Cloud Competition

Is it possible we are in the midst of a round of competition to attract customers to cloud storage? First I see that Box.net is offering Android Users free 50 gigabytes of storage (deal ends in about a month). I am still running a server with less storage capacity.

This afternoon I see that DropBox is expanding services to include the potential for automatic photo uploads from your phone. I immediately ran outside into the early stages of a full blizzard and took some pics. By the time I got back to my office, the images were not only uploaded to the cloud, but synched down to a folder on my desktop. I immediately turned this feature off on my phone because I am not certain I want all of my photos uploaded, but it certainly nice to know the feature is there. DropBox promises 3 additional free gigs for photos.

So, from my camera to the cloud to my desktop and now to you in less than 15 min.

You can share these images by moving them to the Public folder and then requesting the link (example) for each. You can share images from the Camera Upload folder with other DropBox users.

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Takeout

I do my professional writing in Google docs. Using a cloud service allows me the flexibility of working from any location using pretty much whatever equipment I have available. I also trust Google storage more than I trust my own storage. I am betting my equipment and backup behavior is less reliable than the equivalent Google equipment and conscientiousness.

Google wants to make certain I have options. Actually, I think the concern is more that I could be able to leave Google and move on to other services if I want, but the access opportunities work out the same no matter what the motivation. There have been several options, but I just encountered a new approach that seems built in (Google TakeOut). I just made a backup of several hundred doc files and moved them to a local backup drive.

Easy peasy (or whatever the expression for it is not difficult is).

 

 

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