1/3 of Discarded Hard Disks Contain Sensitive Data

Inc. magazine recently published an article stating that 34% of discarded hard disks contain either someone’s personal data or commercial data that a company would not want released.  The study was conducted by purchasing random used hard disks and computers from EBay.

 

Many people believe that simply deleting files from a hard disk is sufficient.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.  When you delete a file from your hard disk the data is actually still present on the disk.  The operating system just does not “see it” anymore.  Even reformatting a hard disk does not actually remove the data from it. Anyone with an inkling to do so can still retrieve information from the disk.  We do this often to help clients recover files they have deleted by accident.

 

The next time you are ready to discard an old computer, make sure it wiped clean.  One tool that will do this is a solution called WipeDrive. 

 

Ryan Williams

 

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/ryanwill

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwill

Website:  http://www.techbetter.com

Blog:  http://blog.techbetter.com

 

The Future of Mobile Internet Browsing

Below is a video of a Mobile Augmented Reality browser.  Basically, while you are walking the street, you can pull out your mobile phone and point it at anything.  Then, using images recognition, a built-in compass and GPS the browser looks up information about whatever it is pointed at.  The video shows pointing the browser at different buildings to see how much they cost.  Then, it shows pointing the browser and buildings to see if there are any job openings within the building.

 

The video below shows this functionality in its infancy but you can imagine the things we’ll be able to do with this technology in 5 to 10 years. 

 

This description does not do it justice.  Watch the video below.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08

 

Ryan Williams

 

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/ryanwill

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwill

Website:  http://www.techbetter.com

Blog:  http://blog.techbetter.com

 

Petabytes

Interesting fact: every single day 15 petabytes (15 zeros) of new information is created.  This is 8 times more information than exists in every U.S. library combined.  That much information is created every day!

 

I think my email inbox is responsible for about ¼ of that total. 

 

Ryan Williams

 

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/ryanwill

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwill

Website:  http://www.techbetter.com

Blog:  http://blog.techbetter.com

 

Google Tasks

If you are one of those people (like I am) who likes to work from a task list, you will want to check out Google Tasks.  Google Tasks is a sub-component of Gmail.  It is by far the simplest task organizer I have ever used.  Just start typing to add a task, press enter to add a new task and press tab to make a sub-task.  Tasks can also be rearranged on the fly. 

 

If you are looking for a simple task keeper to help you manage your day, Google Task is worth checking out.  To enable Google Tasks, click Settings from your Gmail page and then click on the Labs tab.  Then, enable Tasks.  The tasks link will appear on the left of the Gmail page.  You can pop-out the task window to create a standalone task page that is always easily accessible or you can embed Google Tasks within your iGoogle home page. 

 

NOTE: This feature is also available to Google Apps users.

 

Ryan Williams

 

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/ryanwill

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwill

Website:  http://www.techbetter.com

Blog:  http://blog.techbetter.com

Google Wave

Email is still the dominate medium for online communication.  In 2008, there were over 210 billion emails sent EVERY day.  Despite this enormous volume, email really has not changed much since its mainstream adoption in the early 1990’s.  That is about to change.  The next generation of “email type” communication is being developed by Google and it is named Google Wave.  If you would like to watch a video demonstration of Wave visit this URL:  http://wave.google.com/

 

The video is pretty lengthy (over an hour) but you can clearly see that the next generation of online communication will be real-time and freeform. 

 

Ryan Williams

 

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/ryanwill

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwill

Website:  http://www.techbetter.com

Blog:  http://blog.techbetter.com

 

Hiatus

Greetings.  I’m finally back from a brief blog hiatus.  Things got busy, I skipped a week and before I knew it several weeks had passed.  I think I’m back on track now, however. 

 

Whenever I need interesting content for this blog, I can always count on Google.  They always seem to have something new worth reporting.  Both of this week’s tech tips are from Google.

 

Ryan Williams

 

Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/ryanwill

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwill

Website:  http://www.techbetter.com

Blog:  http://blog.techbetter.com