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With the onset of Apple's iCloud (see our article here on how to get started) and a series of other announcements and enhancements this week from Box, Mozy, SOSonline and others, it is time to re-examine what you can get from storing your files in the cloud.

I have used dozens of cloud storage services over the past several years, and I keep hoping that someone will put all my favorite features together in a single service. While vendors are making improvements, no one has the perfect cloud drive, at least not yet.

Symform is an online data protection and disaster recovery service who have been around for a few years, using a rather unique storage method. They start with having no data center to store their files, but leverage the kindness of strangers.

Yesterday Dropbox, the popular file storage Web application that enables users to easily sync a folder from their local computer with the the cloud, made a small change to its terms of service. Dropbox made it clear that it would decrypt and hand-over files if the U.S. government requested it.

The issue is not so much that Dropbox is willing to hand over user data to the feds if requested - as RedMonk co-founder and analyst James Governor points out, the company doesn't have much choice: "given I understand it runs on Amazon Web Services, which would give up the data if asked anyway."

The real issue, it seems, is that Dropbox has the ability to snoop on your encrypted files at all.

Windows 8 will be released in 2012 but news is already swirling about the operating system backing up to Microsoft's cloud storage service.

According to Download Squad, a job posting, which has since been pulled, states that Microsoft is "working on a Windows Azure-based service and integrating with certain Microsoft online services and Windows 8 client backup. Many of the features we develop have ended up in the Windows Client and Windows Server OSes."

One lesson the devastating earthquake in Haiti has taught us is that natural disasters can cause billions of dollars in damage anywhere in the world almost instantaneously. If an earthquake of that magnitude were to hit a tech-centric city like San Francisco, millions of computer files would likely be lost in the destruction.

Natural disasters, house fires and hard drive failures are exactly the futile situations for which backup services like Carbonite exist. Carbonite has been providing consumer level backup since its foudning 2006, and now the company is offering competitively priced solutions for small businesses.

Vodafone is launching a cloud-based service designed for business people and consumers who are looking for a way to back up the data on their desktops, laptops and netbooks. The move is significant as Vodafone is making another move beyond the mobile market and is using cloud-based services to get there.

Vodafone's service is built upon Decho's Mozy platform, the popular backup service, which consistently receives ringing endorsements. Mozy has been on a tear as of late, closing deals with China Telecomm and McAfee.

There are moments in life when the universe decides to play a cruel joke on you and just as your company's files are being transfered to a new data center, a truck driver rams into a power transformer and cuts power to the server rack that is meant to be receiving your precious files. And after that, your other back up gets wiped off its server by an over-zealous system administrator. And then after that, you're helping your CEO write an apologetic message to members. That "hypothetical" story is meant to illustrate the point that backup in multiple locations (via cloud or otherwise) is important.

When it comes to storing personal digital data in the cloud and serving it up in interesting ways - we're in the very early days of a brand new paradigm.

Today popular online storage company Mozy announced that it has been merged by the company that acquired it with another acquisition called Pi (Personal Information) - into a new forthcoming service called Decho (your digital echo). Pi was founded by Paul Maritz, who is now the CEO of virtualization powerhouse VMWare. What do you get when you bring these kinds of stars together into one service? Only a few clues are available so far, but we're excited to see what Decho becomes.