Recently I created a post (turned out to be one of the most popular on this site) to show how to install Live SkyDrive as a Network Drive using Gladinet.

At that time, Gladinet was still a Beta Program. Recently, they released Version 1 and there has been some significant changes to the instructions. I’ve now updated the post to properly reflect these changes.

I’m now using the free edition of Gladinet to connect to my SkyDrive, Google Apps and Google Picasa albums all via My Computer

You can find the article here: Set Up Live SkyDrive as a Network Drive via Gladinet

Hope this helps everyone!

Storage has come a long way from the good old days of keeping data on floppy discs and DVD’s. Its advanced to external hard drives and storage media such as iPods and SD Cards and so on. These forms of data storage are very common nowadays.

All these are good methods to carry information with you as you go however they have a few disadvantages. They are physical devices prone to accidents and subject to demands of physical transportation. They can be lost or stolen and can end up placing information into unauthorized hands. They may also require special drivers or slots installed on the machines before the information can be seen. Collaboration and versioning can be difficult unless if additional transportation methods are implemented.

• The alternative to carrying physical storage devices with you is to store the information in a secure online facilities. Depending on the online facility, this can have the following advantages:
• Its accessible everywhere as long as you have access to the internet.
• It is safe and secure (provided the online facility has good authentication and authorization practice).
• It may be possible to edit your documents online directly on the online facility’s site. Alternatively, some facilities offer offline editing with automatic synchronization back to the online document.
• It is possible to share documents with selected or public audience.
• Some online facilities provide for collaborative editing of document.
• Lastly, its possible to keep physical stores synchronized across multiple devices

Here are a few applications and services that can provide for online document storage, collaboration and remote synchronization:

1. Windows Live Mesh 

A popular product that gives you 5 gigs of online storage space as well as file synchronization across devices. It has additional functionality around remote access and ability to add many “devices” to your Mesh. I’m actually using this quite extensively to connect to my home machine. I’ll write up a post about getting this working on your machine soon.

Links: Windows Live Mesh

2. Adobe Buzzword

A service that supports document storage and collaborative editing of these documents. Its limited to document types only but has a flashy interface and once you got used to it, it can quickly become a tool that you can use everywhere.

Links: NewbTech Review, Adobe Buzzword

3. Windows Live SkyDrive

Another excellent file storage system that gives the user a whopping 25 gigs of storage space and is not limited to document types, so you can store all manner of files here.

Popular file types (such as images) are recognized automatically and SkyDrive will adjust its presentation of these files accordingly.

Links: NewbTech Review, Windows Live SkyDrive

4. Google Docs

An online document management system that allows for storage and editing of documents straight from their user interface. There are limitations on file sizes and functionality if editing through their applications, but, its suitable for everyday needs. The online applications are provided via Google Apps.

Links: Google Docs

5. Zoho Office Suite

A free online office suite similar to Google Apps and includes a variety of collaborative ready applications. It includes versioning and online storage (I believe its 1gig for document storage space)

Links: NewbTech Review, Zoho Office Suite 

6. DropBox

Has functionality that allows for users to create shared folders and drop all manner of files in them. The free version allows for 3gigs of online space and its perfect for quick storage requirements.

Links: DropBox

7. MozyHome

An online backup service that gives you free 2gigs of back up space and you can dictate which folders you wish to automatically back up.

Additional space costs more. It is widely used and highly recommended especially amongst small businesses who may or may not have a robust backup strategy.

Links: MozyHome

8. Spideroak

A cross OS service that allows for online backup, synchronization, sharing and storage solutions. Its available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems and gives the user 2gigs of space for free.

Links: Spideroak 

9. RapidShare

A file hosting service that allows you to upload a file and get a download link that you can send to anyone to download. This service allows for very large file sizes and is popular around gaming and media sites.

Links: RapidShare 

10. drop.io

Allows for private sharing of files and real time collaboration. It creates a virtual folder up to 100megs and supports all file types. You can specify a name to call the “folder” and share this as part of the drop.io URL.

It allows for password protection and other users can drop their files into this folder.

Links: Drop.io

11. GBridge

Offers file synchronization across your devices over the Google GTalk network. It can go through most network firewalls and can allow you to create “shares” on your machines that can be opened to other authenticated users.

Links: NewbTech Guide, GBridge

Conclusion

A lot of online storage services can be made to integrate seamlessly into your desktop using products such as Gladinet so that they appear just as another folder on your computer. In actuality, the documents are stored on the online facilities servers.

The above are just some of the huge variety of options you may have in terms of online storage, synchronization and collaboration. If you use or recommend a similar service, feel free to comment below :)

Recently i looked at Microsoft SkyDrive as online storage mechanism and actively use Google Docs to hold a lot of my documents. Adobe is coming out with a similar offering in terms of online document storage and collaboration.

Main Features

• Its an online word processor
• It allows you to store and access your documents from anywhere (internet access permitting)
• Its got an excellent collaboration functionality – allows multiple authors to make changes to the same document
• Key to any collaboration tool is tracking changes, versioning and reviewing edits. It comes with an tools to do all these things.
• Ability to add comments to the document inline as well as controlling access to documents/functions through roles.
• It supports image imbedding and formatting words around these images.

Right.. so lets take this for a quick test drive…

Prerequisites

In order to start using Buzzwords, you’ll first need (yes you guessed it), a username and password. Buzzwords uses Adobe Id to define its users. So, before we go on, lets create a username for us to use.

Step 1

Open up your favourite web browser and go to http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ . You’ll see a "Sign Up Now" button on the top right hand corner. Click it to be taken to their login/sign up page.

Click on Sign Up! at the bottom of the login box.

Fill in the form that pops up in screen to complete the registration process and it will sign you in automatically.

Note: Google Chrome users may get an Unsupported Browser warning. It suggests running Buzzword on IE, Firefox or Safari.. strange! It did have a link to tell me to try anyway in case i’m feeling adventurous :)

If you have just registered, you’ll need to verify your email. So feel free to do that via your Inbox and then navigate to https://buzzword.acrobat.com to sign in.

Step 2

Once logged in, you’ll see the main working screen of Buzzword.

You can import a document here or create a new one by clicking on the Document Menu.

Feel free to mouse over all the various buttons and seeing what they do. The user interface looks sleek but takes some getting used to. Its Macromedia driven, so has all the usual swishes and sliding menus..

Step 3

I created a new document and started putting some text in. Again, the user interface is slightly different to popular word processors (such as Microsoft Word) but once i got used to it, using the word processor was actually quick and painless.

Again, the menu bar expands and rolls to show you your current choices as well as available options. I got used to the icons really quickly.

Adding images was quick and painless as was adding comments and doing spell checks.

Once you have finished with the document, you can print it out or save it using the Document menu. Closing the document takes you back to the main menu.

Closing thoughts

With features such as sharing and history/versioning and the ability to import documents from a variety of sources, i can see a future for Buzzword as a quick online editor and document manager. It will be useful in particular to students who would like the word count facility as well as the ability to access ones document from anywhere.

The Document Organiser (ie, main screen) can get cluttered and i haven’t found a way to create folders yet..

I liked the image upload and formatting options. The texts flows around the image appropriately and resizing an image was as simple as clicking on a corner and dragging.

It could do with more Fonts though and sometimes, dragging an image to the right of a paragraph can get problematic with it dropping everywhere but at the end.

Will it be a viable replacement for Google Docs? I actually think there is a space in the market for a product that specialises in word processing and gets very good at document collaboration and authoring. Google Docs tries to bring all manner of document authoring to the front. Adobe Buzzword just sticks to one of those products and they have shown that not every word processor out there has to mimic Microsoft Word to be useful.

If you need more information or help when using Buzzword, the first document that is available on your dashboard is "Welcome to Buzzword" – this is a good read for more information on the features available to you.

I’ve intentionally kept this article open-ended as I want to encourage the readers to play around for themselves and make their own mind up. Its not a product that will replace your desktop/laptop word processor, but with moves towards lighter applications and cloud computing, this may just be what the future looks likes a few years from now…

Relevant Links:

• https://buzzword.acrobat.com – Main page for Buzzword
• http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ – Adobe Information Page for Buzzword

One of the more popular online storage providers out there currently is Google with their GoogleDocs application. This is a pretty cool application that allows you to upload and share all manner of documents.

Microsoft has done it one better with their latest offering called Microsoft Skydrive. Similar in concept, it’s one of the services provided by Windows Live that gives you your very own online drive where you can store just about anything.

More impressively, the space you are allowed to store is a mind boggling 25gigs! Thats a whole lot of space :)

So what would you store in these 25 gigs? Here is an idea.. practically everyone out there now has a digital camera of their own (my four year old has her very own.. in pink). And how many people out there keep back ups of their photos? I bet a lot of folks out there have no back up strategy and dump all their photos on their local hard drive only to lose it in the next boom-event (ie, virus, hard drive failure, accidentally formatting your hard drive while trying to install Linux on a separate drive – yeah.. that happens too ;) ).

So how do you get access to this free space and use it as an alternative to Google Docs and other sharing systems (such as Picasa and/or Flickr, etc)?

Right.. lets start shall we? 

Pre-requisites

We have to have a Windows Live account. If you use MSN Messenger or Hotmail, its likely you already have a live account. If you don’t use MSN Messenger, or you know you don’t have a live account, don’t fret.. we’ll create one on the way. (not really a prerequisite aye?)

Step 1

Open up your favourite web browser and go to http://skydrive.live.com

At this point, one of two windows may pop up. If you have already used live.com before and have marked yourself as always log on, then you’ll go straight to your home screen. If you haven’t yet (and i’m assuming you haven’t), then you get the following window pop up (left)

If you don’t have a Live id, then here is the time to create one. Its free and easy to follow through. Simply hit the Sign Up button on the left and follow through the wizard to get your live id.

You can also associate your live id with your current email address so are not creating yet another email address just to use Windows Live.

Once you have got it, return back to Step 1 and go back to the login page and log in with your Live Id.

Step 2

Right, we got the login page and our live user id. Simply log on by filling in your username and live password on the right hand side of the screen. You can use your own judgement if you want the user to be remembered on your computer or not. Ideally, if you are in a public or friends place, i would suggest not ticking the tickboxes :)

Click on Sign In when you’ve entered your information.

You will be taken to your Skydrive. The main parts of the screen are:

• Your Recent Folders (as well as any new folders you may create here)
• Amount of space free (at the top right corner)
• And anything new in your network (note: you get a whole bunch of options similar to facebook that you can play with by clicking on the "Profile" menu on the top of the screen. I’ll let you play with those).

Step 3

Lets create a folder to hold some photos. Click on "Create Folder" (a link just on top of Recent Folders). A small wizard will appear to ask for the name you want to give your folder as well as sharing options.

You can make this folder Public (ie open to all) or limit it to people you trust or just yourself.

Hitting next then shows you an upload page. You can upload documents in one of two ways, either using the "browse…" button and locating a file, or installing the upload tool. You’ll get a link on the top of the browse boxes if you haven’t installed the upload tool yet.

I would recommend installing it as it offers a nice drag and drop functionality. Simple enough to install. Email me or leave a comment if you need specific instructions.

Step 4

Lets upload some things into our new folder. If you have installed the load tool, you’ll see see a large box on your screen with "Drop files here" instructions. Open up My Computer and navigate to the document you want to upload and simply drag it into this box.

It should upload and appear in your new folder :)

The "Drag here" box will drop down and the photo will appear on the top window. If you want to add more files, simply drag more into the Drag box.

Step 5

Once you have finished adding the files you wish to upload, simply hit the Upload button. At this point all the documents you have selected will now be uploaded into your folder. It may take a while if you have chosen large files or large number of them. Once they are all done, a successful message will appear and you’ll be taken to the gallery.

And thats about it :)

Clicking on an individual photo will open it up in its own page. You even have facilities to add captions and if you share with people, they will be able to add comments against your photos too.

As an exercise, i created a Public folder to hold Windows 7 Wallpaper that someone released around the net :) You are welcome to browse my public folder by clicking on the gallery picture below:

I have only shown Image type files being uploaded here. Its also possible to upload other types of files and share them if required. I haven’t gone through all the features of Skydrive, so feel free to play around and leave a comment here to tell us if you like it or not :)

Above all, its 25gigs of space that you can put to use.. and for free.. and you can’t beat that.

Relevant links:

• Exploring Windows Live SkyDrive
• Wikipedia for SkyDrive
• Windows Live SkyDrive Team Blog (on live spaces)