While we’re still waiting for our Palm Profiles to start backing up text messages and our call history, PreCentral reader Devon chimed in to let us know how to do it ourselves. Not only will this let you save your text messages for the potential of calamity – these backups can be used to transfer your messages and history to another webOS phone. The how-to of backing up and restoring is after the break.

Update: be sure to hit up the comments (especially volcom45’s) on this post before attempting – this is definitely a power-user/at-your-own risk procedure.

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Last week, on December 17th, the BlackBerry Internet Server service had a nationwide outage for a few hours, depriving BlackBerry users across the US from getting their email (though other internet services were working fine). It was an event notable primarily because there was a lot more shoulder-shrugging than I expected – it has become par for the course that BlackBerry email goes out for some users from time to time.

It got me thinking – back when something similar happened in February, 2008, Palm had a little fun and pointed out that if you use Exchange with Windows Mobile, you don’t have to worry about a third-party point-of-failure.

What about now, though, where presumably more data gets channeled through Palm’s online cloud service, the Palm Profile?  We checked and have good news, folks: everything will pretty much work. If the Palm Profile goes down, here’s the set of things that won’t work:

• Over-the-Air backups / restoration
• First-time setup
• Remote Wipe
• App purchasing

Unlike the Sidekick, data you’re syncing to the Palm Profile is stored locally on your webOS phone. Unlike the BlackBerry, your push email happens directly via Exchange or IMAP Idle, unlike the iPhone, Palm has yet to release a push notification service so there’s nothing to go down there (yeah, that last one cuts both ways).

Of course, both the Pre and Pixi need to talk to Palm’s servers for their first-use setup, so if there’s an outage that will be a problem. Otherwise take heart – if your email or data goes down on your webOS phone, you will know exactly who to complain to – your email provider or your carrier.

Update: We totally aren’t taking credit the blame for this, but not long after we posted, sister-site CrackBerry.com is reporting that the BIS is acting up again for some North Americans, breaking the BBM service and even all data. Don’t get too cocky bragging about your service, kids — it’s not like Palm hasn’t had the occasional server problem.

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We may live in a litigious society, but class action lawsuits are often effective in twisting the arms of big companies to make right what they may do wrong, and now Palm and Sprint are in the legal crosshairs. According to a class action suit filed on behalf of Jason Standiford and others similarly affected, [...]

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File under "inevitable." A class action lawsuit has been filed in California against both Palm and Sprint over the problems some people have been having with restoring their Palm Profile. The suit, filed on behalf of Jason Standiford (and others), seeks "relief for the loss of personal data suffered." The suit repeatedly alleges that Palm only keeps the most recent backup and refreshes it every 24 hours, arguing that "Once a new backup is completed, all information from previous backups becomes irretrievable." We have heard of Palm managing to grab older data, however, as even Standiford experienced:

A few weeks later, Palm contacted Standiford, having recovered some of his information.

We won’t speak to the validity, merit, or scope of the lawsuit, but we can say that more than a few people have lost data because of the issue, which to our understanding is a result of older versions of webOS not properly restoring backups made by newer versions. The best fix is to update any webOS phone with the latest OS with a ‘dummy’ profile before loading your real profile, as we have previously suggested. The second-best fix, we suppose, is to wait and see if this lawsuit squeezes any money out of either Palm or Sprint.

You can go read the entire lawsuit (in PDF form) here (via the Kansas City Star)

Thanks to GoSteelers for the tip!

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If the recent mess with Palm Profile backups has shown us anything, it’s that you all still want a desktop sync app. We don’t blame you – the cloud is nice until it starts to rain. With that in mind, we thought it time to take a look at the possibilities for a desktop syncing app, especially with respect to your Palm Profile. The question is “how do we get this data from your webOS phone to your computer?”

There are a couple of options, the most obvious being the classic-style Palm Desktop sync. You plug your phone into the computer, hit a button, and sync away. This provides a backup and sync of your data on your desktop, but it locks you into using Palm Desktop.

Given Palm’s emphasis on syncing with the cloud, we think that if there were any chance of there being desktop syncing it would come from the clouds. So that opens up two possibilities: sync to a proprietary app like Palm Desktop, or simply providing open standard feeds like CalDAV. The later would provide Palm an opportunity to flex their open source muscles by helping the WebDAV group expand to support more feeds, such as contacts, memos, and tasks. It would also take the pressure of building a desktop app off Palm’s shoulders – all you would need is any one of several compatible desktop apps to handle the syncing.

Lastly, there’s the Google-esque solution, which would be to provide a way for you to access all of your synced data from the web, through a Palm Profile version of the Google PIM webapps (e.g. Google Contacts, Google Calendar, etc).

So the question we find ourselves pondering is: which would you prefer?

What kind of webOS backup/sync solution do you want?(polls)

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While we have no evidence to suggest that the failure of Palm Profiles to successfully sync contacts to newly activated webOS devices is a widespread phenomena , it is widespread enough to be a cause of concern.  These recent developments, compounded with the Danger fiasco last month, should serve to reinforce the importance of data redundancy, even in the days of "cloud computing." To echo Dieter’s sentiments on the issue:

Our advice: your key data should always be in a minimum of three places:

1. Your Pre (where it’s persistent as long as you don’t erase anything)

2. A cloud service (Palm, Google, Exchange, etc)

3. Someplace ‘else.’ For most of us that will be your desktop, where hopefully you’re pulling down your data from Google or Exchange. If you’re using Palm’s profile exclusively, we suggest you take a look at one of the several desktop sync apps that are available now.

Aside from using third party programs like Mark/Space’s The Missing Sync or Chapura’s PocketMirror, there really isn’t an easy to take the contact information stored in the Palm Profile and export it for use in other services, such as gmail or Yahoo.  There is a utility in the works by DrewPre that’s intended to fill this void, as first reported by Derek earlier this week, but it has yet to be released to the public as of this writing.

Those who want to back up their data without parting with money are still in luck, however: utilizing the tools and resources already made available to us by members of the webOS community, it is possible to back up the contents of your Palm Profile, and even export the contacts contained therein to the cloud service of your choice.

Here’s how.

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