Nov 28th, 2008
How Much to Rely on Web Based Services?
One of the services I depend on a little (not a ton) is I Want Sandy, a reminder/calendar type service that I’ve used in conjunction with Jott. The company that runs both Sandy and Stikkit (a kind of virtual Post It service), Values of n, is closing both services as of December 8, 2008, because the coder behind the two sites has accepted a full time job at Twitter and Twitter has acquired the intellectual property of Values of n.
While this is likely a great development for Rael Dornfest of Values of n, it leaves users of the two services without the information and utility they’ve come to depend on. Yes, there are replacements–Remember The Milk is a popular alternative–but it brings forth a scary thought: are the online services I use, including the data I have there, safe?
It’s not an unreasonable question. For instance, not long ago I discussed Google based applications, and while there are few tech companies as profitable and large as Google, it’s clear that it’s possible that your data and utilities can just go away.
This is not totally unprecedented. For instance, when Internet service providers have changed hands or gone out of business, your email address (and sometimes your email and your Web site or anything else stored there) would go away as well. So how to prepare?
Treat your online services and data just like any other kind of computer–meaning backup, backup, backup! Redundancy is good. Take this Web site–it’s 100% backed up locally at the end of each week. Email is archived regularly and my personal computers all have dedicated backup drives. Remember: backing up saves money; just treat your online services and data the same way. And consider having your own domain for email; even if we think GMail is forever, you never know when you’ll need a different address.
