I have spent a number of years following backup services and discovering new ones. Some are good, some are bad, but one that slipped under my radar was a service called SpiderOak. I was contacted by Ethan Oberman, co-founder, for this relatively new service and I was, of course, ready to experience a new backup service with open arms.

As our digital media grow, it is imperative that we all find ways to keep it forever. I was once a strong believer that I could never be a victim of hundreds of important files lost. I saw more clearly my mistake when I lost some of my most valuable pictures, videos, and music years ago. To keep that from ever happening again, I backup to several places so in the event that anything fails, I have a backup somewhere else. SpiderOak has made the list of saving my most important files, and doing it well.

For For $10 a month, you can store up to 100GB; this can be further increased with another $10 per 100GB increment not just for one computer, not two, but all your computers! If you are like me, then you’ll take it and run with it. One thing that $10/month will get you is advanced security. SpiderOak has one of the most advanced security systems that I have used in a backup service. Many people have their security concerns, so the SpiderOak team takes great pride in protecting their customers. In fact, because of its strong encryption, the program is currently available only in the United States. MacNN, a favorite site of mine, mention: “While it’s unlikely that employees will browse through your files, the possibility is always there, which means you lack true privacy. That’s why the site uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a US government algorithm, for encrypting your data on its servers. In theory this not only halts local access, but means that if the password is lost or forgotten, even you will never be able to retrieve your files ever again.”

I would probably suggest you always remember your password . Also unique to SpiderOak is a feature I absolutely love. Versioning is a wonderful feature that all backup services should use in my opinion. Imagine you save a document, and you decided to change some things within the document and resave it. Most services would replace the backup copy with the new one, however, SpiderOak not only keeps that version, but any previous changes you have made or will make. Brilliant.

SpiderOak also takes great pride in giving users the ability to share their files. You can designate specific files to share, assign a password to them, and then anyone with the right password can access your files over the Internet. Simple as that! With such a simple program, anyone can use it and not only am I talking about any person being able to use this program but any operating system can use it as well. This cross-platform program can have you backing up on your Mac laptop, Windows PC, or your Linux computer.

I am not particularly fond of the look and feel of SpiderOak, but in my conversations with Oberman, he made it easily understandable when he said, “this has been as issue that we have discussed at length internally. However, given that one of our top priorities from the beginning was to be completely cross platform, we wanted to provide a consistent look and feel within the application regardless of platform. Therefore, if you are on a Mac, a Windows machine, or working in Linux, the SpiderOak application will look and feel the exact same.”

That is when the saying, Never judge a book by its cover comes to mind. Despite its unpleasing facade lies a great functional program that not only backs up your files (as it is suppose to do) but also does so with security that even you cannot access without the password. SpiderOak is also joining the “Cloud.” “The company allows users to create a ‘SuperCloud’ that protects them against data loss, makes all stored information available by browser on a 24×7 basis, offers password-protected ‘ShareRooms’ for easy family/friend/colleague access, and provides a variety of technical advantages for efficient and cost-effective data management.” 

As the battle continues against the ultimate online backup solutions, HP has stepped forth with its service called HP Upline. It is a decent backup product at a good price point, but it has a few frustrating limitations.

The software is simple to get started with and the paid plans provide unlimited storage for your documents, photos, music, and video files. The system checks for new files by default every 15 minutes, and uploads your data to the HP servers in a quiet background process. There is a free version that gives you 1GB of online storage for a year, but if you are serious about backup (like me); you will want one of the paid versions. The least expensive “Home plan” ($59.00/year) gives you the unlimited storage and allows up to three PCs. Family plans and small office plans give you individual storage bins, and the business plans also give you an administrator’s dashboard.

Something I really like is that the product allows for web-based access to your backed-up files, which is very useful if you want a file and not by your computer. You can also share files via e-mail or the publish files for public access. Upline can also back up files to a local device, such as a second hard drive, a server, or a PC on the local network. This is a cool feature and I do not think there is a service out that that does both, local and remote storage options, but I could be wrong.

Now there are some cons to this service. Firstly, if you want to back up your emails, you will not be able to. Not yet, anyway. Secondly, this service is focusing on backing up only and not restoring your system, so if you happen to crash your hard drive, you cannot use Upline to restore the system. Although I think this is a feature that is likely to come in the future. Thirdly, the application does not offer PC-to-PC sync. I feel this is a very important feature, and I would suggest looking at a few of my favorites, FolderShare, BeInSync, and SugarSync.

Lastly, HP Upline is not compatible with Mac. I think it is important to offer for both platforms, especially today, since there seems to be a mixed variety of Mac and PC users. Regardless, HP Upline is a great, promising service and in the onward battle of backup solutions, it is also important to keep a nice price point and at $59/year for unlimited backup, I think they have secured themselves in the battle.

No not those kind of sexy Koreans! It looks as though the sexiest Korean gadget this year is not about to make the trip across the water to the US. It’s a shame – Korean manufacturer Tomato have just released what has to be the sexiest data back up system on the market at the moment, the 60GIG Tomato D-18

The Tomato D-18 is a tiny (8mm thin) back up drive. It comes in five colors, includes it’s own little pouch and uses a Toshiba platter. Power comes from a USB bus.

For some reason unbeknownst to us, there are no plans to ship to the USA. If you fancy a trip to Korea, they are selling there for just over $100

I want one so bad, I may have to go get a few. Just let me know what colors you want and I’ll bring a few back. Myself, I like the black ones. As with all things UnObtanium, I have managed to get hold of some great photos to tease you with and Korean gadget site mpnavi have a great looking review here. I can’t understand a word of it, but they seem very exited. Any Korean speakers out there, please leave me a comment letting me know what they think.

Byteswap is a free service (a virtual file cabinet as they call it) that allows you to upload and store files, contacts, Web links, photos, recipes – you name it! All uploaded items are nicely organized in folders. You can use the pre-named folders or you can rename them. You can also add information about the uploaded files, enabling you to know exactly why something is saved. You don’t get a true feel for Byteswap until you sign up. Their homepage and information links are a bit dense and it doesn’t look like much. However, once you sign up, it takes you to your personal dashboard which is customizable and has a lot more options.

Byteswap currently offers a Firefox toolbar that allows you to add links or pictures to your library from the Web. In addition to Firefox, an IE toolbar is in the works. This makes it a lot easier while surfing the Web to quickly save something that you consider a file-worthy item.

You can also make money with Byteswap by putting together a specific type of information that interests a group of people. When individuals view your content, they will see Adsense ads that are related to your content. If they click on the ad, then you get paid. If you are familiar with Adsense, you should know that you need quite a few clicks to make money.

When hovering over an item you’ve saved, a smooth screen shows a preview of the item. I think this is a useful aspect of the site.

You can make your content private or public. If your items are published publicly, then you can share them with friends and other Byteswap users. Byteswap also provides groups to join that serve to share content among users will similar interests. Byteswap is a good option for those of us who like to save lots of pictures and documents on our computers. This is a free way to backup some items in case a virus brings your computer down. Try it out at www.byteswap.com.

I covered google docs in this post, since then I have been keeping an eye out for another application that has as much to offer someone wishing to bring more of their work online. The good news is that I think I found one, the bad news, with so much of my stuff invested into google docs I am not sure that Zoho provides enough reason for me to switch. However for those of you who are about to make the jump from desktop applications to online document use, Zoho may be your answer.

While both google and Zoho offer very similar services there are some that only Zoho offers and others that only google offers. Both offer the following: Word Processor, spreadsheet, slideshow, web clippings, email, chat, wiki (google uses Jot), and web conferencing. What only google has: Web site hosting and feed reader. What only Zoho has: Database application, Online database, project management and customer relationship manger. I think the main difference between the two is that Zoho appears to be more business oriented while google remains strongly consumer driven.

While time will only tell if Zoho will be competitive against the juggernaut that is google, however if you are someone looking for a new place to store your work online, Zoho is worth the time it takes to explore it a little. I like Zoho a lot and if in the future I find that google does not meet all my needs I will definantly give them a shot. You can check out Zoho here, registration and use is free unless you opt for their Zoho business which runs $40 per user per year.