bandwagon posts

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Odds and ends, Apple, iPhone

Spotting celebs with the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on May 14th, 2008

Obama and Lindsay Lohan are far from the only people rocking the iPhone lately -- a new site called "Coolspotters" claims to track brands and the celebrities that use them, and the iPhone is pretty cool lately. 32 celebrities have been spotted -- everyone from Mike Tyson to Heidi Klum to Rose McGowan (pictured, though that really could be anyone, couldn't it?). In fact, the Apple iPhone is actually the most popular product on the site right now -- one spot above something called the Omnipeace t-shirt (yes, but does it have a multitouch screen?), and two spots above the MacBook Air.

Because everyone knows you need a site to tell you that what you own is cool, right? Of course, they are cheating a little bit -- I don't think the fact that Steve Jobs is using something necessarily makes it cool. Otherwise, we'd all have seen celebs toting around Newtons.

Still, if seeing celebs use the same product you have is your thing, the iPhone's got you covered there, too. Can't say it influenced my purchase much, but good to see that the rich and famous are catching on to what's been TUAW's favorite tech-cessory for a while.

[via Kottke]

Tags: bandwagon, celebrities, coolspotters, heidi-klum, iphone, mike-tyson, trends

Filed under: Retail, Software, Internet Tools, iTunes

Bandwagon iTunes backup service 50% off on MacZOT today only

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Jul 12th, 2007

Bandwagon, the clever automated iTunes backup service (with a future promise of synching libraries), has certainly been making the discount news lately. Last week they whipped out a deal with DreamHost customers, and now their $24/year service is only $12 at MacZOT today only. I haven't had a chance to leave Bandwagon reliably running to get a good feel for how well it works. For the limited time I've been using it so far though, it has reliably been backing up my iTunes library to my FTP space at the steady upload bandwidth limit I set, and I'm on song 51 now.

While everyone at TUAW recommends you secure a good backup solution for all your data, Bandwagon is a great, simple option for alternatively backing up your iTunes library to FTP space that's just waiting for something to store. If you're interested though, you'd better jump on the deal because MacZOT offers discounts on each app for one day only; when they're gone, they're gone.

Tags: backup, bandwagon, discounts, ftp, itunes, maczot

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, iTunes

DreamHost offers free year of Bandwagon iTunes backup and sync service

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Jul 4th, 2007

It sure has been getting easier lately to use an account with web hosting behemoth DreamHost to back up your Mac. We found some good ideas for this back in April, but now DreamHost has gone one step further and partnered up with Bandwagon, a web-based iTunes backup service we found in March. In one of their annoyingly lengthy blog posts (scroll to the end of it), DreamHost unveiled that they are now offering a free one-year membership to Bandwagon's DIY services to all DreamHost customers, available through the end of July. This is a great deal, especially if you have both an expanding iTunes library and a massive chunk of storage at DreamHost just waiting for something to do.

To access the offer, current DreamHost customers need only to go to the new Partners Page in the DreamHost control panel, then click on the Bandwagon logo to be taken to the Bandwagon signup page with the coupon code already inserted. The rest of the setup is pretty straight-forward, though I think I should share the solution I developed for a slight snag I ran into: For whatever reason, Bandwagon's FTP client couldn't log into my DreamHost account to begin uploading my iTunes library until I created a brand new FTP user. I don't know if this will hold true for everyone, but it's probably a good idea from a security standpoint anyway, take that advise how you will.

So far, after finally signing up for Bandwagon and getting everything going, I'm pretty happy with the service. Bandwagon's account manager can display statistics of what kinds of data and how many you have stored online. I'll have to see how the rest of the upload process on my 6396 item iTunes library fares before I say much more, but until then this sounds like a great deal that DreamHost customers shouldn't pass up.

Tags: backup, bandwagon, dreamhost, ftp, itunes, online, storage, sync

Filed under: Internet Tools, iTunes

Bandwagon iTunes backup revamps pricing plans

by Michael Rose (RSS feed) on Mar 2nd, 2007

As Mat noted a couple weeks ago, the ambitious team at Xackup announced, then thought better of it and retracted, Bandwagon: an unlimited-storage service for iTunes backups to run over your Internet connection. Greedy fiends that we iTunes users are, with visions of multigigabyte libraries dancing in our heads, we apparently shocked and awed Bandwagon into the just-announced revamped pricing plan.

The new plan offers iTunes backup for $1 monthly, and backup + sync between two Macs for $1.50. Cheap, no? The catch: this is BYOS -- bring your own storage. At launch the service will support backup to Amazon's S3 cloudisk service, with basic FTP and Omnidrive links to follow within a month or two. The Bandwagon blog details the changes here and explains more of the why here. Considering that Xackup is also launching Xackmail (Mail.app & Outlook backup) and Neverfuget (iCal backup/sync to Backpack) tools, this company is making a serious play for Mac home/net backup customers on all fronts.

Will Bandwagon pull you onboard? I might consider it myself, and work out a "homebrew co-lo" agreement with friends or family to put a spare drive and FTP access at their place, reciprocating with the same at my place -- or just bite the bullet and start paying Amazon for disk space.

[via UneasySilence]

Tags: backup, bandwagon, ftp, itunes, s3

Filed under: Internet Tools, iTunes

Xackup bandwagon iTunes Online Backup Service

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Feb 23rd, 2007

We've mentioned previous efforts to roll your own online iTunes backup using Jungle Disk and Amazon's S3, but frankly that seemed like a little bit of a hack, and potentially opened you up to some surprisingly large fees. Now Xackup is introducing an all-in-one iTunes online backup services called bandwagon, which uses S3 as well, but is mediated by Xackup, so the pricing is fixed at $69 year (introductory price) for unlimited storage. Xackup also includes a client, which sits in your menubar (right) and allows you to control the backup and restore process (e.g. selective backup/restore, search, etc.). Unfortunately, it appears that bandwagon is strictly a backup service and does not offer on-the-go access to your music (though I suppose in principle you could use it with your notebook to download particular tracks or albums you had previously uploaded from your desktop). Unfortunately, I can find no information on the bandwagon site concerning bandwidth limitations, if any.

As I noted before, bandwagon is presently available (until the end of February) for a special price of $69 for one year of unlimited storage, after which the price will jump to $99/year. If you want to try it first and see how well it works, they also have a 30-day demo of the service available for $1.

Thanks to those who sent this in!

[Via MacNN]

[Update: the Xackup people have pulled the service because "the response has been overwhelming... [and they] underestimated the demand." They say their long-term pricing plan is "as yet undetermined."]

Tags: Amaon S3, AmaonS3, bandwagon, iTunes, online backup, OnlineBackup

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