Disk is inexpensive compared to the value of your time and data. My personal backup configuration consists of three types of backups. The following combination has proven itself over the last several years and I recommend it. It includes 1) A full disk clone, 2) an incremental backup, and 3) an online backup service. This setup is redundant, quick to configure, needs little maintenance, and allows for rapid recovery of data, even with a catastrophic failure.

Details of the three part backup strategy:

1. A clone is a replica of your disk. One great feature of Mac OS X is that you can boot directly from a clone. This means if your hard drive dies, you can reboot from a clone on an external drive and be

Disappearing Data

What happens to our data when we are gone? What happens to us, when our data is gone? Does any of this missing data make us vulnerable? These questions that once seemed theoretical are increasingly relevant to our everyday lives. The consequences include not only the potential for lost communications, but also lost data in cloud services, and risk for security breaches for individuals and businesses alike.

We all understand that data deteriorates along with the physical media it is stored on–photographs fade and hard disks crash. This is why we have backups, or at least should have them. The problem is, unfortunately, not so simple these days as much of our data in the cloud depends on multiple systems and services acting in concert… Continue reading

Personal Digital Archiving 2011

February 24 & 25, 2011
The Internet Archive, San Francisco
http://personalarchiving.com

We are pleased to announce that the Personal Digital Archiving 2011 Conference is now open for participation. We welcome proposals for session topics and speakers, as well as volunteers to help us organize and serve on site.

Conference sessions will be selected by an international peer review panel that includes:

• Ben Gross, Highlands Group
• Brewster Kahle, The Internet Archive
• Cal Lee, University of North Carolina
• Cathy Marshall, Microsoft Research
• Clifford Lynch, Coalition for Networked Information
• Elizabeth Churchill, Yahoo! Research
• Jeff Ubois, The Bassetti Foundation
• Jeremy John, The British Library

Relevant themes include but are not limited to family photographs and home movies; personal… Continue reading

Smartphone Network Connection Monitoring

Tools for monitoring and modifying connections between web browsers and web servers are essential for debugging, testing, optimizing performance, and assessing vulnerabilities of web-based applications and native applications. Developers, security professionals, and anyone with an interest in gaining insight into the lower levels of web traffic commonly use these tools.

There are many mature options for monitoring connections from desktop machines. Unfortunately, there are fewer tools to monitor connections on smartphones and these tools often require more complex configurations, as the monitoring software must run on a separate device. In this article, I present an overview of tools and methods for monitoring network connections on Smartphones including devices based on Apple’s iOS–iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Google’s Android OS, BlackBerry OS, and Symbian. This… Continue reading