Small story: For years I have been using TIme Machine – yes, warping a file through time is really cool, but I tend to think three times before deleting a file. Now here we are, ready to leave for two weeks of holiday and my MacBooks starts to get hick-ups. Initial disk inconsistencies could be fixed with Disk Utility, but I decided to take the Time Machine HD and my Mac OSX DVD with me.
One day into the holidays, my MacBook HD totally falls apart – no more repair, no booting anymore, and no way to load the pictures off my SLR! So I ordered a replacement HD at Amazon, and two days later the HD arrives in my holiday resort. Swapped the HD, put the Mac OS X DVD in the MacBook, and attached the Time Machine HD. You need to hold the “C” key pressed and the MacBook takes off booting from the DVD. On the install screen I selected the option to restore from a Time Machine backup and that is it!
Approximately 60 minutes later my MacBook was back – all the configurations, all the emails, all my photos, and all the programs.

This was the hot test for me: Time Machine did work perfectly for me, and it has proven to be 100% reliable. Thank you Apple!

From a product management perspective, it is interesting to see how few features Time Machine has. You have one configuration pane, where you define where you want to store your backup, and you can chose to exclude some files (like the download folder or so). That is it! No bells, no whistles. Good design is as little design as possible (Dieter Rams).

Godmode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Warning: this may kill your Explorer Do not try it on 64bit systems. I also figured out that if you right mouse button click on the new folder, Explorer will die. Please only use this at your own risk and do not blame me for telling.

Once you have renamed the folder, the icon turns into a control panel icon and you get a list of all settings you can possibly set in Windows. It is actually quite handy so I thought I should share it on my blog. Credits go to all those who figured it out. I found it on cnet.

So, I do have an SLR digital camera … I do have a computer … off you go. I downloaded Photomatrix and spent an hour reading the manual for my camera. Here is what I managed to get done so far:

Fancy, isn’t it? Ok it is not mind bending yet but it is pretty cool. The picture is based on three shots with AV+2 AV0 and AV-2. Unfortunately there are these watermarks in the picture as I am still experimenting with the trial version – think I’ll buy it pretty soon

Here are the technical details for you techies out there: Dell Dimension 8300, 2.8GHz, 1.5GB memory, 80GB HDD, Nvidia graphics, U.S.Robotics WLAN … Umbongo 7.04 works like a charm.

To say it with the words of FSJ: I honor the place where your OS and my PC become one. Umbongo.

Fortunately Corporate America is full of acts of stupidity that sometimes remind me of the necessity to protect my internet identity. One of these acts of stupidity was the publishing of search logs for 500.ooo users of the AOL search engine. Another one is a recent law passed in the US enabling government officials at US airports to basically copy all the data you carry around on your laptop.

OK … you get the point? Time to become an Info Warrior! Here is my top ten list of tools you should have on your laptop when you want to protect your identity and your data:

CA Personal Firewall 2007 – what used to be “Tiny Personal Firewall” is now being sold by CA for $30. You can close all the holes on your laptop making sure even MS can only do what you allow it to do.

Avira AntiVir Personal Edition – A standard virus scanner with regular virus signature updates but … it is for free.

Sophos Anti Rootkit - To counter another act of stupidity (Sony using a rootkit for DRM) this little tool lets you check your computer for installed rootkits

Hijackthis - As some folks think they are funny, they try to install dodgy software on your box while you are surfing. Hijackthis creates a nice protocol of all the stuff that is installed and running on your box. Sometimes this may be quite surprising output …

Process Explorer - If you belong to the “seeing is believing” section of the house, procexp will help you fight your paranoia. This tool is so cool that even MS recommends it on TechNet.

Torpark - Once you have used all the tools above to protect your box, it is time to protect your identity. Torpark hides your identity while you are surfing the web. A nice sidekick: it perfectly tunnels your corporate firewall.

TrueCrypt - So you have secured your machine against the internet, your identity is hidden … all you need to do now is protect your digital belongings against the nice security officer at the airport. TrueCrypt leaves him with a copy of random bits that even NSA will have trouble to bring back into order.

Eraser - If you think you are safe by now … think again. The files you copied into your encrypted drive are still there – you just do not see them anymore. To really get rid of every piece of evidence on your hard drive, this tool is the right choice (meets US DoD 5220-22.M requirements). You can even schedule a disk wipe so that your disk gets cleaned every Friday at night.

TOP 9  … still open – please send me your suggestions

TOP 10  … still open

Haha … I just had to create this image

Today you stop being organized and start searching. X1, Google Desktop Search and Microsoft Desktop Search are stetting the direction of a life on the search.

With an average of more than 100 mails a day, I finally gave up trying to get my inbox organized. What good is it if I organize my inbox according to the departments I am dealing with, when I need to run a cross-departmental project? What good is it to organize my inbox according to products, if my company runs a campaign across multiple products? I have tried so many ways to get my files and my e-mail organized, but I have given up on it … now I just search.

Using search is a process of giving up your old-school habits. “Ingo, do you have this xyz presentation somewhere?” … sure, let me check on my network drive … office documents … presentations – wrong! Stop it! Go to Desktop Search, enter “xyz” and search for presentations – right? This is when this little devil on your shoulder raises his voice: “Are you sure the search result covers all the information you have?”

Search is so much more than just a functionality. I think that it is a shift in paradigm that might have a major impact on file systems and operating systems. Why do you need folders in a file system when you believe in search? What you actually need is a lot of metadata about your files! What is the document dealing with? Who wrote the document? When was it written? Is it my working copy? So the metadata – the information about the information – is taking over the role of a file system making it much more flexible and multi-dimensional. The more metadata I have collected about my files, the better I can define my search, and the more likely it is that I will finally find the file.

If you take a look at Microsoft Vista, you will not only notice that search is everywhere (you even search for programs to run), but you will also notice that metadata is everywhere. If you open up a file browser you will see the metadata for each file directly in the browser. You can click on any field of the metadata and update it without having to open the file. Just like in the media player, you can now also provide a rating for your files to ensure that search returns your favorite files first.

Maybe here is something that Google is missing … dealing with metadata. When I search the web, Google is my first choice - but if I search my desktop, I rather use Microsoft Desktop Search. In my daily work the knowledge of metadata makes the difference between having to fall back to navigating tree structures of the file system, and blindly trusting in the search results of a search engine.