Category — websites

I’ve been taking alot of photos with my new Sony camera (DSC-W100) and had the thought Saturday: What happens if the hard drive on my six-year-old computer dies?

Like normal people, I haven’t backed up my important data for a long time.

As I type, I’m attempting to use Amazon’s S3 storage to backup my photos and videos. I currently have about 3 GB of photos, and Amazon tells me this will cost $5.40 per year to back up. That’s much cheaper than Flickr’s $25 per year and amazingly cheaper than purchasing a hard drive or setting up a personal server to run at home.

I’m using Jungle Disk to manage sending my photos (and, eventually, important files) to Amazon on a regular basis.

More info
Here’s a look at how S3 compares to running a home server: Replacing my home backup server with Amazon’s S3

A List of Amazon S3 Backup Tools

It’s the money, stupid

I spend a lot of time thinking about money.

Sadly, I use to little of this time to dream up new ways to create money — my thoughts are mostly about paying off old debts and trying to not incur new ones. This focus will change over the next 12 months.

Here’s my rundown of how my wife and I track and build wealth at the moment.

Budgeting
Simple monthly budget: Family monthly budget

Percentages: How much you should spend on what: It Pays to Do the Math In the Budget Game

Saving
ING Direct

Or, check BankRate.com to find a savings account that works for you

Debt reduction
Debt snowball

I’ve also created a simple excel file to track our outstanding debt. Just a simple spreadsheet that lists all of our debts that I revisit weekly to remind me why buying a Wii, a new car or some other dumb want makes no sense.

Investing
Road to successful investing

Buying
CapitalOneAutoFinance
We used CaptialOneAutoFinance for the only new car purchase we’ve made to date. Easy + a great rate.

Costco

Ongoing research
That being said, here are some financial resources that I check up on regularly:

Scott Burns. If you haven’t read The Coming Generational Storm you should. If books aren’t your bag, at least read his latest column Road to successful investing.

He’s the most common-sense financial writer employed by a media outlet today.

Get Rich Slowly. Great tips, great site.

I will teach you to be rich

Beat the Press. Dean Baker’s insightful look at the often-crummy economics journalism.

Using these guides, we’ve turned our financial outlook around this year.

I couldn’t have told you how much I could afford for a car payment before September 30. I had no idea how much we were spending on gas, let alone tell you if we were spending too much as a percentage of our income.

Also, this is the first year we’re going to make a good return on my 401(k) plan. All thanks to the people listed above.

Web development 101 power point

Video on YouTube

Viral video marketing

I’m impressed by the Wind Blows viral video contest but not surprised by the lack of feedback.

The idea of the contest — submit a video showing why wind power is good — had a chance of generating buzz because it has a passionate audience of environmental-friendly types who are plugged in (That is, they might know someone with a camcorder).

The site, by Invoke Media is well done, with features like a slick flash video player that follows you as you scroll down the page.

Several of the videos are watchable, if only because they are so cheesy.

However, even with the $10,000 booty, the site only has 11 entries. And the leading entry has a whopping 213 votes.

Yikes! That’s a lot of cash for such a small turn-out.

Time for me to cut a quick video about the sweetness that is wind power.

More on Adrants

As Lost Remote points out, TV Guide has a new web site that is not only video-heavy, but attempts to point to online video listings.

Check it out, on the right-side of the homepage.

It’s a simple idea that makes TV Guide relevant to users who would never use it otherwise. Smart.

Now, if they were really on the ball, they would daypart and feature “TV” during prime-time and “Online Video” during the workday, or iPrime. They could also rotate their main video offering more often — the Anne Heche “Men in Trees: Preview” has been the main feature for more than 12 hours.

Just stumbled upon a digg for the environmental crowd: hugg.com.

The site features nutty stories, such as “Company makes paper out of sheep poop.” Gotta click on that.

Thanks to an add on the hugg.com page, I also got sucked into gotoreviews.com and the mostly-clever: windblows.us video contest that reminds us that wind power blows, oil sucks.

The newly redesigned Slate feels like a cheap blog according to one reader.

It’s obvious that Slate is trying to get some of that “blogs are the new cool” smell on it by taking many style cues from snarky, pop-culture obsessed blogs.

I love that the redesign is “Presented by Nissan” Great idea to get a buck or two. As for the design, I like it for some of the reasons that avid Slate readers hate it. It feels like a warm, often updated blog of interest. That being said, I haven’t had a reason to visit Slate in years, and I doubt they’re doing the smart thing by ticking off regular customers.

As Copyblogger.com pointed out before me, Stride Gum has figured out a great way to market itself through a viral video. By the way, nevermind where the hell Matt is … what the hell is Stride Gum?

Unbundled, non-linear advertising success, that’s what.

So a story about a guy masturbating at the library is ripped and re-encoded for youtube and finds a home on dozens of blogs where thousands (100K+) watch it in a matter of hours.

The next obvious step for such a viral video? A t-shirt.

• Carl Monday is watching you masturbate (Version 1)
• Carl Monday is watching you masturbate (Version 2 — the best one, if you’re going to buy)

And where can the world find out about this T-shirt sale? Why, on the reporter’s blog, of course!

Well, that’s a slight exaggeration.

Moments after the Cavs titanic win over the Pistons Wednesday night, streaming video was unavailable on NBA.com (See the picture above.)

My guess? Cleveland fans, hungry for a series win over the Pistons, swarmed onto the site, bogging down the league’s servers. Just a theory.

Now, why do I care about this? The NBA has done a supurb job of opening up to the internet this season — I for one have been trained to head to nba.com before, during and immediately after a game for video highlights and great stats.

Up until tonight, I hadn’t bothered to see who was powering the video on NBA.com — apparently it’s Nine Systems, whose network is based out of Englewood, Colorado.

Going with an outside provider is a smart short term move for the league — but compare this with the efforts of Major League Baseball, who has built MLBAM into a formidible online content delivery force.

Does owning the backend mean a better product for fans? Am I crazy for thinking about the online philosophical differences between pro basketball and pro baseball just after the Cavs take a 3-2 series lead over the Pistons? Does the average fan care that he can’t get video on demand game highlights within minutes of a game ending? Oh, wait — yes, a professional league should be worrying about that last one.

(Note, I got an archive of the first half of the game to work at 10:13)

And, on another note: Thank goodness the game is on ESPN. Those TNT announcers were horrible.