I am no longer one of the few worried about investing too much time in free online services. See Jason Perlow’s post concerning Flickr (my previous example) with the recent resignation of Jerry Yang and the possibility Yahoo! may tank. If you have made heavy use of Flickr and have assumed your image collection is safe, Perlow explains how to backup your images.
My use of Flickr does not really exemplify the situation that concerns Perlow. I use Flickr mostly as a backup for a subset of the larger collection I keep on several of the computers we own. I am still interested in this topic because I would hate to promote a service and then learn that folks who follow my recommendations end up losing their investment of time.
This is one of the dangers of promoting tech applications. For several editions of our textbook, we used HyperStudio as our main example when discussing student multimedia authoring. Soon after the printing of one edition, HyperStudio pretty much dropped off the map. We switched to products from eZedia for our most recent edition. Soon after publication, eZedia was purchased by Safari Video and development seemed to slow with the emphasis on video access more so than student authoring. However, HyperStudio rebounded with a commitment from MacKiev and the return of the original founder Roger Wagner.
There is probably a message or two here. Textbooks are too slow for the pace of change in some areas – use the web (we try). Never assume too much from a service you did not purchase. Backup often.
