Let me start off by saying I have a love hate relationship with the “Cloud.” I love it in it’s usefulness, I hate the term. It’s just a silly marketing term that unfortunately caught on. Saying things like “I store my music in the cloud” sounds ridiculous. However, I recognize that a lot of people understand the term so I still use it. There are though a lot of people who have no idea what the “Cloud” is, so I figured I could give you a brief description and then share some popular uses for it. As I stated in a past post, cloud storage is a service model in which data is maintained, managed and backed up remotely and made available to users over a network (typically the Internet). For those of you who use external hard drives to backup the data on your computer, think of it as an external hard drive you connect to via the internet. You can then give permission to others to connect to view this harddrive for sharing content, collaborating on project or keeping multiple computers in sync with the same content. The uses for this kind of off site “cloud storage” are endless. I’ll give you a couple that I use and find very helpful.
DropBox “Your life’s work, wherever you are.” (website)
Dropbox is far and away my favorite cloud service at the moment. I use this for several things whether it be sharing photos with family, transferring large files that can’t be attached to e-mail or keeping my essential files one click or tap away at all times. As far as system wide integration Dropbox is my go to followed by Box.net and Google Docs which are also useful but less so for my needs.
- Keep my computer in sync with all my devices.
- Share files from my Android phone with my computer easily.
- Share photos & videos of family events with my family shared folder.
- Easily get design files to clients.
- Recover files backed up in Dropbox folder should a harddrive failure occur.
- Transfer files easily back and forth with co-workers using Dropbox.
- Sync selected folders on certain machines to save space where needed.
Google Music “Your Music Anywhere” (website)
Google Music is a service created by the ever popular Google that allows you to store an online library of up to 20,000 music files on their servers. There are several options from that point for accessing these files: computer, tablet and phone. There are a couple unsupported formats check those out before you decide to upload all your content.
- Have access to my music when I’m away from my computer.
- Save storage space on all my devices but retain access to music.
- Give my wife and I access to our shared music library and even stream music simultaneously.
- have music available for offline play so I can listen to my music when no internet connection is available.
Box.net is my secondary cloud storage solution. The only reason I use Box.net at all is because on occasion to entice new customers they give 50GB of free storage to sign up. The syncing service is nothing like Dropbox at this point. I’m told the purpose of BOx.net is more collaboration on documents with people, very helpful for small businesses. That’s not a need for me, but storage is. If you ever come across the 50GB deal be sure to snatch it up! [tabgroup] [tab title=”Brief Description”] Box.net is often compared to online storage services like Dropbox, and we’re not sure why. The real strength of Box.net is in its document collaboration tools; it essentially works like Google Docs, except with many more features and an excellent mobile app. When you sign up for the free version of Box.net, you are allotted 5GB of space (like many other online services these days), but there’s a glaring problem here: none of your files are allowed to exceed 25 MB in size. Even if you purchase the $15.00/month business package, your file size cap is 2GB (no storing high-def movies, lossless music, and videos for free here). Regardless, Box.net seems like it’s aiming to please small business owners with its extensive sharing, collaboration, and file version-tracking features. In this department, Box.net beats competitors handily. Google Docs will always have an edge, though, because it includes online document editing in just about any format. With Box.net, you have to download each document, edit it, then re-upload it. Source Article
[/tab] [tab title=”Personal Uses”] Box.net helps me….
- Sign up during their semi-regular 50BG signup giveaways.
- backup important work related and phone related files without worrying about storage space.
Evernote “Remember Everything” (website)
Evernote has become my go to notes solution. As much as I dislike it I’ve become a notetaker, I live and die by to-do lists and EVernote makes it very easy. Thus far I have not found a better cross platform solution than Evernote.
[/tab] [tab title=”Personal Uses”] Evernote helps me to…
- Keep all my notes in sync across all my devices.
- create shopping lists at home and pull it up on my phone.
- keep a running to-do list I can take with me wherever I go.
- allow others to view and copy my notes from seminars or lectures.
- type up notes in class and have them on-the-go.
- save web pages for later viewing.
- create separate notebooks with activities for vacations.
Whether we like it or not cloud storage is the future and it’s actually very useful. More and more I find myself storing files in Dropbox, taking notes in Evernote and streaming music through Google Music. The more devices you have the more useful it becomes to have the ability to sync all of your content and not have to connect cables all over your house. There are tons of awesome cloud services out there. Companies are even trying to help us streamline and combine different cloud services to work for us, see If this then that. What cloud services do you use and what do you use them for? Comment and let me know! I love learning new nerdy tech things!
<3
Bryce
