What did was the fact that this happened right around the same time time Avatar was released, specifically the Blu-ray (BD) version.

What’s the connection?  Shortly after getting Avatar from Best Buy, I received an email from them stating a firmware upgrade to my Blu-ray player may be necessary to watch the movie.

Sure enough, my Sharp BD-HP21 was one of many players needing an update.  Articles here, here, and here summarize.

Luckily I found a forum thread which included a link to an available firmware upgrade from Sharp Canada, which went smoothly and all was well.

So back to my mom. I realize this seems relatively easy for some of us, but not someone like her.  She wouldn’t search for an update, throw it on a flash drive, and upgrade her player.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the advantage of new features, and I actually appreciate that my Blu Ray player didn’t just become obsolete.  And the picture quality is no doubt, outstanding.

But are these firmware updates too much for regular consumers?  Could this be a reason that the Blu Ray format could fail?  Or will internet-connected devices solve some of these issues?  Or is physical media already dead, regardless?

After doing some research, I found KB articles from Microsoft which talked about the need to have Service Pack 1 (SP1) installed in similar cases.  Sure enough, once SP1 was installed and the system was rebooted, Windows accepted the system key and the system was validated.

I’m also guessing that this probably only applies to restore media that may have been issued prior to SP1.  For example, I know that if you purchase replacement restore media from HP, they include many updates that have been released since the system was first released.

I’m hopeful that Microsoft has corrected this problem in Windows 7 so that a fresh install doesn’t require consumers to hire a computer technican to complete a system restore.

To complete the restore process, I’ve been using Partition Commander, which is a great tool when it comes to quickly formatting and converting a volume to NTFS. 

While there may be various reasons why a computer is misbehaving or acting funny, such as an infected computer or the start of a hard drive failure, I always tell clients that this is an opportune time to back up data if you don’t already have a process in place, especially before the situation gets worse.

I cannot tell you how many times I have had to replace a hard drive and the horror on a client’s face when they find out they have lost everything.  I just can’t say it enough.  Backup, backup, backup.  And when I say backup, I’m mainly talking about all the content that did not come with your computer, such as pictures, music, video, and documents.

Personally, I try to use the 3-2-1 backup rule, which is basically keeping 3 copies of files on 2 different media types with 1 copy offsite.   The offsite part of the rule used to be tricky, but online backups have made this much easier now.

In fact, I recently became a Carbonite customer, which is an online or ‘in the cloud’ solution.  So far I’ve been extremely happy. I’m not trying to make this a Carbonite commercial.  There are a few other solutions out there too, such as mozy, ibackup, and idrive. I mainly tried Carbonite because I hear them mentioned on many of the podcasts I listen to.

And if you’re not sure you need a backup solution, just think about what value you would put on your data.  If you’re like me, I can’t when it comes to family videos and photographs.

So no matter what type of backup solution you decide to implement (external hard drive, flash drive, online, or a combination of all), don’t take the chance of losing data, especially when your computer starts giving signs that something is awry.

There was some great brainstorming going on, but not nearly enough time to discuss the massive changes and shifts happening on the Internet.  Thus, the reason I was inspired to share some ideas about what I see coming.

And while many organizations and face-to-face meetings are still important, from an online standpoint, I cannot tell you how radically things are currently changing right before our eyes when it comes to marketing and social networking.

Are chamber of commerce groups important-yes. Will there always be a need for television ads and print material such as newspapers-for some.

But at the same time, future generations are not going to want yesterday’s news once a day, and DVRs are already becoming the kiss of death for TV advertising.  What I see is that conversations are becoming the new way that we talk about businesses, products, and services.

Recently, I attended WordCamp San Francisco, and one of the themes I heard from various speakers was community, groups, and relationships.  And based on that, I wrote “conversations” on one of the tablets which asked “what does WordPress mean to you in one word.”

I know this is going to sounds extremely cliché, but social networking tools such as blogging, videos, FaceBook, and Twitter are where we’re heading.

Will some of these be around in the future? Maybe and maybe not.  But it’s not so much the forum, but the tool itself.  Blogs are not going away.  Videos are not going to disappear.  And maybe new social networking sites will replace FaceBook or Twitter, but the concepts will still be the same.

Both online and face-to-face communities, groups, and relationships will be the new evangelists, advertisers, and mavens.

What I would recommend is instead of brushing off these new technologies and trends, embrace them for what they are now, so you can stay ahead of the game in the future and maximize the potential for your business, while others are left to try and figure it out later and try to catch up.

And if you’re interested in the Bakersfield Business Referral Network Meetup group, you can find more information here about signing up.  It’s a great group of people who are trying to stay ahead of the curve, and are sharing ideas on how to survive in the future economy.

What I mean is that while I find myself using iPhone applications such as Tweetie and FaceBook to quickly upload some content, that doesn’t work when taking pictures with my SLR, shooting video with the Vado, or recording audio with my iRiver.

So until I have a device that has both quality and the ability to instantly upload to the cloud in an easy way, I’m going to have to focus of making myself process the content.

And one thing I have realized when it comes to processing content, is the longer I wait to deal with it, the less chance this task has of being completed.

In other words, for me, what I’ve found that works best is to transfer and upload the content as soon as possible afterwards.  If I wait longer than 2-3 weeks I usually won’t deal with it.

For example, WordCamp San Francisco was almost 3 weeks ago as of this writing, so unless I process the audio and video I captured this coming weekend, more than likely it will never get done.

I guess this is not much different from other tasks in life–but it just seems like with so many devices and content becoming part of our daily lives, it makes it seem so overwhelming sometimes.  So how do you deal with content overload?

In my opinion and experience, cleaning a computer should be the last option, while restoring a computer should be the first option.  Hopefully this article will give you some insight and advice as to the differences.

When a computer has been infected by a virus or malware, I generally find that no matter how well the computer has been ‘cleaned’ there is always remnants leftover, which continues to impact the performance of the computer.  

In fact, most computer I’ve worked on that are 2-3 years old, are already running slow because of excessive programs being installed and unnecessary applications running in the background.  Catch a virus or malware and performance really takes a dive.

Restore Options

So let’s talk about restore options.  If your computer didn’t come with restore media, you may want to see if you are able to create it yourself using an existing application on the computer.  This would entail running a program that is supplied by your computer which will allow you to create the restore media using either CDs or DVDs.  In fact, regardless if you are having performance problems, it’s always a good idea to have a restore option for your computer.

Another option is to see if your computer has a restore partition on the hard drive.  A restore partition is a section of your hard drive that has been designated to contain just the data needed to restore the operating system and any programs that originally came with it.  To start the restore process from the hard drive, you probably need to hit a designated function key (the F1-12 keys at the top of the keyboard) when the computer first boots up.

Finally, if you don’t have the restore media or the option to create it, and your hard drive doesn’t have a restore partition, some manufacturers will actually allow you to purchase it.  Some are reasonable, others are not.

And if none of the above restore options are available, then it’s probably time to look into having the computer cleaned as well as possible.  

Restore Issues

There are some drawbacks to restoring your computer versus cleaning it.  First, if you’ve installed a lot of applications besides what came with the computer, they will all need to be reinstalled after the restore process.  This can be problematic, in that if you don’t have the application CDs or originally purchased them online, you may not be able to reinstall them.  This in itself may dictate the decision of cleaning versus restoring.  

The other issue is related to restoring is user-created content, such as pictures, videos, music, documents, etc.  Basically anything you created that did not come with the computer.  All of this content will need to be backed up prior to doing a restore, as most of the time it’s wiped out after the process.  

Some restore options allow you to restore without eliminating this data, but in most cases I would recommend doing what’s called a ‘destructive’ restore, where the hard drive is completely wiped clean prior to reinstalling the operating system.  By doing a destructive restore, you ensure that nothing is leftover from the previous installation, so viruses and performance issues are eliminated.

The final drawback of restoring your system has to do with operating system updates.  Chances are when you restore your system, updates that have been released since the system was brought home will need downloaded again and reinstalled.  While this seems like a lot of work, the payoff is increased system performance and knowing you have a completely clean system.

To recap, if you have the ability to restore your system; reinstall applications; and backup user-created content, I would recommend restoring a system back to its default state.  If there is no way to restore the system and reinstall applications, or there is too much user-created to backup, you may want to look into cleaning the system as best as possible. 

If you have any questions about this article, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to give you a free assessment via email or phone.

I’m wondering if you’ve ever heard of DVRs?  You know, the device that nearly 1/3 of people are now using to record content and watch at their leisure?

I’m only asking because last night, Tuesday, April 7, 2009, I decided to record the Fringe episode, Inner Child, but evidently because American Idol ran way over on time, I missed the last part of the episode, even though my DVR records an extra few minutes just for this reason.

Yeah, I know I can go to the FOX website and watch the episode, but you want me to install a goofy player, and it doesn’t even work with Google Chrome.  I was, however, happy to see that you support Firefox, but why do I have to install anything in the first place?

I did check iTunes and found that I can purchase individual episodes for $2.99, but I was so frustrated at the end when the episode cutoff, and you have made it all too difficult through your website for me to really care.  You see, I’m not much of a TV viewer anymore, especially because I can’t stand all the commercials.  

I understand you have to pay the bills and production is expensive, but commercials are so out of date.  Which by the way, I hope you are looking for alternative marketing for the future (have you seen what is happening to the newspaper industry?). 

But I digress.  I realize Fringe is not even in the same viewership galaxy as American Idol, and that brings me to my final thought.  The real victim here is not me–I think it’s the writers, producers, and everyone else involved with Fringe.

For me, Fringe was probably the first series I’ve gotten excited about in quite a while.  But because American Idol ran long, and you don’t make your content easily accessible without having to jump through hoops, I probably won’t go out of my way to catch another episode of Fringe, and I think that is sad.

I wonder how American Idol fans who tried to DVR last night’s episode feel. Unless they recorded Fringe, they missed the end too.

Sincerely,

Non-Fringe Viewer

Not only was there talk of agencies running leaner and meaner, but two other points that were mentioned were in regard to collaboration, and the need for agencies to be able to show measurable outcomes.

And while both of these ideas are not new concepts, in either the private or nonprofit world, the discussion reminded me of a recent email article Jason Calacanis wrote in regard to what to do if your startup is about to fail.

Believe me, I’m not hoping any nonprofits or other agencies fail, but I think Jason’s thoughts can be translated to almost any situation, good or bad.

In fact, many of Jason’s recent articles have inspired me to push even harder during these difficult times in both my day job and ‘second life’ IT business.

If your nonprofit or other agency is also dealing with budget challenges, I would recommend reading a reprint of his article (and any others you can find).

They may be geared toward the private tech sector, but there is lot’s of good advice that can be used by all, regardless of what you do. If you too are inspired by his thoughts and writings, you can sign up for future articles here.

Recently, some in-house warranty customers have been asking me if the economy has reduced volume.  Right off the bat, I realized that in the majority of these calls this does not currently affect me because in terms of the computers I usually work on, I’m somewhat living in the past.

In other words, when it comes to making a claim on an extended warranty, in most cases, one year has already passed, otherwise the service claim would be made with the manufacturer.  

Secondly, I think you can just add-in the factor that computer faliures are going to be rare during the first few years of a computer if it’s maintained correctly.

So what’s interesting to me is what is going to happen in the next 2-3 years–will volume drop off?  If people are even buying computers as of this writing (I don’t know one way or the other), are they skipping on the extended warranty?  

Or is it the other way around?  Maybe this is the time to invest the additional cost for some assurance that in the future, especially if parts and/or labor costs rise, it will be taken care of.

Or perhaps this is a benefit to non-warranty work, in that in this future timeframe customers will have to make a decision similar to that of a used car.  Spend some money to fix their exising unit, or invest in a new one.

I’m sure warranty companies will know during these trying times what future trends may hold, but I doubt if this will trickle down to field technicians as to what kind of volume to expect.