Is your Doll Investment properly inventoried?

Yesterday I attended an all day class "Using Google for Realtors". I primarily went to gain Google knowledge that I can use with my current doll business, too.  I have one word to describe the day.  AMAZING!  That was probably the best class I've ever attended, and I've been to quite a few.  I didn't realize the power I had right at my fingertips.  If you have a business, or you use your computer quite a bit, find a Google class in your area to take.  I highly recommend it, and they are not even paying me to say this!

One thing the teacher talked about, that brought me back to my doll collection, was "cloud computing".  Simply put, it allows you to not only store items on your computer, but also on a piece of the cloud, carved out for you. I can already hear some of you saying, "I don't want my stuff anywhere except on my own personal computer."  I used to say the same thing!  However, imagine this, you have all your doll images on your computer.  Occassionally, you will post a few to Flickr, etc.  But the majority of them are just on your computer.  One day your computer crashes and you have to get a new one.  Where are all those pictures?  If you don't have a backup, they are gone for good!  My computer actually crashed 2 weeks ago and I had to take it back to factory settings.  Everything was gone.  Luckily, I had never erased my digital camera drive, so I had about 50% of the photos I had taken over the years. And I had backed up my old computer from 2 years ago, so I had those files on a CD.  All the videos I had created, were all posted to YouTube, so they weren't lost to me.  But you always see the stories on the news, where there's a house fire or other natural disaster, and the people talk about all the family photos (especially the baby photos) that can never be replaced.  If they had scanned those images and placed them on the cloud (which is free), then they would be able to pull them back down to their computer. 

What about the insurance companies?  If I told my insurance company that I had a doll collection of over 200 dolls, he might not actually believe me.  But if I had pictures and video of my dolls and everything else in the house, sitting out on the cloud, and not ruined in the fire or other natural disaster, I would be able to provide actual photos of all my stuff.  You would probably get your claim settled much quicker and more accurately than someone who didn't have that.

These are just thoughts that were going through my mind as I sat in awe about the power of Google.