You know I'm a big (understatement) fan of Steve Jobs, but there's one of his products I recently dumped: MobileMe.
MobileMe, which Apple charges $99 per year to maintain, allows users to sync Mail, Contacts, and Calendars between computers and iPhones. But, I was never successful performing this trick. I did use the iDisk part of MobileMe for on-line storage; but even that was a bit of a hassle. So, sadly, I declined to renew my subscription (although Apple -- in the forum of dire notices -- continues to remind and plead with me to re-up).
I've chosen Google's Gmail to do my syncing between computers and iPhone; and Google Docs (Sergey Brin is Google's Co-Founder and President of Technology)- which is free - to plop all of my documents, notes, e-mail attachments, and other stuff I want to save. Because it's in a "cloud," somewhere in cyberspace, I can access it from either of my two Mac computers, my iPhone, or on computers away from home.
The beauty of cloud computing (iDisk is also a cloud) is that if a fire or other disaster (earthquakes have been popular lately) should befall your computer, your external hard drive, your thumb drive, your CDs, or whatever device you use to back-up your important things (you do backup, don't you?), your output is still safe in the cloud.
As a Jewish mother, worrying about disasters is a birthright; so no use giving me the odds of anything so bleak happening. I'll count on my Russian Sergey (maybe it's our Eastern European roots that are the lure) to protect me.
I only hope Steve forgives me.
Way to go Elaine! Looking forward to more of your posts. Great idea for a blog. I like Sergey's products better for the iPhone as well.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
eric
What I like about cloud computing is that a program like Google Docs allows multiple users to share a single document. No more emailing various versions of a document back and forth for changes.
ReplyDeleteBlackBerry has a desktop backup and synch program but there's a catch: You can't open the backup files on your computer. If you lose your BlackBerry or it breaks you have to buy a new BlackBerry to get your info back. But Yahoo has a synch service that works with BlackBerry that you can read any time, any place from any computer. (It works with other phones as well.)
ReplyDelete