You know, until I actually got the email from Yahoo, I’d forgotten I had a Yahoo Briefcase.  But then I remembed… yes!  Not just one, either, but three, all under different accounts.

That is because all they gave you was 20 MB of space.  When Yahoo first unveiled it, that was enough, but now it’s so small it’s a joke.

Google of course blew that up by giving everyone … what was it?  A whopping 2 gig of free space in their email?  Now it’s up above 7?

Yet poor old little Yahoo Briefcase … still sitting there with it’s pitiful little 20 MB allotments.  A place of several billion forgotten little files.  Abandoned.

That is, until Yahoo sent out the notice that it was closing Briefcase.  Now suddenly the site is all a flurry, more activity than it’s seen in years.  People going out to find what it is, exactly, they’d left up there, and hoping to download it before Yahoo pulls the plug.

Me, I found old copies of manuscripts, a whole collection of old programs for my long gone Sony Clie, a couple of Linux apps (I have no idea why I saved), some little jewels like Microsoft Private Folder (which they yanked almost immediately, so if you have it, you have it, but it you don’t, you’re not getting it from Microsoft).

Altogether I pulled down just a little over 30 MB of files from my three Yahoo Briefcase accounts.  I’ve put them all into one folder, “Yahoo Briefcase Archive,” and I’m going to put it…

You guessed it.

Up on one of my free 25 gig Microsoft SkyDrive accounts.

I have seen so many of these online storage systems come and go, and the one I (and many others) have been waiting for, the mythical Google Gdrive, will probably never surface.  And I have to wonder how long Microsoft is willing to foot the bill for all those free 25 gig folders out there?

A year?  Two?  Then I’ll be pulling all of it down again, to put it … oh,who knows where?  Probably on a dirt cheap 500 gig micro SD card that I’ll no doubt lose amid the flotsom and jetsom at the bottom of my desk drawer.

Anyway, I do have to send out my thanks to the folks at Yahoo who did in fact host all these files for me for all these years.

I suppose next on the Yahoo chopping block will be Geocities.

This was originally published back in November 2008 … I brought it back to the top because they’re getting some bad bloggery over at BoingBoing, and receiving what I think is an unfair beating.  After all, they didn’t get to tell their side of the story.  Anyway…

A while ago I crushed my iPhone by accidentally running it over with my car.

I considered getting a new one, or having it repaired, or simply abandoning it. I came close to abandoning it. I even bought the antithesis of the iPhone to replace it, the Zen feature-free nothing-but-a-phone Motorola F3.

The folks at iResq.com read my blog and contacted me, saying they could fix it. At first I didn’t know if I wanted it fixed (I know, crazy talk, right?) but after speaking with them and checking up on their company, I decided to go for it. After all, crushing your iPhone under a car tire kind of voids the warranty, so what did I have to lose? Besides, they charge way less than Apple, while still being Apple certified.

I was once Apple certified. While working at ComputerLand back in the 80’s I used to repair Apple II’s, IIe’s, IIgs, Apple Lisa, and the original Mac. I know what you have to go through to get Apple certified, and these guys are, so I knew they must have their act together. Plus, they’re a really friendly group of people. I like them.

So I sent it off, and the same day they got it, they fixed it and overnighted it right back to me.

I now have the iPhone back in my life. It’s as good as new. And everything is still there!

So here’s another difference: from what I understand, when you send your iPhone in to repair with Apple, they hand you back an already-repaired replacement phone. You have to go through activation again, and migrate all your stuff over to it, etc.

Me, I just plugged mine in and … everything is fine, exactly the way it was!

I’m up and running again!

So, you’ll be seeing iResq ads on my sites for a while. I am extremely happy with them. The iResq folks are my heroes, and I hereby officially proclaim them to be Groovy Gizmo Gurus.

You know, it will depend on the kid.  Some will thing this is so fun they won’t get off the pot, and others … they’ll end up on lithium.

So, when is a groovy gizmo not a groovy gizmo?

When it’s actually a strange ad to get you to move into the arctic circle:

PomegranatePhone.com

Warning:  Extremely high bandwidth site, but worth it.

(I was fooled up until it claimed you could use it as a projector.  I was shouting “Bullshit!” at the screen after that.)