The scene is familiar… Employees want to use their the own device for work and IT managers want to ensure that corporate data is secure.

It looks like Blackberry 10 has introduced a solution that should make everyone happy: Blackberry Balance.  Balance allows for the creation of a separate Work partition that can coexist with your personal life without the risk of data co mingling with each other.  You control the personal side of your device while IT can secure and control the work side.  Such a balanced solution should make many happy.

Check it out for yourself:

Editor’s Note:  I originally wrote this for DroidDog in 2010.

Admit it.  You are guilty.  Personal and professional emails that you send and receive from associates, friends, and family buzz between your Android device and the Google servers with ease, and you rarely, if ever, think about what would happen, if someday, that relation ship were to fail.

All that data is stored in “the cloud” on Google servers in what some consider the most state-of-the-art, redundant and reliable network of data centers located all over the globe.  Your personal data is syncing with out a hitch.  After all, if you can’t rely on what is arguably the largest, most talent richof cloud providers in the world, who can you rely on?

A quick Google search — yes, I understand the irony — reveals that there are plenty of people, who, like you and many other Android users, thought that their data was safe with Google – only to find that their sense of security was false.  With just a little planning, research and sweat, you can avoid a similar fate and further protect your data.  In order to minimize the chance of data loss, I have my Google-based email synced and backed up on two redundant off-site locations (other than Google’s own network).  Firmly place your tin foil hat on your head and take a short journey with me…

I own a small hosting and web design/consulting business and rent server resources from a data center.  On that server, I have installed getmail along with a few custom configuration files based on those described by Googler Matt Cutts‘ blog posting. The files tell getmail where to pull my email from; in this case, from the Gmail servers, using a secure IMAP connection.  Each config file also tells getmail which folders to retrieve from (eg. “Inbox”,“[Google Mail]/All Mail”, “[Google Mail]/Sent Mail”, etc.);, to only get “unseen” messages; and in which format to store the messages, if not Maildir, then the native Gmail format, Mbox. Getmail runs every hour from a cron job and stores all new messages in the format of my choice: Maildir on my server.  The mail is then encrypted and backed up nightly with all my other data on an off-site server using Duplicity.

I know, I know… not everyone has a shiny tin foil hat like mine that reads “Caution: Geek Below!”  That does not excuse you from protecting your data.  There are many more less intense, more GUI based options to protect yourself.  Here are just a few:

• Gmail Backup
• Backing Up Gmail with Thunderbird Using IMAP
• BackupMyMail
• IMAPSize

While not an exhaustive list of options, these give you a taste of the many ways that you can help keep your Android phone and the tightly integrated Google services that you rely on working together with the peace of mind that should the impossible happen (think Titanic) you have enough life boats to carry your email data to shore.

So, what is your excuse for not backing up now?

Via DroidDog

Google is many things… an advertising company, an ISP, email provider, a cloud pioneer and even a mobile phone maker (almost), but one thing it is not is an energy waster.  To prove that, they recently unveiled Google Green – The Big Picture, a website that highlights the many ways that Google uses its brain power to reduce its power consumption and environmental impact on our planet.  Through the use of non convectional data center and physical plant design and operations Google has reduced the carbon footprint that you, as a customer, use to nearly zero with a final push with its carbon off set program reaching zero.

              

Many of our customers are looking for ways to reduce expenses while increasing their productivity.   Now more than ever may be the time to start looking at Google cloud products.  Not only can you reduce your own costs of doing business you can save the environment at the same time.  We offer full Google product set up and integration services that can help you reach that goal.  If you want an estimate on how we can help you reach the cloud, submit a ticket today!

Few outsiders get an opportunity to pierce the guarded armor of Google known as simply “The Plex” to most.  However, Steven Levy is one of the few non-Googlers who has been granted what seems to be unprecedented access to The Plex and many of those who call it home, including the two that started it all:  Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

From dorm room to global data centers, In The Plex, gives readers a glimpse into where one of the youngest, yet prolific and profitable companies around came from and where it may be going.   Levy, known as a tech journalist and Wired Senior Writer, uses his unique non-tech prose to take geeks, want-to-be geeks and the generally curious on journey through the early days of two college students who set out to index and present the world’s information to the young billionaires who run the company that seems to know more about you than you do.

So, for anyone (from the geek to non geek) who has ever had a dream, an idea or just a hint of what they wanted to do but were regularly told that they could’t, I suggest you take a look at In The Plex.

You will be glad you did…I am.

 

Google, often known for it secrecy and “big brother” like tendencies, rather than it openness,  has released its latest Transparency Report.  According to that report, Google has removed 1,110 items from Google Groups by Court Order and received 4,601 requests for user data and fully or partially complied with 94% of those requests.

 

Read the Entire Report.