Embracing weightless data

I can't stop talking about the MacBook Air. It's so thin, so light and so gosh-darn sexy (in the way that only a machine shaped like a two thousand-dollar toilet lid can be). Since the topic seems to have worn thin with my kids — my 4-year-old insists that the lack of a Firewire port is ludicrous and my 2-year-old is threatening to "...go Edubuntu" just to spite me — I'm going to share my thoughts with you.

Adam Lisagor got it right when he called the Air "...a conceptual shift in personal computing." As has happened many times before, Steve Jobs has seen the future. He knows where technology is going, and he knows what you and I will need when we get there.

Specifically, the computer will become a mobile access point for all of your stuff, not a bulging brief case. With your documents living off-site, all you'll need is an interface between you and your "weightless data." A portable, hyper-wireless machine is it.*

People will resist. Remember in 2000 when Apple asked us to fit an 8" cube into a slot previously occupied by a bondi-colored canned ham? People balked, and the Cube was discontinued a little more than a year after its introduction. Still, Apple knew that small computers would have a place in the market. Such is the case with weightless data.

In this post, I've compiled several ways you can go weightless with your stuff right now. Let me stress that this solution suits my needs perfectly – but yours may be different. If you do a lot of online writing, you'll find this useful. If not, I'm sure you'll still find it interesting.

I've placed my files into five categories:

1. Documents
2. Media (music and movies)
3. Photos
4. Email
5. Contacts

Each can easily be stored online. Let's start with documents.

I have three types of documents: "Reference," "Support" and what I call "Open." Reference documents – like serial numbers and retail receipts – don't require me to do anything, but may be useful in the future.

Support documents are specific to a project. For example, while writing this post I researched online storage solutions. That information became the support documents for this article.

Finally, "open documents" are things I'm actively working on, like blog posts, articles and so on. This post, for example, was an open document whilst I prepared it for publication.

Here's how I use each type online.

Online Storage

All of my documents live on my Apple iDisk (There are many online storage options, like BingoDisk, .Mac, and Amazon S3). I've created two folders on my iDisk: "Reference" and "Support." They contain twenty six folders each, labeled "A" through "Z" – a simple alphabetic filing system. Within the "Reference/R" folder is another folder labeled "Receipts," where I keep records of online purchases. Within the "Support/T" folder is another labeled "TUAW," where I store research for articles. I consider my iDisk an electronic filing cabinet.

So what about the open documents? Read on.

Online Productivity

I write all of my articles with ThinkFree, an online alternative of Microsoft Office. It feels like Microsoft Word, and lets you store, categorize and tag your documents. You can export to familiar formats (like Word, Excel and Powerpoint) for sharing with others, and features like spell check and type styles (italics, bold, etc.) work as you'd expect. I can access those files from any computer, at any time. Best of all, it's free.

Email

I love browser-based email providers. With Gmail, .Mac and the magic of IMAP, my messages live online, and not on my computer.

Bookmarks

I'd be lost without my web bookmarks. As a Firefox user, I've installed Google's Browser Sync plugin. It stores my bookmarks on Google's servers, and updates the list automatically as I make changes. Also, changes I make on one computer will show up on another, so everything is up-to-date.

Contacts

I tried to keep my Gmail and .Mac address books up-to-date, but it was a pain. So, I use 37Signal's Highrise, which lets me manage contacts, keep track of exchanges, schedule tasks and more. If I "lost it all" at home, my contact information would be waiting for me at Highrise.

Photos

I use Apple's iPhoto to mange my digital photos. The photo library itself lives on an external drive connected to my computer. My favorites get uploaded to Flickr in their full-resolution glory. The bonus is If my computer died tomorrow, I'd be able to connect my external drive to a new one and retain all of my photographs. If the external drive died as well, I could download my favorites from Flickr.

Music and Movies

As with photos, my music and movies live on an external drive connected to my computer. I also use a service called Bandwagon to keep all of those files backed up. For $12US/year, you can enjoy automatic backups of your entire iTunes library, as well as synchronization of those files across two computers. Now that's a deal!

So there you have it – all of my beloved files, safely stored off of my computer, available anywhere. Weightless data.

*I know what you're going to say, and you're right. The MacBook Air as we know it today is hardly a "hyper-wireless machine." But this is its initial release, and I imagine future updates will include networking that isn't dependent on a Wi-Fi connection.