Backing up digital treasures is boring. You know you shouldn’t let it slip, but it does. Solutions for backing up pictures, videos, music and other precious PC files strike you as tedious and complicated.
The MiMedia service that I’ve been testing combines traditional online backup with an on-demand personal media site. It can reduce the hassles associated with backing up, and let you quickly access data from any remote computer or smartphone connected to the Web. MiMedia comes from a Port Chester, N.Y., start-up of the same name. Now in beta, it formally kicks off next week.
MiMedia borrows elements from services it hopes to rival. As with Carbonite, Mozy or SugarSync, for example, you pay a tiered monthly or annual fee to store encrypted files in an online locker. As with Flickr or YouTube, you can share media with other folks online. Your pals can even download shared files onto their own computers.
Where MiMedia differs is in how your data get backed up online. MiMedia takes a page from Netflix’s playbook. It mails out a physical shirt-pocket-size USB Shuttle Drive that you can use to transfer material from your computer. Return it to MiMedia postage-free in the box in which it came, and leave it to MiMedia to do the heavy lifting in a fraction of the time it would take you. Files are encrypted, so no one can access them from the Shuttle Drive.
The service is promising. But leading up to launch, MiMedia still needs to massage features and fix some bugs. Its iPhone app repeatedly crashed; an updated version is in the pipeline.
Here’s a closer look.
*Taking the Shuttle Drive. There are already plenty of ways to back up files, but each has drawbacks. You can house files on external hard drives, CDs or DVDs, flash drives or other computers….