Between Dropbox/Google Docs, Spotify and Flickr, is there really any need for backups anymore?

Dropbox keeps all your files in the cloud, important documents and crap alike.
If you want to keep things 100% cloud based of course, there’s Google Documents – now that they allow uploading of any file type.

Spotify is my favourite app, music used to take up so much space on my macbook pro, now it’s all streamed directly from the cloud. If I know I’m going out of coverage, I can mark playlists for offline use. The libraries are vast, and once Spotify allows mp3 imports (which it will, soon), iTunes will be under a great threat.

Everyone’s familiar with Flickr. With programs like iPhoto you can upload all your photos and share them with your friends in a matter of clicks, or mark them as private for your own reference.

The best thing about all of these apps is that they’re not desktop exclusive – I have them all on my Google Nexus One and iPhone too.

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All companies want to keep your custom. Now, most companies try to win you over with brand loyalty, but the frustrating thing about tech companies is that they can use their technology to trap you. The very gadget or software that you’ve spent your hard earned money on, will make it as difficult as possible, for you to switch to an alternative.

The average iPhone owner for example, spends £80 in Apple’s App Store. When I recently switched to a Google Nexus One, I lost use of all £80 worth of my apps. That money is now wasted, those apps have absolutley no use to me anymore, because I cannot install them on my new phone.

Online stores are become more and more popular with handheld devices. I’m not talking about your ebuyer or bestbuy, I’m talking about your App Store or Market Place. The problem is, they’re all locked-down to some extent.

Fair enough, if I buy another android phone I can install all the apps I’ve bought on my Google Nexus One, as I did when I moved from an iPhone 3G to a 3GS. The same is probably true for Kindle to Kindle 2.

But what happens when Apple stop selling the iPhone, or someone releases a better eBook reader than the Kindle, or if Google end the Android project? All of your purchased applications, books, mp3s become useless.

We need to make things transferable!

This is the exact reason I used to rip my mp3s (before the magnificence that is Spotify), instead of paying for a service like Napster or Yahoo Music. Most of those services were DRM based. There were just too many restrictions on what you can or cannot do with the music you purchase.

So before you splash out on the iPad, Kindle or any other eBook reader – and before you upgrade to an iPhone, Nexus One or other smartphone – remember, the money you spend on books/apps/music for that device, may well be thrown away with the device.

Why should you have to hack your Kindle in order to read eBooks you obtained from somewhere other than Amazon (see: over-priced)? Why should you have to jailbreak your iPhone to use apps that Apple doesn’t want to ‘approve’? If you ask me, you shouldn’t,

I have been a member of Grooveshark since they first launched, so this post is in no way biased towards Spotify, regardless of the fact that Spotify has been the subject of 4/5 posts lately.

Grooveshark started out as something really interesting. It was a peer-to-peer music sharing platform with a difference – legality. You had a little system-tray widget installed on your computer, which would gradually upload your enitre music library to Grooveshark’s servers. Users could then purchase these tracks from Grooveshark, who would give you a cut (we’re talking pennies here), and pay the royalties, making the whole thing quasi-legal.

However somewhere along the lines the business model switched.

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Okay these posts are becoming a bit of a joke now. But I really like Spotify, it’s probably my favourite European start-up right now (after GigLocator of course) and I just want it to work!

I saw Shak at FOWA yesterday and he mentioned Spotify have offline support on the desktop now – flipping pro! This is a killer feature, and another reason for me to keep my Premium subscription. All I need now is for the guys to get high-bitrate tracks working again. It’d also be nice for the mobile version to support Last.fm scrobbling.

Of course it’s always a constant battle, with such a high subscription. If only they could offer discounts on the year subs, I’d be truly sold.

Excuse the title. This is just the latest in my Spotify series of posts.

I’m paying for Premium, and it just doesn’t work. The desktop app constantly gives me an error “There is a problem with the connection to Spotify. Please try again shortly” whenever I try and play a high-bitrate track. I’ve followed all the instructions and keep checking back on the Spotify status page. Obviously I don’t want to be paying for premium and listening to songs in a low bitrate, that kind of defeats the purpose.

I’ve also had some trouble with the iPhone app too. See the attached image. I have only ever used the Spotify app on my iPhone 3GS, so I have no idea what this error is about, but either way it erased all my downloaded tracks.

Therefore I have now un-subscribed from Spotify Premium. Back to the advertisements for me.