The Effective CIO

Too Many Choices March 11, 2009

The whole “freedom of choice” concept may be over-rated in this new-fangled internet era.

I have a cell phone.  In spite of the innumerable choices available, I have been able to settle on a phone, a Samsung Epix running Windows Mobile 6.1.  Like any thoroughly modern phone, this phone does everything you could possible want, up to and including making and receiving phone calls.

In the course of doing everything except for making phone calls, I tend to accumulate data on my phone.  Text messages pile up.  Pictures, too.  Videos.  Ringtones.  Music.  Email messages.  Calendar entries.  Contacts. Todo lists.  Since my phone runs Windows and Office, even Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.  For the modern Mobile Compulsive, all this data must be managed, organized, and protected from sudden loss.  Since phones tend to get lost, break, or go suddenly autistic, having some sort of backup plan for your data is a Good Thing.

It turns out that lots of people think it’s a Good Thing, and they’ve all set out to capture this burgeoning market serving the Mobile Compulsive.  The concept is simple: back up all my mobile data, transparently, in real time.  I love this idea, and am anxious to find the solution.  Unfortunately, there are too many solutions, and they are all different.

Dashwire was one of the first of these services to emerge.  It provides a nice interface to your data on their web site, and dutifully tries to link to all your social networking sites.  It also lets you restore your data to a new phone, which is pretty nice.  Unfortunately, the phone client was a bit intrusive and flaky the last time I tried it.

Shozu has perfected the art of grabbing your photos and videos in real time.  It doesn’t back them up directly, but instead pushes them to any of dozens of photo and social networking sites.  It doesn’t handle any other files, and doesn’t  actually store anything on your behalf.

Microsoft’s Live Mesh started out as a PC-to-PC synchronization service, and recently extended the model to include mobile devices.  Live Mesh not only grabs stuff off your phone, it instantly pushes copies to and from any other device in your mesh.  It even provides a desktop view in the cloud, which is clever.

Most recently, Microsoft launched My Phone, which handles most of the data on your phone.  It even handles multiple phones, and collects the data on a nice web dashboard.  It has some of the trappings of Dashwire, but promises more features along the lines of Live Mesh.

Which do I want?  All of them!  Grab everything in real time.  Push it everywhere I want.  Keep a copy in the cloud.  Restore my phone when I lose it.  Provide a stable client with a near-zero footprint on my phone.

What am I using?  All of them!  But not at once.  Instead, I use Dashwire until I tire of the client oddities.  Then I use Shozu until I get too nervous about my non-media files.  I tried Live Mesh for a while, but it doesn’t handle contacts and such.  I’m now toying with My Phone, but am suddenly thinking that Dashwire had it right all along.

Life would be so much easier if there was just one choice, good or bad.  I’d spend a lot less time installing and configuring things, and I’d at least know what to expect from my phone on a regular basis.

It has been suggested that what I really need is a small dose of Xanax every day, and then I wouldn’t care what happened to my phone or its data.  Maybe.  But maybe I should try Paxil, or Zoloft.  Or maybe Cymbalta would be better.   Gaah!