Almost a year ago, venture capitalist Fred Wilson posted a blog entry called My New Setup describing how he’d almost fully shifted his computing setup to the cloud using Google Apps, Dropbox, Macs and Android devices.
I’ve been a Google Apps user for several years now, hosting my family’s email on it as well as using it for business and I have a similar setup to Fred’s, albeit with more components and operating systems. This past week, the cloud storage “wars” really started to heat up with the launch of Google Drive as a competitor to Dropbox, Microsoft SkyDrive, Box.net and SugarSync, as well as others. Though SugarSync seems a laggard as of late and hasn’t received many mentions this week as media outlets chatter about Google Drive, I call it out here as it’s become an integral part of my setup.
For me, the promise and reality of the cloud is “all my information on any device I use, fast.” I use both Macs and Windows machines, as well as an iPhone and with them I can get to all my stuff, pretty much instantly.
One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, remarked “(t)he future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” I think this has been true of cloud synchronization services for some time and that we just recently hit an inflection point where usage will become a lot more evenly distributed with increased consumer adoption as smartphones and tablets continue to proliferate and companies with products that most people already use, like Google and Microsoft, get into the mix.
So, here’s how I roll:
Cloud Services & Synchronization
I use Google Apps for email, calendaring, contacts and some document composition and editing. Now with Google Drive, the Google Docs from my main account also sync to my Mac and PC (no iOS support yet), which is fine as I’ve never liked having my data only in the cloud, though I still keep my non-Google Docs files in Dropbox, with one important caveat.
Because I use multiple computers, my Downloads folder is very important to me as items that I receive via email or download from the web often end up there, sometimes edited. So, I need to synchronize the content of my various Downloads folders between computers. To do so, I have two basic choices:
- Re-map the Downloads folder locations of my browsers, email clients and chat clients for each computer I use to a folder inside of Dropbox and hope I didn’t forget an application, or
- Use a synchronization service that doesn’t care where my Downloads folders are located.
I choose #2 and for this I use SugarSync. I used to choose #2, but since SugarSync dropped paid accounts, now I choose #1.
While the company that became SugarSync goes back to 2004 and Dropbox was founded in 2007, both neither really got going until 2009. The firm I worked for at that time used Macs exclusively and SugarSync was one of the first to support OS X, so we chose it for file storage and backup. It works fine, but because it can synchronize any folder on a computer, it’s nowhere near as simple as Dropbox (or SkyDrive and Google Drive for that matter). But, for my use case – synchronizing a specific folder, it works worked great. I also used to synchronize each computer’s desktop using SugarSync in case I leave left a file there, so that‘s was two folders, total. SugarSync is probably still the best tool for syncing Downloads folders between multiple computers, but its smallest offering is 60GB at $74.99 per year, and I don’t need anywhere near that much storage for Downloads.
Until recently, most everything else went into Dropbox. I use the Teams version at work so we share 1000 GB between 5 people, so I’m not very worried about running out of storage. I also have a personal Dropbox account that has 35.25 GB of free storage that I got mostly through running a Google AdWords campaign, though Dropbox clients only synchronize with one account at a time, so I don’t use this account.
Now, with Google Drive coming out with 5 GB free and Microsoft SkyDrive offering 25 GB free to those with an existing account (and finally launching Windows and Mac clients this past week), I’m considering parceling out my files between the services, as to not hog so much space on my work Dropbox account. That said, the downside of this would be running multiple synchronization clients on each of my computers, which could bog them down, so we’ll see how that evolves.
Mail Clients and Productivity Applications
While all my files and information are available in the cloud, I still use certain clients and applications to access them. I use Gmail in a browser (Google Chrome) a lot, because of all the apps that plug into it, but I also use Sparrow on my Mac and iPhone and Thunderbird on my PC, so I can unify my email accounts. Google Chrome Sync, LastPass and XMarks make sure my browsers are setup the same on any computer I use. Evernote or Pocket (formerly Read It Later) gets my notes or clippings from the web.
Microsoft Office still gets a lot of use for polishing final Word documents (though composition now often occurs in Google Docs) and creating PowerPoint presentations (sorry Google, but the templates just aren’t there yet), and as a “numbers guy” I have a hard time imagining life without Microsoft Excel. That said, the collaboration features of Google Docs are magical for composition and the price is right for personal use or anyone with a side project or early stage business. Were Office365 to offer a freemium model similar to Google Apps, I would seriously consider it as the paid version’s collaborative features seem to rival if not exceed those of Google Apps.
One of the things that I really do appreciate about Gmail and Google Apps is that because Google’s revenue model differs from Microsoft’s, its applications change in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary fashion. Since one doesn’t need to shell out $200-$350 per copy every few years, Google doesn’t feel the need to radically overhaul the look and feel of its productivity suite just to make it seem “new”, therein justifying the purchase. As a result, I don’t have to relearn it. Hopefully Office365 will eventually take a similar approach. Once most productivity apps are used in a browser, then the OS really won’t matter to me anymore.
Search
One of the challenges of the cloud is having data spread across multiple services. When using one’s regular laptop or desktop, any synchronized files should show up inside of Spotlight or Windows search, however not all of my cloud services are synchronized to my computers. A new app for Mac OS X, FoundApp helps solve this issue by integrating cloud search (multiple Google Apps accounts and also Dropbox) with desktop search for a more unified view.
On my iPhone I use CloudMagic or Greplin to search my data within the cloud. Greplin indexes Google Apps, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn with the free version and additional services with the paid offering. CloudMagic, which I use more, is similar to Greplin, but with what I consider a better UI. While it taps into fewer cloud services (in particular, no Dropbox support), it will search Microsoft Exchange-based email accounts, like Office365. Anyone who has tried in frustration to find a specific email using the iPhone’s native mail app would likely benefit from the speed of CloudMagic or Greplin.
While Greplin searches more services, I find that I usually know which Dropbox folder to look in within the Dropbox iPhone app (which also has search) to find a file. With fewer services, CloudMagic provides less cluttered searches of my Gmail/Google Apps content and the ability to confine searches to say, just mail or just docs, so I use it the most. SkyDrive and SugarSync also have iPhone apps with search functions.
The Benefits
For me, the benefits of being able to access one’s information from anywhere really comes in the form of feeling less tied down to a specific place (like the office) or a specific piece of hardware. Most days, my laptop just stays in my bag unless I end up working in the conference room or at a coffee shop. At home, I often use my wife’s computer to dash off emails or review documents, rather than booting mine up. The hardware, and for me, the OS, just fades into the background and I end up focusing on the data and whatever task is at hand.
Update, April 16, 2014:
SugarSync is no longer free, so Dropbox is used in its stead because I don’t need that much storage space for my Downloads folders. There is now a Google Drive app for mobile devices. CloudMagic is now an iOS email client which offers a good unified search function, but it does not go as far back in time as the Gmail app does. Greplin became Cue and then shutdown. A number of contextual apps have taken its place, but at the moment I am not aware of a good unified cloud search app for iOS. If you know of one, please let me know.
rolling on chrome 