Lifestream Backup is a new service that backs up your data from a handful of popular online services including Flickr, Twitter, BaseCamp, Google Docs, and WordPress. You just provide it with your log-in credentials (or give it permission through authentication), and it quietly makes a daily or weekly backup of all your data from each site. It can then be viewed and downloaded if one of those places suffers an outage or data loss.
For $30 a year you get 20GB of storage, which is shared across all of the different services and hosted on Amazon's S3. If you have your own S3 account it's only $15 for the whole year, and it does not impose any storage limits since you're paying for that separately through Amazon. (Note: The prices are slightly lower than these for the next 10 days as part of the site's launch.)
You pick which services you want to hook it up to, and it will back them up automatically.
(Credit: CNET)To give it a good test drive I tried it on my Flickr and Twitter accounts, as well as my Delicious bookmarks and Google documents. It took a little under a day to pull everything in, although the length of time it takes depends both on when it begins its backup, and how much you have on each service. The only exception was Delicious, which was never imported despite me providing the correct credentials.
For Twitter it saved all of my past tweets in an XML file which could not be viewed in Firefox, IE, or Chrome. Instead I had to open it up in Windows Notepad and parse through coding wrappers to get to each tweet. They were all there though, going all the way back to 2007. Not a bad start, but the presentation left something to be desired; a spreadsheet would have been nicer.
As for Google Docs, what's nice is that it can grab documents from multiple Google accounts. I had it hooked up to two of mine. It pulled them in just fine, although it did not mark which account was which. It also does not tell you what type of document each saved item is. If they're text files this isn't a problem since they display right in your browser. If they're spreadsheets or presentations though, you have to save them to your hard drive and open them in something like Excel.
Of all of the services I tested, Flickr took the longest, and with good reason--photos are big. I've got more than 3,200 photos stored on Flickr. For size reasons, it does not download the full-quality version of each photo, which admittedly would fill up your 20GB quite quickly (my 12 megapixel shots run around 3MB to 4MB a pop). Nonetheless, I found this to be a major shortcoming, especially for pixel-peeping snobs like me who like to zoom into the details of large photos. It also did not keep any of the categorization I had worked so hard on back over on Flickr. Sets, tags, descriptions--none of that gets backed up.
Lifestream Backup's archive pages are not much to look at, but they do save your data, and let you download it in case one of those sites is down.
(Credit: CNET)I'd also like to see it do a better job at presenting the files. For instance, it shows when the files were backed up, but does not let you see when they were originally created. You also cannot download your files in bulk. Instead it must be done one at a time. For retrieving single files this obviously isn't a problem, but if you're trying to re-archive an entire gallery of photos, or folder full of documents it can be time-consuming.
Faults aside, I think Lifestream Backup is really on to something, and has big potential. Many of the services it backs up have very comprehensive backup systems of their own. That doesn't mean diddly when they go down though. If you're using any of them for business and want a surefire way to access your content, Lifestream Backup provides that. The one weak point there is if the source service is also using Amazon S3, which is what powers Lifestream Backup, then you really are out of luck until S3 comes back online.
Diddit is a new site for making lists. These lists are not the kind you make for the grocery store or things you need to do at work. Instead it's places you've been, toys you had as a kid (or adult), and anything else that could be chronicled. Some might find this useless, but it's what the site does with the data you've given it that makes it so fun.
The site shares much in common with Yelp and its lists feature, and the recently launched ThisMoment. You can make your own list using activities or locations that others have already added to the database. You can also share a story about any item or activity, complete with a rating from 1 to 10.
As you begin to build up more of a profile, Diddit starts to match you up with other members who have done or enjoyed similar things. Likewise, it categorizes the things you've done to give you a bird's eye view of what you may not know you liked, as well as areas you need to fill out. All of this data will eventually culminate into a really deep recommendation tool.
At least that's the plan.
In a demo earlier this week, Paul Gauthier--the co-founder of Ludic Labs, the creator of Diddit--told me he wants to turn this into a simple way for people to get new ideas for things to do based on their existing activities. "One of the things we're going to be able to do is start harnessing it like Amazon or Netflix," he says. "Diddit will be able to say 'what you did, you'll like doing these things.' This will work once we hit a critical mass of data. Our search engine days will help us with that."
Gauthier is referring to his work at the now Yahoo-owned search software company Inktomi, of which he was a co-founder.
Here's an example list. Diddit breaks down what its members have done for each item or activity.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Lofty ambitions aside, when it comes to explaining how and why it's matching you up with other users the tool is not quite there yet. For instance, it doesn't tell you what things you share in common with the people it suggests as friends.
There's also no way to search through its members based on shared activities or hobbies. A dating site called Youniverse that we checked out back in June of last year did a great job at this, and made the match-ups far more engaging--even if you weren't looking for love.
Missing at launch, but in the works, is a mobile application. Gauthier says it's a clear next step considering most people have their phones with them while they're doing these activities. He wants it to be a resource that people can pull up when they're in a place they're unfamiliar with. The application would also pull double duty, letting users chronicle something they just did or saw while out and about and taking advantage of their phone's built-in camera and GPS.
Faults and all, I found Diddit to be a very enjoyable way to take stock of life and what you've done. Some users have put together truly well-thought-out lists that are a joy to go through, and the promise of future lists and items to check off makes it worth coming back to.
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