The expectation of an emerging dominant platform for smart phones comes from general experience with the PC industry, where there has been virtually a single platform for decades. However, the cell phone business is very different from the PC business: while market forces pushed the latter towards platform consolidation, there are several factors keeping mobile platforms distinct. Factor in Google’s self-stated motivation for entering this market in the first place and it becomes clear that the current fragmentation of smart phone platforms isn’t going to go away any time soon.

1: Cell Carriers Discourage Platform Consolidation

Partially by design and partially by nature, it’s plain impossible for a single platform to become dominant today. Cellular companies make exclusive deals with handset manufacturers, keeping phones out of the hands of consumers who would otherwise purchase them in a heartbeat. The exclusive AT&T and Apple deal comes to mind, but cell companies have been in this practice long before there was an iPhone. Hip devices draw new customers, and the manufacturer receives generous financial kickbacks to keep things exclusive. Additionally, some carriers use different radio technologies, which means that device manufacturer must develop different hardware to support all the different radio technologies around the world, adding expense and slowing hardware rollouts. This isn’t a factor which will go away soon.

2: The Market Has Legs

In 2009 a smart phone sales exploded. According to Gartner, there were sales of 172 million smart phones in 2009, a 24% increase from 2008, and that growth is expected to continue. This means that every company in the market can sell more units than the previous year without competing directly for customers. As long as this continues to be the case there is plenty of room in the market for multiple platforms. For some context, the ceiling for this growth is high. If all cell phones sold were smart phones (not an unreasonable long-term perspective) there would be 1.2 billion every year, so there’s quite a bit of room to grow.

3: Consumers Aren’t Sticky

In stark contrast to the PC market, smart phones are relatively simple to operate. Since the learning curve is lower, consumers are less likely to be afraid of switching to a different platform. Other factors gain relative importance. For example, consumers don’t put a high value on the shape and color of their desktop PC or laptop (beyond the basic form factor), but industrial design plays a more important role with smart phones. In part this is because OS tie-in is less important.

Consumers are also likely to switch between cell carriers every year or two, and when they do they are more likely to purchase the most cost-effective smart phone available with the new carrier. Statistically, this depends mostly on the promotions running at the time, if the same platform is even available. Apple’s exclusive AT&T contract, and Microsoft’s major revision to Windows Mobile are cases where users may not even be able to stick with the same platform if they wanted to.

4. Google Isn’t in the Mobile Phone Business

Surprise. Here’s a quick recap from Eric Schmidt from when Android was first announced:

The fundamental problem with most phones today is they don’t have full-power browsers. We’ve been taking our mobile services and use specialized engineering to get them on other devices. No longer … Imagine not just one Gphone, but a thousand Gphones as a result of the partnerships … I’m a very happy iPhone user. It’s important to say that there will be many, many mobile experiences, and Android will be used on many other kinds of devices…

Remember that when Android first came out, there was really no viable mobile web browser aside from Safari on the iPhone. Google makes their money on web search. Lots of people had phones, but couldn’t realistically use them to search, and Google therefore couldn’t make money from them. Google solved the problem by giving away a smart phone OS to any device manufacturer who wanted it.

So, while Google does have a bottomless wallet, there’s no reason for them to spend significantly more on cell phone development. Android simply has to be “good enough” to motivate smart phone competitors to improve the browsers on their phone. Google makes the money whether a user searches via an Android phone, an iPhone, a Symbian phone, or potentially even a Windows Mobile phone (should mobile IE ever become a reasonable browser). That’s why the pace of Android development has slowed as its uptake has accelerated. Google doesn’t need to dominate the market, because they don’t care which phone or browser you use, as long as you use one. To put it another way, Android is a stick they can use to herd the cell phone market in the direction Google wants.

Conclusions

The public likes competition, and the Internet will never stop pitting different platforms against each other. At first glance, Android and iPhone OS look like they compete against each other. However, the motivations behind their development are very different: Apple wants to sell hardware, while Google wants to spur users to browse the web from their phones. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, which is why Eric Schmidt sat on the Apple board of directors until well after Android was released. Because of their respective philosophies, Google and Apple will never compete in the mobile phone space — Apple will never license their OS to other device manufacturers, and Google will never shift their revenue base to hardware sales (The Nexus One is another stick to hit device manufacturers with, not an attempt to make a profit for Google).

So, to answer my friend’s question, “who will win the mobile phone wars: Apple or Google?” I don’t think either will win, because there isn’t really a war – at least not between those two. Palm, Microsoft, Nokia, and Research in Motion are different stories altogether. Until the market hits the ceiling though, none of them are going to achieve market dominance anytime soon. It has become a game of staying power, and the only platform in any real danger is Palm.

I immediately realized my mistake, and rushed to dry it off. If you search the Internet, you’ll find that the beat thing to do next is stick your iPhone (or other soggy electronics) into a bag of white rice. Rice absorbs water better than almost anything else. It will quick the moisture right out of your phone.

After 24 hours, I took the iphone a out of the rice and guess what? It worked perfectly! Well, almost perfectly. The screen was a little psychadellic, but that cleared up after a few more days as the cu al bits of water dried up, and then it was good as new.

Or so I thought. While I had survived the immediate risk of frying my phone, the moisture ha done some long term damage to the circuit board inside: it had allowed rust to start to set in.

Fast forward to today. 6 months later, my phone started acting funny. It claimed I had an incompatible device plugged in. All of a sudden, the battery only lasted a few hours. The circuit board had rusted and begin to short out.

Unfortunately, the water indicator was still bright orange, so apple wouldn’t fix it for me (rightly so). There’s nothing for it now; my iPhone is in the twilight of it’s life, ends early with electronic alzhimer’s.

First, there are currently two types of external hard drives in the market today. The first kind use laptop hard drives, which offer less storage and slower performance, but are physically small, light, and silent. The second type, which the V1 belongs to, use desktop hard drives. These offer much larger capacity and much higher performance than the first kind, but the tradeoff is that they are physically larger, usually more noisy, and require an external power plug in addition to a USB connection. The VOX V1 however bucks this generality. It is smaller than other external desktop drives (you can see a comparison picture in the photos), and also runs nearly silent. This is partially because the VOX V1 is a sealed case. There is no fan for airflow, and heat is dissipated through the walls of the enclosure. While I wouldn’t recommend putting the V1 in a desk drawer, this does mean that you generally don’t need to worry about available airflow where you place it as much as you would have to with a different brand.

The external hard drive market is very crowded, and vendors have to try to differentiate themselves from the competition. While the V1 supports all the standard things you would expect from a modern external enclosure, including an SATA connector, VOX also supplies a Windows-only backup software package. This software installs on Windows XP or Vista and allows you to push the (only) button on the V1 to initiate a system backup. This is a nice feature, and one really shouldn’t mind that this software is Windows-only as OS X has Time Machine, which is just about the best backup software for home computers in existence. Linux users are unfortunately left to find their own software solution for backups, although there are several solutions available for free.

As mentioned earlier, the VOX V1 includes both USB and E-SATA connectors. It’s nice to see the E-SATA connector as USB2 can’t supply data as fast as the drive can. Unfortunately, E-SATA was a standard that never really took off. It would have been better to include a newer SATA2 connector. Having said that, for whatever reason most modern laptops and desktops do not include external E-SATA or SATA2 ports, so either way you either need to purcahase an adapter card, or simply wait for the standard to catch on. What would have been really exciting was if the V1 included a Firewire 800 port, as those are much more common (especially on laptops) that any sort of SATA port. Regardless, this isn’t a problem just with the VOX V1, but with most external hard drives today. The takeaway here is that it is probably worth the investment for you to purchase an external SATA card rather than rely on the USB connection.

One additional comment is that, while the drive does come with a complete set of E-SATA, USB, and power cables, the included cables are on the short side. Even the power cable, which is typically the logest of the bunch, was under 6 feet long, including the power brick. This makes it a little annoying when using the V1 with a laptop, as you may not be that close to a socket (if the cord is 6 feet you need to be within 4 feet or less of the socket).

Another small note is that the manual said it was supposed to come with a screw driver and screw set, which mine didn’t. However, as there’s no reason to open the case, I don’t see why you would need one anyway. The only reason I mention it is because the manual said it should. Probably, they should just change the manual to not say that.

The above are relatively minor complaints however, and overall the V1 is a pleasure to work with. It is by far the quietest of the 7 other external drives I use, and 750GB of capacity provides a lot of space to use. The fact that it is more compact than my other drives is good (although it is a little bit taller), and the E-SATA port means that the drive will probably last me until my next computer. In fact, in several years or whenever it has reached the end of its lifetime, I’ll probably be able to upgrade the disk inside of it and re-use the case, which is a good thing.

Overall, the VOX External Hard Drive V1 USB 2.0 & SATA has a silly (but descriptive) name. More importantly, it does exactly what it says it does by providing a compact, quiet, and high performing external hard drive. The build quality is excellent, and I look forward to using the V1 for a long time to come.

As my collection of media grew, I started to run out of disk space (My mini only has 80GB). First, I added a USB drive to it. Then two. Then, I created a RAID array out of USB drives using an OSX RAID stripe. But, that is dangerous, because if any drive fails, you lose all the data. So I added more USB drives, and created a second stripe, to use for time machine. I currently have USB and Firewire drives connected to my Mini at the moment, due to this escellation.

It has finally gotten to the point where it really makes more sense to just build myself a multi-terrabyte file server, with proper RAID built into it. Further, while I’m at it, I want to add some additional capabilities as well. Ideally, this is something that will live on the network, and give me the following:

• Centrally store all my media files (music, movies, photos) which can be accessed from any computer in my house
• Provide a “time machine” backup location for my macs
• serve centralized home directories for any linux, mac, windows PC’s in my home
• Act as an LDAP authentication server, for single sign on in my home (yes, my home will then be enterprise-ready)
• Possibly serve a wiki and/or calendering/groupware system which my wife and I can use to sync our phones/mail clients/address book/calandar stuff (that would be nice)

Some or all of this may or may not come from the same software package. In fact, going the enterprise route, here is the solution I intend to implement:

Build an innexpensive file server based on the openfiler project. I’ve already put the order through for the components. Without drives, the whole solution, including a 12-bay hot-swap sata rack-mount case (and taxes and shipping), is about $600 for a Phenom 3-core CPU system w/ 4GB RAM. For drives, I can reuse a lot of the disks I already have running over USB (they are SATA inside), although I purchased an additional TB sata drive. Juggling the data while I’m setting up the new server will be tricky, but I should just be able to do it with the capacity I currently have.

Once the fileserver is set up, openfiler can export data as AFS, CIFS, or NFS to my mac Mini. Moreover, access will probably be [significantly] faster over gigabit ethernet than it was running RAID over USB2.

Then, I’ll install vmware on the openfiler server, and set up a virtual machine possibly running a linux distribution (TBD) to support local authentication for AD and LDAP.

With any luck, the system will be up and running by the end of the week. It’s pretty amazing that I can put together what is a business-class file server myself for under $1,000, even including storage.

The main problem with hard drives are that they haven’t been able to keep up with Moore’s Law. While computers have gotten faster and faster, hard drives seem to have topped out some time ago. At the same time, the total storage capacity of drives has continued to increase. What this means is that the performance/storage ratio has gotten significantly lower. It is so low, even, that it has started to put some significant strain on the average computer user.

Way back in 2000,  when drives were typically 20 or 30 Gigabytes, it wasn’t so bad to be able to access it at a typical 20-30 MB/s. This meant that you could copy an entire hard drive in about 17 minutes. Today, however, when drives are as large as 1 Terabyte (1,000 Gigabytes), and they can only be accessed not much faster, it can take significant parts of a day to copy a disk! Combined with the fact that most people use USB to attach their extra hard drives, and the whole operation takes even longer.

Corporations and users with more demanding needs try to get around this issue with RAID. Originally, RAID systems (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) were designed to provide better reliability than individual hard drives (data is kept in multiple disks, so data isn’t lost if a disk breaks). Increasingly, however, RAID systems are being used to provide improved performance. The idea is that if you have two hard drives you can access both of them at the same time. Therefore, you can read or write twice as fast as if you only had one. Companies like EMC and NetApp take this principle to the extreme. What if you can read from 15 disks at once? Or from 1500?

Unfortunately disk performance doesn’t really scale in real life as well as it does in theory, and so  even high end RAID products don’t perform too much better. Two disks are not twice as fast as one. The more disks you add, the smaller the incremental benefit. Even if it did help more, adding disks ad infinitum is not a reasonable solution for home users.

So what’s the solution? It’s getting to the point where this is a real problem. It now takes me a few days to shuffle my data around when I get a new disk drive.

Newer technologies are on the horizon, but who knows when they’ll get to market. The ones you read about in the paper are still years from hitting the market as a finished product. Flash drives were promising, but in real life use, they seem to be the same or even worse performers than traditional disk drives.

If something doesn’t give soon, we are going to cross a critical threshold where some drastic design decisions need to be made on future PC’s, or the benefits of faster CPU’s and RAM will be hidden by the glacial speed of the system’s long term storage.

For a minute, put yourself in the mindset of a developer of phone software. Arguably, having developed applications which were sold on Verizon Wireless and other cell carriers, this is a bit easier for this author. As a developer then, and attempting to receive some sort of compensation for your work, it would seem that there are too many platforms to develop for, all of them bad for different reasons.

Qualcomm’s Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (aka BREW) is used by several major wireless carriers. From a technical perspective, it is a C-based API, which means that the learning curve is slight for C programmers. The best thing it has going for it, though, is that there is a centralized game store and market place. In theory, developers post their applications and games up to Qualcomm’s website. Carriers look through those apps and choose which ones they want to sell to their customers. Customers have one place to go to buy apps (Verizon calls it “Get It Now“). For a developer, BREW sounds like a great model. You don’t need to worry about selling to end users, or billing, or packaging up your product and selling it in a store. Customers can go on their phone and see a list of every piece of software available to purchase. If they do buy yours, they get the price of your app added to their phone bills. Nice and simple. What could be wrong with this?

Well, as it turns out, carriers aren’t interested in providing, what is to them, low margin software to their customers. They want to be able to sell games and applications (and ringtones) mostly as a way to get customers to switch to their network, and buy their cellphones. Consequently, there is little or no incentive for a carrier to decide to actually carry the game you (the developer) posted to the Qualcomm web site. This is why if you have Verizon Wireless, almost all the games available from “Get It Now” are from either from a huge game studio like EA or Sony, or based on a popular TV Show or Movie. The carriers simply don’t want to be bothered by a plethora of developers for what they consider to be chump change. As a developer, if the carrier doesn’t choose to carry you, you are out of luck. No way to get around them, no way to appeal, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The other major platform for phone development is Java 2 Mobile Edition (AKA, J2me). This is the complete oposite end of the spectrum. Anyone can create a J2me app. When it first came out, J2me looked very promising. Like Java, which it is a subset of, software written in J2me could be run on any phone with Java support. Customers would be free to acquire software from any developer, anywhere on the planet — the carrier wouldn’t have complete control of the application pipe like in the BREW model. This would mean that developers have a much larger market of customers to sell to. Sounds like a good solution, right?

Unfortunately, while J2me was promised to be a great equalizer, this has turned out to be far from the reality. While BREW apps do require some amount of customization for each different handset it is released on, J2ME can vary even more greatly between them. Even different phone models released by the same manufacturer may not support the same J2me program! Because of the sheer number of phones and carriers which support J2me software, it is nearly impossible for a developer to write and test software on all of them. This means that any J2me application will only run on some subset of J2me phones.

Additionally, while the phone carriers cannot blockade access to their devices, developers must figure out how to get their product in front of customers. They must conduct marketing, figure out a billing model, and make sales individually to each customer. Applications are not digitally signed (as they are in BREW), so it becomes difficult for developers to prevent piracy of their product. Combined with the fact that most phones have a horrific user interface in general, and especially for installing J2me software, there are a series of significant barriers for selling J2me software which make it unpredictable to determine beforehand whether a product will succeed. This is a scenario that deters business-minded developers.

Of course, there is also the set of “Smart Phone” platforms, Palm-OS(now defunct), Windows Mobile, and Simbian. These each have their own sets of pros and cons. Certainly they have been successful targets for some developers, but for the purposes of this article we will say that the average user of those phones are typically very different from the average user of a regular phone, and specifically of an iPhone.

This brings us to the iPhone SDK. Apple seems to have derived the strengths of the business models of both BREW and J2ME. All software will be digitally signed, and distributed centrally by Apple. The digital signatures work two ways: They protect the developer from customer piracy, and they protect the customer from mischievous developers. There will be a centralized list of applications, so users can easily browse through apps they might want to download or purchase, and billing will be handled by Apple, which allows developers to concentrate on what they should be: developing. Unlike BREW, Apple has taken a stance that encourages independent developers to target the iPhone. They will place lesser-known, less expensive, or even free applications up on their store right alongside the bigger market players. Like J2ME, developers don’t need to strike a special deal with each carrier in order to get their software into people’s hands.

So, with this perspective, what are people complaining about? That they can’t write software which unlocks the iPhone. That they can’t publish software which curtails Apple’s own SDK or Safari web browser. Make no mistake about this: those complaints are pure ridiculousness. While it is to their advantage to do so, Apple didn’t have to release an SDK at all. Looking at the leading established models of software development, BREW and J2me, we can see that the Apple model takes their strengths and leaves their weaknesses — for the benefit of all 3rd party developers, and especially the independent and open source developers! This should be self-evident by looking at who the people are who are making the complaints — unfortunately, as with all things Apple, the enormous hype machine of the Interwebs has distorted the picture. Complaints are driven by …. Sun (founder of J2me, which Apple has no use for, and which will consequently suffer), Firefox (which, while a great desktop browser, wants to get into the mobile space dominated by mobile Safari) and Opera (struggling to be relevant in any market, desktop or mobile). Obviously, these complainers have motivations that are not entirely altruistic. (Note to avoid flamewar: this author is a huge desktop Firefox fan).

The second topic of complaint is that Apple won’t allow applications to run in the background, and they won’t allow voice-over-ip applications (like Skype) to run over the cell carrier (although running over Wi-Fi is fine). These really shouldn’t be the sore points they seem. From a developer’s perspective, there are certainly neat things one could do if allowed to run applications in the background (like an IM client, for example), which aren’t really practical otherwise. However, looking from a holistic perspective, some testers found that the battery would run dry in as little as four hours while running only basic background tasks. The radio and the CPU, when used actively, use a lot of power. This isn’t Apple’s fault — it’s a law of phsyics. And while I’m sure there are many people who would like to use Skype instead of their AT&T phone minutes, I’m sure the average kindergarden student can figure out why Apple won’t allow voice-over-ip apps to run over the unlimitted data connection instead of using your talk minutes.

So, what can we conclude about Apple’s SDK decisions? Certainly, they studied the existing market and the development models. The solution they came up with, from a business sense, not only takes the best of what is out there, but also meshes extremely well with Apple’s existing iTunes one-stop-shop model for how they already handle music, TV shows, and movies. While some developers may have gripes about some of the policies of the SDK (background tasks, Sun, Opera), the limitations are in actuality completely reasonable.

While the ultimate success of custom apps on the iPhone will only be determined with time, it is certainly off to a good start. As a past independant software developer, I see all of Apple’s decisions on the SDK as smart moves (even the ones that aren’t the most convenient to me), and ultimately very good to the customer, while also being reasonable, fair, and enabling opportunity for the developer. The only ones who don’t like it are the big-name established businesses which this new model will disrupt.

In and of itself, this is a good thing for everyone: the cell phone industry (they sell more phones), the carriers (people use their data plans), web sites (more hits), and of course you (its pretty cool, after all). And, the hype seems to be true: people really are using their “Real Web” browsers.

However, like Apple tried with the iPhone, some manufacturers seem to think that providing a full AJAX web environment is an alternative to allowing people to install local applications. After all, the apps already exist, and they are standardized. What’s not to like?

Unfortunately, there are a couple of holes in that logic. They are significant, although even the iPhone tried to get around them and found that it couldn’t.

First, the performance of a web-based program is significantly slower than a native one. For the iPhone, for example (the only phone so far with a full web browser), a web-based AJAX game is known to be around 100x slower than a comparable native version of the same program. That’s really slow. So slow, in fact, that almost any sort of game is pretty much out of the question.

Second, web-apps are only available where there is web access. In the States, at least, cell-based web access is pretty horrific, despite whatever recent claims the cell carriers have made. And because broadband speeds are accelerating, it makes the cell rates seem that much worse. Definitely not good enough to be taken seriously for an application. Second, you can’t run the app where you get no (or bad) cell service. Like in a subway, for example. Because the phones don’t cache the web page for very long, it means that you can’t even web apps that don’t need to contact the server are unusable if you want to pull up a game like Space Wormy.

For these reasons, phones will still need local apps for at least the foreseeable future. Hopefully, this won’t lead to the introduction of new cell phone platforms and API’s. The last thing the heavily fragmented cell phone industry needs is yet another platform. However, manufacturers can’t seem to help themselves. But that’s a whole other topic.

The answer, unfortunately, is not good.

I’ll preface this by saying that I would really like for Mozy to be a great service. I think that they certainly have the potential to be a significant player in the backup market, especially for home and small office users. Also, their ownership by EMC should provide them with a lot of internal leverage to build out a very solid technical infrastructure.

Despite having developed an almost-perfect local client, a very simple to use interface, and a phenomenal price, Mozy has completely goofed their execution. There are a few components to this, but the end result is that Mozy becomes completely useless as a backup solution for any customers who have an actual need for one.

One issue, a relatively minor one, is that they lead you to believe that their client can automatically back up your computer. Now I can only speak for the Mac client, as my Mozy account is a tied to my Mac. Their client installs seamlessly, and puts a little icon in the menu bar. So far, so good. It even goes ahead and starts to back up your computer. Unfortunately, the client can’t be trusted to actually do an unattended backup. If the client runs into any sort of problem, it just stops, and pops up an error box. And it won’t retry the backup until you click ok! This might not seem like a big deal at first, but now consider that it might take weeks or months to make a backup (more on that later). If you go away on a Friday night, and there is an error, Mozy will just sit and do nothing all weekend until you get back and click ‘ok.’

This is a relatively benign issue, and clearly the Mozy developers can easily fix it with a software update, so I wouldn’t use this as a reason not to use Mozy. The next two issues are a bit more serious, however. Let’s tackle the most obvious one: Mozy doesn’t have sufficient bandwidth.

I have Verizon FIOS, with a 10 mbit upload speed. I’ve tested this at various places around the Internet, and I know that I can upload to anywhere that can handle it at the full speed. The Mozy client, however, *averages* about 35k/s uploading to the Mozy servers. This is fairly ridiculous. I have been trying to make a *single* backup since purchasing the service. That was around 45 days ago. In 45 days, Mozy has backed up 200 out of 450 GB. At this rate, it will take me more than 1/4 of a *year* just to make a single backup. While you may have more or less data to back up, this is not an acceptable rate.

And finally, the other big issue with Mozy is that they have no support infrastructure whatsoever. When I contacted them prior to my last blog post, I used their online chat support on their web site several times, speaking with several different technicians (who I then exchanged emails with). I later exchanged emails with their Support Operations Manager.

The interesting thing is that none of these people knew that I was speaking with the others. There was no internal ticketing or CRM system which let them track my issue. Each person I was speaking with tracked my issue separately (or forgot to, as the case may be, and didn’t follow up). Additionally, although I was told Mozy was looking into it, Mozy doesn’t communicate with their customers over Known Issues, or service outages, or anything of that nature. There are no user forums on their web site so that you can ping the community knowledge base. As I’ve said in my previous post, this lack of communication flow from Mozy is unacceptable in a backup company.

I purchased a 1-year subscription to Mozy, thinking that at the price they were offering, how could I go wrong? While I am stuck with my never-ending backup for the next 10 months, I recommend you look elsewhere. I have no knowledge how the other online-backup solutions are, but at this rate your money would be better spend on a USB harddrive.

Why? I’m 29 now. I have files on my hard drive that include BASIC software I wrote when I was 13, short stories I wrote when I was in high school, and projects I worked on in college. I’ve got an iTunes library that took 10 years to build, and gigs upon gigs of photographs of me and my wife. If my house were to burn down today, my biggest loss would be my hard drive, because it is literally irreplaceable.

And so while I started using Apple’s Time Machine recently to keep local backups, I was looking for a second way to do it — preferably one that is off-site and automatic, so I don’t need to worry about it. Essentially, something like Mozy.

Mozy is an online service which provides backups for your home computer. There are plenty of reviews (both good and bad, as well as indifferent) which describe Mozy’s pros and cons, so I won’t go into super detail on that. Basically, there is a little program that runs in the background and backs up your files every now and then to their servers. If you need to restore a file, you can do it through their web site or else through the program you download.

This is a great service for me, because I can count on Apple Time Machine to provide most of my backup needs (like, “oops, accidentally deleted a file”), while Mozy provides a second layer of protection (like “oops, my baby nephew tried to make all my USB drives bounce on the floor”).

The cost also makes a lot of sense for me. For $60/year, I get unlimited backups. Since I am looking to back up around 500 GB of stuff, this is cheaper than purchasing a new hard drive, like I need to do for Time Machine.

So, about 2 weeks ago, after giving all this thought to signing up for Mozy, I decided to go for it. And quickly ran into my first problem. After paying them through their web site, I found out that the Mac client isn’t available! The weird thing is that it was still listed on their site as a download … which just went to an error 404 page. After contacting tech support, I was told that “this is a known issue, and it should be available again shortly.” There was no message of any kind on their web site. Nevertheless, I tried again the next day, and was able to download the client.

At this point, I was a bit on edge. Not because they took the Mac client offline, but because they made no attempt to notify their clients! Backup companies should have a full-disclosure policy. If I am counting on them to keep my files safe, I need to know if there is a problem. What happens if they simply don’t mention that they lost my latest backup, and I decide to wipe my computer and restore it from them at that time? This is obviously unacceptable.

However, if that were the only issue I ran into, it would have been OK. After all, the Mac client was marked as “beta,” and I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that this was a one-time oversight.

So, I used the downloaded client to start creating a backup. I should note that creating a 500 GB backup takes quite some time, even over Verizon FIOS. Mozy seems to limit their incoming bandwidth to around 100 KB/s, at least for my client. I know from other things that my connection is capable of at least 10 times that.

About 40 GB into the backup (about two days), the Mozy client gave me an error. It said “ServerError11.” Not very descriptive, so I looked at the log file, which said “Server Error. Disconnecting.” Also not very descriptive. Despite multiple reboots and retries at this point, I could no longer get the Mozy client to continue its backup.

I contacted tech support again, and told them the problem. They said that there was probably a “lock” on my account, and they would have it cleared within 24 hours. They didn’t tell me what a “lock meant.” 24 hours later, it still wasn’t working. This was on a Thursday. I gave them the weekend, and contacted them again on Tuesday. Again, I was told the same thing, and that they must escalate the issue to a developer, and it would be cleared within 24 hours. OK. Again, 24 hours go by, and the issue hadn’t gone away. I contacted tech support a fourth time. When I mentioned that I had been told twice that it would be fixed within 24 hours, the guy told me “there are other people with the same problem, and they haven’t been helped yet.” Ouch.

So, what’s the conclusion here? It has now been more than a week since I haven’t been able to back up. In fact, since signing on to Mozy I have not been able to complete a single complete backup. The staff seems unable to resolve any problems in a timely fashion. What’s much more important than even those issues, however, is that Mozy seems unable or unwilling to freely communicate with its customers.

Mozy, I understand that you may be going through some growing pains with all the press coverage you’ve gotten lately. That’s OK. But, as a backup company, your name and reputation DEPEND on being reliable. Reliable doesn’t mean you don’t ever have operating issues. What it does mean is that you disclose those issues when you do, so that people who rely on you can adjust their plans and expectations accordingly.

Until the issue of communication with customers is resolved, I would need to recommend for people that they steer clear of Mozy. You wouldn’t want to rely on a backup company which may or may not be functioning as advertised, and which you can’t trust to even tell you which is the case.

If someone from Mozy wants to contact me, and address this issue, I would be happy to update this blog post. Given their track history so far (when I was chasing them for info), I’m not holding my breath.

* Update *
Within hours, I was contacted by David Dreyer, Support Operations Manager at Mozy. David is working to resolve my issue, and says that there is a general Mozy software update coming this weekend which should resolve similar issues for other users. David was very aggressive in addressing this problem, and that of notification I mentioned above. Sometimes it’s nice to be proven wrong I’ll have another update once my problems have been resolved.

Read on for the 45-day update.

My wife is looking to buy a car. She is 30 years old. She likes iTunes and reads her news online instead of a newspaper. She is concerned about global warming, and about the war on terror. We’re about to have kids, which brings those concerns to the forefront. So, when we started looking around for a car, we remembered all those cool next-generation automobiles we’ve been bombarded with at auto shows and the news. And we were surprised to find that we could hardly find any. This was caused by a combination of them not having actually made it to production despite the hype, and that the dealers practically pretend that they don’t exist, even when they are sitting on the lot.

This leads to a lot of confusion for people who are actually looking to buy a car based on some of the new technology in the pipeline. Auto manufacturers talk a lot about the research and development and upcoming technologies, but it’s difficult to determine what you can actually purchase today.

Also, press releases and science articles tend to focus on how the technologies work and the impact that will have on emissions, the environment, global warming, and the butterfly population in Paraguay. Instead, even the most idealistic drivers are more concerned with how their lives will be affected with automotive technologies different from what they’re used to. The social commentary this implies is left to the reader.

Hybrid Electric (HEV)

Available: Since 1999

“Hybrids” have been available for a few years already from a number of manufacturers. In the United States, Honda made the hybrid debut with the Insight in 1999. They were joined a few years later by the Honda Civic and Toyota Prius. Today, there is a growing number of Hybrids available or shortly available from most major car manufactures.

A Hybrid is a car that has both an electric and a gas motor. The electric one assists the gas when the gas motor would otherwise be inefficient (like at low speeds). Most hybrids are simply an alternate version of a non-hybrid car, with the notable exception being the Toyota Prius. Hybrids are generally quieter than their non-hybrid counterparts. Japanese Hybrids tend to focus on getting better fuel efficiency, while American hybrids tend to focus on getting more powerful engines at the same fuel efficiency. This follows the general trend of American manufacturers to focus on trucks and SUVs, while Japanese manufacturers focus more on cars.

The biggest advantage, for both the driver and the auto manufacturer, is that Hybrid Electrics are a drop-in replacement for a conventional automobile. You drive it, you go to the gas station, you park it in your garage. The driver doesn’t need to do anything differently that they normally would with another car, and the manufacturer doesn’t have to take a risk of drivers accepting any abnormal requirements.

The trade off for this lower risk is that Hybrids are a compromise of technology and capability, tipped well against technology. There is a limit to how much electricity the hybrid can generate just from braking and excess energy from the gas motor, and this limits the efficiency of the electric motor. For this reason, hybrids can improve fuel efficiency by up to 40%, but you won’t see more than that. Also, in general, Gas-Electric hybrids tend to be either underpowered, or else give up their fuel-savings in favor of additional power to the engine.

Plug-In Hybrid Electric (PHEV)

Available: 2008, if we’re lucky

Plug-In Hybrids are an evolutionary step beyond Hybrids. The general idea is that instead of using the gas motor in the car to generate electricity (which is inefficient), instead plug it in to your power outlet overnight. Other than that basic idea, Plug-In Hybrids are very similar to regular Gas-Electric Hybrids. In fact, you could treat it the same exact way as you treat a regular Gas-Electric Hybrid. While you wouldn’t get the additional advantage of home-charging, there would be no other ill effects.

Why would you want to plug in your Hybrid? Power plants can generate electricity much more efficiently than your car engine. So, where it might take a few gallons of gas to fully charge your Hybrid’s battery (since you must drive around to get it charging), it would only cost you a few cents in electricity to charge it from your wall socket.

This tends to favor people who drive close to home. Toyota claims that their Plug-In Prius, which may debut in 2009, will be able to drive around seven miles on electricity alone. That means that your neighborhood chores will require zero gasoline, and while your commutes to work will still eat up the same miles-per-gallon as a regular Prius, those miles only start to count after you’ve driven seven.

If you are anxious to get a Plug-In Hybrid, there are people who have built their own conversion kits for both the Prius and the Civic. These will void your factory warranty, but may be the ticket if you don’t want to wait until the 2009 model year.

Electric and Series Hybrid Electric

Available: 2008 for super cars, at least 2010 for mortals?

Tesla Motors shocked the automotive industry in 2006 by announcing an all-electric sports car which could outrun a Ferrari. The Tesla Roadster has a range of nearly 250 miles before it needs to be recharged, by plugging it into an electrical outlet. At a cost of around $100,000, these aren’t for the average driver, but Tesla plans on using the technology created for the Roadster on a line of family sedans called Whitestar, which they plan on introducing as a competitor for BMW’s and Mercedes possibly as soon as the 2010 model year. If things go well, they are also planning a more affordably-priced sedan after 2012.

Ignoring the EV-1 which GM released and then recalled in the early 90’s, Chevrolet plans on releasing the much anticipated Volt. This muscle-car-esq electric vehicle drives as far as 40 miles on a single overnight charge. While this may not sound like a lot, the Volt also has an on-board gas generator, which means that you can fill up at the pump, and drive it almost like a regular car. This is known as a Series hybrid – The gasoline engine doesn’t drive the wheels like a conventional car. Instead, its only purpose is to recharge the battery while the car is on the road. This is an advantage over the Tesla Roadster, as it means that you can take the Volt on a road trip without having to worry about plugging in. GM has a bad track history with technology, and most consumers are wary about their true intentions. For example, many have alleged that the GM fuel cell program was really just a PR stunt to push off having to upgrade it’s auto technology base by pretending to be proactive. Time will tell, and while GM claims that it won’t be ready until 2012, hopeful rumors hint at 2010.

Other automakers are pursuing Series Hybrids as well. Some other potentials on the horizon besides the Volt are the Saturn Vue and Volvo ReCharge.

Fuel Cells

Available: Don’t hold your breath

Fuel cells are touted to be the next-generation car technology. Fuel cells are a replacement for batteries. Instead of charging your car with electricity, you fill it’s fuel-cell with a fuel (usually hydrogen), and the fuel-cell uses that to create electricity, without the need for a conventional motor or power generator.

A fuel cell does not describe a type of propulsion – just a power source. For example, a Hybrid Electric Vehicle might use a fuel cell instead of batteries, or a full electric vehicle might as well. While fuel cells promise to boost the efficiency of such vehicles, they are not required. That’s a good thing, because no one really knows how to make them yet.

Practically every auto maker has announced intentions of producing a fuel-cell based car. There are several prototypes, usually costing several million dollars and with significant performance problems. The technology simply isn’t there yet, and it doesn’t look like its going to be ready any time soon. Manufacturers like to use fuel-cell technology as an example of what they are developing for the future. Unfortunately (especially in the case of GM), this is really just an excuse for why they have no interesting technologies in the present.

Hydrogen

Available: Never

For a while, hydrogen-powered cars was the talk of the town. Yet, years later, there isn’t a single mass-produced hydrogen automobile. Why not?

While gasoline and even electrical outlets are commonplace throughout the United States, you would be hard-pressed to find liquid hydrogen at your local filling station. Even worse, it can be dangerous stuff. Hydrogen is explosive at room temperature, and either super-low temperatures or super-high pressure us required to keep it contained in a gas-tank. Given how much easier it is for people to switch to an electric car versus a hydrogen one, don’t expect hydrogen cars to make it to mass production any time soon. In fact, no car manufacturer has any such plans, although some government agency vehicles and public buses do run on hydrogen, and BMW has a number of prototypes which they have processionally showed off since 2001.

Which do I get?

Unfortunately, the lesson learned here is that there isn’t too much choice in the marketplace yet. If you can wait 6 months, you may be able to get a Plug-In Hybrid from Toyota. Then again, maybe not. Toyota hasn’t promised anything. If you have $100,000 to burn, you can get a super car-class Tesla Roadster that you can’t take overnight away from a power socket.

However, if you are in the market for a car today, the only technology readily available is a regular Hybrid. The good news is that they are gaining popularity, and many manufacturers are making them. My wife will be looking at models from Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and Lexus. If anyone makes an announcement that they will have a Plug-In Hybrid available in the 2009 model year before we make our purchase though, we’ll definitely hold off until that comes out.

And we’ll trade up whenever the Chevy Volt becomes available. Right before we book tickets on Virgin Galactic to the Budget Suites hotel on the moon.

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