How do I remove my data from the “cloud”?
More and more people store photos, e-mails, contacts, etc. in a “cloud”, with an online service. What if this cloud should disappear all of a sudden? How do you make a backup of your online data?
Individual solutions
1. Flickr. When you upload photos to Flickr you obviously have them sitting on your own hard disk already. Still, if these photos should get lost and you want to retrieve them from Flickr, you can use the free FlickrEdit tool (http://sunkencity.org/flickredit). It helps you to manage your photos at Flickr and you can also retrieve photos to your computer again.
2.Twitter is meant for short, casual messages. But if you would like to save your tweets, be aware that they will no longer be found via the Twitter search engine after about a week. Therefore, if you save your tweets, you should do so regularly. Two free services which do just that are BackupMyTweets (http://backupmytweets.com) and TweetBackup (http://www.tweetbackup.com). They download your tweets to their own sites every day; you can then download them to your own hard disk in various formats.
3. For Facebook there are only a few backup tools available. Firefox users can install the ArchiveFacebook extension (http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13993). Making a backup using this tool may take a while, during which you won’t be able to use Firefox. SocialSafe (http://www.socialsafe.net), which costs £1.99, can also backup your Facebook profile, friends, status messages and photos. If you intend to make regular backups, you can create a Timecapsule containing a timeline showing the evolution of your account (the friends who have joined, the reactions to your photos, etc.). SocialSafe can also make a backup of the photos your friends have posted online and which they’ve tagged with your name.
4. Google offers such a wealth of useful services (Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Picasa Web Albums, etc.) that most Internet users will have data stored with one or more of them. For each of these services you can find a special backup procedure. For Gmail, there’s GMail Backup (http://www.gmail-backup.com); for Google Docs GDocBackup (http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup). Google Calendar lets you export your calendar in the iCalendar format, which is also used by Outlook and others. At Picasa Web Albums you can use the Picasa software (http://picasa.google.co.uk) itself in order to download your web album to your hard disk again.
Google is aware of the problem posed by all these different solutions, and that’s why the Data Liberation Front initiative (http://www.dataliberation.org) was launched. Its goal is to develop all kinds of free tools making it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. A tangible result is the Export facility in Google Docs for saving your documents in the format of your choice (PDF, Word, Excel, etc.). For an overview of all other options for google services, check out http://www.dataliberation.org/google.
All-in-one tool
If you don’t fancy all these separate methods, you can use the paid Backupify service (http://www.backupify.com - from £2.30/month). Enter your login details for all the online services you’ve subscribed to, and Backupify will make a daily or weekly backup automatically. These backups are stored online, but you can download them at any time. Backupify is free for Twitter messages; you can try out the paid version for 15 days for free.
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