All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
And that's why you back up your data
Published by Ewan Spence at 10:45 UTC, October 12th 2009
There's a saying that gamblers will trust everybody, but they still cut the cards. No matter what the other side says, you should never rely on them. As the mobile world is moving towards a “cloud computing” solution for storage and access, the problems of Microsoft and the Danger/Sidekick product are a salient warning to back up your data or risk it being lost forever through no fault of your own.
For those of you not aware of the Sidekick, it's a feature phone that has proved incredibly popular in America and with a number of users in the UK. One of the key benefits is that it is always online, and will sync all the data on the device to a central server. When you get a replacement device or upgrade the model, just switch it on and you get all your data back. Hassle free backups, over the air, invisible to the end user... it's very much the “Advanced Technology appears like Magic” that Arthur C Clarke talked about.
And with the might of Microsoft behind the device, it's not like anything bad would happen to your data.
Wrong.
Over the weekend, it's become clear that, due to problems upgrading the server farm, all the data has been lost at their end. And it appears that when a Sidekick which is power cycled goes online and does the automatic sync the platform is famous for, all the user's information is wiped from the memory of the Sidekick. Unfortunately, Sidekick users have never really taken to backing up their own data. The latest models can save pictures from the camera to a memory card, and some contact info can be copied to the SIM card, but the whole selling point - that it was done online - has given everyone a comfort blanket that has now been ripped away.
Will the Sidekick still be a player in the market after this loss of customer data?
Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the actions of the company, this is a salient reminder of a simple fact. Your data is your responsibility. Yes it's nice that other companies will do their best to take care of it, but ultimately it's not up to them, it should be up to you.
One of the many hidden features (I say 'hidden', it's perhaps in a menu in an application that's launched by an icon that's two folders away from the main launcher screen with what could be a tiny sign that says “Beware of the Leopard”) is the “Back up phone memory” option in the S60 File Manager application. It does exactly what it says on the tin, taking all the data on your C: disk and dumping it onto your microSD card or your internal 'mass memory'.
The PC Suite software will also have the option to back up the same data to your desk-bound computer, again providing the user with their own safety net. Can I suggest that right now, as you read this, you go and back up your data somewhere that you control?
As more of us start to use online services in the cloud for syncing data, be it Nokia's Ovi Service, a system put in place by our network operators, or the numerous third party services that use the SyncML protocols over the air, we may be tempted to trust the magic that is happening in our smartphones. Don't. By all means use it as the primary method of data preservation, because 95 times out of 100 it will be fine. But that last little bit, the extra bit of gaffer tape you might need, that's a locally saved backup.
What's going to be more worrying for the industry as a whole is the damage that this will do to the idea of cloud computing, the idea that your data is safe, the goal of just moving everything online (such as Google Apps) and running your corporate email and document storage there is a noble one, but it's not a solution to everything. It has risks and, unlike the computer on your desk, those risks may not be what you have come across before. But they are there.
So let's spin that gamblers adage around for the 21st century...
Trust every cloud, but back up your own data.
-- Ewan Spence, Oct 2009.
News Discussion
I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. You truly can't be serious can you? Have you actually heard of Microsoft before?
People need to get over this insane idea of "any criticism of Microsoft is just anti-MS bias, how could they be so successful if they were rubbish?"
MS have been criticised for 30 years BECAUSE THEY WRITE TRULY TERRIBLY ENGINEERED SOFTWARE (and services).
I've followed closely MS for over 20 years, have been a software engineer for 25, and am just astounded that anyone anywhere who has even the slightest clue about IT, could even begin to trust an MS product.
Yeah, this is an anti-MS rant. But a fully justified one. They can't even be trusted with data that is live on your device now, let alone backed up stuff - i.e. as a computer or phone is actually running, it could just die, and lose your live data - an unimaginable number of crashes for hundreds of millions of users over 3 decades, has proven that MS are the most incompetant software makers in history. How are they so big and successful? A superb marketing dept. and numerous questionable business practices many of which have proven illegal. Why do people find it difficult to connect their success with for example the EU handing them the largest fine ever given out?
Honestly, people who should know better and still use MS, deserve to use MS, with all the implications. I just pity the millions of poor users who don't know better.
:) Regards jApi NL
FYI, the guy who created the Sidekick went on to create Android, another champion for so called 'cloud' computing. Sorry, but I will not trust my data with any large corporation, especially evil google.
But when talking about S60/iPhone I'm a bit confused to this whole discussion.
I never even dreamt of viewing a phone as a source of data. My contacts/calendear comes from my computing environment, and gets _synced_ to the phone - sure sometimes I add some info on the handset, but that will regulary go back to my computing environment on the next sync.
In my case MacBook and N97 I just use missing sync (works but you have to sync twice to get arround a stupid bug in missing sync+n97), but regardless of what os/environment you use there should always be some way of syncing your handset, if nothing else you can always sync with Ovi or Google, personaly I would see them as last alternatives, but thats just my opinion.
Anyhow if you never ever view your phone as a source and single container of a given data, integrity should be solved with the normal backoup routines for whatever computing environment you use.
In my case the only app giving me a slight issue is Handy Safe, witch I muse use vmware to sync since it seems to be windows only on the pc side.
Same goes with the iPhone, since your computer is the main carrier of the data backups are handled in that end of the pairing.
That's my motto and it has helped me recover data a number of times in the past 20 years.
Kim
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
I've followed closely MS for over 20 years, have been a software engineer for 25, and am just astounded that anyone anywhere who has even the slightest clue about IT, could even begin to trust an MS product.
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Obviously as far as phones are concern, I am a Symbian user, but for PC I am more than happy to stick by MS.
If you lose the phone, you also have lost the mem-card in it, so now the thief has two copies of your data, and the mem-card copy of it isnt even pin-code protected...
When replacing phones - who would bother to keep the old mem-card?? Prices go down and sizes go up so fast that a one year old mem-card has close to zero value, not worth the effort to bother to take it out of the old phone. Simpler to just format it and include it when you sell/give away the old handset, if you are paranoid you could always throw it away.
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Originally Posted by jaclu
I've seen Steve recommend to backup within the phone to the mem-card quite a few times, but I never understood what would be the point of that? Unless ofcourse you have no other backup at all, but that would be a different problem...
If you lose the phone, you also have lost the mem-card in it, so now the thief has two copies of your data, and the mem-card copy of it isnt even pin-code protected... |
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Originally Posted by GeceBekcisi
That's why my friend, we move the newly created backup directory from memory card to PC, and install remote locking + remote data wiping software.
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First doing an in-phone backup to mem-card then syncing that to a PC seems to be a redundant extra step...
I agree on the remote lock and wipe as sound practice, but in my case I wouldn't bother, since my buisness data isn't realy of any value to competitors, or rather I dont have much of competition in my vertical field.
I'm not questioning backups/syncs, more the value of in-device backups, since the fate of the mem-card is usualy the same as for the device.
| I'm not questioning backups/syncs, more the value of in-device backups, since the fate of the mem-card is usualy the same as for the device. |
For Nokia users, we have many backup options (you can even print your whole phonebook now) but for cloud based solution we now have Ovi.
But if you want to back up everything, including call logs, SMS and recording of your calls, try Rseven (rseven.com).
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
>
Honestly, people who should know better and still use MS, deserve to use MS, with all the implications. I just pity the millions of poor users who don't know better. |
Oh, hang on....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8304229.stm
Maybe not.
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Originally Posted by De-Registered
Yes, people should all upgrade to Apple's Speak and Spell OS as soon as possible to avoid data loss.....because it's only Microsoft Software that has problems....
Oh, hang on.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8304229.stm Maybe not. |
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
LOL! That should shut the Apple wierdos up for about 2 days at least.
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The real story is a major corporation selling an online storage & "let us look after your life" service with god knows how much of its client data either did not have a backup or had such a major snafu during an upgrade that the live copy AND its backups died at the same time.
Reading comments by the users I think Danger is stuffed and unfortunately for T-Mobile they are copping part of the blame too, admittedly the comments are filtered by rage at the moment but a large proportion of the posts I have read are claiming to have already left or will leave the service. Nokia, Apple, et al stand to do well out of this.
Regaining peoples trust once you have waved bye bye to their data once will be tough.
I keep my phone synchronised to two different computers in two different locations as well as making a backup to the phone memory card once a week and the computers are backed up too. I would use the Ovi cloud to back up my memory card but it is 16GB and almost full. I guess I could not bother sending the music across and I have a vague distrust of dumping all my stuff on other peoples servers.
Edit.
On an Apple computer using 10.5 or 10.6 there is automated backup software. USB 1TB drives are currently $130.00 AU it takes 10 min to set up a backup.
Is your data worth $130.00 and 10 minutes of your time? Mine sure is.
My S60 phone's memory card (on which my apps live) is backed up several times a dday. I also have a scheduled script running on my laptop to grab backups of my PIM data from the cloud service I use. Apart from actual phone settings, it's pretty hard for me to loose anything.
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