I realize that it is all the rage to live as much of your life online as possible. From making new friends to using services that are suppose to help us manage our personal lives we are being told that the Cloud is the future.

Well it maybe the future but it definitely isn’t all it is cracked up to be today which personally comes as know surprise. I have probably been one of the crankiest bloggers when it comes to all the hype around entrusting our day to day affairs to some nebulous company promising that they will make your life easier – you just need to trust them.

Trust … hmmm … sounds pretty easy especially if you can make organizing things in your life a little easier and in many cases for free.

Unfortunately this isn’t always the case even when it comes to big name brand services as users of Intuit’s Quicken Online found out. In fact they have found out that for the most part that they have been screwed and what makes it even worse is that a great number of people use the service for their businesses.

The gist of the story is that last year Intuit bought up web financial management service darling Mint.com and gave everyone the impression that their Quicken Online data would be moved over to the newer and cooler Mint.com service. Except this never happened and with the expected shutdown of Quicken Online people are suddenly stranded with no way to get at their data.

As Kirsten Nicole writes at SiliconAngle the only thing Intuit has done is post this message along with one customers reaction:

Q. Can I transfer or import my Quicken Online data to Mint.com?

A. No. After careful consideration we made the decision to not transfer or allow customers to transfer their data from Quicken Online to Mint.com.

We realize you may have received messaging several months ago that we would migrate your Quicken Online data into Mint.com. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the different categorization tables, budgets and account authentication between Quicken Online and Mint.com, there was no way to achieve this with elegance or accuracy. We felt this would give you a very inaccurate picture of your financial situation and require too much manual reconciliation.

One very upset customer asked Quicken to “at least wait until the end of the year so that people can have a complete year’s worth of financial records for tax purposes? I know it’s free, and I know you don’t necessarily “owe” anyone anything, but shutting down the product before the year ends is just a really bad idea, and basically tells consumers “Our product wasn’t worth anything anyway, and you probably shouldn’t use Mint.com either, because the same thing might happen with your data.”

Yup, this idea of trusting our lives to the cloud is a really good idea.

How can you trust web based services when even the big one’s let you down? is a post from: The Inquisitr

When we think of the goods times and going on spending sprees buying things we might not really need the last thing we would think of is the Amish doing the same thing. Well think again because according to a post on the Wall Street Journal Online the Amish men of northern Indiana enjoyed the economic surpluses of the early 2000’s just as we did.

Some Amish bishops in Indiana weakened restrictions on the use of telephones. Fax machines became commonplace in Amish-owned businesses. Web sites marketing Amish furniture began to crop up. Although the sites were run by non-Amish third parties, they nevertheless intensified a feeling of competition, says Casper Hochstetler, a 70-year-old Amish bishop who lives in Shipshewana.

"People wanted bigger weddings, newer carriages," Mr. Lehman says. "They were buying things they didn’t need." Mr. Lehman spent several hundred dollars on a model-train and truck hobby, and about $4,000 on annual family vacations, he says. This year, there will be no vacation.

Source: Douglas Belkin – Wall Street Journal :: A Bank Run Teaches the ‘Plain People’ About the Risks of Modernity

Just as with us in the more ‘modern’ world it all came crashing down for the Amish as men who had earned anywhere from $50.00 to $30.00 per hour in various industries found themselves out of work. During the high times even the most treasured traditions of ‘helping thy neighbor’ seem to go by the wayside as the cash rich Amish hired outside companies to do work for them so that they wouldn’t have to repay in kind. Now that the hard times are here though there has been a slow return to their traditional values.

In Indiana, a back-to-basics movement appears to be taking root. More patches of produce have sprouted behind Amish homes this summer. Restaurants are entertaining fewer Amish customers. Mr. Lehman says neighbors "are more considerate of each other now."

Some men have started their own businesses close to home. Mr. Lehman makes mattresses in his workshop. Harlan Miller, a 34-year-old father of five who was laid off in February, started making fruit butter, which he sells at a local market. Freeman Miller (no relation), 54, who was laid off after 30 years in manufacturing, builds wooden caskets for pets.

Source: Douglas Belkin – Wall Street Journal :: A Bank Run Teaches the ‘Plain People’ About the Risks of Modernity

It’s amazing how the power of money can easily corrupt even a faith and community like the Amish.

Not even the Amish are immune to hardship is a post from: The Inquisitr