Put not your faith in cloud services: they may go away

From John Dvorak:

I have complained about the fly-by-night nature of these companies for years, but my concern now seems misplaced. I was concerned about operations that you depend on for deep cloud services. This means complex programs running on the cloud with no real alternative. Over time, I've tended to see these companies as more stable than the "Use our free service. You won't regret it!" model.

I was taken to task by numerous vendors who kept telling me that I was full of crap, because cloud services are professionally managed, and nobody could do the job—whatever the job was—better than a room of pros. With the cloud, the pros would also keep the data safe.

Yeah, until they were all laid off, and the service shut down!

Now here's the problem I am experiencing second-hand. The audio podcast I do with Adam Curry, the No Agenda Show (Google it), has been using Drop.io to store podcast album cover images for convenience. They will all be destroyed, as well as the accumulation of links, tips, curiosities, and other valuable information, in the next few weeks.

Looking back on the idea of using this service, I didn't fully consider the ramifications of its discontinuance despite my skepticism about cloud services in general. You know, this was just a lot of weird stuff thrown into a bin. But once it was discontinued, it was apparent what you are left with: dead links.