Chile has kicked off the 2006/2007 table grape season with clear signals that it is going to be another bumper harvest. The world’s No.1 table grape exporter is on track to outstrip the 2005/2006 total of 811,462 tonnes, a figure which represented 37.2 percent of Chile’s entire fresh fruit shipments for that season, which was 2,182,952 tonnes. According to Decofrut, the overall volume of grapes exported in 2006/2007 is expected to be 864,809 tonnes, an increase of 6.6 percent thanks to strong markets and favourable weather conditions which have so far resulted in a high quality product  The 2006/2007 grape season started in November in the Copiapó and Ovalle regions of northern Chile, which according to Decofrut estimate are expected to export 292,490 tonnes, an increase of 9.7 percent on last season’s figure of 266,519. Around 60 percent of the 2006/2007 harvest in Copiapó and Ovalle is destined for North American markets, and the first shipment of the season to the US arrived this week

If there’s one New Year’s resolution even more likely to fail than “I vow to lose weight,” it’s “I vow to start backing up my computer. Fortunately, 2007 may turn out to be the Year of the Backup. Both Microsoft and Apple have built automated backup software into the latest versions of their operating systems, both to be introduced this year. At the same time, an option that was once complex, limited and expensive is suddenly becoming effortless, capacious and even free: online backups, where files are shuttled off to the Internet for safekeeping. Online backup means never having to buy or manage backup disks. You can have access to your files from any computer anywhere. And above all, your files are safe even if disaster should befall your office — like fire, flood, burglary or marauding children