Backup Your Life , Before it Dies...

I am very delighted as I started writing my first blog article of 2012. Happy new year to one and all. I thought for a while on what is going to be the topic for this article, as I wanted it to be quite unique, non technical, informative to readers. So, there strikes a question which always haunted me... 

Is It Possible to Backup Life ?

 

Days, months, years are passing by as quick as 5 minutes snooze of morning alarm, which you never feel. Hundreds of people that we meet, hangouts with friends, events that we participate in, numerous social engagements, the places that we visit, images that we capture, sports that we play, seminar that we present, innovations that we make, heights that we achieve and the list just goes on.

But we tend to forget all these very quickly, people are lost in day-today engagements, an aggressive life style where things change very drastically.

I always thought, how good it will if I could remember or document all those things which I do everyday, and could exactly recount what I was doing on a particular day of the year when asked.. and the list just doesn't end here , it grows even further with many more wishes like,

• Whom all I met in the years passed.
• What problems I worked on.
• What all the topics which grabbed my attention.
• Which all the places that I have visited.
• The sports that I played.
• Images that I captured.
• Parties that I attended. 

How can I backup all these information in a structured way ?

If I were thrown this question a couple of years back probably I would have had no answer. But now certainly we can address these questions by leveraging the power of web services. In the recent days web has evolved beyond our expectations, with could computing and easy access to internet one could reap the benefits of web services without any hassle.

Below is the brief description of how we can make use of free web services and applications to address all the issues mentioned above, and precisely " How can be backup our lives ".

People whom I met. 

Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn will fit the bill in addressing this concern. With the boom in social networking one can keep in touch his friends effortlessly. Now a days people from internet community are found at-least on one of the social networking site, and this is enough to keep in touch with the person of interest.

Building circles based on my profession and interests.

" Google Plus " is the answer. As most people say Google Plus is for geeks, being a networking site, G+ is heading in right direction in bringing like minded people from every corner of the world. And it  doesn't even expect that the participating members to be friend of each other.

Google Plus is a huge stream of free flowing information source which anyone can listen to. You just need to circle all the people, pages which you are interested in and they will keep you updated about latest technological innovations as you listen to their streams.

Articles which grabbed my interest.

A simple one word answer " Tweet " , tweet more, tweet all those articles which you found interesting. Unknowingly you are backing up all those articles of your interest and in future if you look back you end up having a well structured catalog of articles which you can refer back to.

Places that I have visited.

"Google Latitude" is the perfect application which you can use to keep record of all the places that you visit. Each time you visit a new place, mark it on Google latitude with the help of GPS, that's all. The records are saved in your Google account, ready to be referred back at any point in future.

Pictures that I have captured.

Online photo stores like Picasa, Flicker, Tumblr, will assist in keeping your pictures safe and lets you share your photographs with your friends, and get feedback on them. With the help of these applications you can let the world know that hidden artist within you. 

I want to keep my articles and notes safe for future reference.

Use " Evernote ", a quick note taking and documenting application which is platform and device agnostic, which can be used from anywhere and you are ensured that always you get the most updated data. No matter from whichever device you have edited the information it is all there synched on all the devices.

I want a Document repository which I could share with others.

" Dropbox " is the perfect application for you. Dropbox allows users to backup documents online which is ready to be extracted from anywhere and on any device. Dropbox also allows you to share some selected documents with your friends and hence helps in synchronizing between multiple people working on same documents.

Where can I backup my hobby projects.

"GitHub" a web hosting service for software projects. You can create your repository on this server and backup your code. You can also share repository with team members and it assists in combined efforts of a software development team.

And lastly....

I'm interested in knowing what is happening in others life

After all this is a basic instinct of human race. I don't need to mention the web service for this purpose, but this article would be incomplete if I don't mention it. Use " Facebook ", to be connected with people. That's all and the rest you only know.

With this, we have come to the end of this article. I hope following these would certainly help in backing up ones Social engagements, interests, views, skills, facts, desires, hopes, memories and what not. and hence you can " BACKUP YOUR LIFE".