Connecting the dots ...
Ma.gnolia, a social bookmarking service is down, lost all their user data and they don’t know if / when they can recover.
This is as bad as it can get for any Web 2.0 service (and more importantly for users), and the backlash against Cloud services has already started. My first reaction is taking Stowe Boyd’s approach – a quick overview of how safe my own data is.
Update: also read Krish’s post @ ClouDave: Magnolia Effect – Should We Trust The Clouds?
I’m discussing the above and more using Zumodrive’s launch as case study over @ CloudAve – read the details here.
Quick update to my recent Syncplicity review:
In the meantime Microsoft’s Windows Live Mesh opened to the public, combining synhcronization and backup – also competing with their own Foldershare. Now a word on what will happen to Foldershare, but I guess the writing is on the wall. That said, Live Mesh just failed for me the second time, so I can’t really recommend it.
Another service, Dropbox is getting a lot of buzz nowadays, largely to a smart theme of giving out limited numbers of beta invitations. Apparently artificially created shortage is good marketing, bloggers LOVE being able to give away 10 or so invites…
Dropbox has one advantage over Syncplicity: it’s multi-platform, including Apple’s OS X and Linux, whereas Syncplicity is Windows only for now. But that’s where it ends: it has less features (forget Web Apps integration, e.g. Google, Zoho, Scribd, Picnik), and has what I consider a huge flaw: you have to drop your files into a dedicated folder to be synchronized. That may be reasonable if you want to collaborate on a limited set of files, but it simply does not resolve the “access to all my data anywhere, anytime” problem. It’s certainly a show-stopper for me.
So if you’re waiting for a Dropbox invitation, you might as well try Syncplicity – you’ll love it. And if you sign up here, you get 1G more, i.e. 3G of free storage instead of the standard 2G.
Update: I received a very good, constructive comment from Assaf, who pointed out this was a largely negative post. In my mind this post is an extension of my original Syncplicity review, but now that I re-read it on it’s own, I agree with Assaf. Please read my response here, that makes this post complete.
A few months ago I detailed the obstacle course Microsoft put me on, trying to get to Windows Live Mesh, and somewhat sarcastically labeled it Windows Barely Live Mesh. Fast forward 3 months, and today Mesh is open – but still Barely Live.
But first things first: I wanted to read on the specs before installing. You can click on the maze of mostly useless help text, but can’t find out such basics as:
The last one (encryption) is pretty important and for many users / businesses a potential dealbreaker. Since it’s no-where mentioned, I assume MS does not offer encryption. In comparison, Syncplicity, a sync-backup-and-more service launched by former Microsofties offers encryption, and just as importantly the explain what happens to your data before you take the plunge – see my review here.
Oh, well, so the only way to find out is jump in… so I decided to install and test. No more hoops, simply sign in with my Live Id (formerly Passport) account, and voila! – here’s the download.
2 minutes later:
The “Get more help” takes me back to the already seen generic FAQ.
Normally this would be the time to search the MS knowledge base, or better yet, Google, but this thingie is so new, it’s probably not yet documented. Who has time for this? I’m out of here, be back to check on Live (?) Mesh in another few months.
And Dear Microsoft, this one was just a quickie, but you still owe me for last time, se here’s my virtual invoice:
(Updated)
In today’s world where features are hyped as products and project teams masquerade as companies it’s truly refreshing to see a service that’s almost an All-in-One (OK, perhaps Four-in-One) in it’s category, which I would loosely define as protecting, sharing and synchronizing one’s data.
Recently launched Syncplicity:
An impressive list by all means. Oh, and congrat’s to the team for finding an available domain name that’s actually a perfect description of what they do. The simplicity part probably refers to the ease of installation and use not the task they perform in the background. 
.
Getting Started
Registration, installation of the client is quick and easy, more importantly, after the initial configuration you can forget about the software – it works for you in the background non-intrusively, allowing you peace of mind. You can leave it to Syncplicity to find all your document and media files or specify directories to be synchronized. The process allows more granular control than Foldershare, where one of my gripes was that if I select My Documents ( a fairly obvious choice), I cannot exempt subdirectories, which results in conflict with some stubborn programs (e.g. Evernote). With Syncplicity you can precisely fine-tune what you want synchronized, in fact they indicated that filename-based exclusion is in the development plan. (If you ever had your Picasa.ini files messed up by Foldershare, you know what I am talking about…)
Synchronization
The major difference compared to Foldershare is that Syncplicity is not a peer-to-peer product: it actually uploads your files to their servers, where they are encrypted (AES-256) and are available either to the Syncplicity clients on your other computers, or directly, via a Web browser. This may be a show-stopper for some, and a convenience for others: unlike Foldershare, this approach does not require all synchronized computers to be online at the same time. And since the files are stored online, it might as well be used as a backup service – this is where we enter Mozy-land.
Backup
The two major differences vs. Mozy are encryption and ease of restoring files from the backup set.
Mozy performs all encryption on your computer and even allows you to pick your private key: it can hardly be any safer (so safe, that if you lose the key, you’re files are gone forever). Syncplicity transmits your files using SSL and the AES 256-bit encryption occurs in their data center, using a random key that is then sent off to a different location. Since they hold the key, there’s definitely a trust issue to ponder here.
Of course a backup solution is only as good as the restore, and, unlike Mozy, which will send a zip file hours after your request, then to be decrypted on your PC, accessing your files with Syncplicity couldn’t be any simpler. Install the client on any PC and auto-download entire directories, or just browse the online version, check file revision history and pick what you’d like to download manually.
Sharing
Syncplicity offers both file and folder-level sharing: from your PC, right-click on any file to get a shareable link, which will allow anyone you email it to download the file from their website. Or share entire folders to any email address, and the receiving party can either browse the folder’s online version, or, if they have the Syncplicity client installed, you both will have identical copies on your computers. You can further specify view-only or edit access – the latter takes us into collaboration-land: updates made by any sharing party will be synchronized back to all other computers. Be aware though that each party will still work on individual copies prior to save/sync, so with long multiple edits it’s quite possible to end up with several versions of the same document, due to Syncplicity’s conflict resolution.
This is why I believe real-time online collaboration is superior: there’s only one master copy, and no confusion between revisions. This is what Google Docs and Zoho offer, and – surprise, surprise! – Syncplicity won’t let you down here, either.
They have created the best seamless offline/online integration I’ve seen with Google Docs: at the initial run your designated PC folder (e.g. My Documents) will get uploaded to your Google Docs account, and Google docs will be placed in a subdirectory on your computer. From this point on you can edit these documents using Google, Word, Excel ..etc – your offline and online versions will be kept in sync. This is pretty good, but not perfect: since Google docs only support a subset of the Word functions, after an online edit Syncplicity keeps two (and potentially more) versions of the same file – one with the latest changes, the other with a full set of Word functions “lost” in the conversion to Google.
Syncplicity’s most recently added online partners are:
The Zoho integration presents a funny situation: you can now use Zoho Writer to save a file to your Google Docs space (Zoho>Desktop>Syncplicity>Google). Not sure how practical this is, but I like the irony of a third party creating Zoho>Google integration
. On a more serious note, what I really would like to see is full Syncplicity<>Zoho integration, like it works with Google today (and since Zoho supports more Word functions, the conversion should be less lossy). And while on the wish-list, how about sync-ing to Flickr?
Is it for you?
First of all, pricing: Free for two computers and 2G space, $9.99/month or $99 annually for any number of computers and 40G of storage. You can sign up here to get 1G more, i.e. 3G of free storage, or 45G on paid accounts (using ZOLIBLOG as invitation code also works). The price-tag is clearly heftier than, say Mozy, or free Foldershare, but there’s a lot more functionality you get – and oh, boy, when did box.net become so expensive?
The one potential downside is the fact that Syncplicity is a pre-funding startup. Will they survive? This market has seen casualties (Docsyncer, Omnidrive?), successful exits (Mozy, Foldershare), and stable, ongoing services. The answer is: who knows? The Founders are ex-Microsofties, they’ve put an amazing service together in a very short time, so I’d put my chips on them, but in business there are no guarantees.
A better question to ask what you’re real risk is. If online backup is critically important to you, and are already paying for a service like Mozy, I wouldn’t abandon it yet (Mozy is now owned by EMC, not going anywhere). If you’re mostly just syncing currently, or don’t have a solid backup solution for now, there’s not much to lose. Even if Syncplicity were to disappear, your files will be replicated in several places, you don’t lose access.
In fact, by signing up, you help Syncplicity show traction, which is critical in the funding process, so you can help solidify their position. Happy Sync-ing!
Update (7/17): In the meantime Microsoft’s Windows Live Mesh opened to the public, combining synhcronization and backup – also competing with their own Foldershare. Now a word on what will happen to Foldershare, but I guess the writing is on the wall. That said, I Live Mesh just failed for me the second time, so I can’t really recommend it.
Another service, Dropbox is getting hyped a lot nowadays, largely to a smart theme of giving out limited numbers of invitations. Apparently artificially created shortage is good marketing, bloggers LOVE being able to give away 10 or so invites… Dropbox has one advantage over Syncplicity: it’s multi-platform, including Apple’s OS X and Linux, whereas Syncplicity is Windows only for now. But that’s where it ends: it has less features (forget Web Apps integration), and has what I consider a huge flaw: you have to drop your files into a dedicated folder to be synchronized. That may be reasonable if you want to collaborate on a limited set of files, but it simply does not resolve the “access to all myy data anywhere, anytime” problem. It’s certainly a show-stopper for me.
So if you’re waiting for a Dropbox invitation, you might as well try Syncplicity – you’ll love it. And if you sign up here, you get 1G more, i.e. 3G of free storage instead of the standard 2G.
Update #2: Congratulations to the Syncplicity team on their funding.
Foldershare is a life-saver: a peer-to-peer file synchronization product that does its magic in discreetly in the background, with the user barely noticing it even exists. While it needs to log in to the MS servers, it does NOT sync / upload actual data, all synchronization is strictly P2P. In fact one of the setup options is to define whether you allow remote P2P sync to occur through the Net, or strictly on your LAN, behind the firewall.
I’ve been using it for years now, as part of my data sync and backup strategy: I let FolderShare synchronize data between two laptops and a desktop, then I use the desktop as the “master” which will back up data online to Mozy, the other life-saver.
Of course using two products for somewhat similar purposes is redundant, and I have previously speculated that Microsoft should tie Foldershare and Skydrive (Live Mesh, Live Drive – pick your favorite buzzword) offering both PC sync and Web backup. I wonder if it’s about to happen.
I noticed this weekend that my computers could sync without them being online at the same time – which is (used to be? ) a primary requirement for FolderShare to work. Now I could repeatedly test turning off all but one computer, update files on the one with FolderShare running, then shut down FolderShare, start another machine, and voila! – my changes got synchronized. How was that possible when it had nowhere to get the information from, other than the Microsoft servers? (unless the closed program left behind a process running, other than Foldershare.exe)
If this means FolderShare is no longer strictly a P2P product, I actually welcome that change – except for the fact that it happened unannounced. Leaving users in the belief they are only sync-ing data between their own computers when in fact it’ stored on Microsoft’s servers would be a serious violation of their privacy.
Interesting coincidence (is it?): FolderShare will have a planned outage of 48-72 hours this week. 72 hours (3 days!) is a lot of time, it should be enough for major changes. In fact more than enough – such outage would be unacceptable from any service provider – except apparently from Microsoft
. (Yes, I know, we get what we pay for, and this is a free service – it’s still a ridiculous outage.)
Update: Further testing reveals that the actual data files are not transferred between offline computers, only the *.p2p placeholder files. Sigh of relief: your data files are not stored on Microsoft’s servers. BUT …. BUT: the index is indeed stored centrally. This did not appear to be the case with the original FolderShare by ByteTaxi, prior to the MS acquisition. I don’t know when it changed, and I don’t recall being warned about it. The former FolderShare user agreement page disappeared and I haven’t found any updated information on FolderShare’s site.
Update (6/24):
Ouch! C’mon guys, this is so simple, even I could fix it.
Steve Gillmor redefined TechCrunch today with a thoughtful but loooong (1709 words!) post on Windows Live Mesh. Others come to rescue translating him:
Robert Scoble: But, let’s translate Gillmor: Microsoft Mesh is fascinating. Agreed.
Phil Wainewright: Steve turns that around and points out that what Mesh is really about is connecting the desktop into the cloud
Mike Arrington: I’m pretty sure he’s saying Mesh = good.
Even Microsoft’s Steve Clayton is lost:
I got lost about two thirds of the way in to this post from Steve Gillmor but the first third was a great read. Actually the whole thing was but I just got a bit lost as I think some of the things going on in Steve’s fast thinking brain didn’t quite make it through to the keyboard so you’re left having to assume some things. I’m assuming he likes Mesh though. I think he does.
Commenters on TechCrunch were ruthless, I won’t even begin quoting them. But don’t get me wrong: this is a good article, which would have been a great fit for ReadWriteWeb, but the TC crowd expects short, to-the-point, fairly descriptive posts. In the words of TC owner Mike Arrington:
Steve is an acquired taste. his writing isn’t efficiently packaged into bite sized chunks like a lot of people have come to expect. but if you decide to give it the attention it needs, you may find that you come away a little bit smarter after you’re finished.
Yes. And perhaps Mike is trying to redefine TC’s style himself. But you have to know your readers, Mike – perhaps a a new tab for Essays would be appropriate – or if you want Gillmor’s writing part of the main flow, a graphical “grab a coffee this is a long one” icon would help.
Now, on to the bigger question, why Live Mesh is just Barely Live. (And yes, this will be a long post, too, but due to the screenprints.)
The first leaked news declared this a solution to “sync everything with everything”. Then came Amit Mital, Live Mesh General Manager with a visionary video and announcement at the Web 2.0 Expo last week, adding towards the end: initially it will sync only Windows PC’s, adding more platforms and devices over time. Ahh! So it’s a … Foldershare for now.
Minutes after the presentation I was chatting with a startup CEO who reminded me he had seen a similar video from Microsoft years ago: kid playing, Mom capturing video on cell-phone, family watching it almost real-time on various devices, executive-type Dad watching video on his laptop at an airport feeling “almost at home”. Great video, and yes, it was conceptually familiar, but what has materialized of it?
Live Mesh will be great when it really happens, but for now it’s largely waporware: pre-announcement, typical Microsoft-style. And now, if you’re still here, why don’t you follow me through the hoops of trying to sign up for (Barely) Live Mesh.
Google Search and several Microsoft blogs point to http://mesh.com so that’s where we start:
Hm… I could never figure out why I so often get signed out of Live Network (good old passport style), and if that’s the case why can I not sign back here. But that’s OK, we just take a detour to live.com, sign in and come back to mesh.com:
I though I had just signed in, but fine, let’s do it again. Oops:
The sign-in button changes to sign up – as in sign up for a waiting list. Not fun.. but let’s do it anyway. Btw, before the wait-list screen there was another screen where I had to agree to some terms – sort of usual for actually using a service, but for getting on a waiting list?
Now we’re in something called Microsoft Connect. Is this the same thing? Who knows…let’s click Register (but why, after sign-up, sign-in, agree, now register? WTF?)
I’m starting to really not like this. So far I’ve been presented with a maze of registration, confirmation, you-name-it screens, and I don’t know where the hell I am. Let’s backtrack a bit.
Oh, several screens above, at the waiting list signup, it stated on the next screen I should click Connection Directory, a small option on the top, not the main Register for Connect link… but who reads small prints, all screens should offer enough navigational clues to not get me lost. OK, redoing, now…
This jungle is the Connection Directory. No sign of Live Mesh, at least not on the first page. Text search to the rescue: there we are… somewhere towards the bottom (scroll way down) there is Live Mesh Tech Preview! Voila! (or not). The button to click is Apply Now! As if I hadn’t done it a zillion times already…
Hm.. I can do this now with my eyes closed… click.. click..click.
Geez, this looks like a plain old BS signup form again. I’ve had it. Done. I let others experiment with Microsoft’s Windows Dead Mesh. Let me know when it’s Live. For real.
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
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