Mobile Industry Review - Latest Comments in ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Dpoppitt — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:53:28 -0000

Only 1 GB is free compared to Zumo's 2GB....

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 05:31:25 -0000

Today, probably a bit pricey. Tomorrow, cheaper!

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ben Smith — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:01:40 -0000

I'm not convinced.

Of course there is value in the online storage / backup, but ZumoDrive puts everything at the end of a really slow connection. Event at home with ~15Mbit down and ~6Mbit up that's not enough for anything frequently updated or large media.

For my money JungleDisk (all in the cloud with a configurable local cache) or DropBox is preferable (all synchronised) are more viable solutions. Jungledisk does my backups right now and Dropbox keeps my working files in sync - I'd like a cross-breed of the 2 so DropBox handled syncing boxes with different local storage capacities, but all the down-sides are preferable to waiting for my files to download all the time.

I'm pro-cloud, but not all cloud is good cloud.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ben Kepes — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:37:22 -0000

More here - http://www.cloudave.com/lin... - not quite so positive I'm afraid, and backed up by your own subsequent post re bandwidth.....

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Mike42 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:59:29 -0000

But Ewan, (power-user=niche=no business case aside) even if you need to and can store that much, accessing it over air interfaces proposed any time this or the next decade will be a no-go.

Saying ZumoDrive "will change everything" is like me saying cold fusion will change everything. Of course it will (free, unlimited power from very small sources), but I bet you anything ZumoDrive will have folded an awful long time before the air interface speeds required becomes pervasive to allow anywhere, anytime access to anything.

Maybe in the Netherlands, with GB fibre going into council housing projects, the idea of living with a pure cloud-based solution could be a go-er.

I wish I had £1 for every cloud-based music/file/photo solution i've tried over the last 3 years. I'd probably have enough for a decent meal by now. Most don't exist anymore. Maybe a tipping point of consumer connecitivty is coming, but with the aforementioned cheapness of hard storage already here, I'm not holding my breath....

n.b. my old N800 had 2 SD card slots. so that's 4TB in short order, assuming the OS could handle it. A bit rough, but you get the idea. Streamed/downloaded music was supposed to save the industry, but those pesky kids still sideloaded 80% of content. Admittedly for cost reasons predominantly, but the battery/coverage issues were and are not insignificant, and aren't going away any time soon.

Let's see how you get on on a year's time, with ZumoDrive redux. Pencil that baby into the MIR office calendar.
/m

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:32:09 -0000

With 2TB on board? Bollocks!

I haven't EVEN BEGUN to talk about my movie files. I'm not talking the
lovely, compressed 2.7gb Dark Knight Batman download. I'm talking about
the 6TB of MIR movies that I've got. HD video is about 40gb an hour.

Put that in your 2TB solid state joy drive and smoke it Mike!

I don't want to carry about my data. I just want the immediate regular
stuff right there -- and everything -- absolutely everything else -- stored
remotely and ready for me to 'demand' at a moment's notice.

Admittedly we're years. Decades. Eons away.

I am currently uploading a 120mb MIR Show video at the whopping WHOPPING
average speed of 18.5k per second. Fuck all use that 'cloud' is when I'm
whizzing away at 18.5k/sec.

In fact thinking back about 15 years ago, if I was lucky, I got similar
speeds on my 56k modem.

2009/1/19 Disqus <>

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Mike42 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:52:22 -0000

My guess:

Local storage will shortly (within 2 years, max) get so cheap that cloud solutions relying on massive RF bandwidth / coverage / battery life will never be more than niche. And as others have pointed out, this has been around for ages with a slightly less attractive UI in multiple forms, but has not set the world on fire.

Gmail, yes, but that's a different kettle of emails. Consumers have been raised on Hotmail forever, so they just get it. Also email by its nature relies on web connectivity for its value. Documents, Movies and music do not. Apples and oranges there.

How quickly we forget what's just around the corner.

At 300MB/sec, with 2TB on board, you'll be able to store every presentation & doc you could ever create in a lifetime of working, and be able to show it to someone on the Tube or in a plane just fine.

And again at 300MB/sec, creating a copy of everything will be a simple process of hitting go then waking up 8hrs later to a complete backup of everything digital you own.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:54:38 -0000

That wasn't actually sarcasm, Oriste -- I'm enjoying the discussion. I was actually being serious: I don't keep a backup copy of my Google Apps mail. I don't store it locally -- at all. It's 'in the cloud'. Is that wrong, d'ya reckon?

You're right, I do keep a local copy of my 60gb iTunes library -- that's most efficient way to access stuff.

But when I'm out and about, and *especially* on my Netbook (which only has 2-3gb usable) I am thoroughly enjoying the prospect of being able to browse and play my iTunes library content easily and without having to manually upload and download stuff I want to listen to.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Jonathan MacDonald — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:12:05 -0000

I think its genius.

Invite code worked fine.

Running on my system now.

Gonna try and set up an encrypted layer with TrueCrypt.

Dropbox pisses me off with multiples....

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

photis — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:57:47 -0000

Haha! Sarcasm, huh? Okay, I like that.
Do you also DON'T keep a local copy of your 60 GB iMusic library? That is, after you've uploaded it to Zumodrive for 20 days in a row?
I rest my case.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:33:48 -0000

See a few other comments here Ted -- they've mentioned using FTP/SFTP to 'do this instead'.

ZumoDrive is the first service that spoofs your data on the device. iPhone, netbook, whatever. You don't have to have it stored locally but it appears local. This is the way ahead.

Whether it's ZumoDrive that'll be underpinning everything in 10 years -- well, we'll need to wait and see. The onus is on them now to establish their reputation.

But the concept of efficiently storing and accessing cloud-held data from whatever device I want -- bring it on.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:28:00 -0000

Yeah, it would totally defeat the point. I don't keep a copy of my 8 gig Google Apps account locally.

Big mistake?

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ted — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:24:03 -0000

"Most people" wouldn't have a clue about "Zumodrive", either. You've been hanging around teens and techies too long if you think *most people* can even order prints of their photos online.

And talking about "most online solutions" (ha) is nonsensical -- simply being online doesn't make them equal in terms of downtime. I've seen online services go down for 2 seconds, and I've seen online services go down for days. Zumodrive may have great uptime, but we simply don't know yet.

You could flip your argument around and it would make as much sense. I've seen startups go out of business with greater frequency than I've seen Mac OS X / Vista / Linux boxes go down.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Preshit Deorukhkar — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:22:14 -0000

Here's something I posted on one of the other blogs.
------------

I’m interested in knowing what feature exactly prohibits the usage for some countries? I was nicely welcomed to the site saying it’s not available for India.

Secondly, nice way to advertise about “unlimited” storage in the video, but charge $60/m for 200gb of storage. I’m not saying it should be free. But how exactly is that unlimited?

On a similar note, I’d actually be willing to pay for a service that incorporates the features of the major services, but lets me use and pay for my own storage off Amazon S3 or Mosso Cloudfiles. JungleDisk and similar apps are great for mapping your storage as your drive. So I’d gladly pay if there’s a service that adds more feature to these and is sold without storage charges.

------

Yes, I'm paranoid about my data and it's security. I have four different backup services running on my Mac (mostly because I review them).

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ted — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:18:55 -0000

So ZumoDrive is ... for iPhone users? Because I can already hit my home box from anywhere (not using FTP, because it's ancient and dumb -- not sure why you suggest that one needs FTP to hit one's disk at home). I can already browse my files at home from my computer at work, or in a coffee shop.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Andi — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:08:06 -0000

I will not give my data to a third party service with a low reputation. Who knows if ZumoDrive will still exist in 3 years? (Look at tad's comment below: "ZumoDrive.com is currently broken.")
For me a drive must be timeless, so even if I will upload my data to a third party service I need a local backup.
But I admit that this service can be useful for customers which have no technical knowledge.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Xavier Cambar — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:18:32 -0000

Have a look at Wuala, it's like a supercharged ZumoDrive, for free.
It's more efficient, it costs less and it's technically way above ZumoDrive.

As easy to use, as reliable as ZD, but better for every other comparison point. Except for the icon...

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

photis — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:04:30 -0000

Ewan, I carefully read what you said. I also went to Zumodrive's site to sign up and try it out for myself. The invite code is no longer working, so I won't be able to do that for a while. I watched the demo. I still don't get it. As I said, I fit John Smith's profile perfectly. I don't trust "the cloud" with my data. I don't have a 60 GB iTunes collection either.

You admit yourself you're slightly different from you average chap on the street. So who is this for? After you, Scoble. Arrington, O'Reilly and Calcanis have signed up, who else is going to use this service? This is going to change EVERYTHING? Because it allows me to browse my 60GB iTunes library on my cell phone?

I'm sorry, I'm still totally missing the point indeed. But if it works for you, more power to you. I just hope you keep a local copy of your data, just in case, you know. But that would defeat the whole point, wouldn't it?

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:09:27 -0000

Jonathan, excellent recommendation re: Spideroak

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Ewan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 08:00:58 -0000

Oriste, you've totally missed the point.

Let's say I'm 'worth' 500gb, right? Admittedly I'm slightly different from your average chap on the street -- I've gigs upon gigs of high-res photos, videos (from MIR Shows) and so on. Plus I've got my iTunes library and the usual array of personal documents and whatnot.

I want to be able to access these from my iPhone. I want, for example, to be able to find the presentation file of the talk I gave a few months ago -- whilst I'm sat in front of you -- and mail it over to you. Or share a link.

I want to be able to access my 60gb iTunes library. All of it. Now. From my 8GB iPhone.

Clearly -- and this is the science bit that that you have completely missed Oriste -- you can't store 60gb on an 8gb iPhone. Sure, you can go browsing for it with your shitty iDisk or a WebDAV component. Indeed you could even FTP in to your own 1TB disk store back at home, find the file, download it to your iPhone and see if you can try and add it into the device memory's playlist.

Stupid.

I want it there for me to browse. BROWSE. I want it to APPEAR there. All my data, all my iTunes, everything. When I actually NEED a file, I want it sucked down. Because I understand that my iPhone 8gb can't 500gb of data.

And I'm not waiting until Steve Jobs brings out that version. I want this ubiquity now. And ZumoDrive is the first company to begin to deliver it.

Here's another issue. I want to see my 500gb store on my Vodafone Netbook. It's only got 2-3gb of usable space. But I want to be sat on the train browsing my files. When I want one of the older ones that hasn't been accessed in a while, I want it sucked down to my machine.

It ain't webdav, it ain't iDisk. It is the cloud -- ZumoDrive is one of the innovators in the space and there's going to be a lot more. Bring it on.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

jonathan — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:17:28 -0000

Very similar but more expensive than https://spideroak.com/
Wish they would combine and merge the features.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

logicalextremes — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:19:01 -0000

"The FUNDAMENTAL problem is that I want everything in The Cloud. Everything." - Wow, that's pretty scary. Hard drive space gets cheaper and more reliable by the week. Services like this strike me as Thin Clients 3.0, solving a problem that doesn't really exist on a mass scale (though certainly there are niches of users that it works for). It's one thing to want to back up in the cloud, but I would never want to accumulate more data than I could store (and reliably back up) on local physical media.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Vlad Bobleanta — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:11:23 -0000

Great idea, BUT.

1. TOO expensive. And this whole invite-only thing should have gotten very old by now. Apparently not.

2. This might not be everyone's idea of how the cloud needs to work. I for one would like a service that does this AND what dropbox does AND what the others do....all in one. And, please, someone make an app that is capable of syncing ONE file. Really. I only need ONE file in sync, yet all of the other nice sync apps only know folders. Frustrating.

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Gary — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:48:48 -0000

'butcher's hook' = 'look' (you missed the rhyme of the rhyming slang)

Re: ZumoDrive is going to change EVERYTHING

Lee Wilkins — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:21:45 -0000

hold up????

i got my nice invite, but wtf can i not download it in my country (Romania)?

When did file storage become DRM'd?????