Can cloud services be trusted?

The best person to keep your data safe might be you

Matthew Knell writes about how he used to keep his photos on Kodak’s online service. He trusted them so much, he doesn’t have the originals to many of his pictures anymore.

Now Kodak are charging for their Photo Gallery and the choice is stark: Pay up or your photos get it.

“Stupid to put my photos exclusively in the hands of a brand I trusted? Perhaps. But I believed the hype and trusted Kodak to do the right thing with my content — forever. These were my photos, my data, and I had confidence that they would do the right thing. These were my Kodak memories. I had five years of trusted transactions with this company.”

Interestingly Kodak’s site in the UK still appears to have the original storage policy. But this is likely to change and this won’t be the last freemium service to start charging.

My favourite online video editing system, Jumpcut closed yesterday. This was innovative, collaborative and almost certainly ahead of its time. The ability to remix video simply and quickly is a big loss to creative brains.

And the real shock? Jumpcut was part of Yahoo. It  bought the site in late 2006. I thought this was a very positive move and that the investment would secure Jumpcut’s longevity.

But forever can be a very short amount of time.