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Using Midnight Commander to work with Amazon S3, OpenStack, DropBox, OneDrive and almost any other Cloud

Midnight Commander is probably the most popular command line file manager in the world, and certainly for Linux distros. Its design was initially inspired by the classic two pane interface that was found in Norton Commander which was a DOS file manager (for those who remember !).

One of the unsung features of the Midnight Commander (also available on other platforms including phones (I used to use this on my old Nokia N900) and windows and mac) is that it can connect to server over FTP.

This is interesting from a Storage Made Easy viewpoint as although SME providers a full suite of Linux tools, SME also provider protocol interoperability as part of its Cloud Gateway features. What is this I hear you ask ? Well, simply put, it enables files you have stored on public or private storage to be accessible over any of the protocols Storage Made Easy exposes ie FTP, FTPS, WebDav, S3, SFTP.

SME Protocol Gateway

Midnight Commander supports the FTP protocol which makes it easy to get direct access to any storage that is added to a SME Account using the SME FTP cloud protocol adaptor. To do this:

Choose the Left or Right option
Choose FTP link
Enter connection to SME as follows:

username:password@storagemadeeasy.com

or if you are using the SME EU Server:

username:password@eu.storagemadeeasy.com

Midnight Commander FTP

The net result is a very easy way to bring the cloud into the linux desktop integrated with tools you already know and use. This can be used with the SME Personal CLoud plan, Business Team, and on-site enterprise editions of the product.

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Using Zotero with SME and WebDav

Zotero is a firefox plug-in that is an easy to use research tool that aids in gathering, organising, and analysing sources. You can choose to store documents, notes and screenshots that you take directly with Zotero or you can choose to use another WebDav resource.

Of course SMEStorage provides CloudDav, WebDav over any Cloud we support, even if the underlying Cloud does not support WebDav. If you enable CloudDav for your SMEStorage account you can use it with Zotero as follows:

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Sync Files to Google Docs, Amazon S3 and other Clouds through the web browser with the SME Firefox Plugin

For a little while now we have had the SMEStorage Firefox Plug-In available as an option to use from the FireUploader tool as provided by Rahul Jonna. This is a great Plug-In to use to be able to bulk upload to any of the clouds we support, including of course Google Docs, Amazon S3, MobileMe, RackSpace Cloud Files, Microsoft Live Mesh / SkyDrive + more.

It has a lot more functionality than that providing the ability to share files by email, get a tinyurl link, use group collaboration and other functions SMEStorage overlays over the clouds.

Imagine if you could use a web browser plug-in like this to sync a local directory up to clouds like Google Docs or Amazon S3. Well now you can ! After registering for a SMEStorage account with the cloud of your choice you can use the plug-in to select a directory and Sync it to a folder called My Syncs on Google Docs, Amazon S3 et al.  If you change files, either on the cloud, or on the local file system then  then next time you sync, only the changed files will be uploaded or downloaded.

The Firefox tool is one of our oldest plug-ins and is built on the rich multi-cloud SMEStorage API. It is just one of the many data access points that SMEStorage provides into Cloud Storage. It’s been a while since it had an update, and you can download it from our Cloud Tools page.

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Multi-Cloud Storage Firefox Plug-In

The new version of the Firefox uploader for SMEStorage is now available. It has a number of new features, one of which is the support for Multi-Cloud Providers directly within the Plug-In itself. If you have a Lifetime Cloud or Organisation Cloud account, this means that you can change between using 9+ Storage Clouds when uploading files simply at the click of a button.

The number of Clouds that the Plug-In works with is Amazon S3, Mosso Cloud Files, Box.net, MobileMe, WebDav Clouds, Gmail-as-a-Cloud, Email-as-a-Cloud, FTP-as-a-Cloud.

firefox-multi-providers

Other new features include:

Obtaining file url’s from directly within the plug-in, and also sharing files with Twitter from directly within the plug-in (providing you have added your Twitter details to your account).

firefox-twitter-share

The Firefox plug-in also now shows the special folders that can be setup through the website i.e. shared folders (designated by a red square around the folder) and also Organisation Folders if you are using an Organisation Cloud Account.

firefox-special-folders

If you have thousands of files in your storage cloud then you will appreciate ‘Filter’ which allows you to filter the files viewed by either Alphanumeric values, string values or by range.

firefox-filter

Lastly, collaborative business groups can now be viewed and managed with the plug-in:

firefox-_groups

A SMEStorage Account is needed to use the plug-in. The help documentation for the plug in can be found here.

The Firefox Plug-In is another example of what can be achieved with the SMEStorage multi-cloud API.

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New Firefox plug-in update for SME(Supports S3, Mosso and Box.net)

THe Firefox plug-in for SMEStorage that is part of the FireUPloader product has been updated.

It now has support for Groups and shared content:

firefoxgroups.jpg

To create a new group click into groups and choose the create new folder icon which will not be used to create a group.

It also now supports encryption:

encrypt.png

and also supports file filtering:

filtericon.jpg

filter.png

To access the Filter icon within the Firefox plug-in you need to be at the root folder. When content is filtered you will see “isfiltered” in the path bar.

And of course you can also choose to fileshare any of your files stored on SMEStorage directly within the plug-in by right clicking on the file and choosing “Send to”.

sendtoffox.png

You can download the new plug-in here.

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New version of Firefox Plug-In

The latest version of the Firefox plug-in (0.39) for SMEStorage can be found here. It uses the new uploader API and works much better for large files. If you have chosen to use your own Amazon S3 keys or our platform or Gmail as your storage cloud you can use the Firefox plug-in to batch upload/download files, as well as share files or send to business groups that you have formed.

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SME Firefox Plug-In News

After feedback we have one more bugfix to issue for this before is finally leaves beta. This is to do with the Token expiry which currently does not work. Once the token expires you are asked to log back in even if you are uploading files. We have updated the Token expiry time to one hour and will have the plug-in fix released in the next few days.

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Final Final beta of Firefox plug-in

Ok ,so the last post should have said, “never say never” as we have a final final beta 😉 this includes the update in the Rest API to accommodate folder sharing so you can now share folders also through the Firefox plug-in as well as files. You can download it here.

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Final Beta version of Firefox Plug-in released for SME

The final version of the Firefox plug-in for SMEStorage can be downloaded here. It fixes some small bugs and also now allows files to be shared using the plug-in and also for groups to be administered also using the plug-in.

To intall the Plug-In, download it and then either drag it onto the Firefox screen and release and it will auto-install, or choose file, open from the Firefox menu and locate the plug-in to install.

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New beta of Firefox Plug-in

We have a new beta of our Firefox Plug-in. This time with beta support or sharing files either via email or using Groups. You can download the plug-in here.

To use the plug-in just drag it onto your Firefox screen and the installer will start. Once loaded choose SMEStorage as the provider and choose Manage Accounts and enter your Username and password.

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