Jamie Orillion Photography & Design

In today’s society it is almost necessary to be able to run your businesses remotely.  Thanks to technology we can.  Here are a few useful tools that I use which allow me to run my business from wherever I am:

iPhone:  iPhone is the main platform I use for remote business management.  The beautiful thing about it is the fact that it is a useful tool remotely and locally.  Wherever I am it’s there.

Here are a few mobile apps that keep my business going:

Mail
Calendar
Things
Evernote
Dropbox
Facebook
HootSuite
Dev Chart
WordPress
Deliveries
Chase
The Weather Channel
Camera
Insight
Notes
Google Voice
Dragon Dictation
1Password
Maps

There are several other apps that I use for personal use along with apps that come and go which I have tried and may have failed, but these are pretty much the root apps that I tend to use on a very regular basis.  Please share suggestions/alternatives if you have found any that work better.  If you aren’t taking advantage of your mobile technology I hope you begin to embrace it.

Here is a video you don’t want to skip over. Not so much the same old debate, but just a really cool video.

This definitly voids your waranty so I wouldn’t reccomend it!

This is my nerd post, for all those who ask…
(Not that I have all my solutions completely figured out!)


I thought I would give a little plug to the guys over at Apple.  Now that everything is digital I get a lot of questions about loosing data.  What’s my solutions? How many backups? DVD vs. Hard Drive… The list goes on.  To answer all of those questions:  I don’t have an exact solution, but I can tell you what I do and it gets me along.  As you may know from all of my recent iPhone post I’m a Mac fan.  I love their products and the resources out there to support Mac.  I currently operate off of 2 main computers specifically tailored to me, and I dabble in a little work on others here and there, but 2 for me, but for this post sake I’m going to throw my wife’s laptop in the mix.  Let’s start with my wife’s laptop.  My wife is a school teacher so her laptop (white MacBook) is used mainly for papers, internet shopping, the occasional e-mail, pictures and videos of the kids, and iChat with me (rarely).  A lot of family memories are on my wife’s laptop, and now that Ashton is born there will be lots more to come.  Soo… backup is essential!  At home I utalize a wireless network powered by an AirPort Extreme Base Station which is joined with an AirPort Express for AirTunes which plays music wirelessly through my laptop to my outdoor speakers.  The AirPort Express is also connected to a printer that I share wirelessly over the network between my wife and my laptop.   The AirPort Extreme also gives me extra ethernet ports which go to a hard line network that I also run for when I’m doing heavy load image uploading or web work online.  It also goes to my XBOX 360 and my Apple TV which I love to watch/rent movies with and play music while I cook, not to mention all of the free podcast and YouTube videos that I get sucked into.  With all that said… the one that is most relevant to this post is the fact that I have an external hard drive that I have plugged in USB into the AirPort Extreme.  With the new AirPort Extreme update I am able to back up wirelessly over the network using Time Machine.  


What is Time Machine??? Here is a quick breakdown: 

So thats how we do it at home.  My wife can effortlessly back up here computer without having to worry about anything.As far as my laptop goes (black MacBook), I mainly use it for most of the same things plus iTunes (which sinks with my phone, my apple tv, and my ipod), but I do on occasion do a bit of work  and keep important files on it so I always like to have a stable backup.  In the Crucé studio we have a Time Capsule which acts almost exactly like the AirPort Extreme except it has a hard drive built into it.  Daniel and I both back up wirelessly to it (effortlessly) when we are in the office.  I also have a .mac account which allows me to store files on an online locations and share e-mail and calendar with multiple computers so I always have the correct information no matter what computer I’m on.  The good thing about .mac is that I can also access it from any computer on their website and access my data.  .mac also allows me to utilize a feature which I LOVE…  It is called Back to my Mac and it gives me access to all of the files on my computer in my office from any remote location that has internet access.  I can also see the screen if I need to.  Thats nice when I have a program that takes a while to run and I need to check on its status from time to time while I’m away, I can view it as if I’m on that very computer. 


As far as back up for my Mac Pro in the office… I never seem to have the perfect solution because it seems like I am always outgrowing the space I have and can’t burn anything off because I am working on so many files at one time.  I’ve tried several things, but until I can afford an XServe and some sort of massive RAID storage I’ll keep trying different options.  


Anyway… Just thought i’d share!