On Android, if you look under Settings / Privacy, you’ll find an option called “Backup my data”. The description on this says “Back up application data, Wi-Fi passwords, and other settings to Google servers”. I’ve seen devices where the Wi-Fi passwords part is left out, and other devices where there is no description at all. At first thought, this is a great option. Who doesn’t want their new Android device to automatically know all the settings of their old device?

There are 2 problems with this feature. The first issue is that Google is not clear as to what “other settings” are being backed up to the cloud. Are we talking email accounts? screen brightness? wallpaper? ringtones? etc..  If it’s my data that is being backed up, I should have some sort of indication as to what that data is.

The second problem is that this will automatically backup your WiFi networks encryption keys. This is great for personal home networks. But I’m pretty sure most enterprises would have a concern if they learned that the encryption keys for the corporate WiFi are being uploaded to the cloud. If someone hacks my GMAIL account, they would instantly have access to the corporate network. Since this feature is driven by the phone, there is no way for the enterprise to specify that a given encryption key should not be backed up.

Donovan Colbert might have jumped the gun a little when he first wrote about this on TechRepublic’s IT Security blog, as it’s not some automatic upload in the background without ever telling the consumer. It does ask you during the initial setup if you would like to backup to the cloud. But it doesn’t provide a means to back up some or part of your personal information.

While it sounds a little extreme, if you’re running a private corporate network and want to keep it secure, you might want to consider blocking Android devices from connecting to it, or step up the key rotation.

(Source = TechRepublic)

Back when the Xbox 360 was launched, Microsoft did sell memory packs that you could plugin to the console and then backup your data on. Great concept, but I don’t think many people cared back then, and before long the memory cards disappeared from stores. I searched around to the local stores that deal in traded in games and consoles, but none of them had these memory packs, and nobody seemed to know how to backup your saved game profiles. I did get a couple comments about cloning the hard disk, but that wasn’t really what I was looking to do.

I spent some time searching around the internet looking for a way to do this, but all I found was details on how to use the memory packs that Microsoft no longer sells. Not very helpful at all. And with Lego Star Wars III out, I knew I had to find a solution soon or risk another corrupt profile. So I decided to roll up my sleeves and see if there was a way to do this. Low and behold, there was, and it’s actually pretty easy to do.

Microsoft may not be selling the memory cards any more, but the backup functionality is still in the console, you just need to provide the memory. That’s easy enough! Find yourself a memory card that you’re willing to dedicate to your Xbox 360, and follow these simple steps to configure the card and then backup your saved game progress.

Yes, I know this isn’t exactly mobile related. But, there is Xbox live on your Windows Phone now… So that’s close enough.

1. Get the largest USB memory stick you can afford. I’m using a 4GB card that I had sitting around the house. That’s more than enough room for now. Next time I catch a good sale, I’ll upgrade mine to a 32 or 64GB model.
2. Insert it into the USB port on your Xbox 360. My Kinect is plugged in the back, so I have this card in the front slot.
3. From the Dashboard, press the Xbox button on your controller
4. Scroll all the way to the right and select Settings, then select System, and then select Memory
5. You should now see 3 options – All Devices / Hard Drive / USB Storage Device
6. Scroll down and select USB Storage Device and then Configure Now – This will prepare the card so that the console can copy your content to it
7. When prompted to confirm, select Yes
8. Once completed, the USB Storage Device should now be called “Memory Unit”

Congratulations – you’ve now configured a memory card for use with your Xbox 360. Now for the important part of backing up your saved games.

1. From the Xbox Dashboard, press the Xbox button on your controller
2. Scroll all the way to the right and select Settings, then select System, and then select Memory
3. Scroll down and select Hard Drive
4. In this screen you will see all the content you currently have on your hard drive, you’ll need to determine what you want to back up and what you don’t. I’m just looking to backup my saved games. But if you have the space, you could back up whatever you want. Just remember, your profile is stored in the cloud, and the actual games you should already have the disc for. So there’s not much point in backing those up.
5. Scroll down to Games and select it
6. Scroll through the list of games and find the game you’re looking to backup and select it. For me it’s Lego Star Wars III.
7. The following list should show you all the content from that game that is on your hard drive. Also, if you’ve copied the game to the console, you will see it listed here.
8. Select the saved game that you wish to backup – if the saved game is from a different profile, by doing this you will become the owner of it. So make sure you repeat these steps for the content from each profile that you want to backup.
9. Once you’ve selected the saved game, you should see a menu with Copy / Move / Delete, select Copy
10. Select your newly created Memory Unit as the destination and the Xbox will copy the content to the card.

Simply repeat these steps for everything you’re looking to backup! The only thing left to do, is remembering to do this again from time to time.

As the Android market continues to explode, SPB has provided a very handy way of allowing people to move between platforms. This tool isn’t for everyone – if you already have contacts sync’ed with the cloud, then it’s a fairly high price to pay just to move your bookmarks and text messages.

The full press release is available after the break, and if you’re looking to get started with SPB Migration tool just visit http://mgrt.spb.com

January 12th, 2011 – SPB Software, a leading mobile software developer announces the release of SPB Migration Tool – a solution that helps you to migrate your personal data from old Windows Mobile or Symbian devices to a new Android smartphone.

To buy a new phone is always fun. But every change can cause the number of inconveniences at the beginning. Ask yourself a question: do you always save all of the important phone numbers to the contact list or maybe some of them are kept in the call history? When moving to the new phone these unsaved numbers can be lost without any opportunity to restore. Will you remember all of your favorite links without your old phone? Won’t it be frustrating to lose the text messages with valuable information or cherished messages from the beloved ones?

SPB Migration Tool comes as a complete solution, which allows copying your personal information like call history, text messages, contacts, and bookmarks to a new Android smartphone. What makes SPB Migration Tool unique is an easy-to-use and convenient interface. The migration can be made in several simple steps and it doesn’t require desktop to save the data on it.

Android platform is the fastest-growing mobile platform. According to IDC, 4 of top 10 Android-based smartphone vendors recorded year-on-year growth rate upwards of 100% and growing presence of Android-based smartphone suppliers. SPB Survey results show that the users tend to choose the smartphone with Android OS as their next device. The need for the handy tool that helps to migrate to Android platform grows rapidly with the amount of Android devices being sold every day.

SPB Migration Tool gives the opportunity to choose between two possible data transfer ways. One is more convenient for users who have a MicroSD card and another one is easier for those who prefer to use mobile internet on both devices. Migration can be done easily by means of inserting the MicroSD card into the old device and copying all the information there. In case when the MicroSD card is missing the online migration mode can be used instead.

The user can download the application from the mobile migration site: http://mgrt.spb.com.

The data is encrypted and deleted from the server completely after 12 hours. The detailed instructions on how to use the SPB Migration Tool can be found on the service web site: http://www.migratetoandroid.com.

“SPB Survey 2010 showed the tendency of migrating from all other platforms to Android and SPB is happy to support its customers with the right solution for it. It is much easier to get used to the new smartphone when all the favorite contacts, important text messages, recent call logs and bookmarks are kept on it. So we did our best to create the tool that facilitates the migration to the new device by making it really smooth and convenient. With SPB Migration Tool it won’t take any effort to move to the new phone,” says SPB Software CEO, Sebastian-Justus Schmidt.

I came across a bug with MyPhone while I was on vacation and out of cellular coverage. As I mentioned, the MyPhone client is set to backup my phone every night. However, since I was out of cellular coverage I disabled the radio on the phone. Why waste the battery having it try to find a cell tower when I know it won’t. However, MyPhone would still run and try to run the backup despite not having a cellular connection to work on. It would then display an error message about failing to backup. Now, I can understand that there is a need to let the user know that the backup failed. However, if the cellular radio isn’t even on, then I don’t see the point. The radio would have been turned off for a reason – MyPhone needs to check the status of the radio and respect that. I use the phone as a clock, and in the morning I grab it to see the time. Because of this, I had to clear the error before returning to the home screen and seeing the time.

MyPhone still ranks tops in my books, but Microsoft needs to address this little bug. Oh, and while you’re at it, they should also think about allowing you to name each phone that connects. As it is now, I have 5 “Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard” and 1 “Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional”. I can figure out which device the Professional one is. But I’m not sure which of the Standard ones I should be deleting. It would also be nice if I could connect multiple phones to the same MyPhone account and decide if I want to keep their information separate from each other or merged together so that they all have the exact same content. I’ve got a lot of other nice-to-have’s for MyPhone, but for now, let’s just start with fixing the problem with trying to sync even when the radio is off.

The MyPhone service will not backup your entire device. It will only consider certain items when backing up. MyPhone provides 200MB of space to backup your Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Text Messages, Photos, Video’s, Music, and Documents. On a side note, if you are already sync’ing your email, contacts, and calendar with Exchange, MyPhone will not back those up. When it comes to documents, MyPhone won’t just backup anything in your My Documents folder. It looks for specific file types that it will backup.

To get started with MyPhone, head over to MyPhone.Microsoft.com and create an account. Then grab your smartphone and browse to MyPhone.Microsoft.com/Install to download and install the device client. When you first run this client, you will be prompted to accept Microsoft’s legal terms and then sign-in using your Live ID. This will connect your phone with the account you just setup at the MyPhone website. The last thing that you need to do is select if you want to synchronize automatically or manually. The default when you select Automatically is to sync once a day in the middle of the night. This can be changed by selecting Menu / Schedule from the MyPhone app on the device. Here you can pick between Daily and Weekly and change the actual time of day that the backup runs.

When the synchronize starts, it will upload all of your data to the MyPhone website. Just so you are aware, this could take a little while, but it shouldn’t get in your way as the backup will run in the background.

In the off chance that you don’t want certain elements to be backed up, you can select Menu / Options and turn off or on the various elements. By default MyPhone won’t look at the storage card. On this screen, you can turn on backup on the storage card which will then backup the various elements that are stored on the SD card.

From the device side, that’s about all there is to MyPhone. The rest of the magic takes place on the MyPhone website.

On the MyPhone site, you can browse your contacts, documents, text messages, and everything that has been backed up. Down the left side of the screen you can see all the different elements that have been backed up. Selecting any one of them will show the contact in the middle of the screen, and the details of the highlighted item and some available options on the right hand side. Any item can be archived to the web. This will remove the item from your phone, but still keeps it in your account online and if need be, you can always push it back down to the device.

For contacts, calendar items, and tasks, you have the option to edit the item directly through the web. On the next sync, the updated version will be sent to the phone on the next sync. You can even create new contacts or calendar items directly on the web.

The 200MB storage space is a little small, but to be fair, there are not many devices out today that can hold more than 200 MB without the use of a storage card. However, I can see the amount of space available will be causing some problems with some people and it won’t take long before more and more people start hitting the limit.

What really disappoints me about MyPhone is that it doesn’t back up some of the more popular customizations like wallpaper settings, ringtones, carrier network settings, email account settings, favourites, and more. These are all key things that people don’t want to lose any more than their text messages. Backing that information up is just as important. I hope it’s something that Microsoft can add in a future build. Otherwise, this is a great product at an even better price – free.

“…the newest version of Spb Software House’s has to be considered one of the best already. Version 2.0 of Backup builds on an already solid foundation that was set in version 1.5 but layers on key functionality that allows you to backup and restore literally any aspect of your device. Some of the new features include synchronization of your backup files to your PC, the ability to intelligently determine if you are restoring data to a new device or to a device in which you have upgraded the ROM, a new user interface and ability to unpack a backup file on your PC makes this application solid choice for your backup needs.”

Clinton has recently posted a review of the new Spb Backup 2.0. Backups are something everyone should be doing on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter if it’s your mobile device or your desktop computer. If it has anything valuable on it, you need to back it up. The latest version from Spb allows you to sync the backup files with your desktop computer. It sounds like a great idea to help keep a running history from your device. Check out his full review here.

To do a complete backup of your all your PIM data on a device, I’ve been using a free application from “Dot Fred”. You can download a copy from his website – www.dotfred.net. It’s not that pretty an application, but when it comes to functionality, it’s top notch. If you’re looking at running this on a Smartphone, be prepared for a little more work as the interface is clearly designed for tapping on. It can still be used, but there’s a lot of scrolling and tabbing around at times.

PIM Backup doesn’t just backup your contacts and appointments, it also backs up the speed dial settings you’ve created along, call logs, messages, and there is even a custom option that allows you to select individual files or folders that you want to include in the backup. Once you’ve selected everything, you can select the destination for the backup along with creating a schedule for when you want it to run.

The only drawback that I have found in my use of this app, besides the poor interface for non-touch screen devices, is that it on restore it doesn’t create the mailboxes for the messages to go in. If you create the account first and then run restore, it will put them back into that inbox, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t create that account. I’m hoping that this is something that can be added in the future. For me, it’s the only thing missing on an otherwise great backup application. Regardless of that, you can’t go wrong for the price! Dot Fred has done a great job on this utility.