Loudmouthman

Remember when you bought your first 256MB USB memory stick and wondered what you would possibly fill it with ? How about your first 4GB USB memory stick did it feel daunting to have so much storage and responsibility ? Have you grown accustomed to the constant space available in Google mail ?

Be prepared then to experience that sense of wonder and intimidation as you look upon storage space that seems to stretch for Terabytes before you.

I  bought my first Drobo this week and I  am  astounded  at the prospect of having nearly unlimited storage space available on my network. The knowledge that the Drobo protects my data across a series of inexpensive hard disks is reassuring as are the four green lights currently glowing on my Drobos face.

The Drobo was released with support for Mac and Windows users via USB cable.  There is a new version which offers support for  firewire and USB. If you want to host the Drobo on the network you can purchase an accessory which provides network sharing  capability .

I chose to place my Drobo on my Ubuntu server and whilst this means I dont get access to the control panel interface for the Drobo it does allow me to share it on my network as well add it to my archiving and backup regimes.

If your looking to host a Drobo on a Linux box then the instructions here detail how to format and attach your Drobo to your Linux box. Follow them  and adjust nothing on the mke2fs line and its going to work fine. Bare in mind that the time required to run mke2fs  varies on your processor speed and the size of the Drobo array. Theres no need to partition the drive and once configured the only thing lacking is the control to shutdown the drive however there may be controls and tools available.

Setting up the Drobo and installing the hard drives is really, and i mean REALLY, simple. It is a plug and go operation as you can see from my  Phreadz demo.

If your looking to calculate your prospective Drobo size then check out the very interactive Drobolator.

Ive bought a few Drobos for clients and I cant recommend them enough as a mechanism for adding very sensible and safe storage space to your network or your home computer. My Advice go and buy one ( and the subsequent hard drives ) today.

Thanks for reading.

Isnt it Ironic, dont you think ?

On the one hand Micheal Arrington, the other loudmouthman of Tech, writes an article complaining that the problem with voicemail is it takes too long to listen to. Meanwhile he encourages us all to leave a Video message, which we all have to listen to !!!

Read a little longer  and you see where the article is taking us. The growth of voice to text transcription services are changing the nature of a voicemail. Frankly I am amazed  it has taken this long for people to realise that voicemail was another distraction.

Currently I am using two seperate services to manage my own productivity speedbumps.

First time response provide a service which answers my phone, manages my diary and tracks my contacts. They provide a human voice to  a conversation and translate the requests,interuptions and queries  of my clients into information delivered via Email or Text message. Using them I have saved an hour in the day away from interruptions screening out calls and distractions.

Spinvox provides  an automated service which translates speech from a phone call into an email. well okay its a little more than that. In signing up to the service they provide me a Memo taking service which takes short messages from me and send me the transcription in text. The memo service has been fantasically useful for making notes and sending reminders to myself about agreed appointments and activities.  The voicemail service delivers functionallity similar to First Time Response but it has none of  the interactiveness and the smarts to converse with a client and agree courses of action. It does however provide a great backstop for out of office answering services.

In both cases I get an email with a message, though in Spinvox’s case I am getting a transcription ( warts and all ) of the content where as First Time response will have summarised the requirements and let me know whom called.

The only missing link in all these services is the ability to switch between them smoothly and use First Time Response for office hours work and Spinvox for those out of office , weekend messages.  My only answer to this is to move to publishing a proper land line number for all calls related to the business and forward that exclusively to First Time Response.

Meanwhile its clear to me that Email is getting another shot in the arm and another last minute deal saving it from the edge of bankruptcy as it continues to add to my rules and filters of my inbox. Now if I could only get some one to manage and answer and sort all my emails and just give me a response list at the end of the day.

Thanks for reading.