By WALT ZWIRKO / WFAA-TV
The Internet has a "cloud." That's the word tech types use to describe the place where millions of us now store our e-mail, our photos, and other important personal information.
Like a real cloud, the Internet "cloud" is (at least to us) rather ill-defined and ever-changing.
When you use Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo to look at your electronic mail, you don't know where the computer is that is storing all that information for you. It could be anyplace on Earth; you have just come to expect that typing the correct information into your Web browser will let you read your mail.
Similarly, users of Snapfish, Picasa and Shutterfly entrust their precious photos to these Web sites for sharing and storage.
That's why it's extremely disheartening to learn that users of T-Mobile's Sidekick cell phone who relied on the "cloud" to store their contacts and other personal data just got some bad news: The data — managed by the Danger subsidiary of Microsoft — is apparently gone.
"Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device — such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos — that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure," said a statement to users posted on T-Mobile's Web site.
The statement indicated that while engineers are continuing to try and resolve the problem, "the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low."
One user of the popular messaging phone summed up his feelings this way on a T-Mobile online forum: "I am devastated ... I can't even begin to tell you what I've lost."
The original Sidekick wasn't sophisticated enough to store all this information in memory contained within the handset, so it transmitted that data to the Microsoft/Danger computers in the "cloud."
And that's the danger of the "cloud."
Unfortunately, because of the Sidekick's design, owners had limited options for making backup copies of their personal information.
But if you're using the "cloud" for storing your photos, e-mail, names and numbers using other smartphones or your computer, let this be a warning: Make backup copies of important information on memory cards or USB drives or CDs or DVDs.
It can take some time, and it's not always convenient, but try to imagine life without your favorite photos, or without that list of 1,000 contacts you've carefully cultivated over the past several years.
T-Mobile says it will credit Sidekick users with one month of service "to address any inconvenience." That's a small gesture, however, for many loyal customers.
"I just want to give hell to whom is responsible for this," another user said on the T-Mobile forum.