Insights For Success

Strategy, Innovation, Leadership and Security

Online Storage

PicBackMan helps protect your pictures

ReviewEdward Kiledjian

Of everything I have on my home PC, nothing is more important than my pictures and I am sure many of you are in the same boat. In a previous article, I spoke about the 3-2-1 backup strategy to protect your irreplaceable files. 

So how do you "easily backup your digital treasures" onto multiple online services? Enter PicBackMan. It is a simple program that can help backup your social network pictures (locally) and at the same time backup your local pictures to one or more online services. You create a free account so the app can store your connection settings and then jump straight into the simple configuration.

As mentioned, you can configure sources to backup from, think Instagram, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. Then you can choose the destinations to backup to, like Skydrive, Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, Dropbox, etc.

Once you have configured once source and one destination, the program springs [automatically] into action and start backing up your pictures. Of course it monitors the dedicated source locations and automatically performs a backup when a new picture is found.

One interesting feature is how granular the configuration can be. You can setup different [local] folders for the different services and then configure the app to upload the content of those folders to specific online services. As an example, you can have a FACEBOOK directory locally and tell the app to automatically upload everything in that directory to Facebook.

 They currently have a Windows version only and it works in Windows 7 and Windows 8. They will be releasing IOS, Android and MAC versions in the future.

With products like this, I alway wonder how it will be monetized. At least right now, the service is free but it seems the developers may add additional for-pay functions later (which is fine with me).

 

Tell the app where your pictures are, online and offline

 

Tell the app where to backup your pictures

Verdict

I played with the app for a couple of weeks and tested various complex backup and save designs, the app worked flawlessly. I think this is one of those little gems that may become a must on all of your PCs and [soon] smartphones.

For me the winning combination was the power, simplicity and reliability. I give this app two thumbs up.

Google may launch online storage "soon"

technologyEdward Kiledjian

As a traveller, I carry multiple photocopies of all critical documents (passport, credit cards, driver’s license, tickets, itinerary, etc.) In addition to the paper copies, I also store a copy of these documents on one of my online storage services just in case.

There are dozens of online storage service providers but the most popular are the likes of Dropbox, and Box.net. Unfortunately most of these services charge a premium price when the cost of storage is dropping like a rock so imagine my excitement when the Wall Street Journal reported that Google would soon release its long rumored Google Drive service. Although information is questionable at best, we can assume that if Google does launch this type of service, it will offer plenty of free storage and additional storage at a much more competitive price than its competitors (plus you can expect integration with the other Google properties G+, Google Docs, Picasa, etc).

WSJ says soon may mean weeks or months... So you need patience, patience, patience.