There are basically no reasons for anyone not to be backing up their files these days. There are so many options (Carbonite, iBackup, Mozy, etc.), but in this post I will focus on the 5 best reasons why you need to backup, if you aren’t really convinced yet:

1. Backing up is also ensuring that your data is in multiple locations: Storing your back-up files onsite just protects your data from your main hardrive failures. It doesn’t protect you from water and fire damage that can occur at your location. Remote or cloud back-up (too similar to differentiate in this post) ensures your data is far away from your location to be affected by any damage.
2. Back-ups on CDs or tapes require manual steps. Remote back-ups are “set once and don’t worry about it” type of back-ups. Depending on the service you use, your files/data are backed-up on a regular basis once you set up the parameters.
3. Fixed monthly/yearly costs are easy to budget and easy on the budget since most services start with packages at less than $10/month.
4. Cloud back-up is ore reliable and come swith guarantees and service level agreements ensuring that your data is immediately available to restore if you need it. Some services also allow for you to back-up all the changes that occurred to a file so you can perform versioning and restore a different version of the file. That also calls for faster retore and back-up processes.
5. A good service provider will offer a much more secure environment than you can build on your own. It’s simply a question of scale: They have the infrastructure already in place with teams to monitor hacking activity as well as processes to reduce human errors.

There are pitfalls and the attractive hourly rates can be more expansive than you think if the work is poor quality or takes a lot longer. So, you have to really shop around before choosing an outsource resource. Your hope is that you find a pool of individuals or firms you can count on to cover your IT needs. When well-managed, these relationships will become key to your IT success.

The article below covers specific Web sites you can use to find resources. They all basically work the same way:

1. Post a project;
2. analyse proposals received (sometimes dozens);
3. eliminate obvious ones;
4. select a few to ask questions via the built-in message board;
5. Narrow your choices to 2 or 3 and conduct more personal interviews (using Skype for example).
6. At that point you can ask for specific examples of work performed. Some will even offer to do a quick prototype at no charge.
7. Award your project to the selected firm

http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/02/22/the-top-6-outsourcing-sites-and-how-to-use-them

See the full article at My Mobilewalla (you may have to register)

I’ve seen earlier versions of that product, and I can say that it gives Google a run for its money. It’s a very good option for a small business

You can try it free for 30 days. It might be worth to check it out.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

• Tethering is the ability to use your mobile device to connect a computer (usually a laptop) to the Internet. It uses the device’s own cell capabilities to do that, so it will be as fast (or as slow) as your device.
• You can connect the device using a USB cable, bluetooth or wi-fi connection, depending on the carrier and device
• Set-up is done on the phone itself, and you may have to sign up for the service through your carrier
• You connect your laptop similarly as you would otherwise connect to a wi-fi network, bluetooth device or ethernet connection
• Just watch your usage because this could use up your data plan really fast.

An alternative is to use a mobile hotspot device. ComputerWorld has a great article on that subject

Although this is all very impressive and smooth, what captivated my interest was the ability to synch my documents created with iCloud-compatible apps. At the moment it’s basically only Pages, Numbers and Keynote, but developers will most likely jump on the bandwagon soon. So, I create a document in Pages on my iPad. I can open it up on my iPhone and make changes so that when I use my iPad again, these changes will be there. It works very well. EXCEPT that it doesn’t synch with the desktop version of these apps, and that’s a shame. I really hope this will change soon since I usually create these types of documents on my Mac. Sure, you can manually synch them pretty easily, but it’s not the same thing as the seamless iCloud.

iCloud just works, and it just works very well. The service allows you to also choose to download manually and also download any of your previous purchases (before iCloud) in any of your iTunes libraries and devices.

Also, the speech recognition capabilities of new Siri are amazing. This is more than a voice activation system where you can tell your phone to do basic things by giving it verbal commands. With Siri you speak naturally without specific keywords. You want to know what the weather is New York? Just say:”What’s the weather like in New York City?” and Siri will answer not only by giving you the temperature and condition, it (she?) will also give you an opinion on the upcoming days’ weather. The same happens with stocks. You can have follow-up questions and ask very interesting questions to Siri which it will try to answer. If it can’t, it will ask you if you want to do a search on the Web, which is what we all do when we don’t know the answer.

I’m going to write a post exclusively on Siri shortly, but suffice to say now that it is an amazing step forward over anything I’ve seen or read regarding such tools.

Since it came with iOS5 already, all I had to do was to restore my content from iCloud. I also had to restore my photos and music from iTunes as a second step, but after all that, I was now finally the owner of arguable one of the coolest tools. As you would expect, the iPhone is slick-looking and although a tad thinker and heavier than the iPhone 4, it is a very well designed phone. Next, I will discuss the many new goodies that Apple delivered along with the release of the iPhone 4S.

Like many people, I have always been impressed with Jobs’ uncanny ability to produce “insanely great” products, and as you can attest from my purchase list above, I’ve also taken multiple bites in the Apple. His keynotes were out of this world, so much so that Carmine Gallo wrote a book about Steve’s presentation skills: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, which I read pretty much in one seating since it was so captivating. I’ve adopted many of the advice presented in the book and my presentations have benefited from that.

I am very sorry to see him go, and I am worried about Apple’s long-term future. The Keynote announcing the iPhone 4S was a let down, and the question begs to be asked: What would Steve have done better? First, he would have talked about “Siri”, the new personal assistant software included with iPhone 4S, as one of his famous “but there’s one more thing” moments when you think that the keynote is over when in fact the punch line has yet been introduced. The headlines the following day would not have been about the fact that it wasn’t an iPhone 5, but about Siri, the future of voice recognition and artificial intelligence in the palm of your hand. That was the real story. The phone was secondary; it was there to support the new OS and Siri.

Steve’s Stanford commencement address he delivered in 2005 was the trigger that made me decide to take the leap from a comfortable job at a large International institution and start my own business. I had been planing it for a while, but I was gun-shy, very nervous to follow my dreams. That changed when I heard Steve’s speech. The YouTube video is a must see.

Steve, we miss you already and thank you for all you’ve done. We will stay foolish and stay hungry.

However, I do think it fits a need, but it may not be the need that Amazon thinks. There is a market for low-priced tablets for those consumers where the price is a major driver, no question there. So many people will buy on that factor alone. Remember the recent fire sale (no pun intended) of the HP tablet? They went out like hot cakes and what do you expect when selling a $400 tablet for $99.

I was almost tempted to buy one just for kicks. I don’t think I will, though. I don’t need another iPad-like tablet (I have 2 iPads after all). However, I ordered the new Kindle touch for $99. I never bought a Kindle before because I thought the physical keyboard was useless, and so I bought a Nook instead. Quite happy with it, but I do have a few books on my iPad Kindle app, so I thought it would be good to get a Kindle e-reader.

And that’s where I think the issue is: E-ink. The Fire doesn’t have that so it is just as useless in the sun as the iPad is. So you still need a e-reader to do that. I guess you can have a Kindle touch and a Fire, but then, you’re limiting yourself since the Fire is a rather basic tablet:

• Highly customized Android OS so no access to the Android app market;
• small screen (in comparison to the 9.7 in. iPad);
• limited storage on device (yes, I guess you can download and delete items continuously, but who wants to do that?);
• no cameras (so no video or audio Skype);
• no GPS (can’t use map-based apps);
• no accelerometer (the tool that allows you to move the device around and affect the app you are using, often used in games).

The Fire is a good option for heavy Amazon users who need a basic tablet. It’s also a good option if you are starting from scratch in the mobile device world (no iPods or no iPhone already), and you don’t want to spend too much for a tablet. But, for me, I do more than just consume information (read books, watch videos and surf the Web), I type documents, present slide show, organize my photos, etc. so the iPad remains the only option.