Category: Internet

An emergency is a bad time to plan for one

The most valuable part of a computer is also its most fragile: Data are the wealth of a digital lifestyle, a currency of which many notes are irreplaceable. At least, that’s how I felt staring at a “Confirm you want to wipe your hard disk” message, my finger poised over the mouse.

During an emergency is a bad time to plan for one. It’s the feeling one might get jumping from a plane before checking one’s parachute.

In the Smashing Magazine article, My Hard Drive Crashed…” (And What I Learned From It), Ben Gremillion covers his experiences and thoughts with several backup services.

For what it’s worth, I do backups manually right now. I use Apple’s Time Machine, but I manually back up to external USB hard drives and store them off-site for safe keeping. That being said, I’m considering signing up for CrashPlan. It appears to be the best option, and in asking about different services from people I know, it’s the most flexible.

In defense of email

Interesting read. I’ve worked for a few companies that tried having an “email-free day,” and even one that tried substituting various web-based messaging services for it. None have worked. Personally, I think it’s because people are too hung-up on sharing & communicating, and tend to procrastinate.

TechCrunch shared some interesting thoughts In Defense of Email.

Photoshop.com accounts migrating to Revel

Adobe Revel

Adobe has announced that current Photoshop.com storage and sharing accounts will move to the new Adobe Revel service starting April 2, 2013. The migration will be automatic.

Adobe Revel is a sort of mix of Apple’s old .Mac photo album feature and iPhoto. It stores your photos in the cloud, keeps them synced with all your devices, builds photo albums for viewing by friends, and offers minimal editing features.

Adobe Revel offers a free tier with limited uploading, and a premium tier that offers unlimited uploading and storage for $6.00 per month.

85% of people would rather go without water than their mobile apps, and other stupidity

To quote Charles Barkley:

“People are stupid.”

Apigee has released the results of the 2013 Mobile App Behavior Survey of smartphone owners across France, Germany, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

Survey respondents reported some fascinating country by country differences:

  • 18% of the French are unable to order dinner without using an app
  • 32% say they can’t wake up in the morning without an app
  • Some people use more than 50 apps per day
  • Many use apps to impress people
  • Surprisingly high numbers admit to using apps behind the wheel
  • First smartphone? Germans say no age is too young

Mobile Apps Survey

When asked the age at which it’s appropriate for a child to receive their first smartphone, 75% say somewhere between the ages of 12 and 16. However, 2% of Germans say a one-year-old child should have a smartphone, 8% of Americans say the right age is 10, and 6% of people in the U.S. and Spain say parents should wait until kids reach the age of 18 before giving them their first smartphone.

53% of drivers across the world admit to using apps on their smartphone while behind the wheel. Some countries have made more headway than others at curbing this behavior, but the numbers of respondents saying they do this is consistently high: Germany (64%), France (61%), Spain (56%), U.S. (49%) and UK (30%).

Interestingly, “pride” emerged as the top reason that people stay with the mobile platform of their choice. Americans emerged as the most proud of their chosen operating system at a surprising 37%. However, overall iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows users say it’s pride that keeps them from switching.

Spain ranked as the most app-reliant country with 93% saying they can’t go one complete day; while half (50%) of U.S. residents saying they couldn’t last just four hours without apps. And the amount of apps people say they use each day is significant: 72% say they use as many as 10 apps per day, and 2% in the global survey even claim they use more than 50 apps per day.

[zilla_alert style=”yellow”] Note: I received this information via an emailed press-release, and have NOT seen the actual report. But if what you see here is any indication, it’s got to be a great read. [/zilla_alert]

Testing your HTML email campaign

If you create a lot of HTML emails, you surely spend a lot of time making sure those emails look as good as they possibly can no matter what email client the end-user might have. But you can’t possibly test for them all. Thankfully there is Litmus.

Litmus

Send Litmus a copy of your email design, either by uploading the HTML or sending a test email. Within a couple of minutes you’ll see screenshots of your email as it’s rendered by all the different email clients. It couldn’t be easier.

To be clear, Litmus is a professional service; it’s not for the casual user. Litmus costs a minimum of $49 per month for the basic service, and goes up to $300 per month for the premium. It sounds expensive, even at the low end, but I don’t know of any professional digital design firms that don’t use Litmus (or a similar service).