Webware

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post running down the best places to store your files online. Of the six that I covered, two have since closed up shop and one has changed its name.

It's a constantly changing space. Since then, we have seen a lot of new entrants into the online file storage and backup game. Norton Online Backup is a fairly new product that is getting a very strong upgrade Wednesday with version 2.0 of its product. The new version includes support for Mac and Windows, 90-day file versioning, and the ability to send file download links via e-mail.

Norton Online Backup's home page allows the user to see the status of every machine on their account.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

Norton has put together a very solid offering with version 2.0 of Norton Online Backup. It is introducing support for Intel-based Mac for the first time with this release. This is huge, especially when the company is trying to offer a solution for the whole household. Where most other online storage or backup services focus on serving one user, Norton has placed the focus on protecting the whole family or household. When you buy a year of the service, you are allowed to manage and back up up to five computers on your account. Jeff Kyle, a group product manager for the product, said that support for Ubuntu should be coming around March.

File versioning is a welcome addition to Norton Online Backup. This allows you to see previous versions of backed-up files for up to 90 days. This means that if you accidentally make changes that you don't want anymore, then you can just go back to the previous version. This is similar to the functionality that Apple offers with Time Machine.

Additionally, Norton Online Backup 2.0 allows you to send files via e-mails. You can select multiple files to be sent, and they will be presented to the recipient on an easy-to-use landing page. You can even password protect these files or control how long they are available for download.

Norton Online Backup's landing page for files sent via e-mail.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

My current solution for file storage and backup is Live Mesh, which continually monitors your machine for changes in backed-up files and automatically uploads them. While this feature is great, it can sometimes result in your machine slowing down since the application tends to use a lot of resources. Norton Online Backup's client is fairly lightweight and works on a scheduled backup system, which means that it checks for changes in your backed-up files at a designated time and does everything at once. This results in less overhead for your system.

Other, more minor features included in this release are open file backup, which backs up a file even if it is in use on your computer, file purging, and a simplified set-up/user interface.

Norton Online Backup has a 30-day trial and the full version costs $50 for one year, which gives you 25GB of storage and allows up to five computers on your account.

This is what the recipient see when you send them a file via e-mail.

(Credit: Screenshot by Harrison Hoffman/CNET)

It's been said that information technology is a fashion industry--that we just keep following the latest hype and fads. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison last year referred to cloud computing this way.

Ellison loves this dig, and he uses it least once every technology generation. He's not alone. I, however, disagree with the entire curmudgeon corps' "It's just hype!" attitude.

While it's true that we in IT have our fashions, just like any field of human endeavor, we're generally pretty practical. It's hard to see either IT's executives or its technicians as highly subject to the whims of style or flights of fancy. The truth is closer to the notion that we're an evolving industry--one constantly struggling to find better ways.

It's not easy to grapple with the fantastic, relentless progress afforded by Moore's Law (on the supply side), nor the constant demand for more capacity, capability, and integration (on the demand side).

In a few short decades, IT has undergone a massive shift from an engineering-oriented support role to driving the beating heart of the global economy. IT is now central to large swaths of all human activity.

As new technologies and strategies come online--whether network computing, open source, agile development, service-oriented architecture (SOA), cloud computing, virtualization, or whatever--we seek to employ them to improve our outcomes.

There's always a bit of experimentation and a bit of hype involved in the early days. Indeed, without that willingness to "try it out" and a strong shot of enthusiasm on the side, we wouldn't be advancing as well as we are. That's not just hype you're hearing; it's also the will to progress. And for the most part, the recipe works.

Most of the major new approaches touted over the past few decades have become workaday parts of the IT landscape. Most apps, for example, are now "client-server" in design. Linux and other open-source engines run much of the Internet. SOA is how enterprise IT is designed.

The same Web services that Ellison derided years ago now underpin much of e-commerce, as well as high-interactivity Web 2.0 services such as Google Maps. And virtualization and orchestration--frequently discounted at the top of this decade--are now fundamentally changing how data centers are operated.

Indeed, when one of these previously experimental, previously hyped approaches recede from view, it's usually not because they've failed but because they've succeeded so well that we don't need to talk about them anymore. They've been burned into the way we do IT.

Each wave of technology builds on the last, incorporating its best parts, weeding out what didn't work, and often re-emphasizing themes that had appeared years before but weren't quite workable at that time--though often using different names. The utility computing, grid, and application service providers of years past, for example, have become the software as a service (SaaS, or more generally, ITaaS) and cloud computing of today.

So when something new comes your way--a new approach, a new strategy, a new way of looking at or doing IT--by all means, be skeptical. Try it out in careful, measured ways. But do try it out--and have enthusiasm for those new things. That's how we advance.

Online-backup company Backblaze (Windows | Mac) announced on Tuesday that it has opened its service up to businesses. Backblaze will charge companies a flat fee of $50 per computer per year.

Backblaze's service mimics other, more popular services like Mozy (Windows | Mac) and Carbonite (Windows). Users need only to download its uploading software to their computers and create an account. Once complete, Backblaze starts backing up the contents of the user's computer to its data center.

Backblaze backs up all files on the computer, except for the operating system, temporary files, apps, or files over 4GB in size. Uploading is encrypted throughout the process and works with Windows PCs and Intel-based Macs.

If trouble strikes and a user loses some or all of his files, he can simply go back to Backblaze's site and download the required files. Backblaze already has a consumer-oriented service that costs $5 per computer per month for unlimited storage.

As compelling as its service might be, Backblaze is competing in a crowded space. Both Mozy and Carbonite are doing a fine job of attracting customers. But by using a flat rate, Backblaze is hoping to set itself apart from competing services that charge based on the amount of data that's uploaded. Mozy, for example, charges companies a standard fee of $3.95 plus $0.50 per gigabyte per month for its service.

While online data storage is becoming more commonplace, it is still a risk. For its part, Backblaze said: "Backblaze goes to great lengths to ensure data is safe and to ensure customers are happy. While we would certainly give a business a refund if data was lost (simply out of good customer service)...we don't believe anything can actually cover for the value of the lost data."

Check out Webware's hands-on review: "Backblaze: Possibly world's easiest online backup"

Updated at 1:15 p.m. PST with comment from Backblaze.

The iron mountain

(Credit: Iron Mountain)

Iron Mountain, a longtime provider of physical- and digital-records management, on Wednesday announced a cloud storage API that enables developers to take advantage of Iron Mountain's off-site storage facilities.

Despite the recent issues related to T-Mobile/Danger/Microsoft's data loss, cloud-based storage is not only here to stay, it's a good use case for organizations that don't have the internal processes or means to deal with off-site data management.

And while you can never know all of the things that can go wrong with your data (meaning that no one would have expected Danger to lose the T-Mobile data), established vendors like Iron Mountain have not only the customer base to support their abilities but also the processes to support customers effectively.

Iron Mountain's cloud storage application programming interface is the next evolutionary step beyond a cloud NAS (network-attached storage) that we've seen from providers like Mozy and others. The cloud storage API is similar in function to Amazon's Simple Storage Service interfaces, enabling developers to access data using restful interactions.

Collaborative-storage provider Box.net on Tuesday announced that it had acquired Mountain View, Calif.,-based Increo Solutions, a company with two Web products: Embedit.in and Backboard.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Embedit.in, which was launched in June, lets users post and share their documents in the cloud using an Adobe Flash-based viewer. And Backboard, which is the company's only paid product, lets users get feedback and collaborate on projects using that same document viewer.

In a company blog post on the acquisition, Box's community manager, Sean Lindo, said these products will continue to run independently but that both would later be integrated into Box.net as added features.

McAfee Online Backup has a lot of options and a rudimentary interface that could be intimidating for novices.

(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)

McAfee, one of the world's largest Internet security providers, wants to go one step further in keeping your data safe. It now offers to store your backup data for you.

The company announced Thursday the availability of its McAfee Online Backup, an online backup service that automatically uploads data from your computer's hard drive to a remote server via the Internet.

While online backup services are nothing new and have been available for a long time from many providers, such as Carbonite, Memeo, or Cuku, the main difference with the new McAfee Online Backup service is that it's one of a few that offer unlimited storage space.

For a fixed annual fee of $60, you can back up as much data as you want. This could possibly the best deal around for online backup, especially for anyone with a lot of important data and a high-speed Internet connection.

Other than the generous amount of storage, according to McAfee, its new service, which is powered by Mozy, is secure and comes with easy-to-use software.

I tried the software out briefly, and it was, indeed, easy to install and get the first backup up and running.

Once you have registered an account with McAfee, you can download the software and install it on your computer, much like you would do with the company's security software. When the install is finished, the software tests the speed of your Internet connection, which later helps determine how long it will take to get the first backup done.

The software offers a lot of options, such as Bandwidth Throttle that limits how much of the Internet connection is used for the data upload, and Backup Speed that lets you choose either fast or slow backups, to lessen the impact on the computer's performance.

McAfee Online Backup can automatically detect and find important data, including bookmarks, e-mail, contacts, documents, photos, and so on, to back up for you. You can also manually back up any folders of your choosing. Once everything is set, the software will take care of the backing up on its own. Depending on the amount of data and the quality of the Internet connection, the first backup can take a very long time (perhaps days), but after that, only data that has been changed will be backed up.

It's worth noting, though, that even when you set the backup speed to optimize for fast backup, the software seems to upload data rather slowly. If you have a cable connection and have tens or hundreds of gigabytes, expect the initial backup to take days to complete. Also, the software's unfriendly interface and the overwhelming amount of unexplained options could be intimidating to novice users.

Nonetheless, overall, this seems to be a decent backup solution and could be the most affordable for those who have a lot of data to back up. If you don't have already have a reliable backup service, consider trying it out, as it comes with a 30-day money back warranty.

Social-storage service Dropio on Thursday announced a partnership with Yahoo Mail to deliver a default application for the e-mail program's users. Dubbed Attach Large Files, Dropio's application will allow Yahoo Mail users to send attachments up to 100 MB in size.

When Yahoo Mail users log on to their accounts, they will now see Dropio's Attach Large Files listing included in the Applications drop-down box, which also features apps from Evite, Flickr, and PayPal, among others. When they click on Dropio's application, they can immediately start sending large files through their e-mail accounts.

The Dropio application isn't available through Yahoo Mail's e-mail composition form. Only when the user clicks on the "Attach Large Files" option will they be brought to a page allowing them to select files from their computer. Once they choose all those files, they can then upload them and compose an e-mail message. The message contains a note at the bottom saying the attachment technology is "powered by Dropio."

Dropio has made its way to Yahoo Mail.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

The recipients will then view the e-mail's contents on a unique Dropio page. There, they can leave a comment or download the files to their computer.

Incorporating the Dropio technology marks an improvement for Yahoo. Currently, users of Google's Yahoo Mail rival, Gmail, can attach up to 25MB to their messages. By effectively quadrupling that figure through Dropio's app, Yahoo Mail has another compelling feature to communicate to users.

Dropio was quick to point out that the app it created for Yahoo was based on its open application-programming interface. It hopes that the Yahoo Mail feature will be used as a proof of concept for other developers to find unique ways to use its API.

Dropio's Attach Large Files application is available now for free in the Yahoo Mail Applications listing.

Storage provider and collaboration service Box.net is launching a mobile extension to its OpenBox platform of application programming interfaces on Thursday. The updated platform will enable iPhone app developers to make better use of the service's cloud storage, giving users access to their files across mobile applications on the iPhone and soon other platforms.

The idea is that users will be able to save whatever they're doing on the phone to Box's cloud storage service, as opposed to their servers or the device itself. It's similar to the way the smartphone can natively send some files to places like Apple's MobileMe service and Google's YouTube. Users can then make edits to those files using other applications, subsequently syncing back up the next time they launch the iPhone app.

As part of the new program, Box has already given a handful of developers access to the new APIs. These include Pixelpipe, JotNot, iRec, and iThoughts, all of which are releasing new versions of their apps that will be able to access and save to a user's Box account.

What's missing here are Box's servers, which are doing all the heavy lifting. But the idea is the same--your data flows freely between mobile and desktop apps, all through Box.

(Credit: Box)

Beyond productivity apps, the new APIs allow for any kind of data to be sent over, which opens up transfers from generic things like text files, photos, and videos into things like game saves and user settings. A Box representative told me that while gaming would not be a focus of the API, a developer's implementation of it would not be discouraged.

Considering the heavy saturation of cross-platform games on the iPhone, it could quite easily give developers a way for gamers to continue the game they were playing on another device, making Box a valuable storage locker.

I'm always intrigued by backup tools for Web services that don't really need backup. TweetSaver is no exception. This paid service backs up (almost) everything you've ever posted to Twitter, along with private messages and replies from other users. It then adds an extra layer of utility on top of it, like a search tool that's limited to just your messages, simple sharing options for each message, as well as a way to assign a tag to each tweet for categorization.

Of course the usefulness of all of this hinges on Twitter being down and/or somehow losing all of your data. However, based on Twitter's uptime over the past year, you have to ask yourself if it's worth the cost of $20 a year. That's pretty steep considering there are some free Twitter backup solutions like TweeTake and TweetBackup that do many of the same things.

It's also worth pointing out why you wouldn't need this service for some of the features it's advertising. For one, Twitter's search tool can be limited to just your tweets if you use the from: operator. TweetSaver is also only capable of retrieving your last 3,200 tweets, so if you've got more than that, they're not going to be archived. This in itself is a limitation of Twitter's API, but should be noted if you have 40,000 tweets and think it, or any other service, is going to be able to grab them all.

I do like the idea of tagging tweets though. Crafty Twitter users have already found subtle ways to tag their Tweets by using hashes (#'s), although there's no way to go back to old messages and add them in. It can also be impossible if you're running out of space in an outgoing tweet. Below is a demo of how it works. I'm getting access later tonight and will update if it's got any hidden goodies that make it worth the price: