Sidekick Debacle is now a Class Action Lawsuit

Many people ask me what I have against Microsoft. After all, they gave the world MS DOS, Windows 95, Excel, and Word, right? Yes, but for every great success they have a parallel case of taking something great, and tearing it down for no apparent reason. Newest example: The T-Mobile Sidekick.

For those who may not remember, if you were a happy SmartPhone user in the days before the iPhone - and were not a Crackberry addict - odds are you used a T-Mobile Sidekick (a.k.a. Danger HipTop). This device was a beautifully-designed (albeit somewhat chunky) phone built from the ground up for e-mail, web browsing, and instant messaging. At a time when people were debating how many characters should be displayed on a black-and-white text-only "mobile website", the Sidekick was rendering CNN in full-color with graphics. And all data synced effortlessly with online servers from which users could view all the info as easily as MobileMe is today, or could download data to Outlook. I owned a Sidekick II and III, and loved them both as they kept me connected places that broadband and even dial-up could not reach. I only left the line when the iPhone came out.

This past year, Microsoft - in an attempt to salvage its failing Windows Mobile/Windows Phone/Windows CE line of phones - bought out Danger and took ownership of the whole system which they transformed into "Project Pink". This past week, Microsoft attempted to do a basic upgrade of their storage system for the online data services which failed catastrophically. And apparently, they had failed to do regular backups, so there was no fallback position. Critical customer data was lost, and T-Mobile was forced to advise Sidekick owners "not to turn off your phones" lest the data be lost forever. This one event has likely doomed the Sidekick and Project Pink forever, and cast a shadow over "Cloud Computing" for the future.

Now, T-Mobile is being sued for the data loss in to separate class-action lawsuits. Look for this to quickly be followed up by lawsuits by T-Mobile against Mocrosoft, and perhaps by Microsoft against the people who sold them Danger. This is going to be a messy blame game for all involved.

Rest in Peace, Sidekick. You'll be sorely missed.

UPDATE 2:45 PM: Microsoft now claims all data has been recovered. Here's hoping they are right.

How Do You Back Up Your Photos?

I've gotten to a point where I've almost run out of room on my hard drive again. One of the culprits is my pictures folder. Some of the pictures, such as wedding pictures, I obviously want to make sure I never lose. How do Mod-Bloggers back up their critical photos? Right now, the solution I'm looking at is Flickr Pro plus 2 backup CDs / DVDs. One to be kept here and one to be kept in another location.

On another note, I was happy to find out that if you let your Flickr Pro account lapse, they still keep all of your photos, they just don't show them to you until you renew. My heart stopped and then raced for a few minutes while I worried about that. Glad to have the account renewed with all of the pictures and a free 3 months for renewing to boot.

Review: Mozy Home Backup

I first heard about Mozy on Facebook. They created a group and said that if you joined it, you'd be entered into a drawing for a free iPod or something else. Being a sucker for free stuff, I joined. While I didn't get a free iPod, I did decide to check them out because they offered 2 free GB of backup.

Pros: It's 2 free GB of online backup. For every person you refer, they get and you get an extra 256 MB of online backup. They also have an unlimited plan for $5 per month per computer. Both the free and unlimited support Windows XP and Vista and they have a beta version of the Mac backup. Not only are the files transferred securely, they are first encrypted on your computer and stored encrypted on their servers. For more on the Mac version, see the Mac FAQ.

Cons: 2 GB runs out quickly and at $5 / month, Carbonite is slightly cheaper (though it is only for Windows). Mozy Home does not support versioning meaning that if you made a mistake yesterday, you probably can't get the previously saved copy. Also, if you delete a file from your system, it will be deleted from Mozy in 30 days. There is no other way to delete a file. That being said, the 2 GB limit is based on what you are currently backing up. If I back up one 2 GB folder and then change to back up a different 2 GB folder, that is fine, but the first 2 GB folder will be deleted in 30 days. The way you select which files to back up in Mozy Home is not the most intuitive opting to view the backup as a "set" instead of working like a home user would think. Carbonite, on the other hand, allows you to right-click and say "Back this up". It also puts a green colored dot in the corner of the icon to show a file that has backed up and a yellow colored dot in the corner of the icon to show a file that is set to be backed up.

If you've got a Windows computer and are looking to go with the unlimited plan, Carbonite is probably the better bet (though I didn't test the restore capability). If you use a Macintosh or you just want 2 GB to have an off site backup of your most important files, Mozy Home is a good fit.

Carbonite can be found here. The free version of Mozy Home can be found here. For anyone signing up for Mozy Home that wants to get an extra 256 MB and give me an extra 256 MB, you can enter referral code 7AF8UK.

Sigh. Now 10 Million E-mails Missing from White House Backups

This is a disgrace. Originally, it was believed that 5 million e-mails were removed from White House servers and backups, despite accountability laws requiring all executive branch e-mails be saved. Now, we have learned that it was on the order of 10 million e-mails instead.

OK, it is time for an automated backup of all e-mails in realtime to a secure write-once-read-many domain where the backups can only be destroyed by physical means by order of the President. Then, at least, someone will be accountable for such massive violations.