Daily Cup of Tech

What is the one thing that every IT guys keeps harping on?  Backups!  You have got to do your backups. Regularly. Consistently. Accurately.

In fact, go and do a backup this very second.

Seriously.

Stop reading.

Go and do a backup right now!  Your documents, your websites, your e-mail, your pictures.  Everything!

Go!

Don’t worry.  I’ll wait.

Now that you’re back and you’re not worrying about backups, I can let you in on a little secret.  If you didn’t just perform a backup of your website and suddenly it disappeared, there may still be hope.  And this hope’s name is Warrick.

The purpose of Warrick is to attempt to rebuild your website from different sources on the Internet that make cached copies of your website.

From the Warrick site:

Warrick is a utility for reconstructing or recovering a website when a back-up is not available. Warrick will search the Internet Archive, Google, Live Search, and Yahoo for stored pages and images and will save them to your filesystem. Warrick can be ran through our website or as a command-line utility (directions for downloading, installing, and running are given below).

Warrick is most effective at finding cached content in search engines in the first several days after losing the website since the cached versions of pages tend to disappear once the search engine re-crawls your site and can no longer find the pages. Running Warrick multiple times over a period of several days or weeks can increase the number of recovered files because the caches fluctuate daily (especially Yahoo’s). Internet Archive’s repository is at least 6-12 months out of date, and therefore you will only find content from them if your website has been around at least that long. If they don’t have your website archived, you might want to run Warrick again in 6-12 months.

I don’t know if I would be willing to leave the entire security of my website in the hands of Warrick.  But, if everything is gone anyway, what have you got to lose?

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/20/forget-backups-ive-got-warrick/trackback/

I don’t know if you are an Internet Explorer fan but the latest version is now available for download.

Download, install, and let us know how it fairs.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/19/internet-explorer-8-is-out/trackback/

As I wrote in Big Brother Google Is Watching Me, Google’s new interest-based advertising is pretty freaky. So, I thought that I would help everyone out by sharing this Firefox plugin that may help.

TrackMeNot is designed to perform random search engine searches to as to hide your actual searches in a sea of unrelated searches.  The idea is to make your search patterns undetectable and, this, Google can not create an accurate search profile on you.

Here is what the website says:

TrackMeNot  is a lightweight browser extension that helps protect web searchers from surveillance and data-profiling by search engines. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e. covering one’s tracks), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with the Firefox Browser and popular search engines (AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN) and requires no 3rd-party servers or services.

I’m going to give this a try.  The hard part will be determining whether or not is is actually successful in covering my tracks.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/16/firefox-plugin-to-foil-google-interest-based-advertising/trackback/

Just a quick not to let everyone know that if you have not joined Dropbox yet, I’ve arranged for you to get an extra 250MB in your free Dropbox account.  That’s 2.25GB instead of your standard 2GB!

What’s Dropbox?  I’ll let their website tell you:

Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online.

Works like you do
No complicated interface to learn. Dropbox runs in the background on your desktop.

Worry-free syncing
Sync your files automatically to your computers and the web.

It’s everywhere you are
Sign in and access your files from any browser or mobile device.

Easy sharing
Sharing files with your friends and family is just two clicks away.

Photos
View your photos in a gallery and share them easily with anyone.

Your welcome!

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/15/extra-free-dropbox-space/trackback/

A you may have read in the past, I have been a big fan of temporary e-mail addresses.  These are e-mail addresses that you can enter into a webpage and if they spam the website, who cares because you have already gotten the information that you need and the e-mails that go to the mailbox are automatically dumped after a period of time.

But, I knew it was only a matter of time before a number of these websites got smart to this type of thing.  For example, if you were to enter a Mailinator e-mail address into an Aweber form, it would be rejected.  And this is not limited to temporary accounts, either.  Many free e-mail accounts like Hotmail and Gmail are all starting to be banned from these places as well.  So what is a tech savvy person to do if they don’t want their e-mail to  get spammed?  The answer is to create your own custom temporary e-mail address!

Step 0: Get Your Own Domain Name

This this is not a critical step, it sure makes things easier.  And with domain names so cheap these days (I’ve gotten them for as little as US$2 per year), there is little stopping you from having your own domain name.  Many of you already have your own domain so you will not have to do this.

If you do need to purchase a domain name, I generally recommend GoDaddy.

Step 1: Determine Your Temporary E-Mail Provider and Address

There is no shortage of temporary e-mail providers.  A simple Google search will provide you with a long list of companies that will allow you to create a disposable e-mail address.  Remember this e-mail address.

Step 2: Create An E-mail Forwarder on Your Domain

Next, create an e-mail forwarder on your domain that points to the temporary e-mail address.  You could use something like spamstopper@yourdomainname.com and forward it to spamstopper@mailinator.com.

Step 3: Use Your New Custom Temporary E-Mail Address

Now, whenever you need to provide an e-mail address on the web and the page looks a bit questionable, you can give your custom temporary e-mail address and then check the website for your e-mail.

Bonus Step 4: Set Up An Alias in Roboforms

If you really want to speed up getting that newsletter, you can create an alias at Fake Name Generator and then enter the information along with your new custom temporary e-mail address so that whenever you need to provide information, Robocopy will quickly fill in all of your fake information along with your custom temporary e-mail address.

If you don’t have roboforms, I have made arrangements for Daily Cup of Tech readers to get a copy for free.  Just download, install, and go.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/03/14/create-a-temporary-e-mail-account-on-your-domain/trackback/