• WHAT: An over-the-air method to back up your cell phone's address book (and calendar)

• WHY: If you've ever lost a cell phone, you'll know why.  If not, it's only a matter of time

• COST: Free (for now)

Now that your phone has become an extension of your arm, an additional appendage to your body, another limb and a lifeline all rolled up into one, the thought of losing it becomes horrible.  You can always buy - or re-download - a ringtone, take other photos or find another nice case for your phone, but what about all those numbers you've stored on it?  Have you ever, I mean EVER backed them up?  I didn't think so.

Just a few weeks ago a good friend of mine had his laptop stolen.  Of course the loss of the equipment and the cost of replacement was enough of a sting, but the realization that there were six years of photos and countless music recordings on the hard drive that would now never be recovered gave my pal what I call a "white rush" - that is, all of the blood momentarily leaves your body, you get an incredible chill and cold sweat and realize that, Oh My, you are never, ever going to replace all that stuff.  Or, if you do, it's going to be a gigantic hassle.  

I'm a fanatic about backing up.  Every night I've got a backup that runs automatically to an external hard drive, another one that backs up my critical files to my iPod (did you know you could use the extra capacity on your iPod as a hard drive - see the article HERE) and yet another one that backs up all of my files to an Internet site (a little OCD, I know, but I've suffered through a lost week of work on a book because I didn't back up once and swore that would never happen to me again).  And I back up my phone regularly.  

Do you back up at all?  Ever?  What would happen if tomorrow you left your phone on a plane, dropped it over the side of a ferry, had it tumble from your hands while you were driving along the freeway with the top down or whatever other disaster might befall you?  Would you experience that "white rush" or would you, like I do, say "Damn!" and then get another phone and reload all of the data to it?  

I'm at an advantage because I use a Mac.  Backing up the phone's contacts is easy through iSync and the Address Book.  Heck, I even sync calendar events to my phone.  If I lose one I just re-sync.  But not everyone else could do so before.  Now you can. There's a service called "ZYB.com" that let's you back up your contact information - and even your Google Calendar events - over the air, for free.  No cables, no cost, no problem. 

It's simple to start - just go to their web site and open an account, then set up a simple process on your phone to sync whatever portions of your phone you wish.  It's really simple and once you do it you'll just need to remind yourself (or set up a reminder on your phone, which I'll cover on another post) to sync every now and then.  It's not the kind of thing that you're going to have to do daily, but when you're sitting waiting for a flight, or standing in line at the grocery store, you can take five seconds to initiate the sync (there's no way to set it up on a schedule just yet) and feel confident that you're covered.

There are other ways to back up your phone's data, too, that require hardware solutions, and I'll cover them in future posts, but for now this is a hassle-free way to get your info backed up and sleep a little easier without worrying about dropping your phone out the window.