File sync and backup service SugarSync (which we’ve blogged about before) just announced new small-business friendly features, including a central admin feature to manage from three to 100 users collaborating and sharing files using the app. The new package also includes flexible group pricing plans starting at $29.99 per month, with no setup fees and free phone support.
While speaking with the CEO of SugarSync, I quickly realized that my post about running a virtual team was missing a critical component: backup. As I listened to the company’s presentation of its product, my mind began working overtime. SugarSync isn’t just about backing up files securely in the cloud. It can also be used for secure file sharing, collaboration and file syncing with cross-platform and mobile device access and compatibility. Read the rest of this entry »
If you rely on Google Docs for collaboration with colleagues, the new shared folders feature, announced by Google yesterday, should make life a lot easier for you. It enables you to share collections of documents with co-workers — documentation for an entire project, for example — rather than having to share each document in turn. Removing sharing privileges is then just as fast.
The new feature works as you would expect — put the documents you want to share into a folder, then hit the “Share this folder” link to invite your colleagues to share the entire folder, just as you can with individual docs. Google has provided full instructions on how to use the feature here, but it’s really very straightforward.
As Google notes, this is the most-requested change to Google Docs, and although it’s been a little while coming, this upgrade is a welcome one.
What do you think of the new Share Folders feature?
Sometimes doing things via web apps is great. Everything is in one place: your browser. Even so, sometimes having everything in one place isn’t ideal. A browser crash could kill all of your work, not just one component, and it can be harder to keep your focus appropriately segmented if your tools are all mashed together. Here are a few great Mac applications that give you access to your web apps, but do so in nice, native software packages.
Propane
It’s a fine way to power a BBQ, but it’s also more than that. Propane is a new piece of beta software that does what I previously did using a Fluid browser instance. Specifically, it runs Campfire-based chatrooms, which are a popular tool for people who need to collaborate in real-time with a distributed team. I use Campfire rooms to coordinate with other writers at various blog sites where time and scheduling is a primary concern, but that’s just one possible use.
Like with a Fluid instance, Propane provides Campfire with the bare minimum of browser chrome, so that it does in fact look like a native OS X app. It also provides some nice bells and whistles that allow you to customize the how and why of notification sounds and messages, including Growl notifications. There’s also great tools for better file sharing, including automatic source detection when you drag content (text and images) from a Safari window into your active chatroom in Propane.
Mailplane
I’m not actively trying to rhyme these app names, it’s just working out that way. Gmail is great, and Mail.app is nice enough, but I’d rather not use the two together if possible. I love Gmail’s web interface, but I’m not crazy about trying to manage my email activities in a browser window. Maybe that makes me old school, but I grew up on Outlook, and old habits die hard.
Mailplane delivers all the Gmail interface goodness with a nice, native app wrapper. Basically it, like Propane, is just a browser instance with some additional features specific to the web app in question that makes it easier to use. It’s those features that make the app worthwhile, though. Mailplane takes advantage of Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts to allow you to view and create new messages, reply, attach media, and more using convenient buttons located along the top of the app window. It also badges the app icon in your dock with the number of unread emails, and can notify you of new mail using sound and Growl.
Those with Google Apps and multiple accounts are also in luck, because it supports easy account switching and storage. There’s also an option to display an icon in the menu bar, including new mail count. You can try it out for free for a month, but it is a paid program, and will set you back $24.95 if you do decide to purchase.
Gdocsuploader
This is less an app and more of a handy little applet, but the single, focused service it provides is incredibly useful: a simple drag-and-drop interface for uploading documents to Google Docs. It may not seem like much, but it saves a lot of steps vs. the traditional method, which can quickly add up if you do most of your document editing in Google Docs, like I do.
All you have to do to use it is keep the app icon in your dock, and then drag any document onto the icon to upload it. It’ll prompt you once for your Google name and password, and afterward it’ll just work. If you prefer, opening the app will automatically take you to a file browser for selecting a file to upload manually.
None of the above apps does anything that you can’t do using the web, but they do offer time-saving and usability enhancements that you won’t necessarily get using only the corresponding app for each in a normal browser window. Just because web apps are often convenient and user-friendly doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be more so with a more solid connection to your desktop.
Have any tips on how to make web apps more native? Share them in the comments.
Tags: applet, apps, campfire, client, droplet, Gmail, Google Docs, Mac, mailplane, os x, propane, uploader
Earlier this month, O’Reilly Media published its latest title in the “Missing Manuals” series, Josh Clark’s “iWork ‘09: The Missing Manual.” It throws a spotlight on Apple’s office suite, with how-to guides for the Pages word processor, the Numbers spreadsheet and the Keynote presentation app.
Even as a devoted Apple user, no matter how much I want to, I can’t quite make the psychological break from Microsoft Office. I’ve nothing against the software giant’s office suite — even the 2008 Mac edition I use is a great collection of software, although it is perhaps a little over-featured, lacking the intuitive web collaboration of Google Docs and not quite as elegantly Mac-native as I’d like.
Apple’s iWork ‘09 fares no better on web collaboration than Microsoft’s offering, but it’s certainly more Mac-native and tantalizingly low-priced, though it’s not as full-featured and lacks tutorials for new users switching from Office.
Read the rest of this entry »
Wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft Office had the collaborative and cloud storage functionality of Google Docs? Well, now it does, using a free add-in called OffiSync that launched into public beta today. Offisync adds a toolbar to Office that allows you to use Google Docs for file storage and collaboration.
Once installed, Offisync adds a new toolbar to your Office apps. (Offisync works with Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations.)
The Offisync toolbar
Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re a regular user of Google Docs, note that you can now take advantage of drawing tools accessible from directly within your documents, presentations and spreadsheets. You can view the announcement of the Insert Drawing tools here. The tools aren’t as rich as the ones you’ll find in products such as Microsoft’s Visio, but they are free and good enough for doing flowcharts, annotating images, collaborating on drawings and lots of other useful things.
Here’s what you’ll find, and a couple of other good, free tools for drawing online.
Read the rest of this entry »
I was listening to a story on NPR by Laura Sydell called Computing in the Cloud: Who Owns Your Files? The story brought back all of the fears I’ve had about working in the clouds but have suppressed because:
A. I want the convenience that cloud computing offers;
B. I recently experienced the Computer Crash of Doom and want to know I have reliable backups;
C. I want to get more work use out of my iPod Touch and cloud work is the way.
So what was the bottom line of the NPR piece?
Read the User Agreement. Yes, the gist of the story was that none of us are reading the user agreement with Google or Yahoo or any other company that is housing our emails, documents and files. We actually covered that subject last month, but hey, I’m one of those who never, ever reads the user agreement. Who has the time? Who has the brain capacity? Who likes sifting through pages and pages of legalese?
This is a problem, according to Harry Lewis, a computer science professor at Harvard. All someone has to do is accuse you of something – unproven – and the company hosting your files can simply cut you off, close your account, no questions asked, rather than entering into a legal battle.
There are no rules and more importantly – no laws – when it comes to hosting your files.
Ever since I went to Gmail in the clouds from Apple’s Mail on my computer, I’ve wondered “what would happen if Gmail went down…forever?” The entire record of my work over the last three years would be gone. I tried backing up all of my historical Gmails onto my computer once but it was a major undertaking and never became a habit.
If we aren’t reading the user agreements, how can we protect ourselves from major loss in the clouds?
1. Backups of backups? Does it make sense to have the copy on your harddrive along with the copy online? Lately, I’ve been composing my documents in Google Docs and only saving them back on my harddrive as needed. Should I do it as a rule?
2. Backups of backups of backups? Once I save my docs on my computer, my Time Capsule captures them every hour on the hour. But is there a way to get my Time Capsule to pull my cloud work into a backup drive? Or is that an app that is on the way because it is a critical process that is missing from cloud computing?
3. Distributed files. Does it make sense not to have all of your work and files on one system? Sure it seems convenient and integrated to use all of Google’s cloud working solutions, but should we put some of our work – or back up some of our work – on other sites? Like using Dropbox file storage as a repository for anything and everything from everywhere?
4. Being selective. Do we need to be more selective about what we are willing to put online, keep online, and work on in the clouds? Are we getting a little too careless and thoughtless about the ease of cloud computing or rushing to it without a security plan in place because it seems like the place we need to be?
No technology is failsafe or foolproof. When we are using technology for “convenience,” but have to back up that technology “just in case,” are we losing some of that convenience that we are craving? It seems that, as usual, nothing is ultimately free and everything comes with a price.
How much are you willing to spend – and risk – on cloud computing and how are you backing up your work?
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
