For anyone who is not yet familiar with the AMBER Alert System, it’s a “quick response” system developed to get the word out when a child has been abducted. Authorities say that the first three hours after a child has been abducted are the most critical hours in which the chances are greatest for a rescue, so spreading the word quickly is vital.

Here in the greater Phoenix area the DOT has put up a number of special signs along the freeways as well as major streets, that flash Amber Alert information as soon as a report is called in. It will generally display information on a make/model/color of a vehicle if witnesses can report that, sometimes even a license plate number, other times just a description of the child and/or the suspected abductor.

But what about when you’re not in your car driving around to see the signs? Or not watching the news stations? How about if you’re at the mall, ballpark, beach, or elsewhere? Getting these alerts on your cellphone could possibly help save a child’s life. Sure, cell phones give us a lot of convenience, but I can’t think of a better use for technology than helping save someone.

Signing up is easy - I just did it…….you just enter your cell phone, accept the terms, enter from 1 up to 5 zip codes (if you travel extensively you may want to enter more than 1, but only your home zip code is needed to enroll for the whole city in which you live). That’s it - they’ll send you a text message to confirm your enrollment.

Technology is a wonderful thing…….even better when it can help reunite abducted kids with their families.

Grab this freebie, The Photoshop Anthology (101 Web Design Tips, Tricks, & Techniques), while you can - it’s a limited time offer, so don’t delay. Did I mention that it’s FREE?

The author, Corrie Haffly, is an expert Photoshop user, author, and regular contributor to SitePoint. I love Corrie’s advice and tips in the Design View e-newsletter I subscribe to, and her articles on the SitePoint website have taught me a lot about graphic design.

For anyone who is not a regular reader of this site, SitePoint is my favorite resource for web design books, video tutorials, and general reference material. I own (and use almost daily) many of their books, learn something new from them with nearly every issue of their newsletters, and I use their HTML Reference pages and CSS Reference pages on a regular basis. I especially love their Reference pages because I can use them when I’m on the road (and don’t have their books with me) and need to look something up. Every Web Designer should be a regular visitor to their site!

It’s been a bit over two months now since I hooked it up, and it has been hard at work backing up both of my Macs on an hourly basis, without fail, since I installed it. I have to say I really do like this nifty contraption, and I sleep much easier at night now.

I went for the 1TB model since I have two computers to back up, and for various reasons I don’t use the Wireless feature, instead I use Time Capsule as a “bridge” (hub) to which I have connected my two Macs and a PC via the ethernet ports on the back of the Time Capsule, and the Time Capsule is, of course, connected via ethernet to my firewall/router from which I get my internet connection. This means that my backups are performed at the highest possible speed, and don’t interfere at all with my normal use of my Macs as I’m working. A lot has been written about the (very good) suggestion to connect via ethernet for your first backup when you set it up - since it can take quite a bit of time to make an initial, full system backup (some users have reported that when creating their initial backup via Wireless it took overnight). Using the ethernet connection my PowerBook (with approximately 45GB of data) took just under ninety minutes for its first backup, and my PowerMac (with nearly 120GB of data) took roughly 4 hours to backup the first time. Now both run their hourly backups in only a couple of minutes.

Another nice feature is the USB port that can support either a printer (effectively making it a network printer if you have multiple computers that need to share a printer) or a second external storage drive, which would increase the storage capacity of the Time Capsule, allowing Time Machine to keep additional backup sets before overwriting the oldest ones.

For Mac users who also happen to be computer novices, or for any Mac user who just doesn’t want to fuss with tech stuff, it doesn’t get any easier than plugging in the Time Capsule. In my case, given that the Time Capsule also acts as my hub, I think it was well worth the $499 price tag. Not everyone will take advantage of it’s full wireless, router, or hub capabilities, so if you’re only looking for an external drive to back up to, and won’t use it wirelessly, you should factor that into your decision before buying one, as external storage drives can be had for less, and as long as they are directly attached to your computer, they’ll work as well with Time Machine.

If you’re interested, you can read my review of Time Machine here.

So I’ve been thinking about it a lot, because I work in a small office environment in my home - we have around nine or ten computers, most with multiple monitors, along with a variety of peripherals - printers, routers, hubs, phone systems, etc. A couple of these do need to stay on at night as they run application 24×7, but most are just left on for convenience sake. On occasion I get up at night, and it’s astonishing just how much ambient light is put out by the various LED power indicators that are on. We don’t need night-lights.

In David’s column, he mentions a couple of nifty gadgets to help with this - the SurgeArrest Essential from APC (about $28) that has outlets that can be turned off by a Master switch, leaving some on for those items that can’t be powered down, while cutting power to those that can. He also mentions the PowerKey Pro USB for Mac users that does that and more using software along with it’s power strip, letting you control things with a few key strokes. It’s quite a bit more expensive ($199 for the lesser expensive of two models, $299 for the other), but it could be a good choice if your priority is convenience and features.

I took stock of everything that’s plugged in here, to see what could be unplugged at night with little inconvenience (such as monitors, printers, paper shredder, etc). Even my Time Capsule can be shut down at night, since it backs up every hour, and if I’m not changing files on my computer at night, there’s nothing new to be backed up anyway. There’s enough to shave a few dollars off our monthly electric bill and reduce our energy cost, possibly even enough to pay for one or two of the APC SurgeArrests over the course of a year. For me personally, it’s less about reducing our energy consumption and more about helping the environment - my significant other and I are passionate about trying to reduce our carbon footprint - so I don’t mind the extra cost of the PowerKey Pro USB and would use the extra software features.

I’ll keep you posted on which one we go with (who knows, maybe we’ll try both), and I’ll keep track of our energy savings as well so I can let you know in a few months what impact it’s having on our bills.

Read the Announcement

Shop The TidBits eBook Catalog

I’m a long-time subscriber to their regular e-newsletter, which I love. Every issue is packed with information and reviews on Mac applications and utilities, current happenings at Apple and in the Mac community, and interesting technology news. On occasion they offer opportunities to win some terrific 3rd party apps (I’ve been the lucky winner twice - yaay!). I look forward to, and thoroughly enjoy, every single issue.

Their eBooks are extremely well written guides to a wide variety of [mostly] mac-related subjects, with clear and easy to follow tips and instructions. If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about your operating system and applications, how to make a podcast, or getting the most out of your iPhone, you should check out these eBooks (they have a lot more subjects too). The best part is that even at their normal prices they are a terrific value, but at these sale prices they should not be missed. And when you buy one, they have an embedded link you can click on to check for updates, which makes it easy (and often free) to stay current.

If you’re fairly new to web design, The Usability Kit is a really good primer on how to do things the right way, whether your building a blog or a full-blown commercial site. It will teach you how to ensure that your site is not just completely standards-compliant, but really and truly user-friendly as well.

And if you’re a fairly experienced web designer who wants to go into business for yourself, then the Web Design Business Kit is a must-have. This one will teach you everything you need to know about being a self-employed web designer, from preparing proposals to developing milestones to delivering your finished product. It will help you avoid mistakes that many new entrepreneurs make.

For anyone who needs (or just really wants) to improve traffic to their site (in particular anyone who sells products on the web) you can save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars by learning to do your own Search Engine Marketing instead of paying someone else (who may not even be doing it right), you really nee the Search Engine Marketing Kit. The company I work for used to spend over $6000 per month to a SEM firm, but now we do it ourselves for a small fraction of that.

And last but not least, any commercial site should have a good email marketing campaign - it’s important to avoid doing common things that can get you labeled as a spammer, and to know the laws of email marketing, which is where The Email Marketing Kit comes in.

I don’t normally like to “plug” products, but these kits are such a good value normally, and a great value right now, that I wanted to share them with you before the sale is over. According to the email they sent me, quantities are limited so don’t delay! (Now that’s an example of a good email marketing technique!

All of them have Sample chapters that you can download to preview before buying if you choose to.

I just love this site GeekCulture.com and in particular their Joy Of Tech cartoon…….it always helps to start my day off on the right foot.

Click on the image at left to open the original at the JOT site in order to read these funny warning labels…..caution: some of these may remind you of you…..

Well, there’s a lot to cover. And even though Time Machine and Time Capsule work together beautifully (as they were made to), they are two separate products, so I think it’s best to review each separately. I’ll start with the easiest of the two, Time Machine and do my best to compare it to Backup. I still use both applications and I’ll explain why following my comparison.

First I think it’s important to note that Time Machine is not a replacement for Backup. You need a .mac account in order to use Backup, because it allows you to use your .mac’s storage feature, iDisk. The Trial version of Backup is limited to 100MB of backup and only lets you backup to a location (folder) on your hard drive, however, the full version (with a .mac account) is quite flexible and offers many features that Time Machine does not.

On the other hand, Time Machine offers one HUGE benefit that Backup does not - Time Machine keeps a file-by-file backup so that it’s exceedingly easy to locate and restore just a single file if you need to (although you can always do a full system restore if necessary). Backup creates a compressed single-file image of your whole batch of files. Although it’s not difficult to do a restore, and you can choose different versions of a backed up file, it is a bit more complex, making it harder to restore the exact file you want, and you risk overwriting new files with older ones unintentionally if you do have to restore. Backup handles Personal Settings and iTunes Libraries in a much better fashion than it does other types of file.

There are a few similarities between Backup and Time Machine: a) both allow you to automate backing up your system to a specified target location such as a directly-connected external drive (USB/Firewire); b) both create as many backup sets as possible given the storage limitations of the target location, then overwrite the older backup sets with newer ones); and c) both start with a full backup set (based on what you tell it to backup) then only backup files that have changes (called an incremental backup) after that.

However, there are many differences between Backup and Time Machine. These differences keep them from being competitive products, and instead they complement each other. I will say that Time Machine has a much prettier user interface. The whole space-time-continuum theme is cool eye candy, and the graphical display of zipping back and forth through “time” to find something in your backup sets is, well, kinda fun. I like to zip around in there every now and then even if I don’t need something. But setting that prettiness aside, it’s important to understand how Backup and Time Machine are different, so that you can develop a backup strategy that works best for you.

A brief list of differences:

• Target location for backup sets:
  • Backup lets you backup to a location on your hard drive, a directly-connected external drive (USB/Firewire), your iDisk (.mac account), or your optical drive (CD/DVD). If you don’t have a .mac account, you can only backup to a location on your hard drive, and only 100MB in your backup.
  • Time Machine lets you back up to a directly-attached external drive (USB/Firewire), another Mac running Leopard and with file sharing enabled, a Leopard Server, or Time Capsule
  • Neither of them will recognize NAS drives (network attached storage, i.e. one that lives on your wireless/ethernet network), Time Machine will not see other shared computers if they are not running Leopard, and Backup won’t see any shared computers period. If a NAS drive is your only (or preferred) option you’ll need a different application entirely, such as SuperDuper or ChronoSync.
• In setting up Backup you choose what you want to backup, in Time Machine, you choose what you want to exclude from backing up.
• The file-by-file backup concept of Time Machine vs. the compressed single-file image operation of Backup is a very important issue to consider - a well-developed disaster recovery plan should encompass both.
• Number of backup routines/plans:
  • Backup lets you set as many different backup routines as you like, for example you can backup your personal settings (mail, iCal, Safari, etc) to your iDisk, and your documents, iTunes Library, and your photos to an attached external drive, and maybe your purchased music/movies to a CD/DVD. Backup has a lot of built in flexibility in what to backup and to where
  • Time Machine only has one backup routine - which is whatever you don’t exclude - and you choose one location for that routine.
• Backup gives you the ability to individually schedule your backup routines on whatever schedule works for you. Time Machine does it’s thing once every hour, with currently no other scheduling options. This is the only area where Backup does a better job than Time Machine. Sure you could use it Manually, but that defeats the purpose of having an automated backup application in the first place. And yes, there is TimeMachineScheduler, a 3rd party app that allows you to set the schedule from 1 to 12 hours, offering an improvement, but still not an ideal solution.

So as I mentioned above, I use both Time Machine AND Backup. You see I have a setup that may be different from most folks - I have two Macs that are both continually in use - a PowerMac (which is my primary working machine, on which I do all of my graphics/web design work) and a PowerBook, which I use when I travel (and which serves as my “communication center”, where I keep all of my email using Mail, and my IM Client (Adium). For me this is easier than trying to synchronize mail to my laptop when I hit the road). On my PowerMac I have loads of photos, client files and correspondence, and my iTunes Library. I also keep my Calendar (iCal) and Address Book current on my PowerMac. So I use Time Machine to back up this entire computer, excluding nothing, and I use Backup to backup my Address Book, iCal, and Safari settings nightly to my iDisk. I copy my client site files/photos (only what I’m currently working on) from my PowerMac to my PowerBook just before I leave for a trip, so I can work while I’m traveling. On my PowerBook I use Backup to backup my Mail messages and settings nightly to my iDisk, and I use Time Machine to backup everything except client site files/photos since they are already also on my PowerMac and it’s Time Machine backup sets. I backup everything else primarily so that if needed I could do a system restore quicker and not have to individually reinstall applications that I use.

You’re probably thinking “why use Backup/iDisk at all if you’re only using it for personal settings?”…..it’s true I don’t use it to backup any individual files, primarily because I don’t like the compressed single-file image it produces. And I already use, and really like, Time Machine to backup my files. But I like Backup for my personal settings so that if I need access to my mail messages, calendar, address book contacts, and safari bookmarks while I’m traveling, I can get at them as long as I have internet access just by going to my .mac account. I also travel with a backup copy of my Leopard Install DVD, so in the event of a major problem, I could be back in business in a few hours if I had to, minus my client files. But I’d at least be able to call or email someone to let them know what’s going on, and keep on schedule with my calendar.

I really believe that for most casual (mac) computer users, Time Machine is a great solution and will provide more than adequate backup protection for your files. If you’re a power user, and/or keep critical files that you can’t risk losing, I strongly encourage you to develop a multi-strategy backup plan that should include both Time Machine and another backup application such as Backup, SuperDuper, or ChronoSync . If you need road-warrior access to your mail, calendar, and contacts, then I highly recommend getting a .mac account and using it completely online, or using Backup to keep it synchronized with your computer.

One more thing: I still use ChronoSync to backup my client site files/photos (only what I’m currently working on) from my PowerMac to a second NAS drive nightly. ChronoSync works differently from Time Machine in one VERY important way - the ability to synchronize (or not) deleted files. Although it only backs up (synchronizes) changed files, it doesn’t keep older iterations the way Time Machine does. If a file has changed on my hard drive, then the file on my ChronoSync’d back up is changed also. But it doesn’t delete files that I’ve deleted from my hard drive unless I tell it to (I don’t). That way if I delete a file, then 8 months later find out I need it again, it’s there on my NAS drive. If my Time Machine has reached it’s storage limit and deleted the backup set that contained that file already, it’s gone for good. Hey, call me paranoid if you like, but I’d rather be super-safe than sorry.

Early next week I’ll post my review of Time Capsule.

I have several of their keyboard skins (for both my PowerMac and PowerBook) - primarily because here in Arizona you just can’t stay ahead of the dust and the iSkin keyboard skins do a great job of keeping my keyboards clean, so I don’t have to.

They even has a few varieties of their Revo Case for iPhone on sale (I use one for my iPhone and love it - you can read my review of the Revo Case here). I highly recommend this case for anyone who is even slightly prone to dropping phones.

Great styles, great prices, what’s not to love? Excuse me, but I’m off to do a little shopping…..

(P.S. This is a completely uncompensated plug for iSkin, just because I love them XOXO)

The idea is to promote Web Standards, (x)html compliance, good semantic markup, and just plain old usability. In other words, without the styling (and often layout) provided by CSS, can your site visitors still find their way around your site easily? Is your navigation clear and prominent? Do you use proper headers and titles? Remember, those with visual impairments don’t see your pretty styles anyway.

I must admit, it feels quite strange, and I feel very exposed, but I think it’s worth it to make the point, and it also has me rethinking my current theme’s styling, which I’ve been wanting to update for some time. I imagine before the end of April I’ll find some time to give it an overhaul.

Stay tuned! I’m currently writing a review of Apple’s Time Capsule and how I’m using it with Time Machine to keep two Macs backed up - I’ll be posting that in the next day or so.

Brrrr! Can someone turn up the heat in here?