Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Want to share my personal assistant?

OK, this is so cool. I want to tell you about a very specific type of personal assistant: its name is Yapta, which stands for "Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant."

I've been using this as part of the company's private Beta for the past couple of months, and they have now moved into a public Beta, and I can talk about it. As you know, there are lots of good services out there to help you shop for good prices on airfare. Yapta is the first system I've ever seen that track prices even AFTER tickets have been purchased and alerts you when you are eligible for a travel voucher or cash rebate from the airline!

You see, most airlines have policies that allow you to get money back if the price of airfare drops after you purchase a ticket. Yapta will watch the fares, let you know if the price drops, and helps you get a travel voucher to get obtain travel vouchers - and in some cases, cash refunds - when the price decreases on tickets that have already been purchased. They make it very simple to start watching a trip you've already purchased - you simply enter the airline, the confirmation code, the price you paid, and your last name and it fetches all the details and starts tracking. In the past 3 months of private Beta testing, Yapta alerted its 275 test users to approximately $30,000 in eligible savings and refunds, for an average net benefit of $109 per traveler.

The other thing that is cool is their browser add-on that lets you tag trips you are watching and let you know if the price goes down. For example, from the Expedia site, I tagged a few different routes (clicking on the "Tag it with yapta" button) on a few different airlines for a trip I want to take next Christmas. Now I am watching them to see if any bargains crop up. Today, they track a respectable list of airlines, and I imagine the list will grow as time goes by.

This is a game changer, folks. Be sure and check it out - and sign up for your own account. It is free, by the way!

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Can you watch your legally purchased DVD’s on your video iPod?

I have quite a few DVD's in my collection that my wife has little interest in watching (usually because they are a bit violent or intense - like my 24, Donnie Brasco, Highlander, etc). I also have a video iPod , and I decided that I wanted to have the option of watching my videos on long flights, in addition to the audiobooks I listen to.

One option, of course, is to buy video content through iTunes - and I've certainly done that a few times. However, I already own copies of these movies so why should I have to pay twice just to see them on my little iPod screen?

Access denied!

There are several problems that prevent me from just copying these videos to my iPod:

  • iTunes is not capable of ripping DVD's the way it rips CD's
  • most commercial DVD's are encrypted with CSS (Content Scrambling System) so my (also legally purchased) copy of Nero 7 Ultra Edition will not rip them
  • the copy protection laws under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) make it illegal to circumvent CSS

Let the research begin!

How fair is Fair Use?

I understand that the DMCA exists to protect content producers / owners, and I agree that stealing videos or music is unethical. However, under "Fair Use," consumers are allowed to make a backup copy of a CD or DVD and can store the original and watch the backup. This is no different from copying the DVD to your iPod, putting the original away and watching the backup that's stored on your iPod.

The problem is that the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent the CSS encryption used on the DVD's, so you cannot make unencrypted copies of the content. This effectively prohibits you from watching your licensed video on one of the video devices you own, and seems a little ludicrous to me.

Nonetheless, the motion picture industry is taking a hard line to try to prevent consumers from watching their CSS-protected DVD's anywhere else. Only changes in legislation will make this any better, so if you're in the US and you don't like this Draconian approach, contact your representative in Congress and let them know how you feel about this.

What are the options?

The only means allowable under the DMCA is, apparently, to take your DVD's with you and watch them on a laptop or DVD player.

What about transferring your DVD to the iPod? If it's CSS-encrypted, your legal option is to purchase the content in iTunes (assuming it's available there).

I'll also share that, in doing some research via Google, I found that there are some free device drivers (try searching for DVD43, for example) that (on Windows XP at least) claim to allow you to use your DVD ripping software on commercial DVD's. From there, it should be a simple matter of using your ripping software to convert the video to MP4 format on your hard drive, adding the movie to iTunes, and synching it to your iPod. By the way - I also noticed that Nero Recode (a module included as part of Nero 7 Ultra Edition) has a preset for output to iPod compatible video.

If this approach works (remember, never rip anything you haven't paid for and don't share them with anyone else!) you will be able to use your iPod to watch your own DVD collection on the road.

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[Review] Lead Well and Prosper

Last week, I read Nick McCormick's book "Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager." At under 100 pages in length, it was a quick read. Short though it is, I was pleasantly surprised by the concepts McCormick presents in the book.

This book struck me as a sort of "Cliff's Notes" for management and I think it provides a great reference resource, particularly for new managers who aspire to develop their leadership skills. In fact, I can see this as a very useful handout for companies that conduct any kind of new manager training.

Each of the book's 15 chapters deals with a fundamental technique or concept, often using hypothetical dialog (featuring recurring characters, some humor, and fun graphics) to illustrate the point. At the close of each chapter, there is a summary that includes Do's, Don'ts, and Actions to provide guidance for developing or improving your personal skills.

As I was reading the book I thought, "It might be cool to focus on one chapter a week to go through a cyclical improvement process." Then, lo and behold, I got to Appendix D where McCormick provides an action plan to develop your very own "Development Plan" complete with quarterly targets. Appendix E complements this with a tutorial on planning your week and weaving elements of your Development Plan into your weekly activities.

Oh - and be sure to take the "Am I A Good Manager?" test in Appendix F!

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[Updated] Calling for backup

I'm very good about backing up my laptop (I regularly use Norton Ghost to do full and incremental image backups to removable hard drives). At home, I tried a similar routine to back up my wife's computer using a SimpleTech NAS drive attached to my wireless router. The drive is awesome, and I still use it to store data, but I just couldn't seem to keep a consistent backup routine going.

My wife takes a lot of pictures, and also stores a lot of important data on her computer relating to her very active involvement in Girl Scouts. She would wring my neck if her computer crashed and her data was lost.

Mozy to the rescue

For the last couple of months, I can tell you without hesitation that her computer is backed up every day no matter where I am.

You see, I discovered an online backup solution called Mozy that automatically backs up her entire computer to a remote backup facility every day. Mozy is very simple - you install it on your computer, select the files you want to backup (there are some presets, or you can select them yourself). Mozy then begins to back up the fill set of files you've selected.

One thing you need to know up front: Mozy is designed for users with broadband connections - moving large amounts of data over anything less than broadband is not practical. There are clients for Windows Vista, XP, 2000, and Mac OS X 10.4.

Mozy is efficient and secure

Mozy has built-in bandwidth throttling and uses secure transport and storage (128-bit SSL for data transfers, and your data is encrypted with 448-bit Blowfish encryption before it's sent over the wire).

As efficient as Mozy is, the first backup can still take a while - our first backup of around 13 Gigabytes of data took 4 days to complete over our broadband connection. However, once the first complete backup is done, Mozy performs an incremental backup each day (incremental backups back up everything that is new or changed since the last backup). My incremental backups only take a few minutes each day.

Mozy also handles file versioning (it can store multiple iterations of frequently-changing files), and can back up open files.

Restoring is easy, too

A backup is only as good as your ability to get your files back if you really need to. Mozy shines in this department. You have quite a few options - here are some of them:

  • You can right-click a file and select "Restore Previous Version" and Mozy will show you a list of the previous versions available so you can pick the one you want to restore.
  • You can right-click anywhere in a folder and select "Restore Files in Folder" and you'll get a list of the files in the folder that are available for restore and you can select any combination of them for restore.
  • You can log into the Mozy site and restore from there using their web UI (this allows you to restore to the original location or another location).
  • You can use the Mozy web site to create a ZIP file of selected files so you can download the file and unzip them wherever you want.

Free or fee, depending on your needs

For personal use, Mozy offers a free subscription option, as well as a fee one - here are the differences:

  • Mozy's free option is limited to 2 gigabytes of data storage, but is otherwise fully functional.
  • Mozy's fee option runs $4.95 per month for unlimited data storage - this is the option I chose, and I recommend it for most people. It doesn't take much for your data to grow larger than 2 gigabytes. Incidentally, you can go month-to-month, but a 1- or 2-year subscription is a better deal since you get 1 or 2 months free.
    • Note: I bought my copy at my local CompUSA in a box and it only cost $50 for the product with an activation key for unlimited backup for one year. That's a sweet deal since that comes in at $4.16 per month since Oregon has no sales tax.

For business, there is a "MozyPro" option with different pricing plans (along with additional features and broader platform support).

Outsourcing your backups

In summary, if you're one of those procrastinators that doesn't ever seem to get around to backing up your computer, why not outsource the task to Mozy?

I, for one, am quite pleased with this service.

Updates: Some additional thoughts

Since I posted this yesterday, a few questions have come up in comments - I'll address them here, as well as in the comments.

  • I had a typo in the monthly price - I've corrected it above.
  • Restore speed - will it be too slow?
    • My broadband ISP (and most others from my informal research) provides me with much faster speeds for downloads than uploads. This means that the restores will be several times faster than the backups.
  • Can I trust an online backup service?
    • There is, of course, always the possibility of a problem. However, I have used online backup services in the past (Connected Online Backup - I used it for business) and never had a problem.
    • For many reasons (don't put all your eggs in one basket, etc.), I suggest you have a mix of backup methods - a periodic local backup (I use Norton Ghost for this - I got a copy as part of Norton Systemworks), along with the online backup for more frequent data backups.
    • Mozy has gotten some good reviews from some people I trust (like Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal, and a lot of leading computer tech publications)

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Jott a note to yourself

In my last post, I talked about using "notes to yourself" as a means to build fodder for status reports, track completed activities, etc.

Another tool in the arsenal for this is "Jott" - a free service I found out about a couple of months ago through Big Wes when he commented about it in response to one of my posts.

Jott is a service that allows you to call a phone number and leave a voice message to yourself or any number of predefined recipients (or groups of recipients via a Jottcast). After you leave your "Jott," the service converts it to text and sends it to you or your chosen recipient via email. Very cool. They even provide a link to listen to the original audio recording in case you suspect something's gone awry in the translation.

As with the method of sending an email to yourself, this just becomes a part of your inbox processing workflow (a la GTD) and you can act on or file the email as appropriate.

I have a speed dial key on my Blackberry to make it easier to use this - I just hold down J, and it connects me to Jott. Simple as can be, and easy to incorporate into my habits.

By the way - Jott continues to improve the service and make it even more user-friendly. They've already done a "version 2" upgrade since I've been using it.

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