HAITI

Text “Haiti” to 90999 from your mobile phone to give $10 to the American Red Cross.  Click here for a 7-minute video that gives a sense of how they are attacking the crisis.  Text “Yele” to 501501 to donate $5 via your cell phone to donate to Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti.  There are also Oxfam, Americares, and American Jewish World Service, among many others.

 

CHINA

Click here for Mark Anderson’s tough, sobering view.

 

BACKUPS

Andrew Klossner:  “It’s a truism in computers that a backup system that’s never tested will probably fail.  About Acronis and reloading the operating system, Steven wrote, ‘Fortunately haven’t had to do this yet.’  He shouldn’t feel secure until he pops a blank hard disk into his computer and runs through a full image restore.  Best to find the glitches now.”

 

Stephen Gilbert:  I’ll call your $49.95 Acronis ... and raise:  Carbon Copy Cloner clones Mac drives, and it’s free.  (Of course I donated some money once I saw how well it works.)  I keep a clone of my boot drive (the one with the OS and applications on it) in case the drive in my Mac fails.  If it does, I can replace the failed drive with the clone and just turn the computer on.  Presto!”

 

Bob Sanderson:  “I read about Acronis when I was looking for full-drive backup software, but I chose ShadowProtect from StorageCraft Technology.  This $79.95 product is very well done, backing up the entire drive in the background while you're working on other things.  It allows recovery of the entire drive, or just single files using a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy.  I’ve had occasion to recover occasional single files, and it works great.”