The State of the Cloud, Mid-2010

July 11th, 2010


Keeping all my data in the cloud has become something bordering on an obsession for me. Here are my current suggestions on what the best bets are for staying nimble across a wide range of devices and operating systems — please feel free to leave your personal favorites in the comments:

Best web-based email: GMail

Full IMAP access and the excellent Google Sync keep GMail on top over recent upgrades by Hotmail and MobileMe. Google seems to be stretching for new features to add of late, but nothing else comes close.

What I’d like to see: More space. A recent influx of photos has me bumping up against the edge of my 8GB.

Best distributed file system: DropBox

Dropbox “just works” — it’s a dedicated part of my workflow to collect and distribute files for almost every project, so I’ll never be without that PDF, that Word document, that text file. If you haven’t tried it, hit this link to get a some extra space from day one.

What I’d like to see: “Play all music files sequentially in this folder” in the iPhone & iPad app, making simple folder-based playlists drag-and-drop dead-simple.

Best on-demand music service: Rdio

Not nearly enough tracks yet — the sync between my iTunes library and Rdio only picked up about 2,000 of my 6,000 songs — but the clean interface, killer mobile app and easy entry into this cloud-based music service makes it one to watch. I’m not sure if I’ll pay $10 a month for long — especially with Apple’s Lala-clone rumored to be close to release and Google working out something similar for Android — but for now, Rdio is your best bet for simple access to your music in the cloud.

What I’d like to see: Pandora still rules for casual listening and finding new music, so I’d love to see Rdio develop a music-discovery functionality for the desktop and mobile app.

Best browser sync: Firefox Sync

Chrome is steadily slowly adding browser sync features, but Firefox is ahead of the curve on this one with Firefox Sync (the Sync Service Formerly Known As Weave). I’m looking forward to the upcoming iPhone app, and having this feature ‘baked in’ to Firefox 4 will raise awareness of how great it is to have one single browser session.

What I’d like to see: Firefox Sync Extensions for Chrome and Safari could make this service the holy grail of sync services, with one set of bookmarks, history and saved passwords no matter where you are and what browser you’re on.

Best streaming video: No clear winner

YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix look poised to duke it out over the next 12 months for living-room supremacy (with Apple’s AppleTV as a dark-horse rival). It’s too close to call.

What I’d like to see: An open specification for streaming video so manufacturers and consumers can build “one set-top box to rule them all”. Good luck with that.

Best photo galleries: Flickr

Flickr’s recent ‘wide-screen’ redesign keeps them competitive with Picasa and whatever crap Microsoft is trying to trick people into using. The service remains a little pricey but the presentation and functionality is easily the best.

What I’d like to see: It should be easier to pull all your photos out of Flickr; users should not have to use a third-party client. Also, I’d like to see them build-in a fully integrated TwitPic killer for mobile users.

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