Joost - Slick and Definitely Worth a Look

After poking away at the page for about 20 minutes (apparently their servers are quite finicky handling the new load of the expanded beta) I got into the Joost beta today. off of the provider mentioned on Gizmodo. I wished someone had helped me out with an invite earlier though--if you happen uppon this page and would like an invite, leave your e-mail in the comments. (and I'd encourage you to add me to the feeds that you read if you like what i write about!)

Some notes:
After downloading and installing Joost, it asks you for your e-mail address that received the invite, and for you to select a username and password. I did, and then it said that it was checking my username for about a minute. Then it bounced me back to to the page to provide username, e-mail and password . Although it doesn't say anything right now, apparently if you don't receive a dramatic error message, odds are your username has been successfully registered (there's no "success" message).

Once I got through the hassle of the signup, the Joost software seems to work like a charm. Within seconds after selecting a show, the p2p system gets the show to the screen. Quality is a little pixelated for the first few seconds, but as more content gets to your machine it rapidly improves. So far the content is fairly limited, but there are some episodes of Transformers, Punkd, and Starsky and Hutch with more to come as they make deals with content providers. There are quite a few music videos as well

I dont' think I'll be using it too heavily until there's more to watch, but for now Joost is certainly a great way to get quick access to some quality videos. Again, if you'd like an invite, leave a comment!

Mozy--Setting up an Effortless Backup Plan

Computer backups are one of those things that I'd occasionally do every month or so after reading a horror story about someone's drive crapping out. I'd basically copy my entire user folder over to my external and replace the previous backup. I've always meant to set up a more regulated system so that I don't lose anything important (my files for school are constantly changing and I'd hate to lose them). The school has some sort of tape backup mechanism in place, but I'd rather not be tied to the VPN to do my backups. Ideally, I just want it to stay out of the way, but be available easily should something happen. So the other day I had some free time and made investigations around the net into a good backup strategy.

Enter Mozy. For the price of an e-mail address, Mozy provides 2 gigs worth of encrypted backup space, plus another 256 megs for each person that uses your referral code (you also gain 256 megs of free storage space when you sign up using someone's referral code). You download and install Mozy's backup client, modify the default filters so that the file types and folders you need backed up are taken care of, and then you let it do it's thing. The initial backup will probably run overnight, but from there on out it will just run in the background and upload any new files or file changes onto the Mozy servers when your system is idle. According to Windows Task Manager the mozy software uses only ~20 megs of my 2 gigs of ram, and I personally haven't noticed any slowdown. The Mozy tray icon gives you easy access to all of Mozy's controls and to quickly suspend it from making backups. Backups can be easily accessed through Explorer--Mozy adds a "Mozy Remote Backup" location to your system which contains all your backed up files and folders in their original filestructure layout. In the case that your entire hard drive kicks the bucket, you can also access your complete backup from the Mozy website.

All in all Mozy is my new solution for everyday backups. It typically will make a backup of my files about 4 times throughout the day so it's always up to date. It's incremental, so I don't have to backup my whole drive every time I want to backup. I get over 2 gigs of storage free, with the option of unlimited storage for $4.95 a month. Based on my experiences with it thus far, it's likely I'll be upgrading to the unlimited plan and backing up my photos and music there in the near future. If you're looking for an excellent budget plan to backup your most important everyday files, Mozy is an excellent utility and service that I would highly recommend. I'll be installing it on all the computers I do IT for in the near future.

If you'd like to sign up for Mozy using my referral code 7DDRS3, we'll both get an extra 256 megs of storage when you complete your first backup. You can automatically sign up with the referral code by clicking here. If you do, thanks!

Alternatively, if you don't want the extra space or want to use someone else's code, see the main Mozy site.

Office 2007 -- Engineering and Math Finally Get Some Respect

Office 2007 has been right alongside Vista in receiving all manner of poor reviews and complaints, primarily revolving around the new file formats (such as .docx) and the replacement of the old toolbars with the ribbon. After spending a fair amount of time working on a huge engineering paper the past few days, I feel I can safely say that Office 2007 is the best thing to happen to writing as an engineer.

As someone who has muddled with the old "Microsoft Equation Editor" that has remained almost completely unchanged for years, Office 2007's equation editor is one of those "Why didn't they do this years ago???" sort of things. Press the arrow under equations and get instant access to a list of built-in equations.

If you click on the equations button, an entire chunk of ribbon opens up with every amount of functionality from the old equation editor had, and then some, all instantly accessable directly from within Word without having to deal with another window to insert the equation components.



All of this is perfect for writing entire equations out with great ease. However in engineering writing I frequently need to put in a single greek letter to reference a value. In older versions of word that meant either using a character map, the symbols font, or inserting a single letter through the equation editor. Now, just to the right of the equations button is the Symbol button. Initially it contains a few basic symbols, but as you choose from the attached character map, Office will automatically save the symbols you use. When you need the symbol again, you just click the symbol button on the ribbon, and select the symbol from the nice drop down list.

Just these two tiny additions to Office have made a big difference to how I use it on a regular basis, and I couldn't be happier.