McAfee Online Backup has a lot of options and a rudimentary interface that could be intimidating for novices.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)McAfee, one of the world's largest Internet security providers, wants to go one step further in keeping your data safe. It now offers to store your backup data for you.
The company announced Thursday the availability of its McAfee Online Backup, an online backup service that automatically uploads data from your computer's hard drive to a remote server via the Internet.
While online backup services are nothing new and have been available for a long time from many providers, such as Carbonite, Memeo, or Cuku, the main difference with the new McAfee Online Backup service is that it's one of a few that offer unlimited storage space.
For a fixed annual fee of $60, you can back up as much data as you want. This could possibly the best deal around for online backup, especially for anyone with a lot of important data and a high-speed Internet connection.
Other than the generous amount of storage, according to McAfee, its new service, which is powered by Mozy, is secure and comes with easy-to-use software.
I tried the software out briefly, and it was, indeed, easy to install and get the first backup up and running.
Once you have registered an account with McAfee, you can download the software and install it on your computer, much like you would do with the company's security software. When the install is finished, the software tests the speed of your Internet connection, which later helps determine how long it will take to get the first backup done.
The software offers a lot of options, such as Bandwidth Throttle that limits how much of the Internet connection is used for the data upload, and Backup Speed that lets you choose either fast or slow backups, to lessen the impact on the computer's performance.
McAfee Online Backup can automatically detect and find important data, including bookmarks, e-mail, contacts, documents, photos, and so on, to back up for you. You can also manually back up any folders of your choosing. Once everything is set, the software will take care of the backing up on its own. Depending on the amount of data and the quality of the Internet connection, the first backup can take a very long time (perhaps days), but after that, only data that has been changed will be backed up.
It's worth noting, though, that even when you set the backup speed to optimize for fast backup, the software seems to upload data rather slowly. If you have a cable connection and have tens or hundreds of gigabytes, expect the initial backup to take days to complete. Also, the software's unfriendly interface and the overwhelming amount of unexplained options could be intimidating to novice users.
Nonetheless, overall, this seems to be a decent backup solution and could be the most affordable for those who have a lot of data to back up. If you don't have already have a reliable backup service, consider trying it out, as it comes with a 30-day money back warranty.
Storage provider and collaboration service Box.net is launching a mobile extension to its OpenBox platform of application programming interfaces on Thursday. The updated platform will enable iPhone app developers to make better use of the service's cloud storage, giving users access to their files across mobile applications on the iPhone and soon other platforms.
The idea is that users will be able to save whatever they're doing on the phone to Box's cloud storage service, as opposed to their servers or the device itself. It's similar to the way the smartphone can natively send some files to places like Apple's MobileMe service and Google's YouTube. Users can then make edits to those files using other applications, subsequently syncing back up the next time they launch the iPhone app.
As part of the new program, Box has already given a handful of developers access to the new APIs. These include Pixelpipe, JotNot, iRec, and iThoughts, all of which are releasing new versions of their apps that will be able to access and save to a user's Box account.
What's missing here are Box's servers, which are doing all the heavy lifting. But the idea is the same--your data flows freely between mobile and desktop apps, all through Box.
(Credit: Box)Beyond productivity apps, the new APIs allow for any kind of data to be sent over, which opens up transfers from generic things like text files, photos, and videos into things like game saves and user settings. A Box representative told me that while gaming would not be a focus of the API, a developer's implementation of it would not be discouraged.
Considering the heavy saturation of cross-platform games on the iPhone, it could quite easily give developers a way for gamers to continue the game they were playing on another device, making Box a valuable storage locker.
Box.net is rolling out a new version of its search engine that lets users search for information found within the files they've stored on the service. Previously its system only worked with file names and user-created tags. The new tool will index text within Microsoft Office documents, PDFs, user descriptions, and Box.net's recently-added Web documents service.
This is an important feature to add, and one that's long overdue. For things like videos and image files it was not a big deal since the built-in preview tools made viewing the content within your folders quite simple. For documents, however, the only real quick way to go about hunting through them was to name them properly the first time, or use an appropriate OpenBox service to preview the file within your browser. For businesses or individuals with a large number of files stored on Box's servers, both of these solutions break down quickly.
The company is rolling this out to users, both free and business accounts, over the next few weeks.
Search results now go through your saved files to find words or phrases within. You also get a preview of what it found.
(Credit: Box.net)
Online storage service Box.net has a new tool for internal collaboration. Multiple Box users can now work on a shared Web document, using a built-in editor the company has made from scratch.
While there is no option to work on a single document at the same time, like you can with Google Docs and Zoho Writer, it features all the things you'd want for putting together a sturdy document. You can pick from various fonts, format to your heart's content, and drop in photos--either from your hard drive or a URL. All the while it saves what you're doing and even lets you roll back to an earlier version if someone has gone in and botched something. You cannot, however, see what was added or replaced without first opening up the file.
Box.net's new Web document creator is simple and easy to use. It's lacking real-time collaboration though, meaning only one person can edit at a time.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Permissions have also been handled with some convenience in mind, although there are definitely some rough edges. If you start a document in a folder you're already sharing with other people they are automatically chosen as collaborators. You can then go in and choose whether you want them to be able to edit the document, or simply view it.
Oddly enough though, you can't send collaboration invites from a virgin document; something I'm assuming will be fixed in short order. In the meantime you need to do this from the folder where the document resides. Here you're given the option to send an invite either as a viewer, or an editor.
If you're sending the document to someone who is not a registered Box.net user, they'll need to sign up for the service to edit it. This is where I found it to be a little buggy, since the service doesn't even give them an option to skip registration and begin editing as a registered guest, or simply see a read-only version of the document. In its current iteration they either need to sign-up, or get you to re-send the invite to view only before they can even lay eyes on it.
Despite this niggle, this feature is off to a good start, and a smart way to extend the recently pumped-up collaborative features. I would have been happier to see it replaced with third-party services that let you do the same thing via Box's OpenBox service, but in this case, these documents can be a great natural extension for the service's built-in discussion tools.
I'm big on places to store a lot of files, and Web storage newcomer ADrive seems up to the challenge. The host serves up a whopping 50GB of storage for free, with the only bandwidth limitations being in the size of the files you can upload, which are capped at a reasonable 2GB. The free "beta" accounts are supplemented with ads (hence the AD in the name), which show up on the top and bottom of your file explorer.
While lacking some of the graphical beauty and familiarity of other file-hosting services like Box.net and DigitalBucket, ADrive lets you arrange whatever you'd uploaded into nested directories to help maintain organization. It also doesn't require any special software to upload or download your files.
The one major downfall I came across is the Java-powered file uploader, which uses a pop-up status indicator to let you know what's going on with your transfers. The problem is that it takes control of whatever else you're doing in that browser window. This means uploading large files should be done in another instance of your browser just in case you feel like regaining control of whatever tabs you had open.
Regardless, I found the performance on file transfer to be phenomenal. Given our speed here at CNET HQ in San Francisco is faster than what most people have at home, the uploader will take as much bandwidth as you can give it--which should come in handy if you've got Verizon FiOS or live in Sweden.
[via Cybernet News]
Move, redownload, and share uploaded files with ADrive's file manager.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
We got an e-mail earlier today from a Webware reader and Omnidrive user who told us the online storage service has been out since early this morning. We sleuthed around a little and tried to get in touch with Omnidrive CEO Nik Cubrilovic, whose personal blog is also down, although we've heard nothing back yet. As of publishing this, the service is still down.
Last month Read/WriteWeb broke a story about the online storage service heading to the mythical Internet deadpool after picking up on a flurry of unresolved technical difficulties that had been listed in the official and unofficial Omnidrive support forums. Cubrilovic responded to the RWW post saying that all was peachy, with a new release on the way and a healthy dose of funding in the can. However, hours later Ex-CTO Phil Morle responded with a completely different story, saying that there were no more staff on board and that he had never been paid for his services over his four-month stint with the company. Worse yet, Morle said that member dues weren't properly going to paying the monthly server bill, leading to unexpected downtimes.
If the downtime is permanent, the real losers in this situation are the paying users with critical data that cannot be accessed. Deadpool or not, the best you can hope for in a situation like this is an escape hatch to get your data out and migrate it elsewhere. We'll keep you posted.
Update: (1/9) A handful of users have let us know that the Windows desktop client is still working for them, despite the Omnidrive site and connected support forums being down.
The Gdrive, the mythical, hypothetical Google-provided and free Web-based storage drive, took a giant step toward reality earlier this week. As most of America waddled out of its tryptophan-induced haze on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the myth could become real within a few months.
However, you don't have to wait that long to get free storage from Google. Thanks to Gspace and Gmail Drive, you can start using your five-gigabyte-plus of Gmail storage as a virtual drive right now. This second, even.
... Read more
Thumbplay, a sales hub for mobile ringtones, videos, and games, will announce tomorrow at the CTIA conference in San Francisco, California, that it has also become a free database for user-generated content.
Account-holders can upload and store media from either their cell phone or computer to their Thumbplay "locker." From there, they can send images and clips to friends via SMS or e-mail. Users can also download content from fellow Thumplay members for free, and grab code to affix the image on any personal Web page that accepts HTML embedding. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a way to assimilate another user's contribution into your personal media gallery. UPDATE: They can, however, be stored in a separate folder for favorites.
Thumbplay will also reveal two upcoming Facebook apps, whose presence will complete the circle of what is essentially a free storage and sharing service with some social networking characteristics.
The first of these is Thumbplay Share, which will display photos from your personal locker and automatically update them when you add a new image to Thumbplay.com. Photo Portal does the reverse, allowing users to send photos from Facebook albums to any cell phone.
The apps won't be publicly available until an unspecified date later this week, though Thumbplay's President and CEO, Are Traasdahl, stopped by CNET's San Francisco office to demonstrate. They look pretty effective so far, but more word on that when I get a chance to try them out in the wild.
In addition to the announcement today that the final name is Windows Live Folders, Microsoft also pushed out some upgrades to the service. Those include an updated user interface, drag and drop file upload, a "recently viewed users" section, the ability to embed files in web pages or blog posts, and a thumbnail view for pictures.
Microsoft has just announced two new Windows Live products, Windows Live Folders and Windows Live Photo Gallery. Windows Live Folders is Microsoft's online storage solution, set to compete with AOL's Xdrive, Box.net, and a lot of other startups in this market. Windows Live Photo Gallery acts as an upgrade to Vista's Windows Photo Gallery, providing tight integration with Windows Live Spaces and Windows itself.
Windows Live Folders
Windows Live Folders features a 500 MB storage limit, which is a below the industry norm, compared to competitors like Xdrive which provides 5 gigs or Box.net which provides 1 gig of storage for free. When I asked Chris Jones, Corporate VP for Windows Live Experience Program Management about the smaller than average storage space, he said, "There are lots of people who use .Mac and pay $99 a year for a gig. The reason they do is because of the great integration across the experience and how convenient it is. So we think that the storage limit isn't the interesting thing, it's how integrated the experience is and how convenient it is to go and share those files."
Unlike some of the other competing services, Windows Live Folders is more geared towards storing and sharing documents as opposed to storing music and videos. Xdrive, on the other hand actually encourages uploading music and videos by creating folders for both by default. Microsoft's take is that 500 MB is a sufficient amount of storage for documents. Jones comments, "People will really run over that limit when they are talking about storing video or storing music and that's not what we're designing the service for." While I do agree that it is important to have tight integration with other services and that is where the real value of a service like this is, I think that people are certainly going to want more storage as they quickly fill up their 500 MB. Obviously since this service is just going into beta, Microsoft will have plenty of time to see how their storage limit works out, tweak the service, and make it better for the release.
The other issue that I touched on with Chris was the potential availability of a client based application for Folders. While there aren't plans right now for a traditional client, Chris Jones said that, "We do think that in a lot of cases, the 'client' for this stuff should just be the Windows shell. By that I mean, you just create a folder, you say I want it in the cloud and it's just in the cloud, you shouldn't have to run a separate application to do that." The online storage industry will definitely benefit from the added competition of a big player like Microsoft.
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Photo Gallery is an upgrade to Vista's Photo Gallery, replacing it on install. It can also be installed on Windows XP SP2. In Vista, it integrates heavily with features already built into the OS, making it easy to make a movie out of your pictures or burn a picture CD. One of the other features that was demoed was "photo stitching." Basically this consists of taking a series of photos in the same location and stitching them together to make a big panoramic photo. I haven't had any hands on time with Photo Gallery yet, so I will probably have more to say on this later, but for the time being, I can say that there really does not seem to be a reason to not upgrade to Windows Live Photo Gallery, especially if you are already using Vista.
Both of these products are being released into limited beta with around 5,000 to 10,000 testers initially. We should see the betas expanding throughout the summer with an eventual full release sometime this winter.
