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Interviews

Interview: Matthew Dornquast CEO of CrashPlan

At MacWorld, we were able to interview some interview some amazing people, one of whom was Matthew Dornquast. He has programmed in mostly all programming languages: python, C, C++, javascript, and more. At an early age, Matthew learned how to program. He first began programming because he wanted more lives in a video game. Then started to get more complex and he began to wonder what would the end of the game look like. He started to learn how to create programs by looking at open source programs. He would modify them and see what would happen. Below is the interview with Matthew and I. CrashPlan is a backup program that comes in two flavors: one for personal use (CrashPlan) and the other designed for enterprises (CrashPlan Pro)  and works on basically every platform: Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Solaris, and more. If you backup your data to CrashPlan Central – CrashPlan’s 5,000 square feet underground data center of a former bank in Minneapolis and data backups are verified 24x7x365. Prices for CrashPlan are extremely inexpensive. To backup a single computer at 2 terabytes, it only cost $54.00 first year, $99.00 the second and $125.00 the third. Though I don’t know many people who would need 2 terabytes a year worth of backups, just know you have the option.

Nick: How did CrashPlan begin?

Matthew: Every great piece of software starts with a programers itch, a niche, where something that you want that the computer does not do. My case, new daughter. I had one of the first digital cameras and it took crapy photos, but it was the only photos I had and I ripped my music collection from CD to MP3 that I cared about, and too much work to replace. So I thought about how to back that up. While I could go to a hard drive, but what if that fails? I could  go to a RAID a series of drives where if one fails the other one still works. Well, that’s good but I live in Minnesota and if I put it in the wrong place, lighting or a flood, I could still loose it all. So it had to be off site. I started  to look at off site backups and no one was really doing anything. There was one company that looked like they might be doing it, but I did the math and it looked like even if it worked, it would cost me like $10,000 a year – WOW! I don’t have $10,000 a year. All I want is my stuff at your house for free! So I went to work, talked about it with a couple of my friends and said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if” and we said “Yea, that’d be easy”. So we started building it, and then we found out after two years later that it wasn’t that easy. Three years went by and we realized this really wasn’t easy its hard, but eventually we built it. We came to MacWorld in 2007 and said, ” Hey guys you should try this!” They gave feedback and we just listened, added more features, got more money, and did that year after year.

Nick: What would you put in the next release of CrashPlan?

Matthew: The next thing is that we need to put in what our customers are demanding and we keep track of what they ask for. They want to be able to backup there photos to the hard drive and their finances to the cloud. Right now, CrashPlan lets you backup, but they have to be in both spots. So finance and photos have to be on the hard drive and on the cloud. So, we want to implement backup sense where you can choose what you want to backup where.

There are many key points about the launch of CrashPlan: Original itch, you have to have a passion, then you build it yourself, the second thing is unrealistic sense of optimism – they thought that building CrashPlan was going to be easy. They were stubborn and kept building and now we have the best backup software in the United States. About 1 in 3 people use CrashPlan to backup there computers outside the United States. I want to thank Matthew for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to me. He not only talked to me about CrashPlan, but he also helped me with questions I had about programming and helped point me in the right direction. If you would like to check out CrashPlan, you may do so by clicking the link CrashPlan.

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News

Get Free Songs and Movies from iTunes

Looking to gain a larger iTunes Library or just trying to be frugal when shopping on iTunes? Every week, Apple has free songs of the week, where you can download and keep the songs as long as you want. They release a good selection of songs such as a song I downloaded called “Under Control” by Parachute or “Fireflies” by Owl City a couple of months before it hit the Top 100.  To get the free songs you go to iTunes home page and scroll down to ” Free Single of the Week”, or “Free Music Video of the Week”, or if you want to view the free music, music videos, and movies you can just goto the bottom and click on “Free on iTunes’. The only thing is that there is usually only one song and music video per a week and if you don’t get the song by the end of the week you have to pay for it and the movies are usually older movies and not that great, but not always. Clearly, if your looking to expand your library or listen to some new music, launch iTunes and click away at the “Free on iTunes” selection!

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Uncategorized

Is Your Dock in Need of an Extreme Makeover?

If your dock is unorganized and cluttered then these two commands are for you.  The first command allows you to add an invisible space that gives room between applications.  The second is a command that makes the application minimize into the application in the dock instead of next to the trash can.  Again, to be a Real Mac Genius type in the commands.

Add in an invisible space:

1. Type in the following command into terminal: defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{tile-data={}; tile-type="spacer-tile";}'

2. Next insert the command: killall Dock

Minimize Applications into their icon:

1. Type in the command: defaults write com.apple.dock minimize-to-application -bool yes

2.  Type in the command: killall Dock

Now your dock will be a little less cluttered thanks to these two simple commands.

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Uncategorized

Great Time at MacWorld 2010

At MacWorld we meet great people and had a lot of fun. More interviews will be up later today and early tomorrow so stay tuned. But for now, check out the gallery of pictures. Enjoy!

MacWorld Gallery

Categories
Interviews

Interview: James Ramey, VP of Sales at Codeweavers


At MacWorld, we were lucky enough to interview James Ramey, VP of Sales at Codeweavers. Codeweavers is a Minneapolis based software company that enables Mac OS X and Linux users to run Windows applications. Through the usage of open source software called Wine, Codeweavers is able to allow Windows based applications to run as if they were native applications. When you first switched from a Windows PC to a Mac, you might have been gloomy because you could not play Counter-Strike or had to buy a new license of Microsoft Office (Which is not cheap!).

Codeweavers has two different flavors of software, CrossOver Mac/Linux and CrossOver Games. The price CrossOver Mac are two different prices, $39.99 Standard, and $69.95 Professional. The reason for the difference in price is because of the time of support. CrossOver Mac Standard gives you 6 month of Level 3 Support, so you are able to get the important updates. In CrossOver Mac Professional, you receive 1 year of Level 2 Support. In addition, you also have a copy of CrossOver Games ($39.95). The difference between CrossOver Mac and CrossOver Games is with CrossOver Mac you are able to run enterprise applications (I.E. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, etc.) and Windows only games. CrossOver Games is geared more for gamers, so it only gives you the ability to run Windows games.

If you are using Parallels or VMware Fusion to run specific Windows applications like Counter-Strike, CrossOver Games would provide you with a much faster experience for an even less price. In order to use Parallels or VMware Fusion, you first need to buy the software (About $80), then a Windows License (About $150 depending on version), and then configuring. Even if you were using BootCamp, you would still need to purchase a Windows License. In short, if you are looking for a way to run your favorite Windows only game, or use Microsoft Word, CrossOver Mac or CrossOver Games is the perfect solution for you!