How Inateck Helps Catalogue and Store Your Data!

Last updated on April 5th, 2021 at 02:20 pm

“‘Cuz falling off is a sickness, I heard that it’s quite contagious.”
— Kendrick Lamar, “The Heart, Pt. 3 (featuring Jay Rock & Ab-Soul)” (2012)

I Am Not a Sellout.

How did I put a bow on 2014? By letting someone know how I really felt.

The end of a year that was entirely too long, I finished 2014 yearning to get back to basics, as the #BloggerLife had spun out of control and the blog more about the swag I got than the man behind the words.

So when someone commented on a post, calling me a sellout in a situation that’d be otherwise innocuous, I decided I’d had enough. I let it all out in a Facebook post that laid my feelings bare, sharing everything that’d bothered me in my #BloggerLife for some time, but never given voice.

I’m not a sell-out—I refuse to sell out. If there’s one thing I can tell you from years of blogging, it’s that authenticity matters, and there’s an inherent value to the space you build on the Web—no one in their right mind would give up years of work to grease their palm a little.

Only a couple of months into 2015, I’ve scaled back on my sponsored posts and giveaways. Though my Gmail still gets pitches and invites daily, I’ve set my mind on getting my act together this year—I’ll need to if I plan to make the #BloggerLife even better!

The world keeps turning, though…

But I’d be foolish to think the world would stand still while I navel-gaze, and the siren song of cool gadgets and awesome opportunities is far from quiet!

So that said, I’m back at it, albeit a little differently than before.

Sponsored work shouldn’t be about the money or swag that the blogger’s invariably getting from the transaction—it should be about the stories they can tell about the product or service and how it genuinely adds value to their life. Too many bloggers lose sight of this, flooding the Web with more of the dreck that’s already too abundant.

But enough of that—I’ve been on my soapbox too long already; all you need to know is it’s important for me to come correct, telling the best stories I can whether it’s on the events I attend, the thoughts in my head, or the things that wind up in my mailbox.

And what better way to get back in the mix than with some product from Germany-based Inateck who’s been previously featured on the blog?

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You can know what data you need, but you need the tools to COLLECT it…

I’m all about the data.

I’m the guy who downloads all 50,000 of his tweets to see his trends over time and how his writing style and preferred discussion topics have transformed through the platform’s brevity. And the guy who’ll teach himself Google Fusion Tables to analyze neighbourhood demographics to understand better what the world is trying to show him.

Knowledge is power, and once you understand how to work with data, it opens up an entirely new world to you.

And you know what—you can get data out of anything; people generally think spreadsheets and databases when they think data, but there’s data in your keystrokes. In the number of breaths you take in a week. In how many rutabagas are sitting on the shelf at your local grocery store.

All you need is a way to capture it.

The Inateck BCST-10—For those times when you wanna show off your SWEET book collection but don’t know HOW.

Seeming to read my mind, Inateck sent me their BCST-10 to play with, a Bluetooth-enabled barcode scanner that’d probably be more at home in a shopping mall. It was admittedly a bit of a pain to sync with my Mac (pro tip: always use the more complex instructions), but once I got going, it was on. Using Home Inventory to track my scans on the computer, I started scanning all over the house, wirelessly cataloguing all the things—you never know when you’ll need to file an insurance report for the baby books in your kid’s nursery, right???

Naysayers will say you can use a phone to do the same job, but speaking from experience, the BCST-10 is far quicker, using its laser-guided scanning to recognize various types of barcodes in fractions of a second.

But it’s work—cataloguing, scanning, cleaning the data… and while I enjoy the look of an elegantly organized database in the morning, Inateck and I agree that the masses might want something a little more practical for their needs.

Good thing I needed a little something to transfer files from a dying MacBook Pro…

Data backups. Because no hard drive is FOREVER.

Replacing my 5-year-old MacBook Pro was one of my best investments in 2014. Where my old laptop started struggling with the volume of multimedia editing I got up to; my new model’s good to me, letting me simultaneously run multiple programs to get the job done.

But one thing I didn’t anticipate when I transferred Macs is that the data transfer might face issues, surprising me with empty folders where I expected dozens of files! I needed access to my old computer, but it’d just kicked the bucket and wouldn’t turn on no matter what I tried.

That’s where Inateck stepped in with their FE2006, a USE 3-enabled hard drive enclosure for 2.5″ HDDs!

The Inateck FE2006—When you need more space than a USB key, but don’t wanna carry your life’s possessions around with you.

I’ve been ready to upgrade my external storage game for a while now.

While my Sans Digital TowerRAID is a beast, I’ve had it for ages, back in the days I still worked from a desktop in my room at my parents’ house. Though 3.5″ drives are good for dedicated backup systems that’ll stay in one place, the days of clunky external hard drives are long-dead, and as a grown man in 2015, carrying everything on my back but the kitchen sink just wasn’t a good look.

The Inateck FE2006’s proven itself an excellent solution for my needs—I carry my old laptop drive in the enclosure with a USB 3.0 cable so I can transfer files with my Mac faster than just about any other method! Having immediate access to the files that used to sit around at home collecting dust has been a welcome change, with the bonus that any time I need something I forgot on my old Mac, it’s all right there when I need it!

Always keep innovating. You never know when that data will come in handy!

So in the end, I got a new toy to play with (you should’ve seen my parents’ faces at Christmas as I scanned in each of my son’s gifts), and a nice, tidy solution to a problem I never saw coming. It all reminded me that we should always try to simplify our lives, and Inateck’s product offerings are right up that alley.

Now if you’ll excuse me, these files aren’t going to organize themselves!

Until the next post,

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Disclaimer: Inateck was kind enough to send the BCST-10 and FE2006 for my review, and I definitely found both devices useful.

Inateck’s well-connected on social, and you can see more of what they have to offer on their website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Pinterest!

If you want me and more of my digital shenanigans, I’m on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!