Third party syncing solutions have existed for quite some time for the mac, notably Pocket Mac (purchased by RIM) and The Missing Sync. Unfortunately they’ve behaved more like workarounds and hacks than solutions, causing almost as many problems as they solved. Here’s RIM’s official feature list:

• Sync your iTunes® playlists, calendars, contacts, notes and tasks
• Add/Remove applications
• Update your device when new software becomes available
• Backup and restore your device data with such features like automatically scheduled backups and optional encryption (security is #1 as always…)
• Manage multiple devices

I’m most looking forward to backing up and upgrading BlackBerry software without having to resort to using a PC. This software, if RIM delivers what they’ve promised will make our customers’ lives easier and enable us to work more quickly and efficiently for them. Combined with Apple’s Mac OS 10.6 native exchange support, life is about to get much easier for our Blackberry Enterprise customers too. Here’s to progress!

Backup

Backing up data is important. Hard drives are machines that break. When they do it can be very expensive if not impossible to recover the data they contain. Fortunately, it is possible and affordable to make exact copies of digital information. The question is not whether you can afford to back up, it’s why you think you can afford not to.

Square Peg, Square Hole

Computers use different connectors for different purposed. Displays are connected via VGA or DVI, Keyboards and mice via PS/2 and USB, and copper ethernet networks are connected via RJ-45. Unfortunately IT is not a realm in which it is safe to adopt an “if the shoe fits, wear it,” or “if the connector fits, plug it” mentality. It’s common for both ends of one wire to end up plugged into a switch or hub, which creates a loopback on the network and generates infinite traffic and breaking the network. It’s also common for multiple routers to be connected to a network via their LAN ports, often with identical IP information, defeating the network’s ability to properly route traffic to the internet. Improperly connected network hardware and cables is a big cause of network downtime and can be extremely difficult to track down.

Reset Button

Reset =/= Restart. Restarting or rebooting a network device is a common troubleshooting technique. Routers and switches and wireless access points are actually little computers. They sometimes crash too, especially less robust models. In that case, rebooting can be a quick and easy and effective fix. Resetting the device, however, reloads the factory default configuration, which is probably not appropriate for your network.

Email and Scope

Email is the first indicator. There are many problems with the same symptom that people notice before anything else. When email stops flowing, our phones start ringing. These problems can exist at any step along a long chain. The local computer, local network, network perimeter, ISP, and the mail server itself are all required for email to flow, and a hitch in any one of them can cause the same symptom. Some of these problems might require professional help to solve, some you might be able to handle yourself. To determine where the problem lies, or at least a likely candidate, run down this list:

1. Does rebooting my computer solve this problem? If yes, it’s probably something on my computer that’s acting up.
2. Can I print to a network printer or see file servers on my local network? If yes, the local network is probably healthy.
3. Do I get a response from my router if I type its IP address into my browser? If yes, the perimeter is probably OK.
4. Can I open web pages? If yes, the ISP is probably in good shape.
5. Can I access my email via the webmail login? If yes, the mail server probably isn’t broken.

Knowing the answers to these questions might not fix your problem, but it will certainly help us fix your problem.

Internet

Businesses are internet addicts. Financial information, email, research, data shared with customers, data shared with vendors, business web presence, instant messages and more all require a working internet connection. It’s relatively inexpensive to upgrade your office to a dual-WAN configuration with automatic failover. Save yourself the worry and hassle of internet downtime in your office and make this small investment.

Preventative Medicine

One client insisted that their server’s hard drive was being backed up. It turns out that it was not. Data was recovered, but at a cost of $2,400. Another ignored our recommendations for managed switches. Network downtime cost three-quarters of a day of productivity. Both of these problems could have been identified and mitigated in advance for much less money than the eventual cost of cleaning up after a disaster. Rebuilding the levee is cheaper than rebuilding the city.

Google Gears

Google Gears is a browser plugin that adds new features to your web browser. Today we’re looking at its local data storage and syncing features. After downloading and installing the plugin by following the instructions listed on gears.google.com, you’ll see a new item in the upper right of the Google Docs screen: “Offline.”

Clicking this link and granting their site permission to access your Google Gears plugin will enable offline sync and access to your Google docs. You’ll be able to get to docs.google.com, even when disconnected from the internet, and your changes will sync up once you reconnect to the internet and log back in to your Google docs account.

Gmail IMAP

Given the very large amount of data stored in a Gmail account, syncing Gmail is more complicated than Docs. Google is working on implementing Gears support for Gmail, but they’re not there yet. Fortunately, we already have an email syncing technique called IMAP. If you need offline access to your email, It’s worth setting up one of the desktop email clients (Mail.app, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc) to connect to your Gmail account. Google provides terrific instructions here.

Clicking Links

We’re used to clicking links in our web browser and having those links launch the appropriate software to deal with the content we’re trying to access. Online email throws a wrench into the works, but not one that we can’t extract. Google has written a small desktop app that directs web browser email address link clicks to Gmail rather than to a desktop email client. It’s called the Google Notifier and it’s free from Google.

Once installed, it has to be configured as the default mail program on your desktop.

To do so in Windows:

1. Download the Gmail Notifier.
2. Right-click the Notifier icon in your system tray, and select Options.
3. Check the box next to Use Gmail for internet mailto: links.
4. Click OK.

If you decide later that you don’t want to use Gmail as your default email application, simply uncheck the box.And, if you’re using a Mac, you can set your default mailto handler by following these steps:

1. Download the Google Notifier.
2. Open the Notifier.
3. Click the Mail icon on the Menu bar and go to Preferences…
4. Select the Gmail tab and choose Gmail as the program from the Compose mail in drop-down menu.

Calendar

Gears support for Google Calendar is also still a work in progress. Google’s added support for a different Calendar syncing technique called CalDAV to Google Calendar. Apple’s iCal on OS X 10.5 (and up) also supports this protocol. Google has posted instructions for enabling it here.

There are a few cases in which a more robust syncing solution will be necessary. CalDAV syncing on Google Calendar has problems with event notifications, and if you’re using MobileMe to sync iCal with your iPhone, there’s no support yet for CalDAV. BusySync, a tool I use, is an alternative technology for syncing iCal with Google Calendar.

If you need help understanding any of these concepts or implementing any of these solutions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Happy syncing!

Basecamp

I can’t rave enough about Basecamp. I use this software to provide a virtual meeting place for me and my staff, and to keep my clients informed of the status of their systems and accounts. I’ve never felt more in touch and on the same page with my team as I do now. It’s an office with no walls.

Highrise

This is a call sheet on steroids. In an executive/assistant scenario, this software trumps kludgey excel and filemaker solutions that I’ve come across. Everyone I’ve converted is hooked. Will you be next?

Zendesk

Zendesk forces me to respond to problems. Every time someone asks a question, leaves a voicemail, or reaches out for help, we make a ticket in our Zendesk app. I can then view tickets by context, urgency, client, or age. This tool helps us keep response time down and accountability up.

Freshbooks

Freshbooks makes invoicing simple and saves the planet (if only slightly) while doing it. Invoices generated with Freshbooks are delivered to my clients via email and the status is tracked online. This enables faster delivery, and tracking of statistics like payment time and average invoice size. They even offer postal mail delivery of invoices for those who insist on paper.

BusySync

BusySync keeps us on-time. Both our appointment information and our time tracking for invoices is done in iCal, so calendars are important to us. There are a few players out there in the calendar syncing world, but our requirements are strict. We need by-calendar permission control, offline access to calendars, and near-realtime syncing. BusySync delivers.

Time Machine

Apple’s OS X 10.5 Leopard’s built-in backup software is called Time Machine. It’s brilliant. This software protects against the three types of data loss: hardware failure, software corruption, and accidental data loss. Paired with a Time Capsule it’s almost a perfect backup solution.

Drive Backup Express

This is the closest thing to Time Machine I’ve found for the PC. It basically replicates the Time Machine feature set, though it’s not quite as pretty.

Mozy & SpiderOak

Offsite backup. Network connections are finally robust enough that online offsite backup is practical for most small business and even some home users. This is not a replacement for local backup — recovery times can be quite long for large data sets — but offsite backup protects against disaster and theft. A backup is no good if it gets stolen.

PhoneTag

If you’re already a Feedwire customer, you’ve probably seen that voicemails you leave for us are transcribed into emails. This is a great time-saver. PhoneTag is the company that does this for us. It gives us only one in-box, which helps us to focus and keep our response times down.

Dropbox

Cloud based file storage systems are great, but nothing beats having a local copy of the files. Dropbox handles syncing our project files between Feedwire employees. We operate a distributed office and don’t always have internet connectivity, so a traditional file server doesn’t work for us. Dropbox keeps all of our computers synced and even allows us to roll back to old versions of files. How cool is that?

There are, however, things that can go wrong. It’s the responsibility of every business and business owner to mitigate risks that threaten business continuity and integrity. Responsibility and accountability cannot be outsourced. If your business relies heavily on cloud computing, there are a few things you can do to reduce the damage done by outages and problems in the cloud. I’ll use Google Apps as an example, but these principals apply to any hosted software.

Connectivity

Your internet connection is not 100% reliable. No internet connection is. Modems break, wires are cut or unplugged, billing issues occur, and ISPs go down. In the past, this hasn’t been as big a problem as it can be now. In a traditional local computing office, most of the information needed to work is stored on local hard drives and servers. An internet outage can mean no email or web browsing, but documents can be written, old emails can be read and responded to, spreadsheets can be adjusted. In short, digital office work can continue through an internet outage.

In an office which relies heavily on web-based applications, an internet outage puts a stop to work. Access to documents, schedules, perhaps the business logic on which the whole company is run is abruptly cut off. Fortunately, we can plan for this and install a redundant internet connection. This used to be available only in very high-end installations requiring equipment expenditures in the thousands of dollars. Now, it’s hundreds. You need only three things:

1. An internet connection
2. Another internet connection from a different provider via a different medium
3. A router with multiple WAN connections

This is $200 – $300 of equipment and approximately 2 hours of labor to set up. If you’re interested in increasing your resistance to internet outages, get in touch with us.

Backup

It’s easy to imagine that Google is eternal and perfect. They employ some of the brightest computer scientists in the world, their products are free and easy to use, and they are somewhat of an icon of Web 2.0 goodness. Google is not eternal or perfect. Their systems can fail, or you might even be targeted by a malicious hacker or competitor. Though they employ best-in-class solutions to prevent data loss, Google disavows any responsibility for your data.

Making regular backups of your data is important, no matter where it is stored. When your data’s primary home is your computer, we can use online services to keep remote backups. When your data’s primary home is an online service, we can utilize local copies as backups.

If you’re relying heavily on email and calendars, be sure to configure your local email and calendar software to sync with Google. This way you retain access to your email, contacts, and calendars even if Google’s services have trouble.

It takes only minutes to set up local syncing of documents, contacts, calendars, and email. If you’re interested in backing up your important information, get in touch with us.

Plan B

This is more philosophy than specific advice. For every system on which your business relies, do you have a plan B? If your stapler breaks, you grab a paperclip. Easy. What’s your plan for an internet outage? A broken hard drive? A disgruntled employee who decides to erase the calendar and send vulgarities to the email lists? You don’t need a formal plan for every eventuality, but you should reflect on your business and prepare for issues that you know are likely to occur.

Redundancy

Your information exists in many places and losing data in any of them can be disruptive to your business. We can’t yet make 100% fail-proof data storage, and even that wouldn’t deal effectively with the problem of accidental data loss or malicious viruses and trojan horses. To protect our data, we need to keep several copies stored on different physical media, preferably with some physical separation.

• How is the data on my workstations and laptops backed up?
• How is the data on my server backed up?
• How is my email backed up?
• How is my website backed up?
• How is my phone backed up?
• Do I have a redundant internet connection in my office?

Contact Info

When your various systems and devices fail, you’ll need to get them restored quickly. If you contact information for the people and services who will help you get up and running again is stored on the device that failed, you’ll see further delays. You need to have this contact information on-hand.

• IT support for desktops and workstations
• Email Host
• Web Host
• Domain registrar
• DNS Host
• Telephone provider
• Internet provider

Passwords

During the recovery process, you will need to prove that you are who you say you are. While not the best scheme, we typically use shared secrets for this – passwords. You should know your username or account number and password combinations for all of your business critical services. There are two easy ways to remember all of this information – to use the same password for everything, or to write them all down. Unfortunately, neither is a great idea. I’ll suggest ways around this problem in the near future.

• Workstation User Account
• Workstation Admin Account
• Server User Account
• Server Admin Account
• Domain Registrar
• DNS
• Email User Account
• Email Admin Account
• Web User Account
• Web Admin Account
• Phone Admin Account
• Internet Connection Admin Account

You can download a data continuity worksheet here: Data Continuity Worksheet (PDF)

And if you’re not convinced, see this blog: The Day a Bullet Got Through

And this one: When Was the Last Time You Backed Up