With more and more work being done "in the cloud" with web-based applications that store data on a remote server, edited through a web browser (or specialized client application), you'll want to backup the remote data locally.
The way to do this is to export the data using a tool that automates the process. For example, Google Docs Backup.
One of the nice things about Application Service Providers is that they save you from installing and updating software. The big risk is that they'll upgrade and leave your older documents unusable.
Legacy data in traditional backup scenarios is managed in two ways: one is pickling, where an entire system and software stack is retained to read the data. Another way to manage legacy data is to convert it to newer, more useful formats, or to older generic formats.
Cloud computing leaves you only the latter option. So, applications like Google Docs Backup try to convert the data to something generic.
The simplest way to backup an IMAP email account, like a Gmail or Aol Mail account, is to use desktop client software.
Two popular services, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, don't support IMAP, so, you're kind of "out of luck" with them.
The rest seem to support IMAP.
Two popular IMAP mail clients are Outlook Express (now called Mail), and Thunderbird (from Mozilla). Both are nice because they allow you to create local files, and also save the email in industry standard formats like .eml and .mbox.
You can also script Outlook Express to do some of your dirty work.
The typical backup solution is to create local folders -- folders that aren't stored on the server -- and copy the server's data into these local folders.
There are also IMAP sync tools that copy all the data from one IMAP account to another. These very in speed, and most aren't fase enough for frequent backups, but, they can be used to copy the data over.
If you don't have a second IMAP server (and you probably don't), consider using something like Debian to set up an internal mail server that's used only to hold backups.
TBD
Usually, a web host will give you FTP access to a directory and a web interface. A button in the web interface will produce a .ZIP file with the database contents, and you can download it via FTP.
If you have shell access, and you run a Unix at home, and develop your own website, you can use this script. It dumps the remote database, and then loads it into a local copy of your database.
#! /bin/bash echo echo Dumping db to db.mysql. echo Type your password. ssh launion@webhost.net mysqldump -u uname '-p--remotepw---' database_name > db.mysql echo Loading mysql -u root '-p----password----' database_name < db.mysql
It's really just two lines of typing, but having it scripted is nice.
TBD