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How to make sure your Cloud data does not disappear overnight

If you you’ve been following the IT news recently you probably saw the issue that users recently had with GMail. If not you can read more about it here. Imagine one morning firing up your Android phone or laptop and finding your data was gone!

Of course, this does not just affect email systems. It can affect any cloud service you store data with. Carbonite was another high profile example of data loss, and of course there are many others, and no doubt there will be many more.

So what can you do to prevent such loss? Well, you can backup! Exactly like you do with your laptop. At SMEStorage all users, including free users, can backup their emails to their storage cloud of choice, as long as their email provider supports IMAP, the user can start or schedule a backup and just leave it to complete. An effective solution to a horrible problem should it ever arise.

What about you Cloud data? Well, our Personal Cloud Lifetime and business users can choose to ‘pair’ a backup cloud with a primary cloud. This will instantly schedule a sync of all existing data to a backup cloud, and it will also backup any future data uploaded, giving you total piece of mind that your Cloud data is highly available as a backup copy is stored on another cloud. this could be Amazon S3 and RackSpace for example, or MobileMe to Azure Storage, whatever combination you would like to choose!

If you primary cloud goes down or your data is not available we’ll get it from your backup cloud.

The Cloud does not have to be a dangerous place, just take sensible precautions to protect your data.

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Using SME with your Mac. Upload your Cloud Files direct from the Finder

For many of use in the office using Mac’s we’ve yearned for some tighter integration with SMEStorage and the Mac. You can choose to use the Windows explorer via Crossover or WINE with the Mac and it works nicely, and you can also use the Firefox plug-in which also works really well, but having OS level integration is always nice.

Snow Leopard has enhanced the integration of the automator services into the OS which makes it much easier to provide contextual functionality.

Using this method there is now available an add-in for users of SMEStorage to be able to upload their files directly from the Mac to their chosen cloud of choice (and we now support over 10 storage clouds), and after the file has been uploaded a unique link for the file will be copied to the clipboard.

You can view a video below that show this working with Google Docs:

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Updated integration with Zoho Office

We have just updated our integration with Zoho, online office. Now if you open a document (word, powerpoint, excel) from SMEStorage it will not only load within Zoho, but if you then edit it and change it within any of the Zoho office tools, and hit ‘save’ it will save the changes back to SMEStorage.

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SME now supports Euro Buckets

If you are using SMEStorage with your own Amazon S3 keys from our OpenS3 beta programme, you can now create new buckets that are located in Europe as we now support the Amazon European bucket functionality.

To do this do as follows:

Step one: Go to MyAccount – > MyProviders


EuroBucket1

Step two: Choose to syncrhonize your S3 Account

EuroBucket2

Step three: Add the checkbox for ‘European Bucket’

EuroBucket2

Remember: You will need to add this bucket to you account (using “manage additional buckets” link) to be able to use it. Also if you want this as the default bucket you will also need to change it using the “default bucket” link.

This is useful if you reside in Europe as the latency should be less for uploads and download, and also if you have documents or files that should not cross country borders.

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Upload and download your files to the cloud and Amazon S3 with a Windows Explorer as well as Microsoft Office and Open Office !

Well, SMEStorage Explorer is finally released. It is a windows explorer for SMEStorage.com that allows you to upload and download your files to any of the storage platforms we support, which include Amazon S3. If you take part in our OpenS3 programme you can use your Amazon S3 keys and take advantage of using the tool to upload / download files, share files, and collaborate with business groups.

When you install SMEStorage Explorer, if you have Microsoft Office and/or OpenOffice installed you will get another toolbar that allows you to open and save files to the SMEStorage cloud, which again includes Amazon S3. Pretty nice we think. This was built using the SMEStorage REST API.

SMEExplorerGif

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Unlock Amazon S3 with OpenS3

OpenS3 logo

We recently announced that we had launched our OpenS3 beta. The purpose of OpenS3 is to allow any Amazon S3 user to be able to access the SMEStorage platform and take advantage of all the channels and features we have. This means if you would like to have access to your Amazon S3 files via your iPhone for example you now can. If you want to share your Amazon S3 files or use them on Facebook you can , and much more.

After you have registered for the beta, using OpenS3 is simple. You merely enter your Amazon S3 keys (and choose to store them on our servers or not. If not you will need to enter them each time you access your account) and then we import the metadata from you S3 file to the SMEStorage platform. We don’t move the files themselves or change them in anyway. This means you can still access them from any other S3 tool that you choose.

Once you have synchronised you can then choose to change your filenames and store the files in a proper directory structure. Again this will not change the core S3 files. We overlay a proper directory structure on top of S3.

Once you have completed this process you can use the rich SMEStorage filemanager to access all the additional functionality that we provide over and above Amazon S3 such as being able to back up any email account to S3, easy file sharing, unique url for each file, Public files, Business Groups, Faxing, and integration with Flickr, PicniK, Zoho etc.

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SME integrates ScribD for PDF viewing

SMEStorage is now integrated with ScribD using their iPaper API which allow PDF’s to be viewed inline within the browser from SMEStorage without having to download them to view them. This compliments existing integration within the SMEStorage platform that allows users to view and edit Microsoft Office documents and view and edit graphic files.

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Business Group Workspaces on SME

Business Groups are one of the collaboration of SMEStorage. The basic premise is that you can create a Group and invite users to it. This is very easy to do as you can see from our previous post on groups. Anything that you then share with the Group will be shared with all members of the group. Group members will receive an automated email message letting them know that a new file has been shared with them. Members can also receive Twitter messages when a file is shared with them if they have chosen to enter their Twitter details in their SMEStorage user preferences. You can also choose to allow other users to share files with your business group.

So what are groups useful for ? Well we polled some of our users to see what they were using them for and we found some interesting uses. One of our users is using Groups as a way to keep his sales partners updated with corporate product collateral and technical documentation. He has formed what he calls a “content sharing network”.

Another of our users is in a band and after doing some live recording he tweaks the results in Garage Band and shares them with his bandmates.

Many others are using the Business Groups to keep in touch with family by sharing photos and files

Quite an innovative and bandwidth friendly use is that users are using Business Groups to share jokes etc. Normally friends have a user list in which they send the same joke, which can include a video and picture, to all their friends. Using Business Groups they just do an upload and all their friends get notified.

We’ve had quite a few feature requests for Business Groups and we will consider adding some of the more common ones, such as allowing the option to make business group members private. Watch this space for the rest !

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SME as a native Iphone application

The porting of SMEStorage as a native IPhone application is almost complete. We are now waiting for approval from Apple to allow us to post it for free on the Apple App Store. SMEStorage for App Store includes the following features:

  • Access all your files stored on SMEStorage over Edge/3G and WiFi
  • Send Firewall friendly file links directly from your phone
  • Participate in Business collaboration Groups directly from the phone
  • Choose to keep a file offline on your Iphone for future use
  • Upload your photos directly from the Iphone to SMEStorage
  • Choose to fax documents directly from the phone (may be in rev. 1.1)

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    SME is now available on Facebook !

    **This is an old post and this feature is no longer supported


    Facebook SMEStorage

    We’ve made SMEStorage available as an application on Facebook. You can now share your Public files with your Facebook contact, and if they are using SMEStorage you can see their public files. To set a file to public just click on the share icon and just ‘set it to public’

    PublicFiles for Facebook

    facebooksshot

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