Unrepentant Entrepreneur
From the category archives:
Yep, apparently I’m like a lot of bloggers – starting out strong, but not keeping up a consistent flow of content. I am, however, using a lot these days. Thus, going forward, this blog will mostly consist of my tweets. If I ever do publish a new blog post, I’ll Tweet about it, so you won’t miss a thing! You can either stay subscribed to this blog, or follow me on . Out with the old and in with the new?
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I’ve refined my online shopping habits over the years, and I now think I have a darn good system. Here is what I use:
That’s it! I’ve found this technique to give me the ideal combination of minimizing time spent shopping and maximizing my savings. I used to spend way more time shopping many many sites, using multiple price-comparison tools, searching all over for coupon codes, etc. Now I use the sites above for quick shopping and great prices.
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My wife and I share a single MacBook (older version, but upgraded with a – highly recommended). We previously had two different iPhoto libraries, but this was constantly causing issues – I’d import new photos into one library, then one of us would be browsing the other library and suddenly worry “where are those photos from event XYZ?!”.
After some online research and a bit of experimentation, I’ve settled on two utilities that make sharing an iPhoto library between users on a single Mac easy: , and .
The first has a number of , but the one I use the most is “automated” changing of permissions to allow two or more users on the same Mac to all use the same iPhoto library. I say automated in quotes because does needs to be running for the automation to really work – alternately, you can just launch it when iPhoto complains of a permissions issue. Without this utility, there is no easy way for share a library – each user is otherwise forced to have their own, independent library, which might work for some of you, but certainly wasn’t working for a “family” library like we have.
The second utility I’ve used once so far, but anticipate using it again some day – our iPhoto library has over 15,000 photos, and I recently noticed a number of duplicates – two of the exact same image, with the same date and size, but often different file names. I tried the trial version of and liked it, so I spent the $7 for the paid version – and I’m very happy I did. After running overnight to find duplicates in my entire iPhoto library, reported over 1,500, taking up over 4 GB of precious SSD space. A few clicks later, those images were gone. It would have taken me a day or more to manually find and delete those duplicates, so even if I use it only once, has already more than paid for itself. I’ve been using iPhoto for many years, and I have always had periodic issues with duplicates, thus I’m sure I’ll be running again some day.
Do you have any favorite iPhoto utilities, or any nagging iPhoto issues you’d like help resolving? Leave a comment!
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Backing up your computer(s) is one of your most basic responsibilities – it should rank right up there with food, shelter, and companionship as a necessity of human existence. Without backups, you could lose everything – all your digital photos, all your documents, potentially all your emails, all your music, etc. Even if you do backup, if you don’t do it right, you can still loose everything – a friend of my mother’s lost the only copy of her nearly finished dissertation (6 years of work!) when her computer and backup drive were stolen.
Despite the risks, many computer users don’t backup right – mostly because it used to be difficult, or they didn’t think anything bad would happen to them. First you have to get over the second reason – something bad WILL happen to you – eventually. And now, thanks to CrashPlan, the first reason is no longer valid.
is a combination of backup software and an online service that makes it very easy to do the right sort of backups. I’ve tried many different backup systems and services ove rthe years – CrashPlan is, by far, the best. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it is simply awesome.
Amazingly, the basic version of CrashPlan, which does most of what you need it to do, is free! With it you can quickly set-up automatic, in-the-background backups (meaning you don’t have to do anything, or even see anything, to backup) to multiple backup destinations, including local hard drives, your other computers, and even your friends computers. That’s right – CrashPlan will securely backup your files to the extra hard drive space on your friend’s computers (if they permit you) – which means that even if your computer AND local backup drive are stolen or destroyed, you’ll still have a copy of all your digital goods. If you choose to, you can pay CrashPlan their extremely reasonable rates to backup to their servers and get additional features like continuous backups (instead of just once per day).
I have a free license for to give away ($60 value) – the first person to ask for it in the comments will get it! I’m also offering a backup setup service – if you are convinced you need backups, but don’t want to set it up yourself, I’ll consult with you, draft your backup plan, and implement it using CrashPlan, for a flat rate of $99. This covers installing and setting-up CrashPlan on all your families’ computers, teaching you how it works (if you want to know), and proving ongoing support in the unlikely event that you need it. If you want to backup to CrashPlan’s servers you’ll need to buy service from them (as low as $5/month for ALL your families’ computers) but I’ll do all the set-up for you, and there are no other charges. Email or call if you are interested.
UPDATE: I’ve got a second CrashPlan+ license to give away – post to the comments if you’d like it!
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This is a bit of a rant, and a request to the great internet for answers – if you have no interest in, or knowledge of, Facebook Advertising and/or Google Analytics, you can move on.
OK, anyone left? Probably not, but I’ll press on.
In a nutshell, Facebook says my ads are getting way more clicks than my website reports seeing (via Google Analytics). In a perfect world, the FB Ad clicks and Google Analytics visitors should be nearly the same. In my world, they are different by around 85%! In other words, Facebook says that 10 people have clicked on my ad, and they charge me for those 10 clicks, but my website has seen only one or two visitors!
For more details, and to offer any insights as to why this is happening, please visit http://forum.developers.facebook.com/viewtopic.php?id=49767
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…
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