I have 2 TB’s (that’s 2,000 GB’s) of External Hard Drive storage AND I have Virtual Off-Site Storage as well.

Why???? Well, I love overkill.

No, really it’s because even if  you have your files backed up on an external hard drive (which, at the very least you should) they could still be lost due to theft, fire, flood, or just plain old crashing. And losing all your stuff sucks – big time. My computer crashed a couple of years ago – nothing dramatic, I did a “Restart” because it was running slow and…..it never came back on! Luckily, I had all my applications, files, music and photos backed up on external hard drives, so I was safe. But it could have been awful. So don’t be in a position where you are cryin’ like a baby if all your data disappears! Get backed up – NOW!

Here’s a good article on WHY backing up is important and why you need to do it. I read it on Top Ten Reviews:

Superheroes need it, police rely on it and everyone that uses a computer should use some form of it. In the world of mainframes and microchips it’s called data backup or data recovery and it can mean the difference between a slight computer setback and living through your own electronic apocalypse.

Let’s face it; our computers are a bigger part of life than ever before. We shop, work and play using computers. They’ve replaced stereos, encyclopedias, even the mailman. They’ve become journals, photo albums and canvases for our art.

But computers aren’t perfect. Files become corrupt, motherboards malfunction, CPUs call it quits taking our precious data with them.

The best defense is data backup software. Backing up data is vital for businesses; lost information can cause a major crisis or worse, lead to business failure. Individuals who don’t backup computer data run the same risk. While this may not cause financial ruin, it can certainly be frustrating and even heartbreaking.

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“I heard about this thing called the Internet. I thought, That sounds kind of interesting. The first thing I did is I actually picked up the phone and dialed 411, and I said, I’d like the number for the Internet, please. And the operator is like, What?”
Sky Dayton (Sky Dayton later founded EarthLink, an Internet-service provider, in 1994)

There is a great article in the July 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, An Oral History of the Internet : How the Web Was Won, by Keenan Mayo and Peter Newcomb. (I know, I know it was printed a year ago and I am just now writing about it, so what, you got a problem with dat??)

Fifty years ago, in response to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It would become the cradle of connectivity, spawning the era of Google and YouTube, of Amazon and Facebook, of the Drudge Report and the Obama campaign. Each breakthrough—network protocols, hypertext, the World Wide Web, the browser—inspired another as narrow-tied engineers, long-haired hackers, and other visionaries built the foundations for a world-changing technology. Keenan Mayo and Peter Newcomb let the people who made it happen tell the story…..

The article is fascinating and well-done – give yourself about 45 minutes to read it, or, a few minutes to surf it. I hadn’t really thought about how the internet got started – hasn’t it always been here? Of course I had heard that Al Gore “made it”, which never made any sense and that is completely explained in the article, but the real history and a who’s who? Not a clue.

Click here to go the the article on the Vanity Fair site and read all about it. From the three “Founding Fathers”, Mosiac (first browser), the browser “war”, to AOL, YouTube and Google.

John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla (Firefox Browser) gave a great talk at WordCamp SF. He kept the audience engaged for 45 minutes at the end of the day – not a bad feat. He’s smart. Click here to watch.

The video is on WordPress TV, using VideoPress for the player. I could have that video on THIS blog, but I am too cheap right now to get it – too bad – you’ll just have to go to the link provided to hear Mister Lilly. I’ll get VideoPress later maybe.