a swell day . com

With every domain name known to man claimed, companies are getting more and more creative. I’ve been on the hunt for online storage since undertaking a new paperless filing initiative, and I’m slowly digesting the major players.

Well known and well regarded, at the middle of the pack is Mozy.com, a major player in the online storage biz with some major downsides. I’m not going to go in depth, but you can read a well though out contrarian opinion here and here. Mozy goes for $4.95/month for ‘unlimited’ backup. I have heard rumors of those who hit the 500GB mark mysteriously missing data. The terms of use and odd data access policies leave me feeling like I’m being used somehow.

At the top of the line in online storage is Amazon’s S3 service. With multiple redundancies, great speeds, and an uptime guarantee, S3 is shaping up to be THE option in bombproof remote storage. But the price is shaping up to reflect that. Due to the cost per Gigabyte + transfer fees, my frequent uploading and downloading would likely take me into the $600-$700/year range. Not cool. (Jungledisk is a free interface for simply and automatically uploading to S3.)

And finally we are left with my choice, ElephantDrive. For a mere $9.95/month, I receive 1 Terabyte of storage, 100GB of transfer, and peace of mind. ElephantDrive backs up to two geographically distant location, and focuses on reliability instead of cost slashing (Mozy). I trust my files with ElephantDrive, and am not limited to certain types of access or slow access (Mozy).

What is your workflow for backing up online, and do you weed anything out or just back it all up?

I’m finally exasperated enough with having out of sync calendars that I went on the hunt for a solution.

Here’s the scenario: I have a blackberry that I love. I sync it with my PC about once a year - I just don’t need to plug it in when I can get everything I need over the air. (Essentially the only use for this lovely old computer is as a seedbox and home media server. The Macbook Pro is my constant companion.)

The problem: I only have one copy of my calendar data, which stays on my blackberry. Instead of an exchange server I utilize Google Apps, which until recently did not have an OTA (Over The Air) sync solution. Whenever I make an appointment I immediately enter it into my Blackberry’s calendar. But what about when my fiancee or assistant need to check my schedule? They have to email me or call me - leading to wasted time and communication that doesn’t need to happen.

The solution:
1. I plugged my Blackberry into the PC (hopefully for the last time…) and synchronized the calendar data. The PC’s copy was hopelessly out of date, and now it’s all fresh and clean with exactly what’s going on.

2. I downloaded Google Calendar Sync for Outlook and installed it on my PC. I synchronized my freshly updated Outlook calendar with Google Calendar. For some reason, all of my existing data on the Blackberry is not uploading to my Google Calendar, only NEW appointments that are made after Google Sync was installed. I needed to get a ‘baseline’ on to my Google Calendar, with all of my existing appointments. You can skip this step if you want to start with a blank slate in Google.

3. I followed the directions for installing Google Sync for Blackberry. Once complete, I ran the program, entered my username/password, and told it to sync with my Blackberry. NOTE: It does not matter whether you use Google Apps for Your Domain, or Google Calendar on a standard Google account. Just enter your username/password and let Google figure out which you’re accessing.

Notice that when you open the menu in your Blackberry Calendar, Google Sync is right at the top. It’s the little things that make me happy using a well thought out Google product.

4. Notice that if you set the Google Sync options to Automatic, any new entries will post to Google Calendar within minutes, as long as you have a working data connection on your Blackberry. I took this two steps further. First, I set Outlook to sync occasionally from my home computer so that it will be up to date if I ever look at it. Second, I shared my calendar with everyone who needs access to my availability and appointments. This can be done from the Google Calendar options, and you can select whether the person you’re sharing it with sees busy/free times, or can see/edit appointments.

That’s it! Coming soon: How to sync Google Calendar and iCal on Mac OS X.

For help and more information, try the Google Calendar Discussion Group or the Google Apps Discussion Group.