The thing about useful stuff is

Gladinet - joining up the clouds [storage and apps] Friday, January 09, 2009

Being a big fan of cloud application and to the extent I'm almost able to operate entirely using free online apps, I was delighted to be introduced to Gladinet, a brilliant free service that joins up cloud storage services with cloud applications.

Some of my concerns with any cloud application are a) where does my data live b) how portable is my data c) how reliable is the service provider. Gladinet helps overcome these fears by liberating data storage from cloud applications [or at least the ones it presently supports] and then enabling you to connect between them at will.

Windows only, you do need to install a small desktop application to use the service. The Gladinet software creates a virtual drive on your desktop from which you can access your online storage services as if they were local folders. You can also access the same folders from multiple PCs via the same Gladinet account.

Presently the service integrates with Microsoft SkyDrive [25gb of free storage], Amazon Simple Storage Service(S3), Google Docs and Google Picasa. You can also connect to folders on remote local computers that you have access to e.g. at home or at work. In effect it means your files can follow you.

It's easy to drop and drag files between your online and desktop folders, and the files become instantly available. You can also drop and drag files between cloud storage folders i.e. skydrive to google docs.

The "icing" comes from the ability to easily access online applications. Hence, your online or desktop files can be instantly opened within the web applications supported from Google Docs, Zoho and Think Free.

For example, you can elect to open a document stored on Skydrive in Google Docs. A temporary instance of the document is created in Google Docs but all the changes are instantly reflected by in the original source file when you save the document. Next time you open the document you could instead choose to use Think Free or Zoho to edit it, or perhaps use MS Word on your desktop. A point to note is that I found Google Docs considerably faster at opening files than Think Free.

Gladinet also lets you share your files by creating internet urls that you can send to others. If you choose to youcan protect your share with a password. You can also put a timer on the URL so it can expire at a specific time. Both features make the sharing experience more secure.

Gladinet doesn't provide any synchronisation capabilities between online and offline folders, leaving that to services such as Microsoft's Live Sync and Dropbox amongst others.

But here's a personal reason why I am enthusiased about this offering. When I installed Gladinet I simply couldn't get it to connect to the cloud storage services following the installation and got a Window error code. I dropped Gladinet an email asking for help and one of the founders, Jerry Huang, was kind enough to spend time investigation the problem with me online and despite it not being a Gladinet issue, tracked it down to a conflict with a very old Juniper Networks security application I had on my laptop, which I hadn't even been aware was still active. Thereafter things have been troublefree.

Whilst on the call, Jerry also took the time to give me some background on the company and a taste of their future plans, which were impressive.

Definitely a service to look at.

Labels: Amazon S3, Cloud, Cloud computing, Gladinet, Google Docs, Online apps, Picasa, Windows Live SkyDrive, zoho

posted by John Wilson @ 1:30 PM Permanent Link ,

newsvine reddit

Microsoft's Skydrive ups free storage to 25gb + alternates Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...

Image by via CrunchBaseMicrosoft continued their expansion of their online capabilities by increasing the free online storage limit for their Skydrive "storage in the cloud" to 25gb. This is a considerable uplift - even a year ago they were only offering 1gb.

Unfortunately, they haven't increased their individual file size limit which remains at 50mb, which is increasingly relevant eg home made video files. I realise that you can load these up to video sharing sites instead, but usually you only load finished/edited video to these sites.

Obviously this announcement has generated enormous interest in the website, with the consequence that I was only intermittently able to access the site during today, which is a little worrying - these people are supposed to also be running Azure based services for third parties [Microsoft's Cloud Computing offering], so you'd expect them to be able to handle surges on their own services! Hopefully they will address this pronto, otherwise they will not be a reliable storage choice and will undermine confidence in their abilities.

Meantime, if you're underwhelmed by 25gb for free, you can get 50gb free storage with Adrive here. Easy to use interface and I've experienced no reliability problems with them to date.

Whilst on the subject of online storage, you should also check out Gladinet, a free application which can mount your online storage locations as virtual drives on your PC and make them indistinguishable from your local folders, so long as you are connected to the internet. Whilst the new Skydrive service isn't supported [enhancement being made according to their blog], it does support many other services. However, this is not a synchronisation service - for this you need to look at services like Dropbox or Foldershare from Microsoft, albeit this is imminently due to be replaced by Microsoft Live Sync in December 2008.