If you're at all like me, you like to have multiple backups of your system. Sure, a local backup--or several actually!--is a basic part of the program, but aside from the most obvious, it's also good to have an offsite back up system firmly in place. For me, Bitcasa seems to offer a great deal ($99/year for Infinite Cloud Storage) to the average joe to solve the catastrophic fears in the back of our little tech-oriented minds. Aside from this, they offer free iOS apps so that you can litterally have access: manipulate ('send' or 'share'), and in some cases 'view' (basic content such as pictures, movies, and documents) right on your portable device...and since the amount of storage is 'Infinite' you can litterally put anything and everything you want up on their cloud--even files that you cannot 'view' on the app, simply because you are still allowed to manipulate them (send/share) with colleagues, friends and family for extended and complete file sharing capabilities. At $99/year, it's a steal.
There's One Caveat at This Stage of Bitcasa's Evolution: Your Have to Get Your Hands A Little Dirty--
One thing about Bitcasa is that to fully use what they offer--what they call 'mirroring' (of folders)--you have to really get into your file directory and root around to make sure that all aspects of your system that you want to be 'mirrored' (to Bitcasa Servers), ARE. They offer a partially automated system when you set up their Mac app on your system, but it's really just a 'skim coat' when it comes to getting a good 'Mirror' of your system to the cloud: basic files like pictures, videos, and documents are fairly automated...Unless you've got your stuff stored in places on your Mac or Windows Machine that are not the most obvious of locations. That being the case, you will have to 'point' Bitcasa at those files or folders by 'mirroring' them To Bitcasa (an easy choice in the contextual pop up menu that appears) when you (right)tap/click on the particular (or any) folder or file once you have the Bitcasa app up and running on your machine.
Even to the non-tech oriented Bitcasa's app will make the set up and implementation of their service easy and automatic. Since basic files and folders are going to be mirrored once you say 'yes' to the prompt "Mirror this computer to Bitcasa?", most people will find this sufficient for their purposes. For those of us that want more, the lanscape is open and beconing: you can 'Mirror' everything and anything you want except where the OS will not allow you to because of "security issues". That leaves A LOT that you can configure.
Here's a cool thing that I discovered today:
Photo Stream Automatically Uploaded to Bitcasa:
By 'mirroring' this folder 'volume/user/home folder/pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters' you can cause your PhotoStream photos to auto upload to your Bitcasa Infinite Drive. This is nice since it uses your Mac or PC and iCloud and Bitcasa Services to do the heavy lifting. There is a 'connect to camera' feature on the Bitcasa iOS app, but if you have this folder mirrored on your Mac then you can forego this as iCloud is already doing a lot of this through PhotoStream (as long as you have that feature enabled) on your system and devices. Note: If you are using Aperture or some other Mac app to import your photos other than iPhoto, then you will have to amend the file path above accordingly.
Finding little things like this makes me smile. It's fun. Off I go to find more and when I do, I'll surely share.
Happy Tech-ing.