Mac users have the benefit of being easily able to back-up their files with Time Machine, but it can even prove a chore for us to connect our Mac to an external hard disk. Time Capsule provides an alternative, as users can back their files up by WiFi, but this is an expensive product.

Online back-up services hold a number of advantages over backing up files locally. For example, data is safer with them, as an external hard disk could easily be destroyed. It also allows portability; laptop users can effectively back up their data anywhere as they don’t have to carry around a spare hard disk!

Several online back-up services exist, but the two largest are Carbonite and Mozy. I recently bought a year’s subscription to Carbonite and in this article I shall review it.

Carbonite is an incremental remote back-up solution, available for Windows and OS X. Basically, after an initial back-up, any new or modified data is uploaded to their servers and backed up. This means only data that must be uploaded is, instead of all data being uploaded again.

Carbonite allow you to back-up any files, except Applications. Free trial users can’t back up their music or movie library, but paid customers can back photos, films, documents and music up. At the moment, I have backed up everything except my music library, because that will take some time to upload.

Users can upload an unlimited amount of data to their servers, where it is encrypted.

It takes quite some time to upload your files. I had to leave my computer on over a few nights to upload 5GiB of data, but I expect this is due to my Internet connection rather than Carbonite. I did experience a few problems though: it doesn’t automatically configure my firewall or ports. The lack of documentation resulted in my having to speak to their customer service, who readily provided me with a solution. They were slightly abrupt but got to the root of the problem.

I will share a few of these solutions for Mac users:

1. Allow ‘/Library/Application Support/Carbonite/CarboniteDaemon.app’ to receive incoming connections (the log is in the same folder)
2. Forward ports 25, 53, 80 and 443 to your machine
3. Ensure no folders which are constantly being written to, like cache folders, are included in the back-up

Users control Carbonite through a prefpane in OS X. This preference pane allows users to see how much data is left to be backed up, allows them to exclude data from the back up and allows them to restore files. I would like there to be a few more options in this pane, such as the ability to see the file currently being uploaded and access the log. The icons of the Mac folders are also outdated.

An interesting features of Carbonite is that users can access their uploaded files anywhere, such as their office or at family’s. This effectively allows Carbonite to act as Remote Access.

Restoring files is as simple as simply selecting the file and the location to which you would like it restored.

So, down to the details. Carbonite is $55 a year, however Subscription.com (who provided the software for me to review) offer a Carbonite offer code for a 20% discount. This is remarkably simple to apply: one simply has to go to Carbonite through their website, it is simply one extra click to save $11! I have gone through this process and it is remarkably simple. Subscription.com also offer codes or similar click-throughs to offer discounts on everything from antivirus software to newspapers to magazines!

When using Mac or Linux, I often find myself stumbling upon features which I just find ‘nice’.

I love the built-in support for VNC. On Mac, it is as simple as waiting for the remote computer, providing it’s on a local Bonjour one, to appear in Finder. And enabling it is a checking a box in the Sharing preference pane. (connecting to a non-local machine is done through going to Connect to Server in Finder and prefixing the computer’s location with vnc://). Support varies by distro for Linux, but generally the service is pre-installed.

I love how I can mount SFTP and FTP shares in Nautilus under Ubuntu and in Finder on OS X. Unfortunately, support on OS X is read only. Whilst Windows has limited support for FTP and WebDAV etc, I personally find it very cumbersome and not nice to play with at all. I’d happily use Nautilus to put files onto my website; but on Windows I’d have to use Filezilla!

Faces in iLife 09 is great. Whilst there are better commercial (and probably free) options, it is just nice that is there. But it doesn’t intrude, whilst in Windows it no doubt would somehow majestically stand out to make it obvious that such a nice gimmick is included!

Desktop search is nice. I don’t think Windows Search can compare with Spotlight or Beagle. On Windows, I’d probably download Google Desktop Search. But no need on Mac or Ubuntu, as they’re already there.

I also love the simplicity of Linux commands like dd. On Windows, you’d need something like Acronis to do the same job, just much worse!

So, bringing on the flame war. What do you like in your operating system which isn’t in others?

MyNevermind is a nice freeware game for OS X I have been using to kill time lately.

The game is very similar to the 1970 boardgame Mastermind but it is slightly harder because instead of having 6 colours, you have 10 numbers and the game is single player. Basically, the aim of the game is to find a 4 digit number in less then 10 turns!

To help you find these digits, you would be told whether a digit is correct, but in the wrong place, or whether it is in the right place. You will not, however, be told which digit is correct and you have to deduce this yourself.

The game is timed, for purposes of score calculation, but there is no time limit. I generally spend about 5 minutes to play the game, but depending on your skills of deduction, this may be much longer or much quicker!

The game is not the most attractive application, but it is fit for purpose and still exercises your brain!

If you have a Mac, you might as well download it and at least give it a try. It’s only 308Kb big!

I’m somewhat of a browser nerd. I’ve never realised how many web browsers I have installed, and the recent release of Google Chrome only adds to my collection.

Why do I, and quite possibly all computer fans in general, have so many browsers?

On my Mac alone, I have Camino, Firefox, Safari and Shiira. In a virtual machine, I have IE6, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome. But why? I only use one.

Many people use the excuse of checking for compatiblity of their websites as justification for their browser collection, but you don’t really need two Gecko-based browsers, two WebKit engines but you probably do need half a million versions of IE.

I think the reason we have so many browsers is that we want to see how our primary browser will evolve.

Browsers generally steal ideas off one another (Firefox ’stole’ tabbed browsing off Opera, but IE ’stole’ it off Firefox) and through installing the largest range of browsers, we can see which innovative features will be integrated into ours. Shiira, for example, has many aesthetic features which I expect will one be adopted by other browsers whilst Chrome’s way of handling web apps will also probably soon be adopted.

The more browsers we see, the more features we can see and we know what our web experience will be like, even if we don’t switch browsers.

@azhar and @azharcs both wanted a review of Spore, so I’m giving one (albeit a belated one).

Spore has been in development since 2000, so as you can imagine it’s an extremely well finished and very fun product. The game was from the same creator as The Sims and a key member of the development team was also a Civilization IV develop, so the game brings aspects of funny simulation with serious strategy.

In Spore, you design your own life form and take it through different stages of evolution. You start off as a cell in a 2D world, then you evolve into an animal in a 3D world, then into a sentient being living in a tribe, then in a civilisation before finally evolving into a space-faring species.

Cell stage

The cell stage is quite easy, but quite fun. Firstly, you decide whether your microorganism will be a carnivore or a herbivore. If you’re a carnivore, you must eat smaller organisms whilst avoiding predators whilst if you’re a herbivore, you must eat plants but avoid predators. ‘Eating’ involves chasing and then clicking on the other organism/plant.

This stage sounds really boring, but its simplicity is fantastic. This stage doesn’t last long, but it lasts just the right amount of time for eating microbes and avoiding bigger ones to seem fun. As you eat more, you grow bigger and you get more ‘DNA points’ to spend on additions to your organism (for example, spikes and eyes).

When you’ve eaten enough microbes, you emerge from a rock pool to become a creature.

Creature stage

The animal stage of the game allows you to explore the bigger world, whether your animal be bipedal, unipedal or 8 legged!

The creature stage maintains the basic idea of the cell stage but (literally) adds another dimension. Your creature is now an animal as opposed to a blob of cells and this animal must eat and evade predators, but it can also forge relationships with other species and your creature must find a mate.

During creature stage, you accumulate DNA points and unlock body parts, allowing you to further customise your creature and allowing it to evolve.

There are two stances you can take in creature stage: a combat one or a social one. If a combat stance is taken, the goal is to kill a number of members of a rival species rendering it extinct. A social stance requires you to impress members of other species, through mimicking, singing and dancing. Friendship provides alliances, so you can add members of your allies to your pack along with members of your own (who will assist you in killing/befriending other species). It also allows you to use their nests to restore your health.

Rival creatures are other players’ creations which have been automatically downloaded off the internet. This is an example of the RL social element of Spore, as you can add buddies and even subscribe to ‘Sporecasts’, where users publish lists of their favourite in-game objects/creatures.

I disliked creature stage, it dragged on and made me lose some of my interest. Whilst it’s great to adventure in your fantasy 3D world, the primitive in-game social aspect and lack of sophisticated methods of killing rival species makes this whole stage somewhat boring.

When you evolved enough, your species will reach sapience.

Tribal stage

When you’ve left creature stage, your species divide into tribes and you control one of them. You direct the tribe and must ensure there’s enough food, that labour’s shared properly and how to handle relations with other tribes.

There’s several ways of gaining food: you can either hunt, through making some tribe members hunters, fish, if you have earned fishing roads and allocated that duty to some members, or you can domesticate creatures and eat their eggs. Other tribes can also give you gifts.

You have the option, once again, to either employ a social or a combat stance. However, in the combat mode you can use weapons (arrows and torches, for example) against other tribes, providing you have them (you gain weapons by conquering or allying with other tribes). A social stance involves impressing other tribes with music, by playing instruments when they request it. You gain instruments the same way you gain weapons.

To complete this stage, you must conquer or ally with 5 tribes. For each tribe you ally with or conquer, you get one piece of a totem pole. It takes 5 pieces to complete this totem pole, at which point you advance to civilisation stage.

I didn’t find this stage particularly interesting, but it didn’t take too long to complete.

Civilization stage

This was the point at which the game started to get interesting for me. Your tribal village evolves into a city, and you are taken to a ‘city hall’ designer.

As a civilization, you no longer need to concern yourself with individual creatures but you create vehicles (sea, air and land) to mine ’spice’, the main unit of currency in the game, and to trade with other cities. One you’ve traded enough, you can buy a rival city.

Alternatively, you can take over rival cities by creating military vehicles and quite simply attacking them.

You must ensure cities are productive and happy, through placing different types of buildings in the right place. You can also buy turrets to help defend the city.

The borders of each city are marked using Civilization-like colours.

This was one of my favourite stages, but it is cut short because eventually all cities unite when you (and your allies) have gained control of a sufficient number of cities.

Space stage

Once you gain control of your planet, your species advance into space. Space is quite like your planet, just much bigger. You must still decide whether to buy, ally or attack your rivals but you can also establish colonies on other planets.

In space stage, you can partake in missions to earn money which you can spend on buying tools to establish colonies, sculpt planets, form atmospheres and get powerful weapons. You can also collect artifacts which you can sell and your planets will provide you with spice to sell.

As you progress through space stage, you earn different badges and ranks, which unlock other features.

The space stage is effectively infinite, with tens of thousands of systems to explore. Other species, vehicles and planets are downloaded off other players. The game could probably therefore be described as a space exploration game.

EA promises there is an ending, but claims finding it will be next to impossible.

Other nice things

Best thing about Spore is that it runs on an Intel Mac like it does on Windows, using a proprietary fork of WINE (Cider) very effectively with their being little difference. The game does sometimes freeze on my Mac, but it isn’t the most capable thing graphically (only 128MB!).

If you have Spore, add me. My username is computerjoeuk.