I'm diligent with my backups. Probably more so than just about anyone who reads this. I have a constant backup to a 500GB network hard disk via Apple's set-and-forget Time Machine and I do manual monthly backups to a different 1TB drive, snapshots of my entire disk. Insurance.

But my backup strategy has the same limitation of most people's approach: if something happens to my house (a thorough break-in and theft, fire, meteor strike, etc) (alright, the last is less likely than the former!) then I'm hosed. Worst case scenario: Someone rips off my laptop while I'm on a business trip and simultaneously there's a fire and my house burns down. No backups. Nothing. Including the literally tens of thousands of irreplaceable photos of my children and our lives together, as well as my travels, manuscripts for my books, and much more.

The solution is something that wasn't an option even five years ago: a backup into the so-called cloud, where the data all lives in a secure data storage facility. I've looked at options, but with almost 400GB of data in my personal document folder, pictures, movies, etc., the cost was prohibitive. Then a friend mentioned she really liked Backblaze and I saw that they offered unlimited backup space on their cloud servers for $5/mo. That's cheap enough. But does it really work?

The idea of being able to access all my files and data from anywhere on the Internet is darn tempting. Imagine having a multi-terrabyte file server that only you - and people you invite - can share, and imagine it's fast, easy to set up, and surprisingly inexpensive. Enter the oddly-named Pogoplug. For under $100 (at Buy.com) it does a great job of creating your own personal Internet file server.

CloudEngines has a pleasantly modern sensibility and the documentation that they included with the review unit had a "popcorn test": betting that you could configure it and get going faster than you could microwave a bag of popcorn. Confident, but they would have lost the bet with me...