My rant about how Stikipad founders has screwed their customers attracted this comment from reader Verity, which I figure warrants a proper reply, not just a comment:
It proves that it will be a long time before we dispense with the desktop
apps. I for one only used stikipad as and when I wasn’t at my own computer
and needed to collect info/data as and when for later.
While I am obviously miffled about losing my data, I disagree with that sentiment. However, the Stikipad fiasco does prove that cloud services can be as fickle as the physical hardware we rely on today. And yet, even after several harddisk failures, we continue to store our data on harddisks.
The ultimate reality is that I am the one who should’ve been keeping a backup of my data - just as if I had the data on my local machine. Having my data stored somewhere in the cloud doesn’t free me from that responsibility. Unfortunately, I am not aware of any real, usable solutions for doing that kind of backups - a dormant business opportunity, perhaps?
Stikipad disappearing from the net and taking my and everybody elses data with it is unfortunate, but doesn’t prove anything general about other services.
It does turn out, though, that the cloud of tomorrow isn’t all that different from the physical hardware of today.
Not being able to migrate your data is really the major hurdle of all this Web 2.0 mumbojumbo.
Well, that and the whole “cloud” idea. I know several cloud services that could provide a real benefit to my workplace - but we can’t use them. We need to adhere to policies that state that NO data can be stored off-site, so any web service is basically a no-go, no matter how excellent they may be.
Going back to data migration, the only cloud services I know that easily allows you to “reclaim” your data is Gmail and Google Calendar - but I haven’t researched it that thouroughly.