The Open Source Advocate

I was recently surprised and blessed with a post that reached the front-page of Digg. This means that the post must be good, so you should read it . I had never really paid attention to Digg before this. I knew what it was, but I didn't really understand how the process worked, or how much traffic it could drive to my site. The best information that I have found about how Digg works is this article and of course the Wikipedia entry for Digg . The main concept about Digg is that it uses tens of thousands of internet surfers to decide how good a story is. It is easy to search through these submitted stories and decide if you think a story is worth your "Digg". Here is a screenshot of my post just as it was about to fall off the front page of Digg. Here is a graph of traffic to my blog website. As you can see, I went from about 100 visitors a day to over 10,000 visitors on the day of the Digg front-page. Then there is a quickly dwindling amount of visitors following...

I have always been interested in backups. (In fact, I created an open source project called SaraB : Schedule And Rotate Automatic Backups.) Anyone who has valuable data should be implementing a proper backup process. For a good primer on the fundamentals of backup, I recommend visiting " The Tao of Backup ". Most recently, I have been trying to decide how to best implement the concept of " Separation ". This requires that I store my data in multiple geographic locations to prevent a local disaster from destroying all copies of my data. Like most people, my collection of photos, videos, and documents has been growing quickly as technology become more prevalent and uses higher resolutions. The value of my data becomes greater with every passing holiday, birthday, wedding, and vacation. Here are some options that I have come up with to backup my data to a remote site. Manual Solutions: 1. Periodically burn DVDs and carry them to another location Pros: Simple Che...

Update : As this deal is now expired, I am removing my phone number. You can always sing my replacement number: 555-867-5309! I apologize that this post is going to show up on the Planets. If anyone knows how to edit posts without it going to the top of the planet, please share. I have verified that the "Post time and date" are not being updated, so I don't know why this happens. I wanted to share this awesome deal with everyone who wants to save money on a phone service. This could be used to reduce monthly charges for people who have a Qwest phone line, or to provide a cheap emergency phone line for people who only have cell-phones. SunRocket has traditionally been one of the cheapest VOIP services around, with an unlimited plan for less than $17/month. Now they have an unbeatable deal, but you need to act fast if you want to take advantage of it. They are offering a free year of service when you buy one year, which brings the monthly fee to $8/month. The dea...