Modern Communicator: Backing up mobile phone contacts!

I've been having major problems recently with my Orange SPV M3100 phone. Namely, it's failed twice in the last month. Each time means calling up Orange and requesting a replacement.

It's not the replacement issues that bother me. It's the loss of data each time. If you're like me, and keep hundreds of contacts on your phone, you will have wondered what happens if you loose them!

Bitter experience has taught me that if you take your SIM card and put it in an older handset, you may find many of your contacts wiped. (I think the limit is just under 200 on older Nokia's, for example).

Unfortunately, the SPV M3100 doesn't have any in-built backup options. My previous phone (SPV M1000) allowed you to back up to the Orange Server, to in-built memory, and to an SD card. It's follow-on doesn't have anything. If it goes wrong, you're in the shit!

Nick Saalfeld on the 'True Business' blog makes some nice points about online storage. He's right. Our 'techno' lives mean that our data lives somewhere out there in the great, big, interweb thing.

Thank god though, for a simple, free, open source service called 'myFUNAMBOL'. It's the only service I could find that allows me to back up numbers, calendar, and messages in one place on my particular phone model. I tried it yesterday and it works perfectly. If I could recommend one feature for improvement, i'd ask the creators to install options for exporting data. Sure, you can synchronise with Outlook, but a few alternatives would be great guys!