Collaborating with Bookmarks and Web Links in Teams

There are a lot of articles about document collaboration and project collaboration from a variety of vendors but rarely do they talk about bookmark or web links collaboration which is can often be a key part of any project.

This blog post will outline how easy this is with Storage Made Easy in which it can be done against any Storage back-end, be that a consumer storage cloud such as DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive etc or a business or private back end storage cloud such as OpenStack Swift, Cloudian, CleverSafe, Amazon S3, RackSpace etc. In all more than 45 different private and public storage clouds are supported.

Requirements:

– A Storage Made Easy Business or on-premise account
– The Storage Made Easy web collaborations links plug-in available from the SME Cloud Tools Page.

We will be using a Storage Made Easy SaaS business Account to demonstrate this functionality.

First we simply add the Collaboration links plugin to our web browser. In this case it is Safari but Chrome and Firefox are also supported.

Web Link share

 

Once logged in all the folders from the various private and public cloud repositories are available to capture /  bookmark links.

Once you find a page you want to add to your team repository you can use the Collaboration Links plugin to capture it.

In our case this in iOS 7 page on multi-tasking that the iOS Dev team would be interested in.

iOS 7 multitasking

web link share

 

If we log directly into the Cloud File Server from the web (or any of the mobile tools or desktop clients) I see the link I just shared in my team folder. Any team member can launch the link or visit the site by double clicking on the link. I can also choose to collaborate on it with other team members by adding comments.

Web Bookmarks collaboration

 

These comments are shown on all devices and the team users who have permissions to the folder/file receive an email notification that there is a comment for review:

Web Bookmarks collaboration

 

As usual with StorageMadeEasy all the events related to the file are audit tracked:

Cloud Storage Audit Tracking

 

To summarise this post has shown how it is possible to collaborate on web links / bookmarks in a way that centralises collaboration with the alternative often pinging the link over email and any subsequent comments between team members delivered the same way. In the SME as well as centralising the collaboration the comments and interactions are indexed and therefore appear in search results and also the link itself becomes part of the corporate repository.

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Storage Made Easy now supports Evernote

Storage Made Easy now enables Evernote to be used with the Storage Made Easy SaaS, IaaS and on-site Cloud Appliance.

To add Evernote to an Account please follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to the SME Cloud DashBoard and choose to add a new Cloud and choose the Evernote Cloud

Evernote Cloud Connector

2. Authorise SME to interact with the Evernote account.

Evernote Authorise

3. Once this is done SME will start to index files from the Evernote Account.

Evernote SME Sync

The sync will show the status as to when completed.

Evernote Syn complete

A report is provided that shows the status of each individual item sync’d

Evernote final sync report

4. Once done the Evernote files can be managed using the SME Cloud File Manager

SME Evernote File Manager

Note that Evernote may impose rate limits against the use of their API. This can result in not all of your data being indexed if your account is large. Where this is the case this will be clearly shown in the sync log and you should, later, run the sync again where files missed will then be added.

Using SME with Evernote Restrictions:

    – Files can be uploaded only to the Note.
    – It is not possible to remove Notebooks.
    – It is not possible to create folder in the Note.
    – Each Note have a file ‘index.html’. This file cannot be moved or removed. You can edit it (see http://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/enml.php )
    – When files are uploaded to the Note or removed from the Note then the file ‘index.html’ will be changed.
    – Evernote does not support two files with the same content in the same Note

Users can use Evernote with SME from the SME web, desktop and mobile clients that SME supports.

SME Tools

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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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Share your Cloud Files over RSS

rss_iconWe continue to add new features to the platform, often at the request of users, and the newest is the ability to share files that have been set to public over RSS feeds. For quite a while now user have had the ability to share public files. An example of such a feed can be found here. This is the RSS feed for these public files which are shared via Amazon S3.


RSS for files  supporta all the Clouds SMEStorage supports i.e. Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud Files, MobileMe, Box.net, Gmail, Email, FTP, Evernote, Google Docs, and any WebDav enabled cloud.


If a user clicks on a the links of the RSS item in the feed, the file will be downloaded.


RSS links are in the format:
http://SMEStorage.com/rss/[order]/[user]/[tag]/[limit]


The order can be ‘last’ or ‘popular’


For Example .
http://storagemadeeasy.com/rss/last/TestUser/*/20


If a user or tag is ‘*’ then any user/tag is used (no filter with user/tag)


Also the link can be truncated if default values are used. For Example:


http://storagemadeeasy.com/rss
This shows all the latest files


http://smetorage.com/rss/last
This shows the the same as the previous example


http://storagemadeeasy.com/rss/popular
This show the most popular files of all users


http://storagemadeeasy.com/rss/popular/TestUser
The shows the popular user files of a user called ‘TestUser’


http://storagemadeeasy.com/rss/last/Testuser/mp3
This show the last files of   a user called ‘Testuser’ with tag mp3


The default values are: order – last, limit – 100, user – * (all users), tag – * (no filter with tag)


Cool things you can do ? Well you could store all your files in your GMail account and then give access to them over an RSS Feed. Alternatively, if you are a company you could have an RSS link at the bottom of your email signature that gives access to white papers or product documentation for download. Or how about displaying the files you want to be available for download on your WordPress or Joomla CMS using the RSS plug-in’s they provide. If you come up with a unique use, let us know !


Please note our terms of use as appertains using the SMEStorage service.

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Multi Cloud Storage API Updated

We have just update our multi-cloud API manual and published it on Google Code. We also have added some more code examples in PHP to supplement those in .Net, and added a PERL libaray example with a test PERL app as well.

The multi-cloud API now supports Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud Files, Box.net, MobileME, Gmail, Any Email, FTP, Google Docs, Evernote, and any WebDav enabled cloud. Coming soon will be Microsoft SkyDrive, Twitter, Deicious, and Walrus from Eucalyptus.

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Edit your code directly in the cloud

We have now integrated some new features into our SMEStorage platform. You can now edit your code directly in the cloud. Any code files that you upload to our supported providers, either S3, Mosso, Box.net, GMail, email-as-a-cloud or evernote can be edited directly by choosing to edit as a document or edit as source.

CodeEditChoose

If you choose the document editing view you can edit your file in a WYSIWIG view as show below:

DocumentEdit

If you choose to edit as source then you get a source editor and full syntax highlighting for CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Visual Basic, XML, C, CPP, SQL, Basic and Pascal.

SourceEdit

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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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Filter your Cloud Storage files

You have probably noticed that you have had a new graphic on the menu bar within the file manager for a little while now.


SMEStorage Filter


This Filter allows you filter your files or folders in one of three ways:


FilterType


1. By Alpha Index – the first letter of the file or folder
2. By number – you can specify the number of files you wish to view
3. By String – You can choose a name that we will use to look for in the name of the file or the tag and filter on this.


Why is this useful ? Well sometimes you can have some many files that actually managing them can be quite difficult. We also now use this method when you first click on File Manager to load. If you have over 3000 files you will be told that you have a lot of files and asked whether you would like to filter to speed up the loading process.


picture-2.png


You can also choose to filter on just files or on backups or groups individually or against all of this together.


FilterOptions


We know of some users who have over 30,000 S3 files and so cannot display them all at once and need to be able to filter to be able to display an files at all. Of course the filter works across all the cloud storage providers we support which includes Amazon S3, Mosso Cloud Files, Box.Net, Gmail-as-a-cloud, and email-as-a-cloud.

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Evernote integration and import/export to/from any storage cloud

We have just made live our integration with Evernote and also released our revised cloud import/export function.


Evernote is a software application that allows users to capture information of various types, including text notes, mobile phone snapshots, printed and handwritten text within images, web clips, and digital ink. SMEStorage can now import information you have stored in Evernote directly to SMEStorage. From here you can view it via the web browser, backup to other storage clouds, share with users or just keep it for reference.


You can now use SMEStorage to import/export data to all the storage clouds we support, which are currently Amazon S3, Mosso Cloud Files, Gmail, Email-as-a-Cloud, and Box.net.


smestorage____files_import_export-20090205-170606.jpg

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