That Michael Arrington! The man, I’m told, is a machine. A veritable machine. And it’s delivered yet again — in the form of ZumoDrive.
Michael introduced them this afternoon in his TechCrunch post.
Here’s some of what he had to say:
Newcomer Zumodrive, from Y Combinator startup Zecter, enters this space with an interesting twist. Like other syncing services, Zumodrive creates a drive on your device that is synced to the cloud. But instead of syncing those files with all of your other devices, Zumodrive tricks the file system into thinking those cloud-stored files are local, and streams them from the cloud when you open or access them.
That’s not such a big deal when in comes to PC-to-PC syncing where hard drive storage isn’t an issue. But I have far more music files than will fit on even my laptop. Zumodrive lets me access them (even via iTunes) in a way that makes them appear local. And when it comes to netbooks and mobile devices with very limited hard drive space, Zumodrive is a Godsend. It just appears to make your hard drive limitless in size.
That’s it then.
We’re done.
There’s a nice clear dividing line between the old world and the new world.
This kind of service, in itself — storage/synchronisation — isn’t new. I’ve been a DropBox subscriber since they launched and a user of all manner of online storage services for years.
The FUNDAMENTAL problem is that I want everything in The Cloud. Everything.
I don’t want to mess around with personal storage. Personal storage on-device is like buying your own power station for your house. Anyone who carries round their data WITH them is living in the wrong century. The future is the cloud. When I need the data, I want it available immediately. I don’t want to sod about managing the memories of my mobile handset, desktop machine, home media server and so on. Stick it up in the cloud, give me lightning fast access to my data — and cache my most used files locally for efficiency.
I’ve been trying to do this for a while. I’m a big user of Amazon’s S3 storage. I have about 50 gig there. Accessing it is a bit of a pain, despite the JungleDisk system I use. The moment I click on a file, I’m punished while the operating system waits as the 73mb sound file has to download before I can do anything with it.
I’ve got another 30gb on DropBox. And recently I discovered how stupid that was when I opened up my Mac Air and found it had 15mb of memory left — because it synced every single file from DropBox overnight.
Last week I bought two iTunes albums. And that took me 100mb over the limit for my iPod. Now I have to choose what data I want to take with me. And that is highly unacceptable. The same way it takes 100 clicks to do anything on a Nokia handset. (Ok, so I am exaggerating that a little, Symbian fans).
But that brings me to Nokia. To the ‘old’ devices. To the ‘old Europe’ of the mobile world. Nokia, Sony, LG and to a large extent, Samsung. There’s your writing. That’s it — right there on the wall.
We’re going to the cloud and ZumoDrive is the first to actually point the way.
For $60 a month, you can store 200gb on ZumoDrive. You can stick your whole iTunes album into it, for example, and access it from whatever machine or device you’re using.
Uh oh — we’ve almost found ourselves into next generation territory! 😉 If I can use ZumoDrive to browse, send, look at and play/view any of my files on my iPhone 3G, now you’re kicking. I’m not sure if this will work yet. I’m going to give it a go and see.
There’s issues with the whole cloud thing, certainly. Especially when you live in the United Kingdom provinces and have an 8mb broadband connection that actually delivers about 35k/sec down and a similar rate up. That’s not *quite* going to be that useful with ZumoDrive at the moment. And yes, the reputed 7mbps ‘in the lab’ mobile broadband speeds offered by the operators here in the UK isn’t quite anywhere near the sort of throughput that you’d ideally want — and my measurement is being able to sit on the train and say to yourself, ‘Right, let’s watch a bit of that Batman movie with Heath Ledger in it. Now.’
I won’t be satisfied until I can flick open my device, find the movie in 3 seconds and have it start playing in HD quality (on a, granted, small screen) within 10 seconds. I think 10 seconds is a suitable amount of time to allow. Right now, what are the chances of this being successful? Limited.
But we’re getting there. And services like ZumoDrive are the way ahead. It’s the file spoofing that makes the leap for ZumoDrive. The ability to ‘have’ 200gb of files accessible without actually storing them directly and fully in your device memory.
The implications for the development of the mobile industry are very, very exciting. But game changing. If you think (as I do) that ShoZu, for example, is a good thing — i.e. getting data OFF your phone — how are we going to react when EVERYTHING we create, video, pictures, audio, whatever — is stored and immediately accessible from whatever device we want. Your television, your phone, your laptop, your fridge, your wifi photoframe, your HD digital camera. Screw being limited by physical memory. Screw tapes. Screw the wire.
Right. Having said that, let’s have a butchers, (translation: ‘a butchers’ = ‘a look’) at the install of ZumoDrive.
After install, here’s the first screen.
How big would you like your ZumoDrive to be? 😉
I went straight to the bottom of the list and selected 200gb for $60. Then it asked for my card details right away and I panicked 😉
So I selected 1gb to begin with. Free. Ok account created.
Then, yeah, this is fairly standard stuff – I need to name my computer.
And here’s the explanation of ZumoDrive and the benefits.
And a further illustration.
Nice.
Ok, that’s it all installed. I decided just to ‘finish’. I’ll try it out on the iPhone and other machines soon. Note you can get it on a PC as well as a Mac.
I opened up the ZumoDrive, found a presentation hanging around on my desktop and dragged it over.
Then I opened up the ZumoDrive control panel and had a look. There we go — that’s it loading mobile.ppt up to the cloud.
Brilliant.
I had a click through the various settings. My mouth dropped open at this option though:
RIGHT on. YES please. BRILLIANT.
iTunes ‘synching’. Now, if I can access ANY of my music from my iPhone,… geez that would be really cool.
Right now I’m not entirely sure if this is supported yet. If it is, genius. If not, I’m sure it’ll be coming.
Get yourself over to ZumoDrive if time permits and grab a copy. Let me know what you think. You’ll need Michael’s promo code — ireadtc2 — but you better be quick as I’m sure they’ll be gone in minutes.
More on ZumoDrive soon.
Update: Can’t check out the iPhone application yet as beta invites for that have now closed. But I can tell you they’re also working on an Android app. YES please.
Update 2: The ZumoDrive chaps are sending me a copy of the iPhone app. Plus read Mike’s story now in the Washington Post.
It even works with MAC OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard Latest Server/Desktop OS. 10A222
low cpu usage, generally speaking a well behaved client. VERY GOOD.
A.
Fuck the cloud. Extremely stupid idea of assuming the entire planet just can not be bothered with their own data (nor the security thereof).
As always there will be some who think they 'need' this.
I hope this whole cloud bs just goes away.
Logistically speaking it will never be anything but a waste of money.
Ahhh brilliant! An unbeliever! Great — let's have some discussion.
John, the privacy policy that we work here at MIR prohibits me from revealing your identity. I'm not going to do that — in fact I don't know who you are. But what I would like to point out is that you left a gmail address when you posted your comment above.
And Gmail is the cloud. So I find it strange that — logistically speaking, if you consider it to be a total waste of money, 'bs' and, I presume, a total waste of effort — what are you doing with a Gmail account?
I *trust* that all the email from your Gmail is downloaded immediately to your desktop computer and stored ONLY there. I further trust that you never, ever login to Gmail online — in the cloud — because that would be 'bs', wouldn't it? It'd be 'stupid'. If you want to access your email, you'll do it on YOUR computer, right? Download it and keep it there.
Now, if you're using a mobile device for your email, I further trust that you don't ever use a Blackberry with Exchange — as that's dangerously like the cloud. You want to keep your email on YOUR machine. For security. I hope that you manually sync the email from your desktop machine to your mobile handset — and that you never actually use an email client to check your mail online. As that'd be in the cloud too.
It's not right for every person and for every application — but we're already there John.
Agreed Andy!
Fuck the cloud. Extremely stupid idea of assuming the entire planet just can not be bothered with their own data (nor the security thereof).
As always there will be some who think they 'need' this.
I hope this whole cloud bs just goes away.
Logistically speaking it will never be anything but a waste of money.
Ahhh brilliant! An unbeliever! Great — let's have some discussion.
John, the privacy policy that we work here at MIR prohibits me from revealing your identity. I'm not going to do that — in fact I don't know who you are. But what I would like to point out is that you left a gmail address when you posted your comment above.
And Gmail is the cloud. So I find it strange that — logistically speaking, if you consider it to be a total waste of money, 'bs' and, I presume, a total waste of effort — what are you doing with a Gmail account?
I *trust* that all the email from your Gmail is downloaded immediately to your desktop computer and stored ONLY there. I further trust that you never, ever login to Gmail online — in the cloud — because that would be 'bs', wouldn't it? It'd be 'stupid'. If you want to access your email, you'll do it on YOUR computer, right? Download it and keep it there.
Now, if you're using a mobile device for your email, I further trust that you don't ever use a Blackberry with Exchange — as that's dangerously like the cloud. You want to keep your email on YOUR machine. For security. I hope that you manually sync the email from your desktop machine to your mobile handset — and that you never actually use an email client to check your mail online. As that'd be in the cloud too.
It's not right for every person and for every application — but we're already there John.
Agreed Andy!
I've been doing this using a sftp server and sftpdrive/expandrive since the late 90s. Funny how finally catching up to the turn of the century is game changing…
ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING (via @timoreilly) http://twurl.nl/we8wxz
You don't need all that. You just install your own server and connect it as Volume via SSHFS (MacFusion). It's really easy and my server has 300 Gigs – enough for all my data. “Cloud” is a buzzword 😉
The biggest innovation in computing since the the invention of the PC itself or even Wifi: RT @timoreilly ZumoDrive http://snurl.com/a8yei
Just read http://tinyurl.com/8vyrt8 It sounds strangely like AFS with a nice GUI installer.
I wonder how many people overwhelmed ZumoDrive with private beta requests after @Scobleizer linked http://bit.ly/GFMe
que bien se ve esto http://tinyurl.com/8vyrt8
Just managed to get an invite to try it out, only been playing with it for a short while but my early impression is mixed. It is clean and simple to use but the pricing for what is essentially just online backup puts me off a bit especially as it's still beta. I've recently been trying out sugarsync which will keep any selected folders on your computer in sync with ones on the cloud as well as having a section that can just be used as online storage, and its about half the price for a large storage package, plus the iphone app is prety slick.
the cloud is far going to become ever more integral into everyday technology use: RT @Scobleizer #Zumodrive http://is.gd/gfQ1
I've been doing this using a sftp server and sftpdrive/expandrive since the late 90s. Funny how finally catching up to the turn of the century is game changing…
You don't need all that. You just install your own server and connect it as Volume via SSHFS (MacFusion). It's really easy and my server has 300 Gigs – enough for all my data. “Cloud” is a buzzword 😉
I'd say it's horses for courses. I've got a ZumoDrive account, but I actually prefer Dropbox, precisely because it *does* create copies on each of my three machines without me having to do anything. I don't live in a metropolis where you can guarantee mobile data pretty much anytime. Sometimes I'm with a client with offices in the middle of beautiful countryside, which suits me, but I can't always get HSPDA or even 3G. With this in mind, I don't find ZumoDrive particularly inspiring or a huge advance, though I have nothing against the cloud approach.
I'd say it's horses for courses. I've got a ZumoDrive account, but I actually prefer Dropbox, precisely because it *does* create copies on each of my three machines without me having to do anything. I don't live in a metropolis where you can guarantee mobile data pretty much anytime. Sometimes I'm with a client with offices in the middle of beautiful countryside, which suits me, but I can't always get HSPDA or even 3G. With this in mind, I don't find ZumoDrive particularly inspiring or a huge advance, though I have nothing against the cloud approach.
@Andi and pji I’m not knocking what you say but if you said
“I’ve been doing this using a sftp server and sftpdrive/expandrive” or “You just install your own server and connect it as Volume via SSHFS (MacFusion). It’s really easy”
to most people they wouldnt have a clue what you were on about. Online storage solutions like this are for the masses, it makes it quick and simple. Even those with the technical knowledge to do it themselves might prefere a solution like zumodrive, sugarsync box.net etc becasuse it’s hassle free. You go away on a business trip, try to access the server back home and find out it’s gone down, you’re screwed until you get back. With most online solutions when they do go down it’s usually only for a few hours at the most.
NO, we are NOT DONE until we have a solution that is subpoena-proof.
NO, we are NOT DONE until we have a solution that is subpoena-proof.
NO, we are NOT DONE until we have a solution that is subpoena-proof.
If you're a fan of S3, you'll be right at home – this is just a front end to S3 and MacFuse, et al.
ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING (via @timoreilly) http://twurl.nl/we8wxz
The biggest innovation in computing since the the invention of the PC itself or even Wifi: RT @timoreilly ZumoDrive http://snurl.com/a8yei
Just read http://tinyurl.com/8vyrt8 It sounds strangely like AFS with a nice GUI installer.
I wonder how many people overwhelmed ZumoDrive with private beta requests after @Scobleizer linked http://bit.ly/GFMe
que bien se ve esto http://tinyurl.com/8vyrt8
If you're a fan of S3, you'll be right at home – this is just a front end to S3 and MacFuse, et al.
the cloud is far going to become ever more integral into everyday technology use: RT @Scobleizer #Zumodrive http://is.gd/gfQ1
Good to see a bit of sense in the comments, Steve! Nice one.
ZumoDrive.com is currently broken.
Working perfectly for me as I’ve just upgraded to 200gb 🙂
2009/1/17 Disqus
Working perfectly for me as I’ve just upgraded to 200gb 🙂
2009/1/17 Disqus
Somebody that is in the middle. I like this. Neither a horrible nor a perfect solution this is … the missing link is still access to the web and it speed. Whether you are in a subway in DC, a mountain in Utah, on a plane, or in Peru. If you don't have broadband speed then cloud computing doesn't work … YET.
There are two HUGE problems with this, just like with every cloud service
1) Ownership – once you give something of value to someone else to hold, your ability to exercise ownership declines. Most people have already lost webpages, photos, etc to services unexpectedly (I lost my entire email courtship archive to my wife this way).
2) Privacy – the sciences of indexing, data-mining, and piecing together whole stories from tiny fragments (as is done in anthropology, for example) are getting better very, very fast. Also improving is the ability to store and sift through colossal amounts of data. Even though these services offer encryption and password protection, your stuff is still out there. It's only a matter of time before someone (or several someones) figures out how to take advantage of this. Of course, we may be already fucked this way (through gmail). And yes, I use gmail anyway.
3) Access -This only works if you can connect to Zumodrive and the files are delivered to your device quickly enough. As you've pointed out, mobile access is pretty sad. I'm not convinced that this is possible outside dedicated home and office lines, and even those go down occasionally. If this is the wave of the future, it's still pretty far in the future. After all, it took us a decade to get to the point where file compression was good enough and broadband was common enough to make watching TV online tenable.
ZumoDrive.com is currently broken.
as piece Mr M!
Where’s my invite at?
hold up????
i got my nice invite, but wtf can i not download it in my country (Romania)?
When did file storage become DRM’d?????
hold up????
i got my nice invite, but wtf can i not download it in my country (Romania)?
When did file storage become DRM’d?????
‘butcher’s hook’ = ‘look’ (you missed the rhyme of the rhyming slang)
‘butcher’s hook’ = ‘look’ (you missed the rhyme of the rhyming slang)
“Personal storage on-device is like buying your own power station for your house” http://snurl.com/a9w6z (via @TechCrunch)
Great idea, BUT.
1. TOO expensive. And this whole invite-only thing should have gotten very old by now. Apparently not.
2. This might not be everyone's idea of how the cloud needs to work. I for one would like a service that does this AND what dropbox does AND what the others do….all in one. And, please, someone make an app that is capable of syncing ONE file. Really. I only need ONE file in sync, yet all of the other nice sync apps only know folders. Frustrating.
Great idea, BUT.
1. TOO expensive. And this whole invite-only thing should have gotten very old by now. Apparently not.
2. This might not be everyone's idea of how the cloud needs to work. I for one would like a service that does this AND what dropbox does AND what the others do….all in one. And, please, someone make an app that is capable of syncing ONE file. Really. I only need ONE file in sync, yet all of the other nice sync apps only know folders. Frustrating.
“The FUNDAMENTAL problem is that I want everything in The Cloud. Everything.” – Wow, that's pretty scary. Hard drive space gets cheaper and more reliable by the week. Services like this strike me as Thin Clients 3.0, solving a problem that doesn't really exist on a mass scale (though certainly there are niches of users that it works for). It's one thing to want to back up in the cloud, but I would never want to accumulate more data than I could store (and reliably back up) on local physical media.
Very similar but more expensive than https://spideroak.com/
Wish they would combine and merge the features.
“Personal storage on-device is like buying your own power station for your house” http://snurl.com/a9w6z (via @TechCrunch)
Hey! I don't know if that description fits John, but it DOES fit me perfectly! How did you know?
Anyway, unless there is something I'm missing here, isn't this just WebDAV? We've had that for over 10 years. Even Windows98 had support for that back in the previous century. iDisk anyone? What's the sudden excitement all about? Is it because of the words “cloud” and “Arrington”?
There must be something I'm missing here.
Oriste, you've totally missed the point.
Let's say I'm 'worth' 500gb, right? Admittedly I'm slightly different from your average chap on the street — I've gigs upon gigs of high-res photos, videos (from MIR Shows) and so on. Plus I've got my iTunes library and the usual array of personal documents and whatnot.
I want to be able to access these from my iPhone. I want, for example, to be able to find the presentation file of the talk I gave a few months ago — whilst I'm sat in front of you — and mail it over to you. Or share a link.
I want to be able to access my 60gb iTunes library. All of it. Now. From my 8GB iPhone.
Clearly — and this is the science bit that that you have completely missed Oriste — you can't store 60gb on an 8gb iPhone. Sure, you can go browsing for it with your shitty iDisk or a WebDAV component. Indeed you could even FTP in to your own 1TB disk store back at home, find the file, download it to your iPhone and see if you can try and add it into the device memory's playlist.
Stupid.
I want it there for me to browse. BROWSE. I want it to APPEAR there. All my data, all my iTunes, everything. When I actually NEED a file, I want it sucked down. Because I understand that my iPhone 8gb can't 500gb of data.
And I'm not waiting until Steve Jobs brings out that version. I want this ubiquity now. And ZumoDrive is the first company to begin to deliver it.
Here's another issue. I want to see my 500gb store on my Vodafone Netbook. It's only got 2-3gb of usable space. But I want to be sat on the train browsing my files. When I want one of the older ones that hasn't been accessed in a while, I want it sucked down to my machine.
It ain't webdav, it ain't iDisk. It is the cloud — ZumoDrive is one of the innovators in the space and there's going to be a lot more. Bring it on.
Jonathan, excellent recommendation re: Spideroak
Hey! I don't know if that description fits John, but it DOES fit me perfectly! How did you know?
Anyway, unless there is something I'm missing here, isn't this just WebDAV? We've had that for over 10 years. Even Windows98 had support for that back in the previous century. iDisk anyone? What's the sudden excitement all about? Is it because of the words “cloud” and “Arrington”?
There must be something I'm missing here.
Oriste, you've totally missed the point.
Let's say I'm 'worth' 500gb, right? Admittedly I'm slightly different from your average chap on the street — I've gigs upon gigs of high-res photos, videos (from MIR Shows) and so on. Plus I've got my iTunes library and the usual array of personal documents and whatnot.
I want to be able to access these from my iPhone. I want, for example, to be able to find the presentation file of the talk I gave a few months ago — whilst I'm sat in front of you — and mail it over to you. Or share a link.
I want to be able to access my 60gb iTunes library. All of it. Now. From my 8GB iPhone.
Clearly — and this is the science bit that that you have completely missed Oriste — you can't store 60gb on an 8gb iPhone. Sure, you can go browsing for it with your shitty iDisk or a WebDAV component. Indeed you could even FTP in to your own 1TB disk store back at home, find the file, download it to your iPhone and see if you can try and add it into the device memory's playlist.
Stupid.
I want it there for me to browse. BROWSE. I want it to APPEAR there. All my data, all my iTunes, everything. When I actually NEED a file, I want it sucked down. Because I understand that my iPhone 8gb can't 500gb of data.
And I'm not waiting until Steve Jobs brings out that version. I want this ubiquity now. And ZumoDrive is the first company to begin to deliver it.
Here's another issue. I want to see my 500gb store on my Vodafone Netbook. It's only got 2-3gb of usable space. But I want to be sat on the train browsing my files. When I want one of the older ones that hasn't been accessed in a while, I want it sucked down to my machine.
It ain't webdav, it ain't iDisk. It is the cloud — ZumoDrive is one of the innovators in the space and there's going to be a lot more. Bring it on.
Jonathan, excellent recommendation re: Spideroak
Ewan, I carefully read what you said. I also went to Zumodrive's site to sign up and try it out for myself. The invite code is no longer working, so I won't be able to do that for a while. I watched the demo. I still don't get it. As I said, I fit John Smith's profile perfectly. I don't trust “the cloud” with my data. I don't have a 60 GB iTunes collection either.
You admit yourself you're slightly different from you average chap on the street. So who is this for? After you, Scoble. Arrington, O'Reilly and Calcanis have signed up, who else is going to use this service? This is going to change EVERYTHING? Because it allows me to browse my 60GB iTunes library on my cell phone?
I'm sorry, I'm still totally missing the point indeed. But if it works for you, more power to you. I just hope you keep a local copy of your data, just in case, you know. But that would defeat the whole point, wouldn't it?
Have a look at Wuala, it's like a supercharged ZumoDrive, for free.
It's more efficient, it costs less and it's technically way above ZumoDrive.
Have a look at Wuala, it's like a supercharged ZumoDrive, for free.
It's more efficient, it costs less and it's technically way above ZumoDrive.
As easy to use, as reliable as ZD, but better for every other comparison point. Except for the icon…
Here's something I posted on one of the other blogs.
————
I’m interested in knowing what feature exactly prohibits the usage for some countries? I was nicely welcomed to the site saying it’s not available for India.
Secondly, nice way to advertise about “unlimited†storage in the video, but charge $60/m for 200gb of storage. I’m not saying it should be free. But how exactly is that unlimited?
On a similar note, I’d actually be willing to pay for a service that incorporates the features of the major services, but lets me use and pay for my own storage off Amazon S3 or Mosso Cloudfiles. JungleDisk and similar apps are great for mapping your storage as your drive. So I’d gladly pay if there’s a service that adds more feature to these and is sold without storage charges.
——
Yes, I'm paranoid about my data and it's security. I have four different backup services running on my Mac (mostly because I review them).
I will not give my data to a third party service with a low reputation. Who knows if ZumoDrive will still exist in 3 years? (Look at tad’s comment below: “ZumoDrive.com is currently broken.”)
For me a drive must be timeless, so even if I will upload my data to a third party service I need a local backup.
But I admit that this service can be useful for customers which have no technical knowledge.
I will not give my data to a third party service with a low reputation. Who knows if ZumoDrive will still exist in 3 years? (Look at tad’s comment below: “ZumoDrive.com is currently broken.”)
For me a drive must be timeless, so even if I will upload my data to a third party service I need a local backup.
But I admit that this service can be useful for customers which have no technical knowledge.
I will not give my data to a third party service with a low reputation. Who knows if ZumoDrive will still exist in 3 years? (Look at tad’s comment below: “ZumoDrive.com is currently broken.”)
For me a drive must be timeless, so even if I will upload my data to a third party service I need a local backup.
But I admit that this service can be useful for customers which have no technical knowledge.
So ZumoDrive is … for iPhone users? Because I can already hit my home box from anywhere (not using FTP, because it’s ancient and dumb — not sure why you suggest that one needs FTP to hit one’s disk at home). I can already browse my files at home from my computer at work, or in a coffee shop.
So ZumoDrive is … for iPhone users? Because I can already hit my home box from anywhere (not using FTP, because it’s ancient and dumb — not sure why you suggest that one needs FTP to hit one’s disk at home). I can already browse my files at home from my computer at work, or in a coffee shop.
So ZumoDrive is … for iPhone users? Because I can already hit my home box from anywhere (not using FTP, because it’s ancient and dumb — not sure why you suggest that one needs FTP to hit one’s disk at home). I can already browse my files at home from my computer at work, or in a coffee shop.
Here's something I posted on one of the other blogs.
————
I’m interested in knowing what feature exactly prohibits the usage for some countries? I was nicely welcomed to the site saying it’s not available for India.
Secondly, nice way to advertise about “unlimited†storage in the video, but charge $60/m for 200gb of storage. I’m not saying it should be free. But how exactly is that unlimited?
On a similar note, I’d actually be willing to pay for a service that incorporates the features of the major services, but lets me use and pay for my own storage off Amazon S3 or Mosso Cloudfiles. JungleDisk and similar apps are great for mapping your storage as your drive. So I’d gladly pay if there’s a service that adds more feature to these and is sold without storage charges.
——
Yes, I'm paranoid about my data and it's security. I have four different backup services running on my Mac (mostly because I review them).
“Most people” wouldn’t have a clue about “Zumodrive”, either. You’ve been hanging around teens and techies too long if you think *most people* can even order prints of their photos online.
And talking about “most online solutions” (ha) is nonsensical — simply being online doesn’t make them equal in terms of downtime. I’ve seen online services go down for 2 seconds, and I’ve seen online services go down for days. Zumodrive may have great uptime, but we simply don’t know yet.
You could flip your argument around and it would make as much sense. I’ve seen startups go out of business with greater frequency than I’ve seen Mac OS X / Vista / Linux boxes go down.
“Most people” wouldn’t have a clue about “Zumodrive”, either. You’ve been hanging around teens and techies too long if you think *most people* can even order prints of their photos online.
And talking about “most online solutions” (ha) is nonsensical — simply being online doesn’t make them equal in terms of downtime. I’ve seen online services go down for 2 seconds, and I’ve seen online services go down for days. Zumodrive may have great uptime, but we simply don’t know yet.
You could flip your argument around and it would make as much sense. I’ve seen startups go out of business with greater frequency than I’ve seen Mac OS X / Vista / Linux boxes go down.
“Most people” wouldn’t have a clue about “Zumodrive”, either. You’ve been hanging around teens and techies too long if you think *most people* can even order prints of their photos online.
And talking about “most online solutions” (ha) is nonsensical — simply being online doesn’t make them equal in terms of downtime. I’ve seen online services go down for 2 seconds, and I’ve seen online services go down for days. Zumodrive may have great uptime, but we simply don’t know yet.
You could flip your argument around and it would make as much sense. I’ve seen startups go out of business with greater frequency than I’ve seen Mac OS X / Vista / Linux boxes go down.
Yeah, it would totally defeat the point. I don't keep a copy of my 8 gig Google Apps account locally.
Big mistake?
See a few other comments here Ted — they've mentioned using FTP/SFTP to 'do this instead'.
ZumoDrive is the first service that spoofs your data on the device. iPhone, netbook, whatever. You don't have to have it stored locally but it appears local. This is the way ahead.
Whether it's ZumoDrive that'll be underpinning everything in 10 years — well, we'll need to wait and see. The onus is on them now to establish their reputation.
But the concept of efficiently storing and accessing cloud-held data from whatever device I want — bring it on.
Yeah, it would totally defeat the point. I don't keep a copy of my 8 gig Google Apps account locally.
Big mistake?
See a few other comments here Ted — they've mentioned using FTP/SFTP to 'do this instead'.
ZumoDrive is the first service that spoofs your data on the device. iPhone, netbook, whatever. You don't have to have it stored locally but it appears local. This is the way ahead.
Whether it's ZumoDrive that'll be underpinning everything in 10 years — well, we'll need to wait and see. The onus is on them now to establish their reputation.
But the concept of efficiently storing and accessing cloud-held data from whatever device I want — bring it on.
Haha! Sarcasm, huh? Okay, I like that.
Do you also DON'T keep a local copy of your 60 GB iMusic library? That is, after you've uploaded it to Zumodrive for 20 days in a row?
I rest my case.
I think its genius.
Invite code worked fine.
Running on my system now.
Gonna try and set up an encrypted layer with TrueCrypt.
Dropbox pisses me off with multiples….
I think its genius.
Invite code worked fine.
Running on my system now.
Gonna try and set up an encrypted layer with TrueCrypt.
Dropbox pisses me off with multiples….
That wasn't actually sarcasm, Oriste — I'm enjoying the discussion. I was actually being serious: I don't keep a backup copy of my Google Apps mail. I don't store it locally — at all. It's 'in the cloud'. Is that wrong, d'ya reckon?
You're right, I do keep a local copy of my 60gb iTunes library — that's most efficient way to access stuff.
But when I'm out and about, and *especially* on my Netbook (which only has 2-3gb usable) I am thoroughly enjoying the prospect of being able to browse and play my iTunes library content easily and without having to manually upload and download stuff I want to listen to.
My guess:
Local storage will shortly (within 2 years, max) get so cheap that cloud solutions relying on massive RF bandwidth / coverage / battery life will never be more than niche. And as others have pointed out, this has been around for ages with a slightly less attractive UI in multiple forms, but has not set the world on fire.
Gmail, yes, but that's a different kettle of emails. Consumers have been raised on Hotmail forever, so they just get it. Also email by its nature relies on web connectivity for its value. Documents, Movies and music do not. Apples and oranges there.
How quickly we forget what's just around the corner.
At 300MB/sec, with 2TB on board, you'll be able to store every presentation & doc you could ever create in a lifetime of working, and be able to show it to someone on the Tube or in a plane just fine.
And again at 300MB/sec, creating a copy of everything will be a simple process of hitting go then waking up 8hrs later to a complete backup of everything digital you own.
/m
My guess:
Local storage will shortly (within 2 years, max) get so cheap that cloud solutions relying on massive RF bandwidth / coverage / battery life will never be more than niche. And as others have pointed out, this has been around for ages with a slightly less attractive UI in multiple forms, but has not set the world on fire.
Gmail, yes, but that's a different kettle of emails. Consumers have been raised on Hotmail forever, so they just get it. Also email by its nature relies on web connectivity for its value. Documents, Movies and music do not. Apples and oranges there.
How quickly we forget what's just around the corner.
At 300MB/sec, with 2TB on board, you'll be able to store every presentation & doc you could ever create in a lifetime of working, and be able to show it to someone on the Tube or in a plane just fine.
And again at 300MB/sec, creating a copy of everything will be a simple process of hitting go then waking up 8hrs later to a complete backup of everything digital you own.
/m
With 2TB on board? Bollocks!
I haven't EVEN BEGUN to talk about my movie files. I'm not talking the
lovely, compressed 2.7gb Dark Knight Batman download. I'm talking about
the 6TB of MIR movies that I've got. HD video is about 40gb an hour.
Put that in your 2TB solid state joy drive and smoke it Mike!
I don't want to carry about my data. I just want the immediate regular
stuff right there — and everything — absolutely everything else — stored
remotely and ready for me to 'demand' at a moment's notice.
Admittedly we're years. Decades. Eons away.
I am currently uploading a 120mb MIR Show video at the whopping WHOPPING
average speed of 18.5k per second. Fuck all use that 'cloud' is when I'm
whizzing away at 18.5k/sec.
In fact thinking back about 15 years ago, if I was lucky, I got similar
speeds on my 56k modem.
2009/1/19 Disqus <>
But Ewan, (power-user=niche=no business case aside) even if you need to and can store that much, accessing it over air interfaces proposed any time this or the next decade will be a no-go.
Saying ZumoDrive “will change everything” is like me saying cold fusion will change everything. Of course it will (free, unlimited power from very small sources), but I bet you anything ZumoDrive will have folded an awful long time before the air interface speeds required becomes pervasive to allow anywhere, anytime access to anything.
Maybe in the Netherlands, with GB fibre going into council housing projects, the idea of living with a pure cloud-based solution could be a go-er.
I wish I had £1 for every cloud-based music/file/photo solution i've tried over the last 3 years. I'd probably have enough for a decent meal by now. Most don't exist anymore. Maybe a tipping point of consumer connecitivty is coming, but with the aforementioned cheapness of hard storage already here, I'm not holding my breath….
n.b. my old N800 had 2 SD card slots. so that's 4TB in short order, assuming the OS could handle it. A bit rough, but you get the idea. Streamed/downloaded music was supposed to save the industry, but those pesky kids still sideloaded 80% of content. Admittedly for cost reasons predominantly, but the battery/coverage issues were and are not insignificant, and aren't going away any time soon.
Let's see how you get on on a year's time, with ZumoDrive redux. Pencil that baby into the MIR office calendar.
/m
But Ewan, (power-user=niche=no business case aside) even if you need to and can store that much, accessing it over air interfaces proposed any time this or the next decade will be a no-go.
Saying ZumoDrive “will change everything” is like me saying cold fusion will change everything. Of course it will (free, unlimited power from very small sources), but I bet you anything ZumoDrive will have folded an awful long time before the air interface speeds required becomes pervasive to allow anywhere, anytime access to anything.
Maybe in the Netherlands, with GB fibre going into council housing projects, the idea of living with a pure cloud-based solution could be a go-er.
I wish I had £1 for every cloud-based music/file/photo solution i've tried over the last 3 years. I'd probably have enough for a decent meal by now. Most don't exist anymore. Maybe a tipping point of consumer connecitivty is coming, but with the aforementioned cheapness of hard storage already here, I'm not holding my breath….
n.b. my old N800 had 2 SD card slots. so that's 4TB in short order, assuming the OS could handle it. A bit rough, but you get the idea. Streamed/downloaded music was supposed to save the industry, but those pesky kids still sideloaded 80% of content. Admittedly for cost reasons predominantly, but the battery/coverage issues were and are not insignificant, and aren't going away any time soon.
Let's see how you get on on a year's time, with ZumoDrive redux. Pencil that baby into the MIR office calendar.
/m
More here – http://www.cloudave.com/link/just-because-you-can – not quite so positive I'm afraid, and backed up by your own subsequent post re bandwidth…..
I'm not convinced.
Of course there is value in the online storage / backup, but ZumoDrive puts everything at the end of a really slow connection. Event at home with ~15Mbit down and ~6Mbit up that's not enough for anything frequently updated or large media.
For my money JungleDisk (all in the cloud with a configurable local cache) or DropBox is preferable (all synchronised) are more viable solutions. Jungledisk does my backups right now and Dropbox keeps my working files in sync – I'd like a cross-breed of the 2 so DropBox handled syncing boxes with different local storage capacities, but all the down-sides are preferable to waiting for my files to download all the time.
I'm pro-cloud, but not all cloud is good cloud.
I'm not convinced.
Of course there is value in the online storage / backup, but ZumoDrive puts everything at the end of a really slow connection. Event at home with ~15Mbit down and ~6Mbit up that's not enough for anything frequently updated or large media.
For my money JungleDisk (all in the cloud with a configurable local cache) or DropBox is preferable (all synchronised) are more viable solutions. Jungledisk does my backups right now and Dropbox keeps my working files in sync – I'd like a cross-breed of the 2 so DropBox handled syncing boxes with different local storage capacities, but all the down-sides are preferable to waiting for my files to download all the time.
I'm pro-cloud, but not all cloud is good cloud.
I'd love to hear what you think when you do the math on what 2TB is going to cost you.
I am thrilled about how far the tech has come and even the prices, but let's not fool ourselves: we have a LONG way to go before this is affordable.
I'd love to hear what you think when you do the math on what 2TB is going to cost you.
I am thrilled about how far the tech has come and even the prices, but let's not fool ourselves: we have a LONG way to go before this is affordable.
Today, probably a bit pricey. Tomorrow, cheaper!
Today, probably a bit pricey. Tomorrow, cheaper!
I'd love to hear what you think when you do the math on what 2TB is going to cost you.
I am thrilled about how far the tech has come and even the prices, but let's not fool ourselves: we have a LONG way to go before this is affordable.
Today, probably a bit pricey. Tomorrow, cheaper!
@JHTaylor The answer to your question the other day about mobile apps – here is the future http://cli.gs/2HTZba ZumoDrive shakes things up!
ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING | Mobile Industry Review: That Michael Arrington! The man, I’m tol.. http://tinyurl.com/8vyrt8
@JHTaylor The answer to your question the other day about mobile apps – here is the future http://cli.gs/2HTZba ZumoDrive shakes things up!
ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING | Mobile Industry Review: That Michael Arrington! The man, I’m tol.. http://tinyurl.com/8vyrt8
Great article on Zumodrive – http://qurl.com/t9gz6
Great article on Zumodrive – http://qurl.com/t9gz6
Only 1 GB is free compared to Zumo's 2GB….