No, it’s not a bad country song. It’s the reality that some people are still facing today. Data loss. Yesterday I tied up the already busy long-distance lines wishing my Mom a Happy Mother’s Day and during the conversation she mentioned that she needs everybody to email her again because she lost her hard drive contents and thus her entire address book. She was sketchy on the what and how and why, but the end result was all it took to inspire this post.
It’s called Web 2.0 Mom, and it’s here to help us.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Web 2.0 generally refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages…
Now the Web 2.0 movement is pretty cutting edge and there’s a lot of arguing and back-and-forth on the specifics, but the gist of it is that people are starting to keep their data on the web, rather than on their home PC’s. Situations like my Mom’s notwithstanding, keeping your data online means you can get at it from any computer that’s connected to the internet. Nowadays you may have the opportunity to log on from a friends house (wouldn’t it be nice to be able to show them that video that you found?) or the library (I keep a list online of books I’d like to read, so I can refer to the list when I’m at the library).
And if your computer goes ka-ploo-ey? Your data (address book, documents, lists, bookmarks) are all still online. You can always reinstall your applications, (Word processor, web browser, antivirus) but if your data is gone… it’s a long hard ride getting it back.
OK… well just what kind of thing can you do online rather than strictly at home nowadays?
How about: (these are just the apps I use or have used)
Office Applications:
Writely – Imagine Microsoft Word, but as a browser application that was free. And allowed tagging of documents. And you could set reader permissions for each document you create and allow others to edit the document, or just read it. Or keep it private. That’s what Writely is.
ThinkFree Online – Create Microsoft Office compatible word processing, spreadsheet and presentation files or edit existing documents. Use the tools you need to share the stories you want anytime, anywhere.
Bookmarks
del.icio.us – a social bookmarking, social software web service for storing and sharing web bookmarks. According to del.icio.us/doc/about: Everything posted to del.icio.us is publicly viewable; it is not a tool for storing private bookmark collections. (UPDATE There’s now a “do not share” option in del.icio.us, so you can keep private the stuff you want to keep private… you just lost your reason not to try it)
Spurl – Spurl.net is a free on-line bookmarking service and search engine. It allows you to store and quickly access again all the interesting pages you find on the web from any Internet connected computer. With Spurl.net you will never have to lose a good link again. You can search your links, notes and in fact the entire text of all the pages you’ve ever “spurled”.
Furl – Furl is a free service that saves a personal copy of any page you find on the Web, and lets you find it again instantly by searching your archive of pages. It’s your Personal Web. Furl offers the best ways to share the content you find on the Web, and recommends new Web pages that may interest you. You can also search Furl to find the best sites that other people are saving.
Email
I admit I’m biased toward Gmail because of all the amazing things Google has created, but truthfully, almost any online email application can keep you from losing your address book and make it easier to stay in touch (but, seriously…try Gmail. I’ll send you an invite)
Yahoo! mail
Hotmail
In addition to the big three above, there are almost endless applications that help or allow you to do almost anything online. I blogged a few of them back in January and there’s the ever-growing “I Want To… website that categorizes applications by what you want to do.
Of course, there will always be some data you’d rather not have online, but truthfully the convenience of Web 2.0 apps will make the amount of data you keep offline rather small (and much easier to backup – because you are backing up your data, aren’t you?)