• WHAT: The simplest way to access files remotely while away from your computer
• WHY: There are countless situations where you want to see or send a file that's on another computer
• COST: From $2.99/month up, depending on amount of storage

I'm a nut for computer backups. After losing an entire chapter of a book I wrote many years ago about the usage habits of cellular telephone users I swore that losing work due to computer glitches or, in my case, sheer stupidity, would never happen again. Well, never is a long time, but so far, so good. It's only because I've got more backups than most people have socks. There's one that runs every night, backing up my entire drive to another drive in a mirror image so that when the day inevitably comes - and it will - that your internal drive crashes (mine has on more than one occasion, despite the regular care and maintenance I give it) you can get a new drive, move everything over from the external one and be back in business in no time.

Thanks to high speed connections (I love my Road Runner cable connection - 10+ Mbps down/1.5 Mbps up) there are other options for backups now, too. I use one called "Mozy" that is just fantastic. $5/month for unlimited storage space and I take full advantage of it by backing up all my music, photos, documents, etc., totalling 120+GB. I also use FolderShare, which allows me to sync any folder from one computer to another. Totally free, no storage online but rather allows me to keep a complete duplicate copy of my work on another computer. Very handy. But neither one of them really work well from the iPhone and I wanted access to all of my files while mobile. I did find a solution, but it took some looking.

The search took me through two very capable apps - Briefcase and Air Sharing - that I found in the iTunes store that appeared to do the trick, but both of them had limitations. Air Sharing required a lot of manual work - logging into the phone using the server login in the Mac's Finder, manually dragging files into a folder, etc. Not the most elegant solution, but functional. Then I found Briefcase, which abbreviated the process by automatically accessing the computer (after a brief setup) and would let me see the files I had on my computer, but not really do anything with them. Not the solution I was looking for, either.

Then I discovered SugarSync. While I wasn't looking for yet another way to sync my files (FolderShare does a great job) or store files on line (ditto for Mozy) they recently released a companion application for the iPhone that sealed the deal. Now, whatever files I keep backed up using SugarSync (which backs up any files/folders I designate to their "cloud") are accessible through an elegant, beautifully designed companion app on the iPhone. I am, like, totally in love.

This app does a few other things aside from letting me access backed up files (such as creating a photo gallery for pictures taken from your phone) but to me the killer app within this app is the ability to pull up any file that I have backed up into the cloud and see it and - drum roll, please - send a link to it from my phone to any email address. If someone asks me for something that is on my computer I can simply tap a few times on my phone and send a link that's good for a week to their email address. Even better, I used to depend on file sending services like YouSendIt.com or Box.net for sending files that are too large for email.

It's a great service that works quietly in the background on your computer and transparently on your iPhone. The cost starts at about $3/month, which provides 10 GB of storage online ("in the cloud") and goes up from there. Great stuff - check it out.