Why backup your email? from BackupMy. Net on Vimeo.

BackupMy.Net is a service that allows individuals to back up their tweets, email accounts, blogs and photos. Rather than having to install or configure files for backup, the Austin-based service offers users the chance to store their online data in the cloud. As illustrated by their above email service video, Backupmy.Net may be invaluable in protecting users from accidental deletions, service suspension and outages. While RWW would never suggest you store your passwords in your emails, there is some merit to the service. The blogging and email backup service is particularly useful when you're working with clients who are less than tech-savvy and prone to deleting their files. Similar cloud-based services include Lifestream Backup, Mozy and Memopal.

As for the Twitter back up service, BackupMyTweets is fast to index files and offers users the chance to download their backed up tweets in HTML, JSON or XML format. Nevertheless, one of our biggest complaints with this service is that it auto-tweets a message to your friends upon joining. Love it or leave it, at least Spymaster offers you in-game points to pimp its service to your friends. If BackupMyTweets allowed users to choose to tweet about the service in exchange for discounts on premium offers, the Twitter message might not feel like such an intrusion. Once they overcome the automated Twitter spam issue, the service as a whole will likely prove a useful tool for those looking to store 3rd party hosted materials.

Then, depending on your computer (Mac or PC), you can either download the Windows-only desktop client or head over to the online service at quanp.net. Unfortunately, non-Windows users using the online service miss out on the sexiest thing about this new service: the 3D file browser.

For Windows Users

In the Windows desktop client, you browse through your files using its visually stunning interface. Although pretty, visual browsing isn't always the most efficient way to locate a particular file, so quanp's software also lets you search by keyword, tag, date, and more. The client even includes a basic reader for Microsoft Office files so you can see the content without having to launch the office software.

For Mac Users

Non-Windows users can use the online site to browse through files, but there's nothing all that exciting about this part of the service. It doesn't even offer an web version of the 3D interface. However, you can view files and their metadata, share them with others, plus upload or download files using buttons provided on the site.

Sexy, But Useful?

For the most part, a lot of what makes quanp fun to use is its visual eye candy. However, for users of the free Windows Live service, there may be some hesitation in switching. Although lacking a drag-and-drop widget of its own, Windows Live users can upload both photos and videos to online services using Photo Gallery software - and not just to the online service provided by Windows Live, but to flickr, Facebook, and YouTube as well (the last two via plugins). They can also tag files, identify faces, edit photos, and browse through files - just not in glorious 3D.

Of course there are plenty of other online storage services out there, but Windows Live is the most apt comparison since it, like quanp, is a combination of desktop software and an online component - a "software + services" arrangement. Most other online storage services either don't offer desktop tools at all or don't offer tools that also function as a way to elegantly browse and edit your files.

To determine if quanp is the better choice for you, think about whether you need to upload more than just photos or videos - if so, then quanp will work (although visual search of docs isn't quite as fun). Also of note, quanp offers 10 GB to Windows Live's 25 GB. However, the company plans to offer graded pricing in the future for additional storage, but no official decision has yet been made on exactly what that will be.

Of course, for some early adopters, "sexy" beats "practical" any day. If that describes you, then you should sign up for the quanp beta here. (But sorry world - the beta is U.S.-only!)

After you install ZumoDrive on your desktop, you will see a new disk drive in your file manager. Once you copy data to this new network drive, it is automatically saved to the cloud.

There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach. Other cloud storage apps, like Soonr, Mozy, Syncplicity, or Microsoft's Live Mesh, integrate with your existing file structure and, depending on the program, put a stronger emphasis on backup or synchronization.

While it is quite handy to see the same file structure on your phone, netbook, and desktop, this also means that your files only live in the cloud. ZumoDrive keeps a cache of files on your hard drive, but that is only a cache and doesn't necessarily contain all of your files. If you are looking for a backup solution or an easy way to sync your folders between different machines, then ZumoDrive is not necessarily the best way to go.

Instead, we think that the best way to use ZumoDrive is in conjunction with its iPhone app.

iPhone App

If you are comfortable with the way ZumoDrive works, then its iPhone application (iTunes link) is a great extension to the service. The app features three different views: Files, Music, and Photos. The files menu lets you browse through all your files and folders on your ZumoDrive. The music and photos views present you with views that are similar to Apple's own iPod and Photos apps on the iPhone. It should be noted, however, that ZumoDrive will use up some space on your iPhone, as it creates its own local cache of your documents.

Pricing

ZumoDrive's original prices during the private beta were a bit on the steep side, but the company has now reduced its prices. You will still get 1GB of free storage and the 10GB 'starter plan' will still cost you $2.99 a month. If you need more space, however, then 25GB will now set you back $6.99, 50GB $11.99, and 100GB $19.99 per month.

Verdict

If you are mostly interested in saving and syncing office documents and accessing them from your iPhone, Soonr is currently a better solution (our review) - especially because it opens up documents faster than ZumoDrive and because it allows you to remotely print documents from within the iPhone app. However, if you are mostly interested in being able to access your music files and photos, then ZumoDrive is a better solution than Soonr.

Of course, there is also a whole range of other apps that bridge the gap between your mobile device and your desktop - and many of these programs have a larger (though also more specialized) feature set than ZumoDrive. If you are solely looking for a photo app, for example, we would recommend Phanfare's Photon (especially after this week's update of its iPhone app), and if you just want to access all of your music, then Simplify Media is still one of the best solutions (though you do have to keep your computer running at all times for it to work).

ZumoDrive is less powerful than these apps, but it does provide a good comprehensive solution if you want quick and easy access to more music and photos than your iPhone or iPod Touch could normally handle.

At its core, Photon is the easiest way to browse through all of your photo albums on the iPhone. Thanks to the Phanfare desktop app and plugins for most of the popular desktop photo apps, you can upload all your pictures to the service. Free accounts come with 1GB of space, while unlimited accounts cost $55 a year. Phanfare also offers a wide array of photo printing services.

Features

Photon's interface is similar to that of Apple's own Photo app for the iPhone, but Phanfare's app comes with a number of crucial new features - besides the obvious advantage of being able to access all of your pictures from the phone. The built-in camera app, for example, comes with an image stabilization feature, as well as a self timer.

In addition, you can apply effects like grayscale, sepia, or auto levels to your pictures. For slideshows, you can upload your own music to Phanfare, but you have to do so through the company's website. The app also lets you crop your pictures and add captions to your images.

Of course, you can also publish new galleries to your public Phanfare sites, and invite friends and family to view your new pictures online.

Because the app caches your images on the phone, most of Photon's features even work when you are offline. You can choose how much disk space on the phone you want to dedicate to the cache.

One feature we did miss from the app was the ability to zoom into your pictures, though Andrew Erlichson, Phanfare's CEO, tells us that this will be included in the next release of the app, which should be available within the next four weeks.

Import

Phanfare's desktop app is also quite well thought out,  though it doesn't quite match the polish of the company's iPhone app. It does, however, present the easiest way to batch-upload your photos to Phanfare. After that, you can use plugins for iPhoto, Picasa, and a number of other services to upload your pictures instead. You can also import your images from Snapfish, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, and SmugMug.

Verdict

Phanfare's Photon is currently the best photo sharing and photo management app on the iPhone. It is important to note that Photon puts less emphasis on social feature than other services like Radar, which we reviewed last week. Instead, it concentrates mostly on giving you easy access to all of your photos, while also providing you with the option to share them with your friends.

Phanfare's CEO Andrew Erlichson strongly believes that the iPhone and other smartphones will disrupt the traditional point-and-shoot photo camera market in the long run and will allow new players like Apple to get a foot into this market. This app is Phanfare's first step in following the market in this direction by marrying the iPhone's camera feature with a very capable cloud storage and photo sharing service.

One feature still missing from Syncplicity, which came out of beta late last year, was a Mac client. We were able to get some invites to the private Mac beta of Syncplicity, however. You can claim yours at the bottom of this post.

Synplicity, as the name implies, allows you to synchronize your files and folders between different computers and store them online. More interestingly, however, Syncplicity also allows you to sync your documents with your Google Docs account. You can also edit your documents with Zoho and work on your pictures with Picnik.

Just like Microsoft's Live Mesh, Syncplicity synchronizes your files automatically whenever you change a file. The client encrypts your documents before the transfer and your documents are also encrypted on Syncplicity's servers.

Talk About a Crowded Market

Syncplicity is working in a very crowded market. Most importantly, Microsoft's Live Mesh and Live Sync offer more storage, though also a slightly different feature set (of course, it wouldn't be Microsoft if they didn't offer at least two solutions to the same problem). But there are also numerous other startups like Wuala, SugarSync, Mozy, Box.net, and Dropbox that offer similar synchronization and backup solutions. All of these services, however, will definitely be facing the competition from Microsoft once it releases it online version of Office and integrates that with its online storage services.

For now, however, Syncplicity offers one of the most compelling services in this market.

Pricing

Syncplicity's basic service, with 2GB of storage and syncing between 2 computers, is available for free. For $9.99 a month or $99 a year, you get 50GB of storage and the ability to sync data between an unlimited amount of machines.

Mac Client Beta Invites

One feature that was still missing from Syncplicity was a Mac client. Syncplicity gave us 300 beta invites for its new Mac client. Just head over here and claim yours.

Unfortunately, the latest addition won't please everyone. However, smartphone users of the Motorola Q9m/h, Samsung Blackjack I/II, and Palm Treo 750w/700w/wx will be thrilled to here that Photoshop.com will be available from their phone's browser and Skyfire won't be necessary. The service will be available as a free download in September. To get started you'll need a Photoshop.com account ID and one of the aforementioned supported Windows Mobile phones.

What'll Be Available for Photoshop Mobile

We're not sure if this application should even be named Photoshop.com. There's hasn't been any hints, aside from the name, that users will be able to edit their photos from their mobile phone. Instead, this will serve more so as a storage center for your photos. Users can upload photos to their account with 5GB of storage. Photoshop Plus members will receive 20GB of storage space. You can share these photos will family and friends, though no word on how yet.

Users will be able to also use Shozu to upload photos to their Photoshop.com accounts and more phone support for other popular cellphones including the iPhone, BlackBerry Pearl, Motorola Razr, Nokia 5310, and Nokia 6301 will also come in September following the launch of Photoshop.com.

A Feeling of Emptiness

While the service may be a step in the right direction for Adobe, we couldn't help but feel a little disappointed and the meager offerings from Adobe. Personally, I feel that users would be better off sticking with Flickr on their mobile devices. The emphasis on the site's title made us think there would at least be an editing option or two. However, we're hoping to see such features in future updates of the application. Until then, stay tuned for more news on Photoshop.com's mobile launch.

Boston Globe writer Scott Kirsner tested the service last week and saw even faster turn around - his documents were available on the Pixily website in one day and returned to him in paper form in two days after sending them. That's pretty awesome.

Pixily offers subscription plans from $5 to $60 per month, for your first 50 to 200 pages mailed in and with 1,000 to 12,000 pages of storage. All stored documents are made available in PDF format, so there shouldn't be any concern about losing them if you cancel your subscription.

This is the kind of service that cloud computing makes possible. The Amazon Web Services blog has a brief description of how Pixily uses multiple AWS offerings to keep their prices low.

Trusting People With Your Mail

The "mixed media" nature of this company, combining real world and digital, is one of the things that makes it so interesting. There are other services like this but each are a little different. See also Earth Class Mail, which intercepts your mail before it gets to you and lets you sort it online and Scribd's Paper to iPaper service, which is free, takes its sweet time in scanning your documents and then serves ads next to them online.

Are you willing to send important paper documents to a startup company online? Privacy and security could definitely be a big concern. We are quite interested to see how Pixily works and will report back after spending some time with our new subscription.

You can watch a 5 minute screencast about Pixily here.

The site then went down in January, which Cubrilovic said was due to a failed hard drive. "We had a new server up within hours and we restored backups of the site, and it is up-and-running again," he wrote in comments on a post at WebWorkerDaily. "I am really sorry for the inconvenience to our users of not being able to access the main site, although the actual Omnidrive servers were not affected at all and you would not have had any problems accessing your accounts."

We've been getting emails all winter from irate customers asking us to find out what's up at Omnidrive. Without a domain name, it would appear that the troubled company is finally ready to join the deadpool.

Note: we promise we didn't plan for this to be the day of dead companies.

UPDATE: Please see this post for a continuation of the Omnidrive saga.

Windows Live SkyDrive offers users 500MB of web space for storing and sharing files. Microsoft says it is like "a personal 'harddrive' on the internet". By default, you get several protected directories which you can store your files in, meaning they are private and protected from public viewing. You can also share folders publicly, or just to specific people on your Windows Live Contacts list. The service allows you to set 'read' and 'write' permissions for folders. Windows Live Folders was first discussed back in April 2006, so this is the culmination of over a year's work.

The Competition

Currently SkyDrive competes with a host of other online storage solutions, including Omnidrive, Steekr, XDrive, box.net and others. Many of these startups attempt to differentiate themselves by offering 'value add' services such as social networking functionality (e.g. Myfabrik), APIs and partnerships with other web 2.0 services (e.g. Omnidrive). Some also focus on specific parts of online storage - e.g. Egnyte is focused on collaborative document sharing. Also a lot of the so-called WebOS startups offer online storage as a key part of their package. Finally, social networking services such as Twango, recently acquired by Nokia, have online storage as an essential part of their make-up.

How SkyDrive works

Brandon LeBlanc from Microsoft created a video demo, which shows the new product in action:

The difference between myfabrik and myfabrik lite is that the former is being marketed as a full-fledged storage solution, whereas the lite version is to "host and deliver content". So the Lite version is really about sharing multimedia content with others, via a blog or social network.

Screenshot of myfabrik

Myfabrik is certainly a good looking service and I like the way they are positioning it - not as a boring old storage solution, but as a way to make it easy for people to use digital media on the Web. The tool itself is not much different to the other online storage solutions around, but there are little things that seem to personalize the app more. For example at the bottom of the myfabrik app is a little ajaxy box called 'Experiences'. Click on that and you can label your media files according to life experiences - such as Love, Friends, Event, etc.

Myfabrik is being positioned for use by bloggers and social networkers, as well as creative types. In the pitch I received, it was described as "like having a combination of YouTube, Flickr, .Mac and G Drive all wrapped up into one." This seems like a good ploy to capture that elusive YouTube-using younger generation, at the same time as appealing to Mac-wielding Flickr-loving bloggers.

The basic service is free with 1GB of space - with additional space selling for 49 cents per month per gigabyte. Although when I signed up today I could still get the 2GB free beta offer.