A story in today’s Province newspaper explains that Jimmy and Tamala Lapointe’s laptop was stolen and along with it precious photographs of their baby Rykr which were not saved anywhere else. Hopefully the theives will  read this story and at least return the photographs.

Reading this story reminded me of a CNN Tech news clip I watched yesterday with tips on laptop security. There are many ways in which you can protect your laptop. The reporter said there is a 1 in 14 chance that your laptop will be stolen at some point in your life (not sure what that stat is based on but it seems plausible). I’ve embeded the news clip below, please check it out!

This story also speaks to the importance of photography backup. My grandfather always used to joke when I took photos with the digital camera and he called it the “dhokha camera” or “fraudulent camera” because he didn’t use a computer and once a photo was taken, he’d probably never see it. However, the point of photos is to enjoy and cherish memories – so if you don’t want to get them printed, there are many other options out there. For example, photo storage services like Flickr, Picasa, or a self-hosted Coppermine gallery on your website, or just burning all your photos onto CD’s or DVD’s. It’s always good to have a backup.

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Followup

A good post by Buzz Bishop about photo storage tools available online. “There are two rules about baby photos. 1) Back them up. 2) Back them up.” :)