Why should I back up my computer? There are two types of hard drives: those that have failed and those that will.

Don’t get caught with your pants down when your computer crashes. There are numerous methods you can employ to organize and back up your computer files. I even find myself refining my backup strategy periodically. There’s also the constant struggle to organize local and offsite backups. What happens if there’s a local natural disaster? With a remote backup, you can have Aunt Stella FedEx your external backup hard drive from Australia and you’re all set.

Most of your files are likely in your My Documents folder (Windows) or Home directory (Mac and Linux). But do you know where your email messages are? Your applications? Your pictures? You’d better find out.

Here are some tips:

• Back up your email. A quick search on Google for “email backup software” results in numerous listings, but the one I have personal experience with is for Macs called MailSteward ($49.95). You can download a demo that archives up to 3,000 emails. It even includes a scheduler that automatically archives emails without you having to lift a finger. With email archiving software, you can store those thousands of messages you want to keep without clogging up your email server.
• Back up all your files. General purpose backup software can be configured to selectively back up your important files to external hard drives or even remote servers. You just need to organize your files, possibly buy some extra hard drives, and schedule your backups, and you can rest easy knowing that disaster recovery is just a few clicks away. My backup software of choice is ChronoSync ($30), because it can synchronize two hard drives - delete or change files on the master drive, and the copy automatically mirrors those changes.
• Make a bootable backup of your computer. Let’s say your computer crashes. No worries with a bootable backup drive. All you have to do is start up from your bootable drive and continue working. In other words, a bootable drive includes your operating system, applications, files, and preferences. It’s literally a mirror image of your regular working hard drive. Backing up all your files/documents is a great start, but when your main hard drive crashes, you not only have to copy all your files, but also reinstall all of your software and preferences. What a pain! Unfortunately, ChronoSync doesn’t create bootable drives, so I use SuperDuper! ($27.95). Confirm that the hard drive you’re using is a compatible bootable drive for your operating system.

Have you ever considered the amount of money you spend each time you print invoices, brochures, letters, and pamphlets? Then you have to consider the ink, envelopes, packaging, and postage. Why not use electronic correspondence instead, such as email and websites?

Incidentally, U.S. Postal Service rates just increased again, which means rates have gone up nearly 24 percent since 2001.

Save the paper, ink, and postage, and send email with attachments to provide information and documents (PDFs). Use hyperlinks within emails to refer to pages on your company websites. Rather than mass marketing through snail mail, email marketing is more efficient and easier to track.

Here’s the best part: You can choose Dogpaw Web Hosting to run your website on sustainable wind power.

Any Mozilla fans out there? Firefox, anyone? I’m a huge fan of the ever-popular and secure internet browser, Firefox 2, and definitely looking forward to the release of Firefox 3 this year. Well, Mozilla is hard at work on the next version of its popular email client, Thunderbird … code name: Shredder. Shredder alpha 1 was released on May 13, 2008.

Any application called Shredder has to be good, right? The underlying engine that runs Thunderbird 3, Gecko 1.9, touts more than 10,000 updates related to improved performance and stability and more.

One of the cool aspects of Mozilla products is the ability to customize the user experience by using what they call Add-ons. Thunderbird 3 will make it even easier to customize the application using the new Add-ons Manager.

I’m particularly excited about the update that lets you run Thunderbird 3 natively on Macs and integrate with the Mac OS X system Address Book.

Read more about this Alpha 1 release: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/3.0a1/releasenotes/

For those of you who opted for the premium spam filtering service called Postini, here are some links for illustrated, step-by-step instructions on how to use it. The links will take you the respective email support pages on the HostMySite website.

• Adjust your Blatant Spam Blocking Settings - The following article explains how to adjust your Blatant Spam Blocking settings. Blatant Spam Blocking (BSB) is a setting for your domain that detects and deletes the most obvious spam before it reaches your email server. The spam messages are either bounced or deleted and aren’t included in your quarantine summaries. View instructions
• Adjust your Premium Spam Filtering Filter Settings - The following article explains how to adjust your Premium Spam Filtering filter settings. Premium Spam Filtering filtering is based on 4 categories: ‘Sexually Explicit,’ ‘Get Rich Quick,’ ‘Special Offers,’ and ‘Racially Insensitive.’ You have the option of adjusting the overall level of filtering or adjusting each category. Filters are adjusted on a per user basis, allowing each user to determine their own level of filtering. View instructions

The hosting that we set up for our clients via HostMySite (HMS) includes a basic level of spam filtering. This works pretty well for most of our clients, but sometimes it’s not enough for the heavy-duty spam dumping that some of you need. Personally, I used to get 300-500 spam messages EACH day until I got completely fed up. Then, just in time, HMS announced their partnership with a company called Postini.

Postini is the ultimate spam killer. You pay $1 per email account, per year … well worth the reduction of my own spam to somewhere around 1-2 annoying junk emails each week. I’m no longer pounding my desk and yelling at the internet gods for creating such a time- and energy-sapping entity called spam.

Contact us if you’d like to try out Postini for 30 days. You won’t regret it!