I have had a keen interest in the online storage space for sometime.

It all started in 2003 when I had a hard drive go bad and spent 24 hours frantically copying my personal files to CD. That only happens once to anybody. I now backup things across my home network using SmartBackup for the PCs and Synk for the Macs. What I wanted to do was send the files off site, but that was cost prohibitive.

Then in the fall of 2004 Robert Cringely wrote an article called “´Cause Backing-up is Hard to Do” that caught my attention. Cringely suggested that a peer-to-peer backup solution would solve the cost issue. That got me to thinking. It would indeed solve the cost issue, but create a privacy issue that in my mind is way too big a leap for must Internet users to make.

I was not only thinking, but I was also trying services on the market and calculating how much it would cost to deliver a solid service. It turned out that most of the services that I tried were lacking in terms of user experience and the cost to deliver the service was rapidly falling. It felt a little bit like the Internet access market of 1994.

Just as Internet access changed things forever, people taking advantage of the availability of broadband Internet access and the falling price of data storage to put music, photos, movies and other aspects of their life into a digital format will profoundly change the way we live our lives over the next five years. As people embrace this digital lifestyle a strong need to securely store, access, share and publish these digital files is emerging. This is going to be big. Fred Wilson, whose opinion I respect a good deal, agrees with this point of view.

Evidently so does Google. There is a big GDrive brouhaha going on today. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch has a fascinating summary. Aaron of box.net and Nik from OmniDrive have good points of view.

Mine is a simple question. Would you trust Google with your most personal data?

I have asked that question a lot. The answer is always no.

And I am not buying the story that your average consumer is too dumb to know. Consumers are smart. You are one of them.

I am a big Apple fan with a PowerBook, iMac, and a couple of iPods. The thoughtfullness and design that normally goes into the user experience is unsurpassed.

How did they come up with the iPod Hi-Fi? What were they thinking?

The Bose SoundDock has it beat on looks and design. I just cannot image the Hi-Fi sitting in a bedroom. The Bose also costs $50 less.

I have not heard either of these systems play, and weighing in at a whooping 10 pounds more than the Bose, perhaps the iPod Hi-Fi sounds better. But it sure is ugly.

I expect more from Apple.

Dear Elena is one of the most powerful things I have read in a long, long time. Wow.

Yesterday Om Malik speculated that EarthLink might spin off its muni wireless business. Om is one connected guy, but as the person who started EarthLink’s wireless business I have a different perspective on what they might be doing.

One thing you have to always remember about EarthLink. They are not in the technology business. They are in the service business. They use technology to deliver the services that consumers want. They do not have deep expertise in developing consumer applications.

EarthLink has a nice little pile of cash these days. On top of that their core business, dial up Internet access is throwing off tons of it. The problem is their core business is dying and their primary growth business, broadband, has smaller margins. The reason for this is that they have not been able to work out the type of deals that they want with the RBOCs and cable companies. Strategically they are not in a great place. They gotta do something.

The first of that something is expanding into the mobile wireless business. This has now taken the form of Helio, which will be launching in the not too distant future with high end products. Deep consumer mobile application products.

The second of that something is the muni wireless effort. How as a service company, EarthLink has never felt the need or wanted to run a large network. Just like the MVNO play, they buy network access at wholesale prices, bundle it up and sell it at a profit. But they can’t get their paws on the broadband pipes in the manner they want. Hence the Wi-Fi play. EarthLink may be willing to partner with a large network operator to run the network for them at acceptable margins, but I do not see another joint venture.

What I do see them thinking about is how to bring EarthLink (including muni), Boingo, and Helio together when the world of converged Wi-whatever and 3G networks emerges down the road.

They get their pipe, have deeper IP in consumer apps, and the potential for growth.

At all started when I met Joe Reger.

Joe has an interesting data blogging company called Reger.com. I was talking to Joe one day about my personal Web site. It recently had a facelift, and while the folks at Brandego that helped me did a fine job, it was lacking something. Joe told me to go read it in front of a mirror, which I did. It read like a press release.

I have no intention of being a press release. I want to be me. I had lost my voice! I don’t know and I don’t care where. I just know that I needed to find it. But how?

As things go, Joe knows a diva named Toby Bloomberg who is somewhat of a blog marketing expert. I asked for an introduction and the three of us sat down to talk. One of the first things out of Toby’s mouth was that “you are nothing like your site”. Toby convinced me within about 20 seconds that I needed to blog to get my voice back or in her words, “unsuit your suit”, which I thought was pretty funny, pretty on target, and actually considered it for the title of the blog.

So here I am.

I am blogging to find my voice again, learn about this new corner of the Internet, see how it might work for my clients, and shameless self-promotion.

I am going to write about things that I am passionate about: my experiences being an entrepreneur, consumer technology, how to grow technology companies, and all the important customer experience. Periodically I will post about more personal things.

So, here we go, let’s have fun!