I found multiple blogs ranting about possible data recovery by putting your hard drive into your freezer? At first I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to take that approach. But I did. After all I still had a perfectly non-working hard drive that was under warranty. What I found (most commonly) was this: If you’ve ever had a hard drive that make a clicking noise, and it simply wouldn’t boot, you know this is a bad sign (*obviously). However there’s some hope; in most cases you can still retrieve your files. Just follow these steps:

#1. First thing you want to do is Remove the hard drive from the computer (*obvious to me since I read you the Model#)

#2. Remove the hard drive, let it cool down, and put it into a sealed plastic bag to avoid condensation (*I used a static bag just in case, and ziplock as my non-condensation making bag)

#3. Put the hard-drive in a freezer

#4. Keep the Hard drive in a freezer overnight (*Best guess 12 hours or so)

#5. Pull the drive out of the freezer and and hook it up quickly.

Does putting your hard drive into the freezer to recover data work? I’ve read that I will have approx 20 minutes to plug the hard drive into my computer and take my files from it. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but I’m guessing it something similar to that YouTube video about magnets and liquid nitrogen. What I’m worried about is the step Step #2 and a crazy amount of condensation. Here’s a picture:

does putting your hard drive in the freezer actually work?

This will probably potentially ruin my hard drive, and void the warranty, but its worth a try? Data is the most important file on there. Rather than spend a few hundred (*$900 USD on data recovery), a Ziplock bag, static bag and a freezer would be ok too. In my case, my hard drive is actually clicking. It has a physical clicking noise, and I’m pretty sure it has to do with the spindle touching the disc (sector); the freezer idea can theoretically work because when in very cold temperature something weird happens with magnets and metal. Other bloggers have suggested that it could do with the heads retracting because of the cold temperature. I’m not so sure about this. I’m kind of hoping trial and error right now. I will update this post and make the missing link to the video on my Youtube Channel for all to see (*nervous).

The world is ending: Mark Zuckerberg is selling Facebook

Yes, the world is ending, Facebook which has created and broken more history headlines, blogs, articles, stories, records, data and benchmarks, by the youngest Billionaire is being sold to. Mark said recently that “Facebook is the biggest destroyer of his life” and his wish is to sell it.  Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth in 2011 is 13.5 Billion USD. The self-made 26 year old billionaire wants to call it quits on the Facebook Legacy. My only question is if Facebook is sold, will it turn into a pay site or a highly lucrative ad site? I still don’t understand how Goldman Sachs can look at Facebook as a business valuation of US $50 Billion; but from a business standpoint, “I get it”, stocks, securities and a $1.86 Billion revenue examination? I read the Tech Crunch blog citing that the actual revenues posted for 2010 were lower, but it was hurting the company. I don’t know what the world is going to do when this guy leaves.  The company is climbing though, from $700 Million in 2009 to $1.86 Billion by Dec 31 2010. What I find funny is that most of Facebook’s income didn’t come from big corporate advertisers. If you’re  nerd like me, you read PcMag.com and in a blog post this year in January they contrasted company growth by small and by large companies (*large being coca-cola) (*small being small). I don’t want to drift off topic here, but its all coming to an end. Seriously. in 2009 50% of Facebook’s earning came from smaller marketers (*by small I mean companies or people who didn’t use an ad agency). Accounting for 1/2 of the companies ad sales; in 2010 $1.12 Billion (*60%) came from smaller company advertisers. I’m also assuming at this point that since most smaller affiliate based companies were “cut-off” from Google (*or Google Slapped), they shifted gears and started to market $500/d on Facebook ads. Ironically (*at least to me) Google is the 5th ranked advertiser on Facebook. LOL. I think its ironic considering that there’s a rivalry force (*ref. Michael Porter)  in the industry among them. Do you remember when Google blocked users from importing contacts into Facebook from Gmail? Facebook in return removed all tags, content relating to the Google contact import from the “Find your friends” feature (*totally off topic here). You don’t just shut down a multi-billion dollar company without recourse. I think people have taken this March madness issue too strongly.

From a multi-disciplinary  point of  view, there is no way Facebook is going to shut down. If it did, it probably would be the end of the world (*ref. Mayan Calendar); and then someone would fill the void. I did manage to find this false truth (*quote) from Zuckerberg making the accusations seem more serious “I don’t care about the money, I just want my old life back”. Mark can do whatever he wants, but shutting down a social country (*not happening) – negatory.

Silly little rumor. Think about this. Would Facebook decide to shut down the firm after receiving $450 million from Goldman Sachs and $50 Million from Russian firm Digital Sky Tech on a valuation of $50 Billion (*I wonder, is social media getting better spreading UFO stories or are people on the Internet getting surprisingly dumber).

For the recent few years, I have been increasingly interested in David Foot’s book regarding the boom, bust and the echo. The book is generally about demographics and how it did and will influence the future. And how much more efficient corporations would function, if they knew what demographics to function for. Most companies miss that; that which is: in 10 years there will be more baby-boomers than jobs not available. In retrospect, companies will not have the people with the skills to hire. But that’s besides my main point. So without getting lost, lets focus on why David Foot”s report on demographics makes an a really valid point on this blog entry. VentureBeat.com mentioned that

a majority of mobile and social gamers also appear to come from middle-class origins and make between $50,000 and $80,000 yearly, according to the report. Mobile and social gamers typically earn 50 percent more than the average

That demographic is significant because it provides us with a market for gamers. Statistics have found that currently gamers spend relatively $9 on games per month. Of the 127 million active gamers in Canada and the U.S., 56 percent play games online. Sixty-four percent of those online gamers are female, according to results of the survey, released by Nielsen Entertainment in 2006.

The report found that women social gamers were typically older than their male counterparts — as women outnumbered men in the 26 to 65 age range. Men barely outnumbered women in the 18 to 24 age range. Just about a third of all mobile and social gamers were also in that same age range — 18 to 24 — while about half of mobile and social gamers fell in the 26 to 44 age range.

In my opinion, there is an opportunity for gaming girls to enter the cell phone gaming industry and develop applications. Whether directly or indirectly, their influence on the gaming industry will monetize the Billion dollar industry and create new opportunities for games which do not exist yet. I also think that what Jason Fried said in his recent Inc.com blog post about products:

There will always free applications on the Internet, and there will always be paid applications. Nevertheless, there will also be applications that are identical to the free applications and people will pay to use them.

Why? read his article on Inc.com [here] to find out.

Most people who don’t have have any online working experience won’t know about working online. In most cases, your business model is a fish net that will catch some big fish and some small fish. The bottom line is what kind of value are you providing? Are you blogging, vblogging or selling and telling?

I am most people. None of my friends who are in their mid-to-higher twenties and early thirties know about multi level business types. Which tells me two things. The growing socialites of the echo [ref. David Foot] are not interested in network marketing companies or working for them – or they’re so smart that they don’t work for them, they create them. Here are 3 examples of online employment that work for the 1% persistent enough to do it.

1. Youtube

2. Design of iPhone/Android/Bb apps

3. What I do online, stays online.

#1. Youtube is a very impressive and powerful way to express yourself vblogging or creating compelling intuitive videos that draw the ‘views’ of millions. Youtube will award the creators or the curators of those videos money for supplying youtubers with videos. You will find teen’s vblogging about hair products and beauty products; news and jokes and autotuning the news. Youtube will pay you the equivalent of a figure job to just make videos. Youtube benefits by allowing Google to promote advertisements on each video to a prime demographic which they determine using Google Analytics.

#2. Not too long ago there was a 14 year old boy who was not from Napa valley, or Palo Alto. He was from a library from a town covered in snow. The point I’m making is that he borrowed a book from the library, and by the process of persistence and determination he built – what has now become the No.1 downloaded game on iTunes – an iPhone app. The No. 1 downloaded iPhone game app surpassing Angry Birds with just over 200,000 downloads. At the time of this blog writing the app has been downloaded nearly 2,000,000 [2 Million] times. If he charged $0.99 cents for the app like most standard apps, he would have made what the average person earns after 50 years of working.

Sadly only 1% will heed advice like this, and earn profits instead of wages. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. Everyone else will fail.

“5 short years later and a $350M app empire is built. Bloggers which we’ve interviewed went from creating 4 blog sites and $30,000 USD a year to building 1 app which contributed towards $30,000+ USD in a day  all by selling the app for $0.99USD”.

It’s almost impossible to remember what the mobile world looked like before the release of the iPhone. I was still in university in 2006 when one of my buddies purchased an iPhone for USD $600. He brought it to class one day and introduced me to a ‘jail-broken’ version of Mario Brothers [for the Nintendo emulator] on his iPhone. I was impressed, but also hesitant to touch the touchscreen which comprised the entire phone, unknowing at the time that it was sturdier than any other touchepad I had ever encountered.

Mario Brothers was my first experience with mobile apps, and it didn’t take long until all sorts of apps started to appear in what seemed to be a “free” app community. It quickly turned into a buzz-word for the entire world and many saw lucrative opportunities through apps.

I attended many conferences that year and through them met many bright people. One in particular stands out. He was an A+ math student at the university of Waterloo in Ontario, and we talked a lot about the possibilities in mobile apps. When checking up on him a couple of months later, I found out that he quit university and moved to San Francisco where he has built a business entirely founded on apps.

iBought an iPhone too, wanting to experience and understand the ‘app-phenomenon’ better. By 2009 apps became more than a trend. They became an expectation of the sophisticated mobile consumer. To sell a handset which does not support apps meant to deny your customer a fundamental privilege of mobile communications, something which even the most stubborn of mobile handset makers (aka Nokia) learned not to do.

More importantly, by 2009 everyone was looking to build apps. There were apps that helped new developers develop apps. Think of it like the MS Visual Basic of programming. Allowing amateur programmers to program their own programs [no pun intended]. And I’m not talking about the Apple Dev site, I’m referring to 3rd party websites which anyone with “basic” knowledge can visit and design their “own” personal app and release to the “iWorld” of apps.  However, during the writing of this blog [which has inspired me to write], I could not find the app-designer app. It was on the news, but since then, it’s disappeared. If you find it, make a comment please?

5 short years later and a growing $350M app empire emerges. Many mommy/daddy-entrepreneurs which we’ve interviewed went from creating 4 blog sites and $30,000 USD a year to building 1 app which contributed towards $30,000+ USD in a day – all by selling their app for $0.99USD. In 2009 games were the most profitable apps downloaded by consumers.

I believe there this is only a beginning to redefining mobile communications. Opportunities arise with every enhancement and new handset which appears on the market. These opportunities are especially attractive to young entrepreneurs who have “little skin in the game” [as a mentor once said to me] and who have the ability to make a considerable splash in the industry by leveraging a comprehensive knowledge base.  Gen-X, Gen-Y and the rapidly growing Gen-Z will be among the leaders in the iPhone/iPad app industry [among other app industries including facebook apps, blackberry apps, etc...]

It’s tough. Many immediate barriers jump out at me. For instance: spelling, constructing sentences [not to mention I hate commas and where to put them]. I still don’t really know the difference between a colon and semi-colon and furthermore: what the heck does pluperfect mean or future indefinite?

Now, the truth is, none of the above could matter less when it comes to what writing is really about. Grammar and syntax are “tools of the trade” – the writers trade – and have nothing to do with creativity, thoughtfulness, integrity or passion. Writing has only to do with what you want to say and anything that gets in the way of what you want to say is obviously going to be a problem.  So, the very first thing we must learn to deal with is the unnecessary intimidation caused by rules and regulations. If rules and regulations are your primary concern – you’re in trouble. So what do we do: “there are no rules”.

Technicalities that intimidate can prevent the guts of what you want to say from reaching the page. The page is all that matters: the page and what you want to put there. Therefore, put all thought of craft and technique behind you until you have put whatever you want to say on the page. Never think unconsciously of form. The form will declare itself in the doing. Grammar and syntax come after the fact, not before it. In truth, all rules and regulations come after the fact, because it is only after the fact has been established – the writing on the page – that you can recognize what does and does not work. Put it this way: when we are starving and are given food, we get the food to our mouths however possible – often times just stuffing it in our mouths. It is only after we have fully recovered that we even begin to think of where the dessert spoons are laid. If the blank page is starving, are you going to sit around refusing to feed it because you don’t know where to lay the commas? Give it the words: that’s all it wants.

Okay! There is one more essential that must be stated and that is: if you are a writer, you will know it. Others will know it, too. The voice of the true writer is always recognizable. It is recognizable in precisely the same way that we recognize any other natural talent, from basketball to skating to playing the piano. This is what Michael Jordan and Sidney Crosby and Yanni have in common with J. K. Rowling: all of them found their own unique voices and the voices were basketball, skates, piano keys and pens. All of you have to do it verify the trueness of these voice is try to imagine J. K. Rowling playing for the Chicago Bulls or Yanni  in skates. This is not, of course, to say that these particulars don’t dance or that women don’t play hockey. It is simply to say that an Atwood attempting to find her voice on skates, and Gould, his voice in ballet shoes would have been tragically prevented from fulfilling their potential. Beyond the finding of the voice lies endless work and effort – but without the voice, the work and the effort could go on forever and nothing would ever come of it.

Why am I saying this? I’m saying this in order to demonstrate the truly compliant role that grammar and syntax, rules and regulations play in the making of good writing. No amount of perfect understanding concerning the craft of writing will ever produce a writer. Gertrude Stein wrote that she had once had a very sad conversation with an aging, ambitious but not very fitted artist whose whole career had been an attempt to emulate Picasso “…but only Picasso can be Picasso,” she told him. What a pity the aging artist had not attempted to be himself – [via Mike Robbins].

I suppose, when all is said and done, there are two areas of the writing process that I could define as being the “toughest”. The first of these would be articulation and the second would have to involve the final decisions concerning edits.

Achieving articulation is quite a long process for me. Every line – actually – every word must be made to do its job, but every line and every single word must be made to seem effortless. Seams must be invisible. The reader must never be aware that anyone has been “at work here, taking pains”. Unfortunately, what guides each writer through the articulation process is necessarily private and unique, therefore, there are no guidelines or any general rules concerning articulation, barring the single rule: be true to your own voice. Nevertheless – for me, at least – the articulation of precisely what is being said inevitably involves the longest and the hardest slugging in terms of sheer labour.

Psychologically, the toughest moment in all writing for all writers probably comes during the final editing sessions. This is when you must make your final draft and hand it over to the publisher. This is when you give it up and commit to finalization. This is the moment that William Faulker defined as the time to “kill all your darlings”. I for one couldn’t have said it any better myself. Let them go. The work is all that matters.

Wrong: “sell everybody. Hi my name is I love ccp, check out my websiite.”

2. Trust

But I can’t guarantee your success because your business is your life. Your life is your success.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection…again.

13. I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

19. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.

20. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

21. I would rather try to carry 10 over-loaded plastic bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

22. The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

23. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

24. How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear or understand a word they said?

25. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

26. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

27. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?

28. There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

29. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate bicyclists.

30. Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

31. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!

[via Alex King]