Are You Backing Up Your Backups

I came across this post “Who Protects Your Cloud Data?” by Mike Gunderloy over at Web Worker Daily.  It really struck a chord with me since I am developing a service that rides on top of one of the mentioned storage providers (its not quite ready so more news on that to come).  In any case it appears that OmniDrive, an online storage provider, may have go offline and joined the so called “deadpool”.

How sucky is that.  I started to wonder just how many customers of OmniDrive, who have been trusting their data to OmniDrive, now have not only lost the trust but also their data.  How many have been using OmniDrive to protect their cherished family photos that are gone.  How many have used OmniDrive to store important business documents they no longer have access to ?  It pretty sad, an unfortunate tale of the technology and the companies providing that technology we have come to rely on.

The post points out we need to be selective in trusting our data.  There are other providers out there that are backed by big named companies that will not be going anywhere.  Mozy is backed by EMC and Amazon has their S3 storage platform.  These are sound companies, not a “storage startup”.

Does this affect any of you out there ?  We would love to hear your thoughts.

Hulu: Almost Perfect, Almost

Until 2 days ago, I did not have a Hulu account, and to be honest I didn’t think I even wanted one. I will admit I am a bit late to this party, but I was kind of mad when NBC and Apple had their tiff and NBC took their shows off of iTunes. I travel a lot and it was great to have the season of 30Rock on my iPod for the plane or even the hotel room to connect and watch on the tv.

So the other day I aw Ars Technica was giving away some invites to Hulu and I went over to grab one and check out out. I will say that my first impression was very favorable. The site is clean and easy to navigate and find the shows you want to watch. I watched several episodes of 30Rock and was shocked at the video quality. I even pushed it out to full screen on my Dell Ultrasharp monitor and the resolution was great. I was very impressed. There are a few ads interlaced, but they are very short and quite unobtrusive.

I said it was almost perfect though. Here are the problems I have. NBC has gone and taken a HUGE market out of the picture. People want to be able to buy these shows and watch them on their television. Granted NBC is selling the content via Amazon’s Unbox, but there are limited options for this service. They only allow download to non iPod devices and also to only Tivo subscribers. Oh yeah, and no player for Mac’s, big downer. At last count there are how many iPods out there ?? a lot ! NBC has taken content off those players and out from under all those paying eyeballs. I would be curious to see some numbers as to how NBC is doing as compared to selling their content on iTunes
All in all, if you are one who watches most of your shows on your computer, Hulu is awesome. I was completely impressed by the whole package. The selection is great, player clean and easy to use. They offer selections form Bravo, Fox, FX, NBC, Sundance, and Sci-Fi just to name a few. If you can get a hold of an invite it is well worth your time to sign up and enjoy.

The Demise of the Brick and Mortar Electronics Retail Stores

Richmond, VA based Circuit City announced a wider than expected loss yesterday just one day after announcing they were giving away millions in bonuses to keep executives and some management. I think this may be the beginning of the end for many of the traditional retail electronics stores.

Granted BestBuy posted a huge third quarter profit, but that was attributed to an

extra week of holiday shopping and sales of higher-margin items such as video game consoles and GPS devices.

Personally, I will be happy to see them go.  With sites like newegg.com, amazon.com, and even costco.com, I am perfectly content to do my research and make the buy online without stepping foot in those stores.  There was a thread on twiiter going last week about the retail chains and how they thought BestBuy service had gotten better.  It is all relative I guess, but I can relate this small story.  A couple was in BestBuy purchasing a $3k LCD HD television, and the “expert” salesperson was selling them the set of $10 RCA cables to connect their equipment …  Gee that will look great.  Those poor people are going to start watching HD content and say “We spent how much to get this ?”.

I realize that the massed are yet to adopt the online shopping experience, although the number is growing fast.  But I think the system of ratings and reviews that Amazon has set up will only help the shift to online.  When I need a product, I go to Amazon read the reviews and then go to newegg and buy the product after checking out the reviews there.  A day later and it is at my house.  I also think that a bulk store like Costco will fare better as well.  With great prices and generous return policies I have had nothing but good experiences purchasing from Costco and I will most likely buy all my future HD tv’s there.

It is curious to me why Circuit City would be wanting to pay bonuses to management who are tallying record loses, but it does not surprise me.  I do not want the employees to lose jobs, but I think the market space for a Circuit City is shrinking fast and wont be surprised or disappointed if they went away in the very near future.  CompUSA ring a bell ? ….

Amazon Adds New Killer Web Service

I am a huge fan of Amazon’s Web Services that they have been slowly rolling out. So big a fan in fact, I am basing my own little startup venture around one of them, and now maybe two. Some time back, Amazon released S3 (Simple Storage Solution) which is an endless storage platform for business and regular users. The great thing though is that while it is endless, you only pay for what you use, and it is very very reasonable. I store like 20Gb of pictures on it and get a bill for @ $2.50 a month. My venture, MyDropBin, is basically a user friendly web front end for a users S3 storage space. It allows the ability to upload files and tag them as well as keep them in user defined folders accessible anywhere you have a connection. And soon there will be the ability to save dynamic data right from the web. But enough about that, this post is about a new service that really rounds out Amazons offerings.

It is called Amazon DevPay, and basically here is what it can do:

• Develop your software application using Amazon S3 or an Amazon EC2 Machine Image (AMI).
• Use the simple Amazon DevPay web interface to register your application or AMI with Amazon DevPay, provide a product description and configure your desired pricing.
• Embed the Amazon DevPay purchase pipeline link into your web site to allow your customers to purchase your product.
• Protect your application from unauthorized use by integrating with Amazon DevPay’s authentication mechanism.
• Monitor the money you are earning on the Amazon DevPay Activity page.

I have to admit I was waiting for a prescription when I saw this and sat riveted to my iPhone as I read about it. I know that they have recently released some other cool stuff, like the SimpleDB and a Flexible Payment System, but to me this is “IT”. For a one person, self funded startup, it is a service like this that makes it absolutely possible to build a viable web service and possible compete on a global scale. Amazon is making it so easy for me to build my vision and make it a reality using building blocks they are providing. I will now be able to integrate this quite easily and in a few small steps have a professional payment pipeline tied into my product, especially since it is another one of their services I have built upon.

This is basically an affiliate program for their web services. Now I can use their products and set pricing to include fees and overhead costs that are passed onto the users. Amazon tracks the users usages and charges and bills them directly and I get the difference dumped into my account. It could not be easier and I could not be happier nor more excited.