loss

Get in shape with MyFitnessPal

In years of economic downturn, there are still a handful of sectors that manage to remain profitable, and the health and fitness industry is one of them. Mobile apps are also enjoying quite a bit of popularity at the moment, thanks in part to the fact that so many of them are affordable. Combine the two and you get something along the lines of MyFitnessPal, a free Webware service that offers companion apps for the iPhone and Android devices (BlackBerry coming soon).

As the name suggests, MyFitnessPal is a community-oriented site designed to help you lose weight and track fitness … Read more

Thousands of Evernote users affected by data loss

Online note-saving service Evernote on Monday acknowledged that it had suffered a hardware fault at the beginning of July that resulted in potential data loss for more than 6,000 of its users worldwide.

The issue was first reported by blog Techwave, citing a report from Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shinbun. In a Monday note to Evernote users on the company's blog, Evernote CEO Phil Libin explained that the loss stemmed from bad server hardware:

"Every user's data is stored on a 'shard.' A shard is made up of a server together with a redundant fail-over server. If there is any problem with a server, the system automatically fails over to the second server in the shard. We currently have 37 shards. Shard 22 was the one that had problems last month."

Evernote's back-up system stores user data in up to six different places using both on- and off-site servers as well as locally on the user's copy of the software. Though in the case of the problem, which lasted four days, user data was simply being overwritten due to one of these systems not having a working failure routine. "Basically, the shard kept failing over back and forth between two servers over the time period causing some of the data created during that time to get overwritten," Libin explained.

In a call with CNET on Monday morning, Libin said that of the 6,323 users affected by the outage, approximately 70 percent were able to get their data back.

Evernote's software saves a copy of a work in progress before syncing it up with whatever was stored online, so the company was able to pull the complete copies of various files once the problem had been addressed and fixed. However, those who had been working purely on Evernote's site, and whose work was being stored on the faulty shard, had no such protection.

As an apology, Evernote has provided affected users with a free year of the company's $45-a-year premium service. Those who were already premium subscribers get an extra year.

As for whether this could happen again, Libin said it's extremely unlikely."This was a freak of hardware failures. But we've changed the fail-over process so it won't happen again."

Data loss on large-scale Web services is uncommon, but can be extremely hard to recover from. In 2009, social-bookmarking site Magnolia suffered a massive data corruption that resulted in the loss of all its user data. It has since started from scratch with a new version of the site. Prior to that, one of the most high-profile outages was a multi-hour downtime for Amazon's S3 cloud storage service, which many sites use as their built-in storage solution.

At a press conference three weeks ago, Evernote announced it has reached 3.7 million users since launching in June of 2008. In that time, its users have saved 145 million notes, which Libin said works out to 312 new ones every minute.… Read more

HP to cut 9,000 jobs, take $1 billion charge

Hewlett-Packard is spending $1 billion and cutting 9,000 jobs in a restructuring designed to consolidate and invigorate its enterprise services.

The company announced Tuesday that it plans to spend the money to invest in a series of commercial data centers that will offer enterprise customers a more integrated platform on which to run their businesses. The initiative will also consolidate HP's data centers, networks, and applications. But as a result of the increased streamlining and automation, HP expects to eliminate around 9,000 jobs, or about 3 percent of its work force, over the next few years. HP … Read more

Restaurant rate reducer

It's hard enough to make a go of a restaurant by emphasizing things like food, service, and sanitation. Where too many good restaurants fail is not in the kitchen or the dining room but in the office, where costs, inventory, and profit and loss are often left to fend for themselves. Restaurateurs who want to succeed need to pay as close attention to their bottom line as they do their menus. Spreadsheet123's Restaurant Monthly Profit and Loss Statement Template for Excel RPLT 1 isn't too long a title for such a helpful tool. It contains five Excel … Read more

Apple wins appeal in earbud hearing-loss lawsuit

Just because something can benefit from some improvement doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad for you. That's basically what a San Francisco appeals court said when it upheld a previous ruling that Apple iPod earbuds cannot be held responsible for hearing loss, according to a Reuters report.

In the ruling, a judge wrote that the plaintiffs didn't offer evidence to show that iPod earbuds were dangerous, only that they believed they could be made safer. The judge wrote:

The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do … Read more

Back up there!

Next to antivirus protection, regular backups may be the single most important measure you should take to protect your PC, your data, and yourself, yet studies consistently show it's the preventative measure PC users neglect most. There is simply no excuse for not backing up your system, especially when you consider the following facts: (1) You have a lot of money invested in your hardware and software; (2) Your PC most likely contains files, records, and archives that are important to your life and well-being; (3) something is certain to go wrong; and (4) backups are easy, especially with … Read more

Data "loss" in OS X: Is there really a heightened risk?

Recently there have been a number of reports around the data loss bug that, while rare, can cause a Snow Leopard user's home folder to be deleted upon logging into and out of the guest account. These reports may have people concerned about their data in OS X, but in reality it is a very rare and easy bug to avoid, and also it is much easier to inadvertently overwrite a file or accidentally trash one than be caught by this bug and other behaviors that may lead to data loss.… Read more

Apple acknowledges Snow Leopard data loss issue

For the past month, some Mac OS X users have been reporting their personal data missing after logging into their guest accounts, and Apple now says it's working on finding a fix.

"We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix," an Apple representative said in a prepared statement Monday.

It's the first time Apple has said it is looking into the issue. In early September, a handful of Mac users reported the issue on Apple's discussion boards. The problem, when it occurs, goes … Read more

Gadgettes Podcast 157: The Recessionista Episode

We've heard that the recession is waning. But our gut tells us something different. Today we examine gadgets that appeal to our recession-warped minds.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 157

Downturn doll sleeps in a car - but costs $95

Dell banks its brand on artists, baseball and nail polish

Netbooks rise, notebooks fall

Sony’s new Vaio X: thinnest laptop ever, $1,300 and up

SanDisk on Sansa: Value is our top priority

Gilt on the Go iPhone app… Read more