Text message storage from O2... but not until May

I've been reading about O2 opening up its Bluebook for its customers over at 160 Characters. The bluebook account offers 1000 MB of storage space for important text messages, pictures or video clips. Photos taken from cameraphones can optionally be opened up to be viewed online by others (I'm guessing flickr or moblog stylee) and also sent directly to Kodak for printing. The service launched on the 11th January and to begin with, users must send in their content back to the server using a free shortcode 40202.

In the next phase in May, messages will automatically be cached which I think is great. I'd love to be able to get my messages either as an email or some kind of online store so that I can search them from time to time. Often there are phone numbers to be retrieved, or simply text messages you want to treasure (like the service currently offered by treasuremytext). In addition, in this next phase, customers will be able to store their contacts and other blogging features will be incorporated. I was initially skeptical of this, but actually, O2 has done a pretty good job, by all accounts, of LookAtMeTV which is another of their community efforts.

Of course, you can already store your contacts online for free at Zyb and also that's an additional benefit if you download Shozu to your phone so you don't *need* to switch to O2 to get the service. Oh and did I mention, Shozu and Zyb are also free? There is also a new kid on the block for mobile storage and that's Mobyko which seems to me to do the same as Zyb. Mobyko claims an ability to store your texts, pictures and videos, but you have to send them on to a long number so there's a cost to send so it's not really a full syncing service. Still, it was as fast as Zyb so worth a try.

Still, at least this is progress (albeit, I've been backing up my phone book on Shozu and Zyb for some time now). But I love the idea of AUTOMATICALLY storing your messages - that's a definite plus factor for me. So come on T-Mobile. If O2 can do it, so can you. Instead you have an incredibly difficult log-in process, that's so tricky and archaic (if you don't log in correctly, they have to send you your password by post), I've NEVER actually managed to log in to it despite being a customer for 5 years or more! So it *could* be quite a leap for T-Mobile to do something like this. I live in hope!