ZYB is a free online service that allows you to backup all your mobile data, contacts and calendar easily through your cell phone and pda.

Synchronization (between cell phone and the service) can be done periodically, chosen at anytime during the day and at any frequency. Whenever you sync, a copy of your data is stored securely on their server. If you delete some data by mistake, that data is easily restored by using restore points from ZYB to retrieve what’s lost. A new restore point is created just before each sync.

At the 2007 3GSM World Congress, they launched an extra feature that added SMS storage as well. The SMS backup service is the first of its kind as it combines with the users own contact list and works for all mobiles - regardless of operators. Apart from the standard SMS rate charged by operators, backing up your SMS will initially be free.

This is an invaluable service for your mobile gadget that will decrease the dependence on SIM card storage, allow easy transfer of data between mobile gadgets and ease your fears of losing your important data.

ZYB Supported Phones
ZYB Product Page

The buzz this week was that of OpenID, where Kevin Rose announced at The Future Of Web Apps conference in London that Digg would adopt OpenID. This comes after Microsoft and AOL’s announcements.

So what exactly is OpenID? Think of it as a mechanism that allows you to use one login for multiple websites.

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If you want to try out the TouchStone software we reviewed last week, let us know. We have 5 TouchStone Beta invites to give out. Testing is by invite only so don’t miss your chance! Just leave your name and email address in the comments so we’ll know where to send it to.

* Tip: to make sure that your email address is not displayed to the world, put it in the “email address” field of the comments form.

Update: Touchstone is now Particls

Update: We have TouchStone Invites to give out for free. Click here for more details.

We have had the pleasure of getting an invite to test the Touchstone Beta this past week.

What is it?

For those who have not heard about it yet, Touchstone is a free desktop app that helps you track important changes in your favorite sites by displaying live alerts. Think of it like a highly filtered RSS Reader that is intelligent enough to pick out the articles you.

It looks at incoming information (like RSS, Atom Feeds, Emails and Gmail), runs them through a set of filters (as specified and administered by you) and outputs the results in a horizontally scrolling ticker on the top of your desktop. The alerts and notifications can be tailored to how important you feel it is. Optionally, it could intelligently scan your computer, learn and recommend keywords based on what you have done in the past.

It is an output adapter that “consumes only the amount of attention required for the relevancy of the alert - something they call The Policy of Diminishing Attention Consumption.

In essence, it gives you the alerts and news that you want without sifting through lists of RSS readers and email.

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Brian King of BeeTooBee.com has surveyed 287 Web 2.0 startups that were posted on the TechCrunch forum, coming up with his own “2007 Web 2.0 Idol”.

His measurements were compiled within a time length of 40 days and based on 2 aspects i.e. the interest of the forum community with how many views were made and the number of comments on the thread.

It wasn’t a surprise to see that the top 2 startups fitted the current trend of the web - a video feed multimedia site (in the style of YouTube) and a content sharing Digg-like site. The most popular categories were social networking (with 39 companies) followed by Search (27) and Media Sharing (21). The lack of unique startups surveyed makes me wonder how many of them were started to jump on the bandwagon without proper thought and business models. It is indicative of how saturated the web is with social networking, search and media sharing sites.

Brian certainly did a good job and the list was pretty interesting. However, I thought that several other measurement factors could have been added in the mix i.e. how much it was talked about on Google, its visual appearance and functionality.

The full list with each startup’s info can be seen on the BeeTooBee site.

Web 2.0 Idol List [BeeTooBee]