Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Right on its 4th “birthday”, my primary hard disk hit the digital Purgatory on New Year’s Eve. It also took a secondary drive hostage, as if lightning had hit twice.

I spent several hours wondering why would two admittedly “ripe” Western Digital drives fail on me, then I decided to go get a brand new Barracuda drive and re-install Windows and worry about getting my data back later.

I back up data regularly but not that on my main drive. Getting overly confident is a bad state of mind when it comes down to keeping data safe.

So it happened, and my primary drive made whirring noises, refusing to boot. The other drive showed up as “dynamic” and Windows asked me repeatedly to format it.

Lots of data was at stake at losing, so with Windows Vista back on the new drive, I searched for software to reclaim it. My last resort would be to send the drives off to a data recovery company and risk paying up to $1,000.

It’d be a very costly mistake but thankfully, two pieces of software – one free and one priced at $29.99 saved my digital ass.

First, my primary drive was drilled down by TestDisk, a brilliant piece of software that is “designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table).”

In my case, the drive was clearly dying, judging from the metronome clicking sounds it made. The TestDisk software, however, pulled through like a champ and helped me locate my lost partition and reclaim and copy all 95 Gb of data into safety. All this, for free.

My other drive was salvaged using the Dynamic Disk Converter for $29.95. After running the demo version and confirming that my data was intact, I purchased the full version and in five seconds my drive was once again recognizable by Windows and ready to use. Needless to say, that I copied over all the data to a new drive.

Moral of the story: Back up all your data regularly and don’t rely on the alleged reliability of hardware brands; get a new drive every two years max, as technology improves as well (had no idea most drives now come with 32 Gb cache as a standard!)

I thought I’d start the week with a tribute to Google and its ability to return useful results to meaningful search queries.

Projectors were eliminated from Kodak’s line of products in late 2003, much to the dismay of aging family men and old-school salesmen. For only $65 I managed to get one such projector on Craigslist; the price even justified driving to Daytona Beach to get it.

When faced with a situation where the newly acquired but rather aged (16 years old) Kodak projector kept firing up slides non-stop, I had no recourse but look online for help.

Googling the model number didn’t help much; the results involved an endless line of eBay auctions and such.

Then I searched for “Kodak Carousel 4400 keeps moving slides” and sure enough I found a meaningful result in the form of an online resource of problem-posting and problem-solving.

The Fixya.com web page contained even a schematic diagram of how to fix the problem; after taking apart the projector and pondering about the complexity of hardware made in the US, it took me just 5 minutes to fix the problem.

As it happens in those cases, it took me 30 minutes to put the projector back together but that’s a totally different story.

Thanks Google. You nailed it this time.

After six whole years, my trusty Panasonic Lumix FZ20 has been retired.

The aged, bulky 5 megapixel camera still functions just fine, and image quality has always been great – but one cannot fight the proverbial “force of progress” much longer, particularly in digital photography.

My new camera, ordered from Amazon.com during the heat of the Cyber Monday sales, is another Panasonic – the FZ150.

Costing almost half of what I paid for the FZ20 in 2005, the FZ150 will hopefully accompany me to many more domain conferences than its older sister.

After several days of window shopping, Cyber Monday made me succumb to peer pressure.

Hopefully, my choice was right!

Over the course of the past 18 months I’ve moved the majority of my domain portfolio over to Fabulous.com and I couldn’t have been happier.

I’ve written before why I think Fabulous is *the* best domain registrar catering to domainers.

This time around, I will discuss an important layer of security, available to Fabulous.com customers via an one-time fee: A security token or “fob”.

When I met Mike “Fabulous” Robertson at TRAFFIC Las Vegas in January, I could not but mention how great Fabulous.com is for domainers like me. For being an Aussie, Mike was particularly sober but regardless, he promised to send a spanking new Fabulous fob to my mailbox. I just could not wait!

A few days ago, as promised, the fob arrived in a small envelope. For almost an hour I simply examined it, planning what to do with it. Eventually, I simply ripped the envelope open and the fun began!

The envelope’s particulars showed a total weight of 11 grams or less than 1/2 an ounce. That thing was light as a feather, yet it managed to make it all the way from ‘down under’ intact. After I opened the envelope, I saw that it was packed in some bubble wrap for protection. And no, that’s not the layer of Fabulous security I was referring to!

Inside the bubble wrap was a small square plastic folder, complete with a label. My excitement peaked, as I saw the Fabulous.com logo with the blue gradient and the stars of Australia! The words “Security Key” made it clear that this was the real deal.

I opened the plastic folder, barely wider than a business card. Inside was a printed piece of paper that consisted of the front cover with the logo, the back bearing instructions and finally, the Fabulous fob in all its glory!

Here is a scan of the instructions portion. Since this was my first time to ever face a ‘security fob’ I had no idea how it’s used. The instructions miss one important detail: you have to plug the Fabulous fob into a USB port before you proceed with the steps above!

You can see how tiny the Fabulous fob is, the hole on the left allows you to put it in a keychain – although I would not recommend it – and the right side is what you plug into an available USB port in your computer. So what is the center part that looks like a ring? Hold on!

This is the magic glow of the Fabulous fob, after it was plugged into the USB port! It is now ready to be used and provide an extra, solid layer of security to your domain portfolio with Fabulous.com

After your Fabulous fob is installed, log into your Fabulous.com account as usual and go to the Admin section, then click on “Security”. A menu will be available. Select “Fabulous Security Key” and you’re ready for the registration part.

At this point, you need to ensure that you have easy access to the USB port; first click inside the form field as displayed above. Then press your finger firmly on the round, green ring of the Fabulous key.

As if by magic, the form will fill with a long set of encrypted characters in just a few seconds. That’s the time when you should lift your finger from the Fabulous fob and press the “Register Fabulous Security Key”.

The next step will confirm that everything went as planned with the registration of the security key token. Head over to this discussion if you want to know how the security fob works. Who said I’m not assisting you with your technology education!

At the bottom of the same confirmation page as above, you will see this nifty menu of options which will allow you to set up the extent of security that you’d like to implement. For example, you can enable authentication via the use of the Fabulous fob only when you want to make finance changes, or before you push a domain to a different account. Since you have this Fabulous device in your hands, you might as well check them all!

Finally, this is what you’re looking at when authentication is needed. To proceed with authorizing any action specified in the checkboxes above, the Fabulous fob must obviously be plugged in. Then, click inside the form field, tap and hold the glowing green ring of the fob until the form field fills – then hit Continue and you’re in!

I hope you found this review and tutorial about the security key, a.k.a “Fabulous fob” rather helpful. Fabulous.com is indeed a quiet giant, in the dark blue sea group of companies and it’s the domain registry of choice for anyone serious in the domain business.

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/acroplex

There’s a new gaming application for the iPhone called Canabalt. The great news is, that you can download it from the Apple store for just $2.99 – or play the online version for free on the web at Canabalt.com

The game features multi-level parallax scrolling action, miniature but detailed graphic sprites and intense action that only requires one finger: tap the screen to jump or tap and hold it to prolong it (gravity takes its toll).

The music is reminiscent of the Bourne Ultimatum soundtrack and adds to the atmospheric gameplay, which consists of jumping on collapsing rooftops, avoiding obstacles, robots and walls. That sounds like the kind of challenge Rick Schwartz might introduce at TRAFFIC New York 2009.

Whoah!