SiC – David Sidwell

Over the years I have loaned out assorted DVDs and books, then totally forgotten who has what. Indeed just 2 days ago a friend returned 3 DVDs and a book. And I swear I had no idea they had them.

I had flagged the idea of looking for a specialty ‘loan manager’ application for the iPhone (iPod Touch).  One where I could record the key info (media type, media name, person, date loaned).  With thousand and thousands of apps out there, surely there would be a little database one to do this.

And then it hit me. Why bother?

The very flexible Ultimate ToDo program I have already purchased can do exactly that.  With its Tags, Project and Context item.values (in reality these are all meta-data) it’s really already a Database. And it can sync back to the web-based Toodledo.  As a bonus, the Ultimate ToDo iPhone app now supports iPhone Contacts, so it’s easy to select the name of the person who is borrowing the item.

Basically I just have a new grouping (“Context”) called Loans Outbound. And a few new Tags like DVD, Book etc. Then I add the ToDo item with the persons Name (“Reference Contact”) and Date borrowed (as text in the “Note” value, only for reference…I guess you could use the Due Date if you wanted to),  plus the Context and Tag.  And all done.

Both the iPhone app and the Toodledo then let me quickly look at my Loans Outbound view. Smart stuff.  

Am looking for a solution that runs on my Windows XP PC for a fairly simple set of requirements:

• Define a backup set of folders/files on XP PC (eg My Documents)
• Manually or automatically back up the lot to external USB hard drive
• Run incremental back ups etc after that.

Keep external hard drive as my ‘master’ or safety back up, that is:

• Perform back up
• (accidently) delete Resume.doc from XP PC
• Do one or more back ups
• Discover Resume.doc is gone
• Get it back from USB hard drive

Some ‘syncing’ software would have deleted Resume.doc from the USB hard drive

• Don’t want version control etc; handled manually within Word etc
• Happy for back up to clobber USB hard drive copy if required

So any ideas? Does this type of back up have a name/description?

Update Sept 9th.

Found one that works. Here’s the email I sent to the tech buddies who had helped me find a good solution.

“Have been using Dropbox for a while now and am a big fan.  For my many-GB stuff I’m trying the BPSP "SyncToy" from Redmond way. Thanks to <snip> for pointing it out. It’s contribute mode is just what I was after.

(Binary, Proprietary , Single Platform)   true…but Horses for Courses

Plus  IJFW  It Just Works…”