Webware

A look at the new Dropio home page.

(Credit: Dropio)

Dropio, a file-sharing start-up that lets you easily toss anything from photos to phone calls in a "drop" (kind of like a virtual storage cabinet), has launched a new look.

The redesign makes the site look a little slicker, and certainly accentuates Dropio's "easy to use" mantra. It's also clearly a consumer-oriented product now--in comparison, the old design looks like a back-end content management system. That's good, because the company hopes to appeal to Luddites as well as techies. (For a business model, Dropio offers premium accounts that get rid of the 100MB free account storage limit.)

Feature-wise, it's pretty much the same, but Dropio's team has said that it's "about a thousand times more customizable and useful" thanks to a newly reorganized dashboard. They also say that the speed of the site should also be a notch higher.

Later this week Valve Software, makers of the popular Half Life series, and the Steam software distribution system are releasing the first version of the Steam Cloud service in the demo for the upcoming cross-platform title Left 4 Dead. The service will keeps things like game saves, mouse and keyboard settings, and player profiles the same across multiple PCs.

Up until now the Steam application, which lets you use the same game license on multiple computers, required users to take and make these changes across all their devices. Announced back in March, Steam Cloud puts the onus on Valve instead, and syncs up any per-game settings changes between sessions.

In addition to the Left 4 Dead demo, which will be available this Thursday, Valve is adding Steam Cloud functionality to its entire back catalog of games, making it easier to ferry settings back and forth in case you have multiple gaming rigs. No word yet on when you'll be able to do this with (now) classics like Portal and Half Life: Episode 2.

Facebook is one of the most popular photo hosts on the Web, but when it comes time to get your shots off the service it's also one of the worst at providing tools to do the job.

A solution called simply "Get my tagged pics" does the heavy lifting for at least some of your shots, or rather shots of you. Any pictures that are tagged with your name gets grouped together into sets of 10, which you can pull down to your hard drive as a zip file.

The system is not entirely perfect. For instance, if you're looking to archive the 300 or more shots of yourself that have been accumulating over the past several years this is a tedious system. Also, the shots the application grabs are full size for Facebook, but not the original quality of the shot. Facebook squishes them down for the sake of page load and storage, and as a result you can't enjoy some of the full-quality goodness of the original copy. Still, it's better than going through your photos and saving them one-at-a-time.

Having had a lack of similar options on photo host Flickr, and with no official support for FTP backup, many developers have created archival tools that leverage the service's API. The same ecosystem has been noticeably absent from Facebook, which in the case of an eventual move to another service, could mean leaving your photos behind.

[via DownloadSquad]

Get my tagged pics lets you grab up to 10 shots at a time of photos that have been tagged with you.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Sugarsync, a pricey but excellent file-syncing and backup solution has a new iPhone application that's downright cool. It gives you access to all the files stored on computers linked up to your Sugarsync account. Better yet, it provides instant--and I do mean instant--updates when a file has been touched by you or another user by utilizing some spiffy push technology.

I got a demo of it in action a few weeks back, and it's one of the better looking applications I've seen. Like the desktop version each linked up machine has its own special icon, and all you have to do to access your files is to pick one from a neat spinning wheel. You'll then get a similar view of the file structure, with folders, icons, and more.

One of the application's greatest assets is that it can be synced up to several computers, and then pass over that data between them in the background. In the mobile world, something that makes this system useful is trying to send someone a large file (say 500MB) that you can't just pull down on your phone and send through e-mail. Sugarsync's solution is to simply send your recipient the link and they'll be able to download the file through their browser's download manager.

The application is also set up to let you move, rename, and delete files remotely. Since everything is linked up to the live sync server those changes will go out immediately. In the demo we saw these changes from desktop to phone and back again getting pushed out in about a second, even over EDGE.

For now, one of the only drawbacks is file compatibility. It handles everything the iPhone can just fine (like MS office documents, PDFs, Quicktime Movie files, etc.), but it has had problems with certain movie codecs and audio files. I'm told all supported audio files will play just fine, it's just an issue of trying to let you do other things while the music is playing, as it currently kicks the file onto the full-screen Quicktime player. Future versions should hopefully be able to let you multitask.

The application is free, but Sugarsync's service is not. Users can grab a 45-day free trial of the 10GB service, which normally costs about three bucks a month.

Sugarsync's iPhone app lets you access and manage your files on multiple devices, right on your phone. You can even open and access compatible file types while out and about.

(Credit: Sharpcast Inc. / CBS Interactive)

With AOL-owned Xdrive on the auction block, competing cloud storage providers are scrapping together all sorts of plans to woo these potential paying customers to their services. Two in particular, Dropio and Box.net, have set up simple escape hatches wherein Xdrive users can simply plug in their account credentials and have their data piped over.

There's a catch, though: both services have free storage caps well beneath Xdrive's generous 5GB. In the case of Dropio, that cap is 100MB. To supplement this, the service is offering Xdrive users a special premium drop, which bumps up the cap to 1GB. Normally these premium chunks of storage cost $10 a pop, and only keep for a year's time (read: subscription service).

Likewise, Box.net's free cutoff cap is 1GB. If a user wants more space than that they'll need to upgrade to a higher plan, which starts at $7.95 per month to get that same 5GB users had back on Xdrive.

So to summarize, if you're an Xdrive user looking to jettison your data to someplace besides a hard drive, either of these services is really great, but they'll cost you. The 5GB equivalent will be $40 in Dropio (for your first year, then $50 after that), and $95.40 for a year in Box.net. If you're willing to stick to 1GB, Box.net is the better deal, since you won't have to pay $10 when free premium credit from Dropio expires. You could also just throw caution to the wind, and go all-out with 50GB of ad-supported online storage from Adrive.

Today, Syncplicity launches its PC sync tool. Like the old-school FolderShare and the newer SugarSync (review), this product will keep the data on two machines (PCs only) in lockstep with each other. Syncplicity is in the hub-and-spoke camp (like SugarSync), not in the peer-to-peer world (FolderShare). This means that all the data that Syncplicity keeps track of for you is also stored on the company's servers.

There are advantages to this. Since the data is stored on an off-site server, the service becomes a passable backup and remote data access application. Also, the server-based architecture means your PCs don't have to be online at the same time to sync up. The downside, though, is that the storage costs the company money, so Syncplicity can't offer its service for free, as Microsoft does with FolderShare. Pricing for Syncplicity has not been set yet, but CEO Leonard Chung told me the single pricing scheme for the service will be in the ballpark of $20 a month.

Syncplicity has a very attractive interface, will sync your files across machines, and will integrate Google Docs too (sort of).

That's a lot of money for the service, although if you have a lot of data to sync up it's a good deal when compared with SugarSync. Syncplicity gives you unlimited storage and bandwidth--you don't have to count bits when you use the service. HP's new online backup service Upline (review) similarly offers unlimited storage.

I found the service very easy to set up, and the online interface to stored data clear and attractive.

Syncplicity has another trick up its sleeve: It syncs your data to online services. At the moment, it will sync word processing files to your Google Docs account, letting you (theoretically) move between using a local word processor such as Microsoft Word and Google's Web-based word processor. In reality, since the file formats and feature sets of Word and Google Docs are very different, it doesn't quite work like that. Syncplicity forks a Word doc into a simpler version when you open it with Google, making for potentially confusing edit reconciliation if there are changes made to a complex document in Google and on the desktop.However, for easily sharing files (read-only) from your desktop, it's a good start. A similar feature will come to spreadsheets and presentation files.

The product also syncs photo libraries with Facebook, so you can bypass the whole awkward Facebook upload process. It creates private, or hidden, folder for you, which you can then make public on your profile when you want.

At the moment, the Google Web service integration seems to be a bit of a party trick, but the Facebook link-in is pretty clever. This concept is Syncplicity's real revenue stream. Chung told me he plans to strike deals with online service companies to get them to link to the platform. He wants to see online services integrate with peoples' desktop data stores. It's a good vision.

See also DocSyncer, which does Google/Word integration, and Box.net, which has a similar business model but not Syncplicity's desktop chops. And ThinkFree, which has an integrated online/offline suite.

HP has entered the online backup space with a new product called Upline. It's a decent cloud-based backup product at a good price point, but it has a few frustrating limitations.

The good news first: The software is simple to get started with (critical for a backup application) and the paid plans provide unlimited storage for your documents, photos, music, and video files (also critical--who wants to count bits when signing up for data insurance?). The system checks for new files by default every 15 minutes, and uploads your data to the HP-run servers in a quiet background process.

Upline's desktop widget.

There's a free version that gives you 1GB of online storage for a year, but if you're serious about backup you'll want one of the paid versions. The least expensive $59/year Home plan gives you the unlimited storage and allows up to three PCs to share the online storage pool. Family plans and small office plans give you individual storage bins, and the business plans also give you an administrator's dashboard.

The product allows for Web-based access to your backed-up files, which is very nice if you want to grab a something when you're away from your PC. You can also share files via e-mail (recipients get links, not the files themselves) or publish files for public access.

Upline can also back up files to a local device, such as a second hard drive, a server, or a PC on the local network. I don't know of any other products that handle both local and Web-based backup. It's a very cool feature.

The product is based on Titanize, which HP acquired when it bought the company Opelin last year. I've always thought Titanize was an underappreciated backup application. Perhaps HP was listening.

Now, the flip side. The biggest turn off is that Upline does not backup e-mail files. That's planned for the future, according to HP, but backup users will need it now. Imagine losing your e-mail archive. Enough said.

Another missing piece: System restore. Upline is a document and media backup product. It won't store your programs or system settings. So if your hard disk crashes, you can't use it to rebuild your system.

The application doesn't offer PC-to-PC sync (see FolderShare, BeInSync, SugarSync), which to many is an obscure feature, but I think it's one of the most valuable data safety and convenience applications you can have on a personal computer. There's no virtual drive, such as XDrive has, which makes using the service just a little more tedious than it needs to be. Also, it's PC only on the backup side, although any machine with a browser can view Upline archive pages. There's also no mobile client. Finally, the search feature seems to only search file names, not files' contents.

Upline is neither a perfect backup tool nor a complete integrated online storage suite. However, at this price point, given its unlimited backup space and its straightforward sharing options, it's a good deal.

The desktop application is pretty straightforward for a backup product.

See also: Mozy and Carbonite.

This review has been updated from the original: Information was added on backing up data to a local device.

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to host images for quick and dirty sharing. Worth checking out is Photie, which is an incredibly simple photo host. It's light on features, but offers unlimited storage and file sizes (great for people with 14 megapixel SLRs), along with generous sharing options both for downloading shots and hosting on external sites and social networks.

What might be its killer feature, however, is that it gives you a detailed listing of when and where your photos have been viewed. It's something you find on YouTube and Viddler for videos, which can make tracking the buzz of a certain shot more fun for the creator. Many photo services simply give you a view count, which isn't nearly as useful.

While the tracking is great, the service is not without its small annoyances. Thumbnail previews are slow to load, and tags can only be added to shots one at a time. Users of Flickr will yearn for more.

Photie isn't all that different from other photo hosts, but the layout is clean and free of ads, and there are simple ways to share your shots in all manner of sizes. (click to enlarge)

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Dropbox is a promising new tool for online storage, file sync, and sharing. The cross-platform system plug-in gives you a shared drop box where you can dump files and access them from multiple computers just like you would on the home machine. It also keeps track of any changes to the files, which can be rolled back to previous versions that have been archived on the service's cloud storage.

I gave it a brief spin this afternoon on one computer and it works as advertised. I had no problem dumping a bunch of files, then accessing them through the Web interface. The photo album feature has been especially well implemented, as the system will automatically group together a folder of photos and categorize them into albums using the metadata. There are other nice touches too, such as visual notifiers to let you know when a file is syncing up with the server, as well as Growl system messages on the Mac version to let you know when a change is made to your drop box.

If a file needs recovery you can send it back to its rightful folder right from the Web.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

If you're away from your home machine you can still access all your files through the Web interface. There's also a file uploader that lets you add files up to 25MB if you want to save a file from a guest computer without having to install any software.

The service is in private beta with plans to open up later this year. We've got a little less than 100 invites to give away to Webware readers. Just sign up and enter "Webware" as the invite code. (Update: Invites are now gone. We're working on getting some more). Beta accounts offer up 5GB of storage with no limitations on how many computers you can have linked up. When the service opens up later this year, the free accounts will be limited at 1GB, so get 'em while they're hot. Another screen of the interface after the break.

Related: Tubes (now dead), Apple's .Mac 'Back to my Mac' service, SyncToy, Foldershare, BeInSync, SugarSync.

[found on Digg]

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