Backup solutions for MySQL
mysqlperformanceblog.com
mysqlperformanceblog.com
I found automysqlbackup.sh and it is wonderful. Setup took about five minutes (edit file to put in names of databases, create a .my.cnf file so I didn't have to put the DB root user and password in a script -- on general principles), set permissions on the backup folder and set up cron job. After that it is fire-and-forget, automatically taking backups and rotating daily, weekly, and monthlies for me.
You can find it on sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/
This will probably not suffice for your needs if you are Twitter. Luckily, I'm not Twitter.