My documents are spread out across Google Docs, Office Live, SkyDrive, and Box.net. My photos are on flickr and Facebook. My music and video collections are backed up locally to multiple external drives (since I'm too cheap to pay for the hundreds of gigs of online storage needed), but one thing that wasn't backed up anywhere but on my own PC was the thing that may be the most important of all: my iPhone.

How Do You Backup Your Contacts? The Results of the Twitter/FriendFeed Poll

Is an iTunes backup stored off-site the most efficient way to go? Is that how most people handle this issue? Curious, I did what any social media addict would do: I asked Twitter and FriendFeed. The answers I received have me pondering my options. After receiving nearly 30 responses, I was surprised to find how many people rely on Google as their address book (14 responses). In fact, keeping your addresses and phone numbers in Google and syncing that address book to your iPhone is actually what a lot of people consider a "backup" these days.

But as much as I trust in Google, the old I.T. girl in me can't help but think "single point of failure, single point of failure!" Truth be told, several folks must feel the same because they also used another method on top of the Google solution, often MobileMe.

MobileMe wasn't as popular as I would have expected, though. Only five people said they used it. That number would probably be higher if it wasn't a paid service.

Seven people counted on iTunes to do the backup for them, but a few were careful to also make sure their PC was backed up as well.

I'm hesitant to sync my Google contacts to my iPhone for reasons I've stated before, but it couldn't hurt to make sure that my iPhone contact information also exists in my online address book...something that I know isn't the case as I recently found out when the phone's battery died during a phone call and I frantically searched for my friend's number on the web.

iPhone Contact Backup: Yep, There's An App for That

I also recently happened across an additional solution which you could add to your backup routine with ease. Called iDrive Lite, this free iPhone application will quickly backup all your contact info to your device in case you ever accidentally delete an important address or phone number. You'll also want to activate the app's "Web Enable" feature which backs up your contact data to the web where you can access it anytime at idrivelite.com. Not bad for a free service.

Your Turn! RWW Poll

If you didn't have a chance to participate in the Twitter poll, please participate in this one below. Now, we know not everyone is an iPhone user here at RWW, but we know that a lot of you are, so let us know how you backup your contacts! If you find yourself marking "other," feel free to comment and explain.

Apple once again had to accept defeat and has announced that it will extend all subscriptions to its bug-ridden MobileMe service for yet another 60 days. This move comes after the company already gave every subscriber an extra 30 days after the botched launch of the product in July. MobileMe is quickly becoming Apple's most public failure in recent years - when the service first opened, it was basically rendered non-functional for the first couple of days, after that, a good number of users stopped receiving email, calendars disappeared or didn't sync, and the service often simply didn't work.

MobileMe was supposed to be Apple's answer to Web 2.0 mail clients like Gmail or Yahoo Mail, but instead, it has turned out to be a relatively clunky and slow paid alternative to a lot of free services. While the MobileMe email client has some neat features like QuickReply, it often doesn't stack up against its free competitors.

Besides handling mail, MobileMe also manages contacts and calendars, as well as online storage and photo-management (both of which are pretty much useless for Windows users, by the way). MobileMe users have complained about problems with pretty much every single aspect of the service, so giving everybody a total of three free months of subscription (which is pretty much three times the lifetime of the service so far) is a small consolation for the agony a lot of paying users have had with MobileMe. Thanks to the constant service interruptions, MobileMe even became the target for phishers.

Given that nobody is paying for MobileMe right now anyway, maybe Apple should just have had an open, three-month beta period.

According to a recent post from Computer World, users are receiving a typical phishing email, only instead of being plagued with the numerous grammar hints, this email is well written.

"Welcome. We were unable to process your most recent payment. Did you recently change your bank, phone number or credit card?

To ensure that your service is not interrupted, please update your billing information today by clicking here, After a few clicks, just verify the information you entered is correct."

While some may be able to avoid this problem, 100 - 200 .mac users were scammed in one day. Names, address, credit card numbers, passwords, and more were taken advantage of in these phishing attacks. Apparently the attackers have been very smart, effectively timing the attacks with the launch of the MobileMe service, where Apple forced some of the users of its older .Mac service to switch to the new MobileMe. In this respect, the phishing email could pass as a real email from Apple for some users.

What to Watch For

If you check your email in the future and happen to see the following email in your inbox, spam it and ignore it.

Image Credit

This isn't exactly the first time Apple has sneaked additional programs onto our machines. Already notorious for bundling QuickTime with iTunes, Apple was finally taken to task last March, when they bundled Safari with their iTunes software update. (QuickTime is one thing, apparently an entire web browser is quite another.)

Yet, they didn't learn their lesson from that experience, or even more likely, they just don't care. They're Apple. You love them. They can do anything right?

Wrong. The truth of the matter is, outside the tech blogosphere (which, ironically, doesn't seem to include that many blogs about computer software), the MobileMe "malware," as it's being called in some cases, is a hot topic for discussion.

When clicked, the icon launches a window that essentially functions as an advertisement for the MobileMe service with text that reads:

And guess what happens when you click the "Learn More..." button? You are, of course, taken to a web site where you are able to purchase the MobileMe service.

To remove the icon, you have to go into the Control Panel, Launch "Add/Remove Programs" ("Programs and Features" on Vista), and uninstall the program "Apple Mobile Device Support." Since the name of that program doesn't actually say "MobileMe," a more novice Windows user might not know that it is the program responsible for the new icon on their machine and leave it be.

If any other company did the same (especially Microsoft!) the outrage would be deafening. So why aren't we hearing more complaints about this behavior when Apple does it? Can they really do whatever they want?