Will Platnick

I’m in the process of doing the due dilligence on a potential startup.  This phase involves weeks and weeks of thinking, analysis and planning.  During this phase my brain is moving constantly and if something hits me, I need to write it down quick.  The only device I have on me 24x7 is my iPhone, so it made sense to me to take notes on the iPhone. Unfortunately, the Notes application is very bare bones and offers no sync.  This sent me off on a journey to find the best combination of technologies to get done what I wanted.

Tool #1 - Google Docs - FREE - Man do I love Google. Truthfully, I would pay a great deal of money to use most of Google’s services.  I place a high value on their products.  Google Docs is great, and with their Google Gears, I could even work on the documents offline and sync when I am back online.  Personally though, I like Microsoft Office.  I’ve used it for years and years and know exactly how to do what I want.  The power that Google Docs brings in terms of document collaboration (important when I bring others into my project) can’t be beat though, and I like the centralized storage.

Tool #2 - Offisync - FREE - Downloadable from offisync.com - Offisync is a toolbar that installs into Office 2003 and 2007 that allows you to create, open, edit and save Google Docs through Office. It works very well despite being in beta and I was able to make some fairly complicated changes to my documents.

Tool #3 - GDocBackup - FREE - Downloadable from http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup - This free tool alleviates the major issue I have with cloud storage - No local copy of my work in case of a disaster on their side.  GDocBackup is a simple tool that allows me to put in my Username and password and it connects to Google and downloads copies of all my documents and saves them in the format of my choice (including Microsoft Office.) I now have backups of all my files that I also backup to Mosso’s CloudFiles via JungleDisk just in case.

Tool #4 - Google Mobile for iPhone - FREE- Using Google’s Mobile Website, I can perform a quick edit of any document or spreadsheet on the go. While the way it edits documents isn’t the best, it’ll do in a pinch. I use Google Docs for my budgeting, so being able to hop on and make an adjustment on the fly is very useful.

Tool #5 - NoteMaster for the iPhone - $4.99 - Notemaster is the best application I’ve found for taking notes on the iPhone. The product has been getting better and better with each version and now offers exactly what I needed - Syncronization with Google Docs.  I setup a subfolder for my Notes in Google Docs and NoteMaster uses that folder as a base for its syncronization. I can now edit my notes directly on my iPhone, through a web browser via Google Docs or in Microsoft Office via Offisync.

By combining all of these tools, I now have a fully functional and backed up document solution that combines the best of all worlds.

I’ve recently been playing around with the demo of a program called Drive Snapshot.  It is a utility that takes an exact copy of your entire Windows system, bit by bit, giving you an exact copy of your system.  What is miraculous about this tool isn’t what it does, plenty of other tools do the same thing.  What’s amazing is that it accomplishes this task with remarkably low resource usage. On top of that, it’s the quickest backup program I’ve ever used before. It includes its own driver that it loads dynamically that allows it to back up files in use or it can use Microsoft’s volume shadow copy service, which allows it to take backups of things that are VSS aware, such as SQL Server 2005 databases.

If you want to restore a file or directory, you can just load up snapshot, open the backup file and just mount the whole backup file as a drive with a couple clicks.  If you want to restore a whole partition, you can do that. Hell, if you want to restore your whole windows installation, you can do that too, just boot up with a Windows PE bootdisk.  BartPE actually includes a plugin for the program in a default installation.

In a recent versions, they even added the ability to inject a mass storage driver (RAID, SATA Controller, etc…) to a system after the Windows partition is restored.  This has a variety of uses, such as restoring a system onto new hardware or a virtualized environment such as Hyper-V or VMWare.

I couldn’t recommend this program highly enough.  Well worth the money.

I just installed Picasa for Mac, and overall it’s very similiar to Picasa for Windows.  Unfortunately for me, the ONE reason I installed it for (uploading photos to Walmart or other printing providers) is not present in the Mac version yet. Bummer!

Then I remembered SmugMug allowed me to make prints (though slightly more expensive) directly from my already uploaded album. So, I just hopped on there and purchased the photos there.  I’ll gladly pay a little bit more to a startup, especially since I really dislike Walmart. It’s just hard to look past their prices sometimes, you know?

For those who are unaware, Skype offers a $2.95/month subscription plan that allows you to make “unlimited” (10,000 minutes according to Fair Usage Policy) calls to US destinations.  Definitely a very tempting deal, but most people don’t have their computer on them all the time to make the call with Skype.

Enter the iPhone.

The #1 consumer smartphone has the ability to breathe new life and money into Skype.  As of right now, there are a couple of VoIP applications such as Fring that allow you to place calls using your Skype subscription.  Unfortunately, none of them work particularly well and are plagued with huge latency issues.

A few days ago, Skype was announced for Google Android, so we can hope the iPhone won’t be too far away.  When it comes, if it works well, I see Skype’s subscription service going through the roof, even if they just limit it to WiFi.

It’s a no-go on Lasik surgery for me, at least for a year it seems.  I have a smaller amount of corneal tissue than the normal person, and apparently it’s too risky given my age.  If I were 40 it’d be no big deal. Oh well.  Maybe I’ll wait a few years and see if the technology and price get any better.

You guys are missing out on advertising revenue.  Like others, I am trying to button down when it comes to finances and I am thinking of getting rid of my cable bill.  I very much enjoy your entire Monday night lineup, but I can only watch full episodes of How I Met Your Mother online.  Why can’t I watch The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men too? I don’t care if I have to watch commercials, I’d gladly watch your advertising to do so, even though I do dislike the ads.  Please make whatever deals you need to and I will watch your shows religiously.

Best Regards,
Those who don’t want to pirate your shows