By Peter Kay

Last time I counted, we had seven computers in our family of four. All of our photos, music and documents exist only digitally as does our business and of course e-mail correspondence. I used to get really nervous when severe weather would begin to roll in like those nasty thunderstorms we've had recently. Even though I had traditional backups, the thought of my computers getting struck by lightning or demolished in a hurricane kept me up at night.

So my goal for 2007 was to go beyond backups and move to resiliency. Today I'm proud to say that God forbid, should all our computers be completely destroyed, all of our digital belongings would be accessible via any web browser and all of our critical functions like e-mail and web would continue unaffected. My hard work was put to the test a little while ago when high winds and rain struck Oahu and we lost power: in the middle of the night I calmly shut everything down under battery backup and went back to sleep like a baby. After I woke the next morning I had access to e-mail on my handheld PC even though the neighborhood had no power. Here's how you can build resiliency into your home computing assets.

Total digital resiliency has three components: online backups to securely store all your files on remote servers, online applications to run the majority of your day-to-day operations via a Web browser, and mobile computing to tie it all together without requiring wired networks or power.

Online backups are easy but might take a while to complete. Use a service like Mozy or Carbonite which charges a small monthly fee to automatically backup your system every day. I've backed up almost 300gb of data that took me almost five months to complete, but now the daily backups take only a few minutes. It was well worth the effort because in addition to total peace of mind, I can also restore files to any computer using just a web browser.

Switching to using online applications (instead of traditional desktop apps) took the most amount of retraining. All the work we do with clients, friends, or civic groups is performed using low-cost or free online services. Google is quickly becoming the defacto player in this space as they provide a free online equivalent of Microsoft's Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, known in GoogleSpeak as Gmail and Google Docs. Other services like BaseCampHQ.com and Google Groups provide online project management that lets people work as a team over the web. Using online applications require a change of mindset but once you've made the switch, you'll never go back. Not only are things faster, easier, and more reliable, you don't even need your own computer in order to work on your documents. Get your hands on any Web browser (e.g. the free ones at the library) and you can get right to work. Best of all, regardless of what happens to your personal or company computers, everyone else you are working with online won't be affected in any way.

Mobile computing is the final piece that nicely ties this all together. By using handheld computers like Microsoft's PocketPC phone edition, Apple's iPhone, or RIM's BlackBerry, you can access the Web, e-mail, and basic documents and spreadsheets even while you're on the phone. Combine this functionality with using online applications and you have near-complete resiliency: not only are you essentially impervious to crippling environmental conditions, but you can work anywhere and anytime without missing a beat.