3 easy options:

I use Mozy Online Backup for my important data and images and I do a complete system backup to a external drive once a month. You can get a 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive for about $65.00.

At the very least, make sure you backup your most important documents that are critical to your business daily. Quickbooks backup, your office accounting database file or your latest client files. I have a Lexar 16GB Backup Drive USB Flash Drive that stores tons of data on the go and securely encrypts files . Around $30.00!

There is no excuse not to backup your computer system at home. If you live in San Francisco and need IT support, you are going to pay twice that to have someone take a look at your system before the real work of recovering data from a dead drive begins. Do yourself a favor and put a online backup system in place or buy a external hard drive to backup your system. All Macs make it dead simple and Windows 7 has a pretty decent backup program built-in as well.

Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

Was $59.99…Now $29.99 – Lexar Media Echo ZE 16GB Backup Drive USB Flash Drive

Some iPhone owners groused about AT&T’s network and longed for the day when they’d be able to use their Apple gadgets on Verizon’s network. That day has come, but for a few iPad 2 owners that Verizon service isn’t proving to be worry free.

Bloomberg News

Apple says a “small number” of Verizon iPad 2 customers are experiencing connectivity problems, acknowledging the problem after message boards filled this week with customers complaining they are having difficultly accessing Verizion Wireless’s 3G data network.

An Apple spokeswoman says the company is investigating the issue. She wouldn’t say how many iPads were affected, or how soon a fix would be sent out. Verizon declined to comment, deferring to Apple.

Some iPad 2s users are having trouble reconnecting to the Verizon 3G network after they turn it off the connection. One fix circulating around the Internet has been to turn the cellular data switch to on and then reboot the tablet by turning it off and back on again. Another message board user has suggested erasing the content of the iPad after backing up the data, which others have commented as effective.

Apple has faced issues with its products before, including the high-profile “antenna-gate” that affected the AT&T Inc. iPhone 4 last year. But the problems haven’t dented its reputation; consumers continued to snap up the smartphone, while the iPad 2 remains a hard-to-find gadget.

David Pogue Reviews the MacBook Air and echos my thoughts. I think I’d rather have a Air for $950, than an iPad. Much more usable.

“New Mac Airs: Beautiful and Usable

I’ll be straight with you: I’ve always been a sucker for the Apple MC505LL/A 1.4GHz 11.6″ MacBook Air, which looks more like a sheared-off, ridiculously thin piece of an airfoil than an aluminum laptop. I actually bought one. I used it as my main laptop for about a year.

I didn’t miss the lack of Ethernet or FireWire jacks. I rarely missed the DVD drive. I occasionally wished for a second USB jack. What ultimately drove me to abandon it, though, was its sluggishness. It just couldn’t handle Photoshop, video editing, multitrack audio and other high-horsepower jobs.

Last week, Apple unveiled two new Air models—a 13-incher and an 11-incher—that are still crazy thin, beautiful and light. They’re skinny wedges, culminating in a near edge that’s thinner than an iPhone. There are now two USB jacks, thank heaven— on opposite edges, so you don’t worry about fat connectors edging each other out — a headphone jack, video output and (on the 13-incher) an SD slot for your camera’s memory card. You now get stereo speakers that sound much better than the old mono one.

The crazy thing is that these Airs have no hard drives inside. Instead, they use flash memory, just like an iPad. That means you don’t risk losing your data if you drop or jolt the thing, because there are no spinning platters. It also means better battery life: these Airs get 5 hours (11-inch) and 7 hours of life, according to Apple.

(Apple calculates these results using a new battery test, in which it visits the top 25 Web sites over and over, doing whatever you do on each one—search, browse, play videos and so on—until the battery’s dead. It says the battery life will be even better if all you do is, for example, write in Word.)

Flash memory also gives you what Apple calls “instant on.” I found that claim odd, since Mac laptops have always turned on instantly when you open the lid. Turns out they’re not talking about sleep. They’re talking about what’s called Hibernation on a Windows PC. It’s for when you don’t use the laptop for a long time — an alternative to Off.

A few minutes after you close the Air, it saves what’s in memory onto an invisible file on the drive, and then cuts all power. It can sit that way for 30 days—and when you open the lid, the whole thing is fired up and ready to go in about one second.

The downside of flash memory, of course, is that it’s expensive, so these laptops’ biggest compromise is their small “hard drives.” The base $1,000 11-inch model comes with a 64-gigabyte “drive”; $200 more doubles that storage. The base 13-incher ($1,200) comes with a 128-gig drive, and $300 more takes you to 256 gigs. That’s getting into normal laptop hard drive storage—and you’re still paying less than you did for the original, much slower MacBook Air. (Of course, a regular 13-inch MacBook with a 250-gig traditional drive also costs $1,200, so you’re paying a $300 premium for small and light.)

So that I wouldn’t make the same mistake again — letting my heart rule my head, and winding up with a too-slow laptop — I transferred all my stuff onto the 13-inch model and tried living with it. (I was pleasantly surprised by the USB flash drive included with each laptop. It comes with an installer that can restore your copies of Mac OS X, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb, iDVD and GarageBand.)

Once again, the thing was so light (2.9 pounds), I frequently grabbed my laptop bag to run out of the house and panicked, thinking that the laptop wasn’t even in it. (That issue is even worse/better with the 11-inch model, which weighs only 2.3 pounds.)

I found that the speed issue has gone away. The 13-inch model felt about as fast as the 13-inch traditional MacBook Pro I’d been using — which Macworld’s benchmark tests confirmed. Yes, even the Photoshop and video-editing stuff is fine. Which is odd, since the Air has a slower processor than the MacBook Pro. Chalk the speed boost up to that flash memory.

The 11-incher is an astonishing, way-out laptop. It’s tiny and flat (11.8 by 7.6 inches), almost the dimensions of an iPad.

Apple has always insisted that it will never make a netbook. And sure enough, the company argues that the 11-inch Air isn’t a netbook. Its screen isn’t stunted—in fact, it shows even more pixels than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s just that the pixels are tinier, so everything looks a little smaller. You’ll probably have to adjust the font size in your apps.

Its keyboard isn’t stunted, either. Its keys have 100 percent of the size and key travel of a full-blown laptop. Typing on this micromachine is terrific.

The only compromised aspects are, as noted, the “hard drive” size and the processor, which runs at 1.4 Ghz. That’s perfectly fine for writing, e-mailing, Web surfing, Web videos, database work and so on, and it’s faster than the original Air was. But working with digital audio and video will make this thing gasp.

Nobody’s kidding you: small, light and chic commands a price premium. But at least with the new 13-inch Air, you’re not also paying a speed penalty.

The 11-incher will delight you with its practical nonexistence but disappoint you if you think of it as your main machine. But if you think of it as a satellite for a full-blown computer, you’ll be very happy with it. It’s sort of like an iPad with a keyboard.

In other words, these laptops aren’t for everyone. But at the end of “The Silence of the Lambs,” Hannibal Lecter told Clarice Starling: “The world is a more interesting place with you in it.”

You could say the same about the new Apple MC505LL/A 1.4GHz 11.6″ MacBook Air.

There are many reasons that can cause a wireless network to become unstable. In densely populated cities such as San Francisco, there can be 10 or more wireless networks within range of your wifi devices and if they are all on the same channel, there can be too much competition for the same frequency. Set your router to use a channel that is less popular and make sure your network is getting the highest priority in your computer wireless network settings.

Not configuring the DNS (domain name servers) properly is also another common cause for slow page loads or no connection at all. Different internet providers require different configurations and your router made need the DNS addresses added manually.

The most common issue for dropped connections is an old router. As we all know, these plastic devices do not last forever. They will start malfunctioning, some sooner than others, and they will start requiring power cycles more and more often. To save your sanity, that is the time to get a new router and configure it properly.

Knowing what I know now about website design, SEO and search engine marketing, I can see that this person obviously knew nothing about it. They may have had good intentions, but I felt misled at best. A pretty site is nothing if it is not structured and optimized properly for the search engines. The old adage, “build it and they will come” does not hold true for web platforms.

Five years later and countless hours devoted to learning how to design web sites that attract search engines and perform for my clients brings us to this new site. I had converted the old site to WordPress over a year ago which was a huge improvement. In my opinion, WordPress is the best web platform for SEO, hands down. I also have a developer’s license for a premium WordPress theme, called Thesis, which gives you incredible flexibility for site design and optimization opportunities. It’s clean and can get as fancy as you feel is necessary. Personally, I prefer websites that are easy to navigate and give me the information I want quickly.

Thesis just released version 1.8 which rocks! WordPress recently released version 3.1 which has many improvements and security updates. (always update to the latest WordPress version for security after checking for compatibility issues)

I’ll be updating the site design and SEO components of the web site for the next few days, but I am excited to have a fresh new, dynamic website that will perform for me. ~ Jamie