NEW YORK -- Last night at the Pepcom Holiday Spectacular I learned about a new way to store your data in the cloud. A startup company called Cucku (seriously!) is pushing what it calls social backup.

It entails automatically backing up your data to a friend's PC or from your home to your office. According to the company's Web site, security is covered by encrypting the files as they're sent from one computer to another.

But can we really trust storing your data somewhere out there in the clouds? Check back on InternetNews for more on this next week.

Apparently a crash in Los Angeles last week between a commuter train and a freight train was preceded by the engineer exchanging text messages.

According to reports, cell phone records are being examined to see if texting did play a part. Unfortunately, the engineer's eyes may have been on the texts rather than the tracks.

This is one case where technology can be a hindrance rather than a help.

We're all tempted to check a text or see who's calling while driving, or even texting or talking while crossing a busy intersection.

Let's hope this is not a trend that grows.

(Photo credit: Reuters)

Two years ago, InternetNews.com reported that Google's acquisition of biometric technology company Neven Vision could lead to innovation in face-recognition technology for its Picasa photo-sharing site.

Today the search giant finally unveiled this functionality in Picasa 3 by adding a Name tag feature to help users identify subjects in their photos.

Unlike the tagging features found on sites such as Facebook, Picasa helps you figure out who's in the photos using biometric technology.

This opens up new opportunities for social networking and photo-sharing sites to incorporate similar face-recognition capabilities. Stay tuned.