But cloud storage isn’t for everyone.  For some it’s a brave new world of anytime/anywhere accessibility. For others who may not be so technologically inclined, it’s a dark scary place…or bright and fluffy depending on what your image of clouds may be.

So let’s demystify this a bit – the cloud is just a server…or, a bunch of servers. It’s a collection of hard drives sitting in a data center run by a few guys who know a bit more about computers than the average bear and are waiting for you to access it with your music, photos and anything else you love and cherish.  Just like any other server, it will store your data just as a regular hard drive would. So there you go, don’t be afraid of the cloud.

The first time I used Dropbox, I thought it was a great way to have my info wherever I wanted it. I dabbled with ZumoDrive because it had an app that worked on my Android phone allowing me access to my music.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a total cloud convert. I will always be reliant on my external hard drives because they give me a great sense of security and stability with my data. But a cloud solution can give you a sense of freedom that you don’t always have with traditional storage because of the accessibility of data centers.

Although I suppose there is a bit of a personal stake in this. After all, who do you think supplies the hard drives used in those data centers?

Seagate is a “cloud friendly” company. We understand the importance of cloud storage for businesses and consumers alike.  We know you want you the convenience of having your data secure and available at any given time because life happens. So take a load off and relax because we’ll enable you to have access to your data from the cloud to something as close to you as, say, your pocket.  And isn’t keeping your information close what it’s all about?

Related Posts:
Life’s Good…in the Cloud
What Would/Could You Do With 5GB of Free Storage?
The Shift to the Cloud and its Two Masters

5MB Seagate ST506 Winchester (circa 1980)

We asked an open question on Facebook recently to see when the last time people had backed up their hard drive. I was a bit surprised by the number of people who actually had – especially within the last month.

Backing up your hard drive may not be something you think about on a regular basis. It’s the equivalent of using that weird shaped brush to clean your refrigerator coils. I mean really, when was the last time you actually did that? And don’t get me started on dusting air vents.

But I digress.  Imagine a situation where you’re going about your day working along and whistling a happy tune.  Then *bloop*, you’re computer dies. You’re stunned. You’re shocked. You may start using words full of color as an expression of your frustration.  Then it slowly begins to sink in and you ask yourself “When was the last time I saved my work?”

When I was in design school, we lived by a simple motto – “Save Often.”

We had to. The work we were doing was very precise and trying to replicate it again was difficult and time consuming.  Why should this be any different? Whether it’s a spreadsheet, a blog, digitizing photos or music composition, the work you’re doing is of the utmost importance.

So “Save Often.”

Your digital life should get the same treatment as your work. Accidents are called accidents because they don’t happen on purpose.

So “Save Often.”

Backing up your hard drive may sound intimidating, but it really isn’t. In most cases, you can automate the process so while you’re in a blissful slumber, your computer is slowly gaining sentience preparing for the technological uprising all while saving your important data.  If you’re more of a “hands-on” type of person, you can go through a quick process to get things started while you catch up on the last few episodes of Desperate Housewives before the show ends it’s seven-year run.  There may be minor differences depending on your system, but everyone knows the importance of data storage (at least they better), so it’s much easier than you may think.

Regardless of what method you choose, “save often.”

So what are you waiting for? Go back up your hard drive today.

This put me in a bit of a conundrum as I had to determine which apps I really wanted versus what I really needed. I don’t recall the last time I ate at Pizza Hut or looked for a local Ben & Jerry’s so those two got canceled faster than a Christian Slater show on network television.

Yet as I made space for one app, I found myself wandering my app store looking for related applications and recommendations.  After all, now that I’ve freed some data space, I have to fill it up again. This quest for the next big-time killer app while shoe shopping with the little woman reminded me of some news I recently saw on the rise of mobile apps.

What really stuck out for me is how Apple isn’t as dominant as advertising may lead you to believe. In fact, they are number three on the top platform list and number five on the top phone list. Another interesting tidbit is that with 300K in downloads; you can’t dispute the appeal of hurling upset fowl at a green hog…even in space.  Social networking will remain category king on smartphones with apps for Twitter, Facebook and several others.  We have yet to see the full growth of app downloads as it’s projected to hit 21 billion by 2013 — way over the 5 billion from 2010.

Seems I’m not the only one who’s app happy as I am! Check out the infographic below for more stats and think about this the next time you go to update your copy of Fruit Ninja.

Infographic created by ShoutEm

I appreciate what the Smart TV is trying to accomplish in making Internet content available from the device with the largest screen this side of your local movie theater. But with the accessibility and power of today’s smartphones and tablets, is an Internet friendly television really necessary?

If you’re anything like me, you probably keep your smartphone (or tablet) at the ready for all things including news alerts, email and once in awhile, an actual phone call. Another draw about this is the ability to quickly call up information based on something “as seen on TV” whether it be a film trailer I want to know more about, sports updates (especially during basketball playoffs) or just trying to place the name of an actor I’ve seen on another show.

I don’t want to take myself out of the immersive experience watching TV provides by navigating to the web during a show.  Having my smartphone within reach is more ideal so I can keep the party going without being disrupted if something strikes my fancy enough to go and learn more.

While it’s cool that Smart TVs can lend themselves to providing additional content such as Netflix or Hulu, if you have a game console such as an Xbox™ 360 or PlayStation®3, chances are you already have these apps and more to scratch that itch. In fact, I see more people on my friends list watching movies than I do actually playing a game. I grasp the concept of having one device to rule them all, but given the various needs of each household, is that even realistic?

Between game consoles and the storage capacity of some of the DVR’s hitting the market, I’m okay with keeping my living room setup as is. So will the Smart TV go the way of the HD-DVD player or the Personal Digital Assistant? Only time will tell us if the Smart TV is a smart investment.

The realization of something that you treasured is gone and there is nothing you can do to get it back. It could be a photograph, a piece of art or something more tangible such as a favorite earring, a lucky charm or even a person.

For me, it’s Adam Yauch.

Adam Yauch, A.K.A. MCA was one of the three members of the Beastie Boys. It was announced today he has passed after a long battle with cancer. I’ve been a fan of the Beastie Boys since my early teens and knew lyrics to many of their songs including She’s On It, Paul Revere, Hey Ladies, Sure Shot, Sabotage, and of course Girls.  The music of the Beastie Boys was on the playlist of my life during my high school and college years.

One of the things I loved about the Beastie Boys was their style. They each had very distinctive voices that blended well together giving an amazing symmetry to their music.  Early albums gave you songs that were fun, light-hearted yet filled with energy while later albums had a lot more messages about real world situations and experiences. As they grew and matured, so did their music.  Having owned so much of their music over the years, I felt like I was maturing right along with them.

The loss of someone you love or care about is always a painful one but it can make you reflect on the positive memories you have of that person. The Beastie Boys had a huge influence on me growing up through their music, their videos. Should I even admit to wearing a VW and chain around my neck like they did? (Guess I just did.)

Adam Yauch is gone, but will never be forgotten. When he comes of age, I will share my favorite Beastie Boy songs I have saved with my son the power of lyrics such as this:

“I Want To Say a Little Something That’s Long Overdue
The Disrespect To Women Has Got To Be Through
To All The Mothers And Sisters And the Wives And Friends
I Want To Offer My Love And Respect To The End” – MCA

Without trying to make this a plug for some friends at Marvel Entertainment (Hi, Ryan P.), I’m looking forward to the kicking-off of the summer movie season with the release of The Avengers this Friday.  It’s no secret that I’m a comic fan so the opportunity to watch the culmination of all the past Marvel movies comes together to create a film like The Avengers is a dream come true.

In preparation for this gathering of “Earth’s mightiest heroes,” I’ve been watching all the previously released films – Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, all loaded onto my GoFlex Satellite.  It’s like a movie marathon on the go.

This level of accessibility to my favorite content is just one of several reasons why the GoFlex Satellite is such a premiere storage device. The anywhere/anytime functionality it offers makes things really easy so I can watch a little bit of the movie from any of my preferred devices. (Which in this case is my smartphone since I still don’t want a tablet.)

This doesn’t have to end with just movies too, I can keep my comic experience going by adding soundtracks of these films from iTunes as well or even movie stills that I may want to “procure” from the official movie site.  With 500GB to play with, I can pretty much put the entire Marvel universe in my pocket.

I’m ready for this weekend. I have one more film to complete to be caught up. I’ve been spending time in the Marvel Wikia learning more about supporting characters like Loki and Nick Fury. When the lights go down and between stuffing buttered corn kernels in my mouth, I will be the first to yell “AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!”

This chart gives an interesting breakdown of storage types, usage by region and industry and several other nuggets that will make you say “hmm.”

I wish there could have been a deeper breakdown that would have included fields like artists, filmmakers or musicians. But I’m sure they fall under one of the included industries.

However, the one key takeaway that really stood out is the line about how much data there is in the world and to make sure yours is in a safe place.  So, is it?

So what happens if you decide you’ve had enough and want to “erase” your digital life? Is that even possible?

According to Abine who makes DeleteMe it is.  Similar to how a “do not call” list works, for the low, low price of $99, this service will remove you from some of the top people search databases including Been Verified, Public Records Now, People Lookup and many more. (Sorry, I didn’t see anything about steak knives being included if you act now.)  This process will take some time and DeleteMe won’t erase your entire existence. So if you’re on the run from the mob, this service probably won’t do you much good. Some information simply can’t be removed.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Time and again I’ve been curious enough to Google myself to see what is out there and it can almost be scary how accurate some results can be. After all, given the nature of my business, if I wasn’t “out there,” then I’d have to wonder if I’m doing my job correctly.  And that’s not the only irony in deleting all the data we’ve put together.

Abine uses DeleteMe to keep private information private. But it makes me chuckle that a company specializing in removing data will have data stored for the people they are removing.

Information equals power and data equals money. The importance of having data means so much to so many. Companies want to learn as much as they can about their consumers so they can continue to market to them correctly. Some do it so well that you don’t even realize you’re being marketed to.  After all, doesn’t this process does help sustain our economic ecosystem?

What do you think?

Now before you start thinking the future is now and dust off your petitions for jet packs, understand that this tech is still a few years off and to many storage enthusiasts almost considered vaporware.  But hey, even Duke Nukem Forever released eventually.

So what is holographic storage? Traditional magnetic or optical storage is a method that relies on individual bits being recorded as changes on the medium. Holographic storage breaks this limitation by recording data throughout the entire medium and instead of recording in a linear fashion like current storage, instead reads and records millions of bits in a parallel fashion in turn increasing data transfer rates.

Ok, Professor Long, I get it.  But where does the “hologram” part come in? Holographic storage is able to store info using 3D “images” that represent data — not that you’ll be able to “look at” your data and see it as an image. Naturally the data is still digital bits, but they’re stored in 3D patterns. Through this process, data lasts much longer (like 50 years longer) than current data archiving.  Though I do think I have cassettes from my parents that may be close to being that old.

But we’re still a bit off from this actually becoming a reality…or are we? According to this press release, hVault has a holographic storage solution in the works that should be available this spring.  I’ll be watching to see how this develops and if they can pull it off, I’ll do my best Duke Nukem impression and say, “Hail to the King, baby!”

(cc Test Freaks Blog)

How often do you pay attention to the amount of space available on your hard drive?  If you’re anything like me, it’s not something you give a lot of attention to. You just always expect there to be some.

But what happens when you’re out?  How do you really prepare for that? Admittedly before I started working for Seagate, my solution was to always have a thumb drive handy. That worked great, until they started filling up too. So now I’m in a position where I have about 3-5 thumb drives in three different satchels and backpacks all at about 90% capacity with data that I likely don’t even need anymore but want to hold onto just in case.  Does any of this sound familiar? It really became a sitcom when one time at work we’re trying to transfer information from one person to another and none of us had a portable drive handy. We all have more than one device, but they were at home or one of the aforementioned satchels. Basically every other place except where we needed them.

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my local Starbucks because I thought a change of scenery would be grand.  As we head towards summer, we head into comic convention season. I’m a huge comic fan and was going to do a blog about some of my favorite comic artists and the importance of art preservation but the key examples that I have I wanted to share are on my GoFlex Satellite which is sitting in the living room charging because I was transferring movies to it from my computer. Trying to be thorough, I checked my hard drive on my computer and saw how much data I am storing and how soon I’ll need to do a clean up. Thus my initial question – how often do you pay attention to the amount of space available on your hard drive?

My father once taught me to always keep hidden in your wallet the “secret twenty.”  Essentially this is money that you would use if in a bind or need a quick snack while on the go. The same can be said for portable storage. One of my new tasks will be to clean up (or as my co-worker said, “discard”) my thumb drives and make sure that my portable drive is always at the ready as I would power cords or USB cables.  Just because it’s a hard drive, I shouldn’t treat it any differently.