The most common reason people give for not making backups of their computer is: “I forgot”. That’s understandable, but also very unfortunate. Especially when there are free solutions that allow anyone to make regular backups.

One of those products is called Mozy. It’s a piece of software that you install on your computer (did I mention it’s free!), and then you can literally forget about making backups. Mozy will remember for you, and automatically make those precious backups once or twice a day, or just as often as you want. The backups are stored on Mozy’s servers, on the internet. So if your computer or laptop is stolen or breaks, your data is still safe and sound, ready to be restored as soon as you have a working computer again.

I’ve been using Mozy for some months now, and I like it very much. Twice a day the software automatically backups all data in the folders that I’ve said are important, including any new file or sub folder I created since the previous backup. In addition to the software itself being free, you also get 2 Gigabyte of storage space on the Mozy servers free of charge.

But wait, it gets better: if you use this link to sign up, install the software and make your first backup, you even get an additional 512 Megabytes of storage space, completely free (that offer lasts until November 30, 2008. After that date you still get 256 MB of additional storage space on top of the 2 Gigabyte). Just click the link, and then click on the big “Get 2 GB for Free” button.

I can really recommend using Mozy for your computer backups. It’s as easy as ’set it and forget it’. Just give it a try, it’s free!

Your domain name is the first point of contact on the internet. It is a vital part of the address of your website and of your e-mail address. You’ll be using that domain name for a long time, so it’s crucial to spend some time deciding on the best name, to find out if that name is available and to register a few variations of that domain name. In this article, I will present some tips and suggestions about the steps involved.
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I read an article the other day, reporting on some shocking statistics from a study by Accenture. They surveyed 800 American and British frequent internet users. It turned out more than half of them had only one password for all websites, web mail, online banking and other internet usages. The reason people give for doing so is easy to understand: its very hard to come up with and remember different passwords for all different sites.

This week, Google posted some guidelines on their Official Blog, on how to choose a good password and how to keep it safe.

In my business, I constantly have to come up with new passwords, for accounts and systems I work on for my clients or for my own use. Instead of being creative with new passwords, I use a tiny little tool on my computer that generates completely random passwords for me. It’s called Password Generator, and it’s free! You can download it here (PC only).

What this program does not do for you is remember which password you created for which site. That’s the second challenge. My web browser Firefox can remember them for me, and since access to my PC is protected by a password too (and that one I do remember of course), I feel it’s reasonably safe this way.