In a recent blog I wrote about a series of technology catastrophes that recently befell me. For some reason they see to come in bunches. If I were superstitious I’d think that the fates had it in for me. I just chalk it up to my tendency to replace pieces of equipment at about the same time. Now that shouldn’t make me any happier or more comfortable, but it does. So I just charge ahead ignoring the fact that a device with 10x the semiconductor component count should fail more frequently (i.e. sooner) than one with just x semiconductors in it.

But reliability is a topic for another blog.

If you read my “snakebit” blog, I left you with me having received my replaced or repaired cell phone. The tech assured me that he’d transferred everything before decommissioning my old phone. Ha!

There’s gotta be a better way: my cell phone connects to a vast digital network. If my cell phone dies, Won’t work, Doesn’t light the idiot light, Or won’t DO a number of things that cell phones are supposed to do – I should be able to recover all of my data from a central depository. I should be able to get my address book back. I should be able to get my call logs. Most importantly in this case, I should be able to recover all of my email settings so that I can get email on my phone once again.

Here’s my thought: Permit me to run a web app that transmits a complete image of what’s on my phone to a central store. Encrypt the data to meet privacy laws in all countries. Now when I need to restore my phone for any one of a number of reasons, I just run the “restore” web app and everything goes back the way it was. Simple.

Why do I care? When I got my cell phone back some of the data was restored, but not the email settings. And not some of my address book. This wasn’t the first time that this happened. Fortunately I had a backup of my data on my laptop (remember the laptop that died?). A few hours of futzing around with setting up the Blackberry app on my laptop and I was home free. But when cell phones go wrong it’s never at a convenient time or place. That’s why I believe that central storage is critical for cell phone data. Want to make it even better? Give me an 800 number to call that has an Interactive Voice Response system to read back my data in case my phone dies and all I can use is a (hard-to-find) pay phone.

I think that there is a better way.