My latest post on RouleyWrites dot com…
http://www.rouleywrites.com/blog/2017617/social-media-for-writers
Sorry it has been so long since I’ve been here. Seems I may need to upgrade to a Business plan so I can monetize my work here! Consideration and deliberation will certainly precede this decision. I’ll write again, soon. I promise.
How many blog posts start with the words, “By now you’ve heard…”?
It looks like at least one of my accounts has become a target for fraudulent charges. The sinking feeling I have is not for the potential loss of less than twenty dollars for the two charges, but for the loss of time involved in phone calls and other activities I’ll have to suffer through with my bank or banks to clear up this malady. In my business, every hour spent chasing down demons feels like another hundred dollars into the fire. I don’t even get to enjoy the heat.
While I cannot pin this down to the recent hacker activity at Target, I did a search for “CEWCS fraud” to find the entity trying to bill me for $9.84, twice in one account, on Christmas Eve, no less! I found another blogger had posted exactly that same name and transaction amount billed to a card he was sure he had used at the store. That is one long way of saying there are probably many people who will find similar charges on their accounts.
This writer has never been in the “misery loves company” camp. No tidings of comfort or joy are in this holiday season regarding this unpleasant event.
Bah, humbug, indeed!
Check your accounts. Only vigilance will save your money. Your time, however, will be spent.
This morning, there was a message in my inbox from a “local SEO guy” and until I read through to the bottom line, it seemed the content was the work of the sender.
This was not so. The content had been lifted from the page properly cited below. Man, that just seems a little sneaky, slimy to me!
Questions raised by using someone else’s work are something I hope to avoid. Without exception, my blogs are filled with original material, unless I quote someone and then I always try to properly cite the source. Heck, I’ve even written and railed about the need for originality – probably after receiving the same material in three different email messages on the same day!
But, enough about me and my want for others to be creative….
Share the good stuff, yes. And, give me links to the original work, so I can do my own research.
Just be sure to say so up front, so questions won’t be raised about your intentions, your character, etc.
Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229645#ixzz2kRXMtiO4
OK, where were we? Ah, yes, that third way is far more labor intensive and makes far less sense than a cloud based backup plan.
If you came in in the middle of this conversation, scroll down or click here, to see the first part of the article.
The big upside to an external drive is the same as its greatest downside, it’s right there with your computer. On the upside, if your computer crashes, your data is already right there, you only have to plug it into a healthy computer and run the restore process. On the downside, if your computer is destroyed by some natural or unnatural phenomenon, most things nearby are also ruined. Or if your computer is stolen, (this actually happened to one of my clients!) your external drive will also be stolen. You may argue that you use a USB flash drive and keep it in a safer location and I’ll say that’s good, but they are portable and they suffer wear and tear, so there is a greater chance that they will be lost or damaged beyond repair. Enough said; you probably see the number of ways an external drive solution is not the best.
3a. Regardless, we press on with two ways to use your external drive to back up your data or your system. Actually, those are the two ways. You can use whatever backup program you like, or the one that came with your external drive, to complete a data only or a full system backup. The learning curve on this is pretty flat and you can figure it out in one session.
3b. another way you can get a full system backup is to use a disk image utility. I’ve been using a product by StorageCraft for several years now and it does a flawless job of creating an image of the entire drive. You can even use this image to completely restore a failed computer, with all programs and settings intact, on another computer, even if it is not the same make and model. This same backup and restore process can be used if you are installing a larger hard drive in the same system. If you are only moving data from an old computer to a new one, this image transfer will ensure that you have not left behind some obscure directory of data files essential to little things like email or contacts.
Yes, we could go on about all of the ups and downs of backup and restore processes here, but those are the three ways, including part 3, a and b!
Almost any technical person will agree that any kind of backup is better than none. There must be survey results available on how many tech people would agree that cloud backup is a better approach than on-site or external drive backup systems. However, there is always that security concern with the cloud. And, businesses that deal with sensitive information may have restrictive guidelines with data management that prevents the use of cloud-based systems. That’s material for another article.
Find a way to protect your stuff. Implement it immediately. That proverbial rainy day will come and you’ll be glad you brought an umbrella!
I’m going to strengthen my SEO chops with a challenge:
Soon, a link to the page on the Screenmobile Corporation website for retractable screen doors will appear on the first page of Google search results. Let’ see how long it takes to make this true! I first posted this challenge on Facebook on November 17th. Perhaps we’ll see our result before the end of this year, 2013.
First, we need a few sentences with our target phrase in the mix. Since we want Google to see where we mention retractable screen doors, that phrase is linked to Screenmobile’s web page for that family of products; we’ll have to provide a few morsels of spider chow with that association in place. Yes, we’ve already done it a few times on this page, but if you go to their site, you’ll find that Screenmobile offers no less than nine different manufacturers of retractable screen doors for our linking pleasure.
So, let’s talk about those nine choices right here!
Screenmobile has 9 different choices for Retractable Screen Doors
You collect stuff on your computer. In the latest versions of Windows, it’s all under your user profile, and in Libraries on Windows 7 and 8. Libraries are pretty nice shortcut management tools for your stuff, introduced in Windows 7. The standard set contains your documents, pictures, music, and video files. Under your user profile, a.k.a., your personal folder on Windows 7, you’ll also find important folders, like Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, Favorites, and possibly others, related to applications like Google Drive or Dropbox. Saved Games and Searches and Links are also here, but are likely less important to the task at hand.
Protecting your stuff means you’ll still have your precious photos and documents if your computer should fail. And, yes, this is YABA (Yet Another Backup Article), but one that is focused on what must be done if you are going to rebuild, upgrade, or revert to your old OS after an upgrade, on your current computer. Such is the life of users in the Windows world. There is simply no guarantee that your data will remain intact after any change to your OS, so it’s a good idea to continually either synchronize it, or back it up, with cloud based services. For the purpose of this article, synchronization means you use more than one computer to access your files. Backup means you will have to execute a restore process to get your stuff back on the computer, after you’ve made changes to the OS.
For my money and time, synchronization makes the most sense. Because I use at least four computers to do my work, I need my data to be the same in several locations. This may not apply to you, but there is great comfort in knowing that if one of my computers should fail, I can simply carry on with one of the few remaining units, while I decide on how to replace the one that failed. If you have more than one computer – for some of my clients that means one desktop and one laptop – synchronization will simplify things for you, and provide one of a few forms of data backup. Dropbox and Google Drive and SkyDrive all perform this function. A detailed description of those services does not fit the scope of this article. However, consider synchronization to be the first of three ways you can protect your stuff.
You may use any one of several cloud based backup solutions. You can simply search; “cloud based backup” and read all about it. Carbonite gets a lot of attention and seems to have many affiliates, as I hear people on radio and Kim Komando constantly pitching for the company. MOZY is probably its closest competitor, in terms of similarities. Most lists of cloud based backup solutions include synchronization providers, so consider my premise of having to do a restore, versus already having a synced directory. Again, you’ll have to do your homework here. I’m testing iDrive and will likely try out Amazon’s S3 solution in the near future. This second way of protecting your stuff is best for someone who has only one computer, or who does not see the need for the benefit of synchronization.
The third way of protecting your stuff is the old tried and true external drive implementation. In my opinion, this is the least reliable and most labor intensive method, but it is still way better than nothing. It is tempting to simply end things here, since I don’t recommend this choice, but it makes sense to review image backup versus file and folder backup. Consider this parts 3a and 3b, as your external drive system may be used in at least two or more ways.
I’m publishing this post at 8 a.m., and will continue later with an expansion on that last point. For now, I’m off to help a client with backup of his system prior to reverting back to an older OS!
Enjoy. 10/26 8:03
I’m going to strengthen my SEO chops with a challenge:
Soon, a link to the page on the Screenmobile Corporation website for retractable screen doors will appear on the first page of Google search results. Let’ see how long it takes to make this true! I first posted this challenge on Facebook on November 17th. Perhaps we’ll see our result before the end of this year, 2013.
First, we need a few sentences with our target phrase in the mix. Since we want Google to see where we mention retractable screen doors, that phrase is linked to Screenmobile’s web page for that family of products; we’ll have to provide a few morsels of spider chow with that association in place. Yes, we’ve already done it a few times on this page, but if you go to their site, you’ll find that Screenmobile offers no less than nine different manufacturers of retractable screen doors for our linking pleasure.
So, let’s talk about those nine choices right here!
Screenmobile has 9 different choices for Retractable Screen Doors
A couple of days ago, I heard a capacitor pop. If you know what that is, you probably know what it means. If you don’t, I’ll tell you here.
It means some part of the electronics in the device that made that awful noise is now dead or malfunctioning at best. In my case, it meant that my video display adapter (which had been flaky for months) had now failed. Booting my computer would refresh the image just long enough for the whole thing to freeze up on me. Lovely!
So, after an appropriate grieving period, I simply resigned to the idea that I would have to use one of my other five computers as my primary. The unit that had failed was a refurbished PC from a couple of years ago and I simply had to let it go. If you are in tech support and share my sentiment on such things, you probably have the same ideas about diminishing returns. By that, I mean there is no way I can justify putting any time or money into an old computer, so it will now be spare parts for somebody.
Which leads us directly to the second part of the subject at hand – backup. I did not backup the data on this computer and I don’t feel the least bit anxious about that. Two reasons, one is I use DropBox for all of my important stuff and the other is that the drive did not fail, so it will be almost painless to go harvest the data from that drive. Also, the system was built on a solid state drive, so after I do pull the data, I’ll have a nice drive to use in the next system I build. That’s almost what you would call upside, except I still have that work to do!
My heart goes out to a recent client, who “pushed a few buttons and erased everything in my document” lost his book. He had been working on this opus for the last two or three years, with no backup, no DropBox, and no easy method of restoring his document.
This definitely illustrates what some might see as a deficiency in my service offering. So, I’m going to change things now. All of my clients will be offered the opportunity to work with me to institute some form of cloud storage or backup for their data. Seriously, my heart aches just thinking about someone losing his work that way.
As shown above, if your computer dies, you may be able to pull the data from your drive. But if you are not taking measures to protect your data, through version control and by using cloud based backup and storage, you are exposed to potential catastrophic data loss. Even us tech gurus are powerless to reverse errant keystrokes that erase a document’s contents. It’s just sad.
I’m going to strengthen my SEO chops with a challenge:
Soon, a link to the page on the Screenmobile Corporation website for retractable screen doors will appear on the first page of Google search results. Let’ see how long it takes to make this true! I first posted this challenge on Facebook on November 17th. Perhaps we’ll see our result before the end of this year, 2013.
First, we need a few sentences with our target phrase in the mix. Since we want Google to see where we mention retractable screen doors, that phrase is linked to Screenmobile’s web page for that family of products; we’ll have to provide a few morsels of spider chow with that association in place. Yes, we’ve already done it a few times on this page, but if you go to their site, you’ll find that Screenmobile offers no less than nine different manufacturers of retractable screen doors for our linking pleasure.
So, let’s talk about those nine choices right here!
Screenmobile has 9 different choices for Retractable Screen Doors
OK, here is the end of the story.
So, we’ve downloaded our Fb history to a zip file on our computer. We’ve extracted the text from that file and have done all the find and replace functions to get each record on one line in Excel, with each record having an individual time and date stamp. That took some work, since there were three components to the original download text and we had to do a couple of passes, employing delimiter creation for the purpose of separating text to columns. All of this took just a bit of trial and error, but we got it done in part 2 of this story.
Finally, today, the original goal of reversing the chronological order was achieved by simply numbering the lines (or rows, in Excel), then using that series of numbers to do the sorting. Since Facebook lists your most recent activity and status reports at the top of the timeline, if someone wants to see that same story starting from the beginning of time, this work had to be done.
This is the end of this tale. Thanks to Mardi Boettcher for posing the problem. It was definitely a worthwhile challenge and I learned a few things along the way.
I’m going to strengthen my SEO chops with a challenge:
Soon, a link to the page on the Screenmobile Corporation website for retractable screen doors will appear on the first page of Google search results. Let’ see how long it takes to make this true! I first posted this challenge on Facebook on November 17th. Perhaps we’ll see our result before the end of this year, 2013.
First, we need a few sentences with our target phrase in the mix. Since we want Google to see where we mention retractable screen doors, that phrase is linked to Screenmobile’s web page for that family of products; we’ll have to provide a few morsels of spider chow with that association in place. Yes, we’ve already done it a few times on this page, but if you go to their site, you’ll find that Screenmobile offers no less than nine different manufacturers of retractable screen doors for our linking pleasure.
So, let’s talk about those nine choices right here!
Screenmobile has 9 different choices for Retractable Screen Doors
This is in answer to the question:
How Long Should Your Business Description Be in the Google Places for Business Dashboard?
So the recommended length? You should use just enough words needed to describe what you do in a compelling way.
Shortly after getting started with SEO, this question comes up. It is second to: How long should my title tag be for the best search results?
So, I’ll add another post about that topic.
Keeping these posts brief is also part of the plan!
If you need to know more about mousy search terms, or mouse help, you’ve come to the right place. Here at mousehelp.org, we can answer all of your mousy questions and even provide results for a long-tailed search, like; help me with my mouse – no pun intended! Here we add a link to computer mouse help, so we can compete with number one.
Mouse Help – Organic SEO
http://www.mousehelp.org
I’m going to strengthen my SEO chops with a challenge:
Soon, a link to the page on the Screenmobile Corporation website for retractable screen doors will appear on the first page of Google search results. Let’ see how long it takes to make this true! I first posted this challenge on Facebook on November 17th. Perhaps we’ll see our result before the end of this year, 2013.
First, we need a few sentences with our target phrase in the mix. Since we want Google to see where we mention retractable screen doors, that phrase is linked to Screenmobile’s web page for that family of products; we’ll have to provide a few morsels of spider chow with that association in place. Yes, we’ve already done it a few times on this page, but if you go to their site, you’ll find that Screenmobile offers no less than nine different manufacturers of retractable screen doors for our linking pleasure.
So, let’s talk about those nine choices right here!
Screenmobile has 9 different choices for Retractable Screen Doors
Are you looking for the Best SEO in Palm Desert? If so, click that link and come on into Mousehelp @ Rouzell.
“Above The Fold” is where you want to be found on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). In plainer English, it means you’ll be on the front page of Google and your prospect won’t have to scroll down to find the link to your website or web page.
OK, that may not be news to many, but sometimes these terms are new, so I thought it worth illumination.
The thinking is that most people are going to only pay attention to the first few results they get from search. And if you are not one of the few on that page one, you might lose an opportunity. This is why you pay for SEO services. More likely, this is maybe why you should be doing SEO, or buying SEO services.
One question I have for my readers: If you see more than one result from the same provider, does that improve the impression made on the mind of the observer?
Do this: search for “mouse help” without the quotes. You’ll find entries for two of my sites in positions four and five of organic listings. Since I’m listed twice on the first page, does that double my chances of getting someone to click on one of my links?
What happens if you search for “mouse help” with the quotes? My stuff is in positions two through four, in an entirely different set of results. This seems like a good thing to me!
Looking for Palm Desert Computer Repair, Rouzell Enterprises, Inc. has what you need. Diligently working toward becoming your Palm Desert SEO Expert; Rouzell Enterprises is a Palm Desert based company providing compassionate care to people who use computers. This includes computer repair and computer support, also computer training and network support, and social media training and support. If you have any need for SEO, or help with computers, networks, or social media, one call to Brian Rouley at Rouzell Enterprises is all it takes to get the help you need. Rouzell Enterprises is your Palm Desert SEO Expert.
If you need to know more about mousy search terms, or mouse help, you’ve come to the right place. Here at mousehelp.org, we can answer all of your mousy questions and even provide results for a long-tailed search, like; help me with my mouse – no pun intended! Here we add a link to computer mouse help, so we can compete with number one.
Are you looking for the Best SEO in Palm Desert? If so, click that link and come on into Mousehelp @ Rouzell.
Doing a search on this blog for articles on backup, I found only five! I cannot think of another topic, aside from blogging and SEO, that I’ve covered more thoroughly. Thing is, all of my articles on backup have mostly to do with backing up your computer – your photos and documents are the invaluable data that you keep on these infernal machines. You can replace a computer on a whim, but if you don’t have a good backup of your personal stuff, you may suffer the pain of loss that comes with a computer or hard drive crash.
Enough about that and onto the subject at hand…. I did a backup of my website a few months ago, early in 2013. How fortunate for me, since my primary website – rouzell.com was hacked and malicious code was injected into many of the pages on that hosted website. For me, the solution was easy. Grab the copy of my backup, FTP it to a new hosting service, add a few updates (there were several, but they were also easy to find in backup copies of individual pages) and then, with just a little bit of DNS redirect magic, my website was up and running again on Bluehost.com – my current favorite hosting service.
It occurs to me that this (backup, that is) is something I do almost without thinking about it. But now that I’ve had this experience, I will be devoting a bit more of my attention to being diligent with my efforts to preserve my web pages. There must be hundreds of pages by now, if we count each of the blog entries I’ve produced, so there is a volume of work to be preserved through this effort.
I hope you appreciate my sharing these somewhat painful details with you. But if you do have a website, find a way to back up your content. Filezilla is what I used (mindlessly), but I’m sure there are better, even automatic, methods for doing routine backup tasks. Search it out and send email with your results. I’ll be happy to post progress reports.
Palm Desert SEO is the search term I hope you will use to find my service.
Looking for Palm Desert Computer Repair, Rouzell Enterprises, Inc. has what you need. Diligently working toward becoming your Palm Desert SEO Expert; Rouzell Enterprises is a Palm Desert based company providing compassionate care to people who use computers. This includes computer repair and computer support, also computer training and network support, and social media training and support. If you have any need for SEO, or help with computers, networks, or social media, one call to Brian Rouley at Rouzell Enterprises is all it takes to get the help you need. Rouzell Enterprises is your Palm Desert SEO Expert.
Are you looking for the Best SEO in Palm Desert? If so, click that link and come on over to Mousehelp @ Rouzell.
Palm Desert Computer - Local SEO Expert 