RIP LogShare
- Thread starter dsffdssdf
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Jason W (FlyNE)
Damn, that's a bummer. I can imagine it's hard to support something like that after a while.
tdager
En-Route
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LittleIronPilot
Where do you read that? I do not see that on the front page.
BTW...this has been, and always will be, my fear when putting information "in the cloud". If the information holder goes belly-up...bam you are done. Now this guy is nice and giving a warning, but what if he had not? And even if you DO have copies of all the data, if you want the benefits of an electronic log you now have to completely re-enter the information.
I will stick with desktop software, thank you very much.
BTW...this has been, and always will be, my fear when putting information "in the cloud". If the information holder goes belly-up...bam you are done. Now this guy is nice and giving a warning, but what if he had not? And even if you DO have copies of all the data, if you want the benefits of an electronic log you now have to completely re-enter the information.
I will stick with desktop software, thank you very much.
JeffDG
Touchdown! Greaser!
For me, with logshare, I have it set to e-mail me an export of my data every month. I still keep the paper logbook, but it's handy cause it does the math for me adding up the hours, and I can add other columns (for example, I keep a column for XC time by the strict XC definition, and another for my XC-PIC that I'm building for my IR)
ron22
Cleared for Takeoff
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Jason W (FlyNE)
If you have copies of the data, then you don't have to completely re-enter the information... Or did you mean something else?
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Jason W (FlyNE)
Now the site says this....
Looks like he's trying to figure out what to do.
Looks like he's trying to figure out what to do.
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Jason W (FlyNE)
Where can you configure it to do that?
he may be referring to flightlogg.in which has that feature
EdFred
Taxi to Parking
That's why you make your own like I did. So long as I can read the data (txt/csv/doc/xls, etc) I can import it - doesn't matter the layout. The only thing I use my paper logbook for is signatures.
JeffDG
Touchdown! Greaser!
You may well be right...I have my data in a few places to avoid loss...
T
thebaaron
Guest
Check out copilot.aero. They have an online logbook with boatloads of features and backup features to make sure everything is safe.
Oh, and they do digital signatures. No more paper!
Oh, and they do digital signatures. No more paper!
tdager
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LittleIronPilot
Willing to share?
Cap'n Jack
Final Approach
What's wrong with just using Excel? Or OpenOffice?
Keane
Pre-takeoff checklist
It is a shame, but I think you could do something similar with any spreadsheet. I did a simple one in Google Docs, but you could do it with absolutely any spreadsheet.
tdager
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LittleIronPilot
With something like that you're on your own to keep that data stored in a way thats safe and secure. An online logbook application (that lets you export your data) acts as a redundant source to store your data in case your computers hard drive fails. Yeah, you could just copy the excel file over to your external hard drive every week or something, but it's just more work for you to have to do. Also specialized logbook applications lets you do cool things like make graphs and maps and stuff like that.
airdale
Pattern Altitude
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airdale
With all due respect but speaking from several decades of experience as a computer designer and programmer, my SSD hard drive is more reliable than any "cloud" online logbook is likely to be. Logshare being a handy case to make my point. And, yes, I back up everything to DvD every few weeks. I also print a hard copy from my logbook program once in a while. IMHO anyone who trusts an online service for to be there for the long haul is simply foolish.
BTW if anyone wants a free logbook program, you can PM me. It's called YALT, for Yet Another Logbook Program. Among its claims to fame are (1) all the data is kept in an Access database so it's accessible to you, (2) it will display your data in any columnar format you like, including preset layouts for the Sporty's, Gleim, and Jepp logbooks, and (3) it gives you the 8710 data including differentiating between cross-country and cross-country > 50nm. flights.
You call yourself a "computer designer" and yet would rather trust your own hard drive over a professionally administrated data center with all kinds of RAID arrays and automated backup solutions? Hmm...
When has logshare ever had a data failure? When has any "cloud" provider had any kind of data failure?
Do you really backup everything to DVD ever week, or are you just saying that for sake of the argument? Is your hard drive less than 6 GB or do you really spend what I imagine to be a lot of time every week backing up to potentially dozens of DVDs?
Whats so great about access? Its Windows-only and costs $100. FlightLoggin, for instance, does everything you mentioned and then some. Plus it will automatically email you your entire logbook data every day, so you always have a full backup in your gmail account thats never any more than 24 hours old. Oh wait gmail is not reliable because its part of the cloud too, right?
Cap'n Jack
Final Approach
Or just copy it to your ISP that offers online storage. I don't care much about the graphs and stuff, but any modern spreadsheet makes graphs. I get maps on my own; I guess I don't get it.
Attachments
If you come up with your own backup solution, you have to manage it. You have to come up with some kind of system where you have to either remember to send the file to your ISP's data store, or write some kind of automated system that does it for you. Why do that work for yourself, when you can have someone else (who knows better than you) do the work for you?
If you use online logbooks, the data is managed for you. Thats the benefit. In the case of flightlogin you get a full backup of your logbook sent everyday to your email account. You don't have to remember to email it to yourself like you would have to do if you were just using an excel spreadsheet. Plus you get other benefits like having your data available to you from any platform that can run a browser, etc.
CJones
Final Approach
I was thinking of coming up with an online logbook system myself as something to tinker with. Apparently the market is already flooded with the systems. I'll probably try to put something together at least for my own personal usage. Adding some built-in mapping capabilities would be kind of cool. Maybe weather overlays of the maps so you could remember what kind of weather you encountered on the flight.
Maybe I should talk to that genius over at JesseWeather.com and see if we can come up with a way to combine his weather with my flight logging.
hmmmm...
Maybe I should talk to that genius over at JesseWeather.com and see if we can come up with a way to combine his weather with my flight logging.
hmmmm...
Cap'n Jack
Final Approach
I think there are services that do this for you...just include the log book in the list of directories to be backed up. Or just back up the log book with the rest of whatever is being backed up with whatever method you care to use. This really isn't rocket science.
So it's like using the free spreadsheet in Google Docs?
Also, why would I e-mail the spreadsheet to myself? It's already on my computer.
jesse
Touchdown! Greaser!
I have yet to see one of these online logbooks provide an SLA or publish their backup practices. Assuming that they're taking better care of your data then you would is pretty foolish.
Gmail loses data:
http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/12/gmail_disaster_google_confirme.html
Tmobile/Danger/Microsoft lose a crap ton of data:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/1...-servers-crashed-and-they-dont-have-a-backup/
Hotmail loses data:
http://windowslivehelp.com/solution...ows-live-hotmail-data-loss-event-on-11-3.aspx
Salesforce has data compromised:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/11/salesforcecom_acknowledges_dat.html
Palm data loss:
http://www.i4u.com/article28730.html
Need I continue? There have been a ton of incidents. I didn't even have to try hard to produce the list above. There have also been major cloud outages, gmail, amazon, etc.
A logbook need not be complicated, and those familiar with access prefer to do it on their own. I wouldn't say they are making a bad decision. See above, yes gmail has went down and yes gmail has had data loss incidents.
Assuming that any random "cloud" service or any random logbook application is REALLY protecting your data is pretty damn foolish. Assuming that they know more then you is even more foolish. Would I trust data to a cloud? Sure. But they're going to have to have a track record and their practices and my expectations are going to have to be in writing. From there, I'll still keep the data elsewhere. When the **** hits the fan and data is lost it is MY fault. Cloud failure or not.
The data is managed for you, by someone you do not know, with no real contract in place. You don't know where it's hosted, what their practices are, and how seriously that developer takes the application.
Am I against clouds? Nope. I'm just against people falsely assuming that they are perfect. It's a dangerous thought pattern to have.
Those of us that are responsible for large amounts of data know that **** happens. I'm not perfect - a cloud service is not perfect - humans are not perfect. You just learn to accept that the responsibility is yours and tread carefully. Even the big guys screw up.
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If you're using excel... But if you're using Logbook Pro or the one that uses Access, it's a little lot complicated. You can't just point Mozy or DropBox or whatever to an Access database.
Using Google Docs in lieu of Excel is much more sensible in my opinion. It's stored on Google's servers so you know it's secure, and not going away any time soon, plus you have access to it from anywhere.
The only thing is it may not be as easy to get nice custom reports and graphs and stuff using Google Docs. If you're going to use an online service to keep track of your flights, why not just use a service that specializes in keep track of flights?
You send it to your email account in case your hard drive fails, your laptop/desktop computer gets stolen or anything like that.
RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
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Geek on the Hill
Brilliant summary.
Redundancy is the key to backup because no single method is fail-safe. I practice and advocate redundancy, but clients (as in people clients, not applications) are notoriously lax about actually doing backup. So I try to make it as automated as possible, but with some safeguards in case the automatic methods fail (which they do -- fairly often).
My own backup strategy for my office computers is as follows:
1. Images exist of all original OS installations.
2. The system drives are cloned daily.
3. Email, application settings, and other important stuff that lives on the system drive is backed up to the data drives. Information stored online by third-party providers is exported and downloaded to my data drives periodically, with the frequency depending on how important it is.
4. The data drives are RAIDed. They also contain backups of the installation sources for all of the software I use (and much that I don't use, but purchased and might use some day).
5. The data RAID arrays are cloned to external backup drives daily.
6. The information on the data drives is also backed up to an online backup service constantly (whenever the computers' resource use is low). Typically, any changes are uploaded within a few minutes.
This isn't a "perfect" strategy. Nothing's perfect. My goals are simply (1) to have a backup strategy in which the chances of each element failing simultaneously (and therefore leaving me with no backups) is extremely slim; (2) to be able to get machines up and running quickly in the event of hard drive crashes or systemic damage to their operating systems; (3) to have local backups that can be accessed in minutes if I need them; (4) to have remote backups that can be accessed even if my house and everything in it is destroyed; and (5) to automate the process as much as possible.
In short, backup's cheap and backup methods are plentiful nowadays. There's really no excuse for not having redundant backups any more.
http://www.backupnut.com
-Rich
Any pilot who wishes to keep track of their logbook with a computer application, whether it be a desktop application or an online application, needs to have some kind of automated backup solution in place. Do you agree? Even if your hard drive is some kind of super drive which is supposed to never fail, and even if the cloud service you're using is supposed to be 100% reliable as well. You need have that data backed up onto some other completely redundant source.
The point I was trying to make, was that if you take the hard drive failure rate of all consumer hard drives and compare it to all cloud services, you'll find that cloud services will hands down.
If I had to keep all my eggs in one basket, and my choices were something I myself had to manage, as opposed to something managed by Google or Amazon, I'm choosing the one managed by Google or Amazon.
Better yet would be some kind of solution where the data is stored and managed automatically with Google and Amazon. That way If any one of the services fail at any one time I always have some service with my full data in place.
I can't speak for the others, but flightloggin, which I use does just that. It stores the data on the flightloggin servers, as well as automatically managing a mirror of my data on my gmail account. Even if flightloggin's servers are ran by monkeys, I have nothing to lose when the ** hits the fan, because I always have a complete backup at my fingertips thats no older than 24 hours old. And the backup in in CSV format, which can be imported into excel, openoffice, logbook pro, Google Docs, and I'm sure a bunch others. All you have to do to set it up is enter an email address for it to send to. I don't think you can come up with an easier system with the various desktop apps out there, at least not without paying money.
airdale
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airdale
Well, ghhftyd43sd hfhc, I'm not intereste in getting into a protracted argument but I will answer your direct questions, some of which seem to impugn my integrity.
Actually, before I moved into management my job title was "computer architect." I hold several patents and have published a number of papers in refereed technical publications. I am also certified as a systems programmer.
I didn't say that.
Every time one of them goes out of business, taking their customers' data swirling down the drain with them..
For a relatively unsophisticated user, these may be the only alternatives that can be imagined. Actually, I have my data on a separate disc partition from my system and applcation programs. The result of this is that my critical data is isolated and easy to back up onto a single DvD. I also back up to one of my home servers occasionally. Both have RAID drives. That's a bit faster than burning a DvD. Big data, like music, just lives in the RAID-3 box. I am too lazy to back it up but strong odds say I'll be able to rebuild the array if one of the drives goes TU.
Again, to an unsophisticate user, this may appear to be an issue. Actually YALP uses an Access database via the JET database engine that is distributed with Windoze. A YALP user only needs to buy the Access program if he wants to mess around with the logook data on his own. Alterntively, I think Excel can get into a Jet database without the user's having to buy Access though I have never done it. And, since you ask, Access is a really great database program for smaller databases. I have written multiuser database programs that use Jet and handle up to about a half-million records with no performance problems. IMHO it is one of the few innovative things to have come from Microsoft, but that's another debate in another forum.
Why would you want to do that? I thought you trusted them.
Cap'n Jack
Final Approach
I use a paper log book. I don't use Access...I use MySQL or SQL Express if I need a database. But why make it so complicated? I'm just summing various things from different columns.
Actually, I don't know that. There have enough cloud failures recently with "reputable" companies that I don't trust too many of them. Google is mostly reliable, but I've been places within the past 3 weeks from where I couldn't access Google or anything else.
If it were truly important to me, I'd pay Jesse (one of the admins of this board) to set something up for me since he knows his stuff.
I'm pretty sure Google has nice graphs too. It's also free to me.
Or just back it up as one is supposed to do. Also one of the active PoA members maintain that Apple products have never failed or lost data, so maybe I'll just save it on one of those.
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dmspilot
Final Approach
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DISPLAY NAME
Methinks you are being argumentative because you are the owner of flightloggin. Your User ID is 1.
JeffDG
Touchdown! Greaser!
So, take one of the online logbooks that will e-mail out the data, like the one mentioned, get an account with Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!. Send it to all 3. The odds of all 3 having exactly the same data loss are infinitesimally small.
I don't need to trust them. I only need to trust that they'll actually send the email, which I can easily verify.
You only need to trust one entity with your data if that data is with one entity and that one entity only.
It's like in a multi-engine airplane, you don't need to trust the engine unless that engine is your only engine. With two engine all you need to trust is that they both don't fail at the same time, which never happens. (The analogy is not 100% congruent because a multi-engine airplane with one engine operating is slightly different than one data server being down and the other one still working... but you get the point)
Cap'n Jack
Final Approach
I think the point being made was that having data stored on an outside server or system, such as an on-line logbook, in no guarantee of its security, and these were examples of how large, well-known compaines, failed their clients. If such well known companies can lose data, it is probable that a smaller company can do the same. It is best to know and understand how data will be managed before entrusting it to someone else.
airdale
Pattern Altitude
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airdale
Good catch, dmspilot.
Obviously correct as I see he has now removed the site link from his sig line. And it's now clear why he was so quick to post the news when a competitor appeared to be in trouble. I thought he sounded a little like a troll, but didn't bother to check around. Thanks for making the effort.
Looks like he uses the ids nbv4 and nbvfour around the internet.
More here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...what-it-takes-to-be-a-professional-programmer, here: http://github.com/nbv4/flightloggin
and here http://forum.webfaction.com/viewtopic.php?id=3214
But you can never be sure. My favorite internet cartoon: http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html
flyingcheesehead
Taxi to Parking
*I* don't remember losing any data, but I used to be REALLY good at data recovery - I can't tell you how many hard drive failures I've had back to my first hard drive (an Apple HD20SC), but I've always managed to bring the data back from the dead.
These days, I'm either a little smarter (hmmm, maybe not) or maybe Apple has just caught up with my laziness by offering a great backup solution as part of the OS that works with the click of a single button for setup and is hands-off after that. It's so good, I've been restoring from backup when I switch to a new computer (or buy a new hard drive) rather than copying stuff over from the previous drive.
Apple stuff has hard drive failures just like everything else - The hard drives are the same. I have experienced data loss issues with my former clients, when they didn't listen to me. "I don't think we want to spend all that money on the backup system you recommended, I mean, we've never had a problem before..."
At least I knew that if they wouldn't pay me the money for the backup solution now, they'd probably end up paying me the money to attempt to recover things later - Unfortunately, usually when I'd rather have been doing something else. 
flyingcheesehead
Taxi to Parking
Jack Spectre
Line Up and Wait
Well, dsffdssdf (if that IS your real name), is this true?
Uh, did you not read the sentence AFTER that part you quoted?Wow.
Please don't fly multi-engine airplanes.
And no I am not affiliated with flightloggin in any way, other than being a user. I took the thing out of my signature because I didn't even know it was there since I browse the forums with sigs off and I didn't want it to look like I was prosthelytizing, because I hate it when people do that.
Anyways for the sake of the argument, I'm in this thread to argue against the idea that all online logbooks are somehow less safe than desktop applications, which is an idea I see a lot, and I disagree with. I'm not meaning to advocate any one company or product.