Byte Me by Marv Dealy
Project 10100 – Which Idea Will Help the Most Folks?
Google is generally known for developing ideas in-house or buying up companies that have developed a unique tool or whatever and then rolling it out as a free service to you and me. For example, Google Docs is a free, online approach that offers a word processor, a spreadsheet, or even a presentation for which you would otherwise probably use Microsoft’s Office, which includes Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The big difference between the Google approach and Microsoft’s is where your document is stored. With Google, it’s in “the cloud” and with Microsoft it’s on your computer.
Our subject today is what Google calls Project 10100 which they say is “a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.” That’s a pretty tall order.
Google started the project last fall and to date they have received ideas from more than 170 countries and thousands upon thousands of people. Over time, Google says, they started “noticing lots of similar ideas related to certain broad topics, and decided that combining the best aspects of these individual proposals would produce the most innovative approaches to solving some very pressing problems.”
Google has sifted through all the ideas and come up with what they call their “16 big ideas” and they want us to vote on which really big idea they should sink their time and money into. We have until October 8th to learn about each of these ideas and vote our favorites through to the next round, so to speak.
Google gives a pretty good summary of each of the sixteen ideas, and we haven’t room here to reprint all that information, so I’ll just list there the project names to whet your appetite. Then, you need to get on over to the website (project10tothe100.com/vote.html) and vote for your favorites. Google says our votes will “help our advisory board choose up to 5 projects to fund” so remember you’re spending Google bucks here, not your money.
The list of ideas, in order presented on the website: Create real-world issue reporting system, Enhance science and engineering education, Create genocide monitoring and alert system, Promote health monitoring and data analysis, Collect and organize the world’s urban data, Build better banking tools for everyone, Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists, Work toward socially conscious tax policies, Provide quality education to African students, Make government more transparent, Create real-time natural crisis tracking system, Help social entrepreneurs drive change, Make educational content available online for free, Drive innovation in public transport, Create more efficient landmine removal programs, and Build real-time, user-reported news service.
Some of these ideas are simpler to grasp than others, but I think you’ll agree they all bear thinking about. Go to the Google website (listed above) and read more about each of these ideas, then vote for one or more that you think ought to consume some of Google’s time and money to bring to fruition.
Backing up your computer files: Rarely does a week go by when we don’t have to tell someone that the computer they’ve brought in for repair has turned into a lump of coal that doesn’t weigh enough to serve as a boat anchor, yet is too large to serve as a door stop.
Like they say about motorcycle riders (there are two kinds; those who have crashed and those who will) they are two kinds of computers – those that have crashed and those that will. Now, crashing a motorcycle and crashing a computer are entirely different in very painful ways, and I say this with personal conviction based on past experiences. I can also say that the worst you’ll experience with a computer crash is data loss, where of course with a motorcycle crash you can experience all sorts of bad things, up to and including being dead.
Human nature being what it is, I know many of you out there are groaning about now and saying, “Look, I keep meaning to get a backup system under way, but its so hard,” to which I say – nonsense. You can buy a variety of backup services that usually involve an external hard drive that won’t break the bank. You can also purchase a “cloud computing” backup solution, where you pay a company to backup files on your computer to their computer, located somewhere in the Internet. The Internet, by the way, was referred to by early programmers in their sketches of networks as a cloud; therefore, today we have “cloud computing.”
Even if you do have a backup program and it’s working, are you sure of the quality of the files? I have personally experienced the ecstasy and agony of a backup gone wrong – I knew we were backing up stuff, but the guy in charge one day had to tell me, “for some reason the backup is corrupted” to which I replied “aaarrrggghhhh!” as I went looking for a motorcycle to crash. (I’m kidding.)
The good folks at Data Doctors have posted an excellent column (tinyurl.com/ycujcnv) that talks about the do’s and don’ts of backups which I strongly recommend you read, particularly if you are among the faithful thirty-three readers who just haven’t quite gotten around to getting your computer backup program under way. One of the important points the Data Doctors make is that yes, you can recover data from a hard drive in a crashed computer, but it’ll cost you a lot of money, to which I can say amen. Personal experience with a customer’s crashed hard drive – that wasn’t backed up properly – led that customer to spend some several thousand dollars to regain the data on that hard drive. So remember the three rules of computing – backup, backup, backup, and get yours going today.
Email questions to Marv at: marv.dealy@throck.com.
Marv Dealy founded Throckmorten Enterprises in San Francisco in 1988 and moved the company to Big Oak Flat in 1996. Open Monday through Friday, 9-ish to 5-ish (209-962-7308. The company provides technical support for HP’s webinars, professional website design, computer repairs, and has recently begun providing wireless ISP services. The company also publishes the Yosemite Gazette.
