Month: December 2005

So Jeremy Zawodny poses an interesting take on online backup, with a great analogy which he hopes might be true. The comments seem to say otherwise, with knowing advice. Fred Wilson recommends two services, including one he depends on personally. His readers, too, have potentially useful comments on the situation.

The problem? None of the four or five solutions I just reviewed via these posts are for Mac OS X. Yes, I know about .Mac, but there are notable problems with that solution, starting with terrible online documentation. Even in the PDF (PDF?!?!!), I couldn’t find any explicit details about Backup 3 that would tell me how many gigabytes are available, nor any discussion about bandwidth limits, if any. I believe there is a single digit gigabyte limit on many/all of these services. I understand that, but part of the appeal of backup is… not thinking about it. I don’t want to have to consider which files to backup. I would hope that .Mac is remarkably simple, matching the brand promise and the target audience, but would it kill them to provide actual services details on the website in easy-to-understand HTML? Until that problem is rectified, I won’t even consider the more important issue of space limitations.

Maybe I’m in the minority. I am willing to pay a reasonable amount for a solution, since I know I’m living on borrowed time here.

Thoughts? Of course, I don’t have comments or trackbacks enabled, so hard for anyone to share the ideas/services I’m missing, but let me know via email at jbr at this domain.

Sujal reminds me about SuperDuper, which I had previously noted. Compelling review here. Still not an online solution, which means I have to (a) buy and (b) rely on an external drive… but the app is less than $30, and storage costs continue to drop. I’ll take this step over the holidays. And keep hoping for that perfect backup in the cloud solution.

The Ludlum novel, The Apocalypse Watch, was written by Robert Ludlum (earlier musings) , and it has all the usual pace, plot, and global conspiracy. I needed another “cleanse the palate” read a couple of weeks ago, and found this hardcover on the shelf while culling some titles to make room for more in the future. This book now goes on to a new home. Verdict: a quick covert action thriller, but not worth its space on the shelf long-term.

One note on the villains… published in 1995, Apocalypse Watch employs a neo-Nazi group as its global bogeyman, which seems mildly old-fashioned in the post 9/11 world. Recall how the Mel Gibson/Danny Glover movie Lethal Weapon 2 used apartheid-era South Africans as the villains of choice in 1989? Very politically correct villain, in that few potential viewers would be offended or identify with those being pursued, killed, and otherwise brought to heel. I’m interested in catching Syriana at theaters in part because it seems partisan, or at least unafraid to take a side. That doesn’t mean the movie is any good, of course.

I’m not sure why Dave Winer was poking around the top ten most common last names in the United States, but I was pleased to see that Roberts did not make the cut. Roberts is only 43rd on the list.

Nothing like getting on a morning airplane to make for a light sleep the night before. Off to Brooklyn to meet the new niece, with boy and girl in tow. Wish me peace and quiet, courtesy of JetBlue.