Cloud storage. It is a term that is now becoming more commonplace, this article explains exactly what it is and will help you decide whether it could benefit you or not.

If you have ever taken any photos or have any personal documents of any kind, then this article is certainly worth a read.

So what is cloud storage?

Cloud storage is simply a means of saving all of your personal items to a server (a big computer) somewhere in cyberspace, so that if you ever want to access them you can do that. The way it works is that companies that offer cloud storage have large servers, you create an account and upload your documents / photos / whatever to your storage space and then there is a permanent copy of your stuff stored there.

There are several reasons why this can be a very good idea.

Of course if your house gets broken into and your computer gets stolen, or your house burns down, then you really have no chance of getting your photos etc back! This is something else that cloud storage offers over just backing up your personal data to an external hard drive and storing it in the house. If there is a fire or a burglary and the backup drive either burns or is stolen, then you have lost that too.

The other reason is that sometimes you might want to access your photos / documents when you're not at home. Nowadays tablets such as the iPad are popular. It is possible to store all of your music, movie files, photos etc on the cloud and then access them from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. This is way better than carrying your computer everywhere with you!

Is it difficult or complicated?

The way it typically works is that you create your account, you then have a little symbol or folder on your computer desktop. You can then drag and drop the items you want copied to the cloud into this folder. So if you want to add more prhotos from a holiday for example, just drag and drop. Easy!

Some providers even offer a 'watch folder' option, which means that you designate a folder on your computer and save your items in there, this is automatically scanned for changes and if you ever put anything new in there it then gets uploaded without you having to do anything. Very easy and even a complete computer novice can do it. If you can handle having an email account then you could handle a cloud account.


The first is that computer hard drives are relatively fragile and don't last forever. If you store all of your personal photos on your home computer, it's great, until the day when your hard drive stops working. There is typically little to no warning when your hard drive gives up the ghost, it just dies one day. It can be possible to extract whatever is stored on there, but you usually have to pay a specialised company to do this and it isn't cheap. Hard drives arent always salvageable either, sometimes you just lose the data.

But is it safe stored in a cloud?

The companies that offer this service have a system in place called data redundancy. This means that they have more than one server with systems in place so that if their hard drives fail, it doesn't matter as they have backups. So your backups have backups! This is done in various ways, but the specifics of how they do this isn't really important, what is important is that your personal documents / photos etc are safely backed up and stored somewhere so that if you do have a disaster at home then you can get them all back again.

Of course the data that you are storing in your cloud area is safe and secure as you have a password and username, so only you will be able to access your items. So don't worry if you have sensitive photos, they will be fine!

So is the best way to back up my personal pics etc?

Well the best bet is to have a backup drive that you can store at your house or possibly at someone elses house and also have cloud storage in my opinion. That means that you really are doing the utmost to protect your photos etc.

If unsure whether it's worth it, just try to imagine that the computer you are reading now suddenly disappears into a black hole, never to be seen again. Would you be upset as there is a lot of unreplaceable stuff on there, or would you not worry too much? If you have backed up then you would feel a lot more relaxed that's for sure!

Is it expensive?

There are plenty of companies offering cloud storage and it's a pretty competitive market, which means prices are always going down. Top contenders in the market are Google and Amazon, but there really are absolutely loads of cloud storage providers out there so it pays to shop around.

It does depend on how much data you have of course, if you're just storing your holiday photos and maybe some music, you could probably get by with 100gb or less, the easiest way to find out how much you are likely to need is to right click the pictures folder on your computer and select properties at the bottom. That will tell you how much is in there to give you an idea of what to look for when it comes to shopping for a cloud provider.

If the worst ever happens, your computer explodes one day and you do need your backup, then you will be ecstatic that you spent the few measly dollars / pounds on backing everything up, so my advice is get it sorted!

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this article useful, please leave any comments below.

Is This Writer's Block?

As I sit and stare at the blank page before me, I feel empty. Is this writer’s block? Or is it something deeper than that, the overwhelming feeling of life closing in, of overtaking any kind of creativity. I have many ideas, many topics to write about, but I can’t focus tonight. Geez.

This frustrates me. I want to write with free plagiarism checker. I want to be a writer. I want to be a better writer. But I have to write to be a writer. And I have to write more to be a better writer! But I’m stumped. Has life really gotten the best of me? Is it the pressure of the job? One day at a time, I tell myself. One day at a time. But it wears on me. And somehow a long-time relationship of mine may be ending—could it really?—and I can’t even explain why. I just know that it could be happening as I write this, and I feel helpless to stop it.

What If You Feel Helpless?

Helpless? Isn’t it normal to feel that way in a world full of ups and downs, and sometimes incredible pain? Tonight I went to a memorial service for one of the fallen Navy Seals who was shot down in a helicopter in Afghanistan. He was a former high school student of mine back in the mid-1990s. As I had reconnected with many of my students of that time on Facebook, I decided I should attend.

I know that sometimes it’s almost cliché to say of someone who has passed away how great a person he or she was—how good and kind—but this guy was. He was popular in school and kind to everyone. Hearing the stories tonight from his friends, testaments of his love for his wife and family, and words from the other soldiers he worked with made me think how unfair the world is. Is it true that “only the good die young?”

It seems that many around me are also going through tough times, facing challenges greater than the usual daily grind. I can’t seem to keep up with daily chores, much less the larger heartaches of my own and others around me. For the last couple of weeks, I have been throwing myself into writing. It has been a great release, and I have been thrilled to feel that I’m finding my groove… but tonight it is failing me. Now what? I’m empty. Nothing is coming to me. My mind is swirling with all the thoughts of the past few days, all the disappointment, hurts, and questions. How can so many issues be crashing around in my head, and yet I feel almost numb?

Write About the Emptiness

I don’t know. I just don’t have the answers tonight. I don’t have ANY answers. I have only questions. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s okay to write about those questions, those frustrations that keep me from writing, because at least I’m still writing. Writer’s block or not, writers should write. Somehow I’ve plodded through and written an article about just that. I guess that when I’m full of topics, I’ll write about those topics. When I have an idea about a poem, I’ll write a poem. And when I’m empty, I’ll just write about the emptiness. But at least I'll be writing.

Your small business probably doesn't make a whole lot of money. Hopefully, it's enough to get you a decent salary and to keep the business afloat, but there probably isn't a whole lot over for major marketing. Unfortunately, you kind of have to do marketing if you're going to grow your business and get it to the point where it does more than just barely support you. So, what should you do? In today's world, there are plenty of ways to market your business without having to pay a lot of money. The internet is the way to go for small business marketing that doesn't cost a fortune. In fact, there is plenty of online marketing that you can do for free.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites are one of the quickest ways to spread the word about your 3 digital marketing power plays to maximize roi without spending any money. These sites don't have sign-up fees and allow you to connect - and stay in touch with - a large number of people from across the globe. You can start with the ones that you already know on a social level - MySpace and YouTube are safe bets. Use MySpace bulletins to spread the word about your work to your friends and colleagues; ask them to repose bulletins about your projects so they're friends can see the information, too. And use YouTube for free video marketing that will put a face to your business and encourage others to get to know more about what it is that you do.

But you shouldn't just stop there. Make use of other social networking sites as well. Digg is one of the most popular ones, of course. You can post articles on your site and then spread them to others, asking them to Digg articles that they like. Get enough "diggs" and you'll get higher traffic to your articles (and therefore a larger potential customer base) from Digg. There are numerous Digg spin-offs that you can use for marketing your small business as well, so take a day or two to really browse the social networking options online that are right for your business and then get involved in them.

Blogs

Your business should have a blog. Quality blogs keep customers coming back to your site again and again and are also terrific tools for submitting to social networking sites like Digg and other traffic-driver sites like blog carnivals. Basically, you can use your blog to spread information about your company as well as to increase the number of people checking out your work. You can set up a free blog account ... or even work with something like Google Adsense to generate a small amount of money from your blog while helping to market your business.

You should also make sure that you are paying attention to the blogs of others. By commenting regularly on other people's blog sites, you'll get their attention and drive them to your blog and therefore to your company. As they get used to seeing your name around, they'll inherently begin to trust you and will be more likely than before to contact you for your service or produce should they identify a need for it in their lives.

Educational Resources

Perhaps more important than the specific things that you can do for free online to market your business are the places where you can go online to get free information and assistance with marketing. There is a lot of terrific information out there on the web and it's there for the taking so be sure to stay on top of the trends in your industry and the trends in marketing for small businesses to improve your success in this area. One terrific online resources for this kind of free education is the Small Business Association online. This organization has numerous resources including free online classes that you can take advantage of to assist you with all aspects of operating your small business, including the marketing that you need to get your name spread around and your income on the upswing.

His theory of evolution by natural selection was radical and controversial when first introduced to the world, especially with the church. Yet now it has been widely accepted by scientists. His research as a naturalist led to ideas which now explain the origins and diversity of life on earth.

The Early Years of Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin was born on the 12th of February 1809 in Shrewsbury in Shropshire. He was the son of a wealthy doctor. His grandfather on his mother's side was china manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood. His grandfather on his father's side was Erasmus Darwin, one of the leading intellectuals of 18th century England.

Darwin went to the University of Edinburgh Medical School in October 1825. He dropped out of the medical course because he did not like working on bodies and always buy medical essay. As a result, his father sent him to Christ's Church in Cambridge to study Divinity. It was thought that Darwin would become an Anglican parson. During his university years, Darwin was introduced to the pursuit of beetle collecting by his cousin William Darwin Fox.

Voyage of the Beagle

In 1831, Darwin joined Captain Robert Fitzroy on a five year scientific expedition on the survey ship HMS Beagle.

During the voyage, Darwin spent most of his time on land. He investigated geology and made natural history collections. He kept careful notes of everything he observed.

At that time, most people in Europe thought that the world had been created by God in seven days. It was during his voyage on the HMS Beagle that Darwin read the book Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell. This book put forward the idea that the fossils in rocks were evidence of animals which had lived millions of years ago.

Darwin came across animal life and geological features which supported Lyell's ideas. He was particularly interested in what he found on the Galapagos Islands, 500 miles west of South America.

While he was there, Darwin observed that each island supported its own form of finch. The birds were closely related but different in important ways. Darwin's observations on the Galapagos Islands were the beginning of his theory on the evolution of the species.

The earliest surviving record of the initial ideas which led to his theory is a sketch of an evolutionary tree with the words, 'I think,' written above it.

Who Did Darwin Marry?

Charles Darwin married Emma Wedgewood on 29 January 1839. She was the first cousin of Charles Darwin. The couple had 10 children, three of whom died at an early age.

Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution

When Darwin returned to the UK, there was a lot of interest in his work. Darwin's father helped find the money to fund his scientific activities.

When he found out that naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had been working on similar ideas for annotated bibliography, the two made a joint announcement of their discoveries in 1858.

Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was published in 1859. The book was controversial at the time because of the ideas it expressed. Darwin's theory seemed to suggest that man was simply a type of animal who evolved from apes. This went against ideas about how the world was created. Darwin was consequently attacked by the Church.

What Was The Reaction to Darwin's Theory?

Darwin's book The Origin of the Species was very popular. The first print run sold out before it hit the shops. Despite a great deal of interest, there were those who had a problem with his ideas.

While many saw Darwin's theory as an important step towards understanding the natural world, his book received a great deal of criticism from the church. In fact, the negative influence of the church prevented Darwin from receiving a knighthood for his work. The idea of natural selection did not become widely accepted until the 1930s. However, that was later to change.

Other Works of Darwin

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, published in 1871, put forward evidence that humans are animals, with a continuity of physical and mental features. His 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals dealt with the evolution of human psychology. His experiments connected with evolution led to books such as Insectivorous Plants, The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom and The Power of Movement in Plants.

When Did Darwin Die?

In 1882, Darwin was diagnosed with coronary thrombosis and disease of the heart. He died at his family home Down House on 19 April 1882. He told his wife Emma that he was not afraid of death. Darwin was buried at Westminster Abbey in London. He was one of only five people outside of the royal family who were buried there during the 19th century.

How Important Are the Ideas of Charles Darwin?

In the years since his death, DNA studies have provided evidence which supports Darwin's theories of evolution. Darwin's ideas are hugely important within the scientific community. The whole field of evolutionary biology is based on his work. Despite being widely accepted elsewhere though, Darwin's ideas continue to be highly controversial with creationists.