(r)Evolution

This article by Alex Iskold, coupled with a recent profile of 37signals in Time Magazine, all serve to sort of underscore what I was trying to get at with my last post about tools for the way that we live now. Our evolving modes of communication, and the steady growth of the virtual office phenomenon make it imperative that attention is being paid to those services that function within this new workplace paradigm.

In addition to this, Alex Iskold was also recently quoted in an article (direct link sadly unavailable) in the Wall Street Journal that discussed storage strategies. As it turns out, not only does he regularly write thought-provoking things at Read/WriteWeb, he also knows exactly whom to turn to for online storage.

Alex Iskold of Livingston, N.J., uses ElephantDrive.com to back up 10 gigabytes of music, hundreds of photos, and documents for work like PowerPoint presentations. “It is really powerful to have things stored online,” says Mr. Iskold, the 34-year-old chief executive of AdaptiveBlue, a Web-personalization start-up.

The Way We Live Now

Articles or lists like this one always leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Not that I have anything against Guitar Hero, or want to cast aspersions on Nintendo products, but, operating systems aside…where are the tools, on this list, for the way that we really live, in the day to day? They seem largely buried, in this laundry list, between widgets and gadgets.

Now, I suppose this is due in part to the fact that when things just work, we rarely think to laud them with praise, or to trumpet their silently innovative way of making our lives smoother. Cars have long been old-hat, I barely give thought to my laptop, and I certainly don’t marvel over an air-conditioner. When these things break, however, I’m not going to turn to Guitar Hero to fix them, or, to my iPod for solace. I’m going to look for the best tools that I can find to fix the problem, and then to prevent it from happening again–things like ElephantDrive, that toil quietly and efficiently in the background of my life, so that everything in it just…works. I’m inclined to think that the measure of a product, in terms of whether or not it’s the ‘best’, isn’t necessarily about how entertaining it is, or how much procrastination it enables you to do. It’s also about how it can make the routine effortless and easy, and how it takes care of the future by functioning well in the present. I’d like to see PC World make that list.

Open to…backup failures?

So. This, featured in Read/WriteWeb today, looks pretty cool, though, I agree with a number of people in the comments section who point out that it is incredibly similar to Google Docs. One thing that I’ve also noticed, in reading about new open office solutions is that few of them, if any, seem to mention including an application for data backup. The concept that you can sort of pick and choose your office applications, and tailor a suite to your needs, is intriguing–and why shouldn’t that include an application dedicated to backing up your office’s valuable data? I think ElephantDrive would fit neatly into this sort of concept, because one of its strengths is that it can be used as a tool for sharing stored items, in addition to backing them up–key in this sort of office structure.

Do As They Say….Not As They Do

You’d assume that a magazine whose life revolves around Web 2.0 would, naturally, be savvy about backing up. But…you’d be a bit mistaken. All-nighters are fun, in a weird masochistic way, but, I still think I’d pick secure backup and a decent amount of sleep over heroic recovery efforts at four in the morning. My Elephant never needs sleep. I think I’ll keep it that way.