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Egnyte’s Remote File Management System Comes to Android, Just in Time for Working Holidays

Charles Hamilton — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:00:53 +0000

The folks at Egnyte, the file management, sharing and backup service I wrote about a couple of months ago, have released a survey indicating that over 80 percent of small business professionals plan to work over the holidays. Here are a few more statistics from Egnyte’s survey, which was conducted in October 2010 and received over 500 responses:

80 percent will work in their home office, while 31 percent will work at the home of an extended family member, and 31 percent will work while on the road. Only 24 percent plan to work at the office over the holidays.
83 percent said they plan to access work data using a smartphone, with the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry leading the pack for the most popular devices.
Nearly eight in 10 (79 percent) will use their device “when they can get away with it” this holiday season; 12 percent will use it during the drive to Grandmother’s house. Thankfully, only four percent will check it at the dinner table.

For those who are working from their smartphones, Egnyte is now offering an Android app, which joins the existing iPhone and iPad apps, to enable users to access and share files while on the road (or during the holidays).

The Android app has some nice features, shared with Egnyte’s web app, such as being able to:

Create notes
Manage different versions of the same document
Email documents as attachments or links — links can be set to expire after an interval of your choosing.

Of course, in order to edit documents, you’ll need an appropriate editor app.

Egnyte’s Android app is now available in the Android Market at no charge. The Egnyte service is available at several price levels, beginning at 20 GB of online storage for $14.99 per month, through 1 TB of storage for $49.99 per month. A 15-day free trial is available.

Egnyte will also be one of our Net:Work Future Ideas Launchpad finalists. You can see the company’s CEO Vineet Jain presenting on stage at Net:Work in San Francisco on December 9 — register here.

Will you be working during the holidays?

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Egnyte: File Management, Sharing and Backup

Charles Hamilton — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:00:28 +0000

As file storage in the cloud is becoming ubiquitous, Egnyte has chosen to stand out from the crowd by incorporating both old and new technologies to improve the speed and usefulness of its services. As of today, Egnyte supports FTP file transfers, because, according to the company, FTP remains the fastest and easiest way to move data to and from the cloud. In addition, Egnyte now offers seamless connections with Google Docs, so you can use the Docs interface for instant edits.

These new features are added to the existing Egnyte service, which provides one interface for managing an internal file server available to employees, file sharing with partners, large file transfers, and computer backup. Egnyte is a hybrid system, meaning that files are always accessible, even without Internet access. The interface puts a friendly front end on standard FTP, HTTPS and WebDAV protocols. By using these well-proven protocols, and by synchronizing invisibly with local files, Egnyte has enough speed to allow file editing directly in Microsoft Office.

Files can be managed via a web interface that can be branded to suit your organization. Egnyte also offers an optional desktop app (for PCs, Macs and Linux) that simplifies setting up connections to your local file system via WebDAV over HTTPS; mapping local drives; and specifying backup intervals. More sophisticated users can set up these connections manually, if desired.

Files are also accessible via mobile browser. In response to many customer requests, Egnyte is currently developing mobile apps for Android and iOS that will allow full file access and editing on such devices as the iPad.

Egnyte offers a long list of security, access, administration, privacy, search and storage features that are similar to what you’d expect from a local file server.

The service is available at several price levels, beginning at 20 GB of online storage for $9.99 per month, through 1 TB of storage for $44.99 per month. Additional storage is available, and a 15-day free trial is available.

Let us know what you think of Egnyte below.

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Backup Strategies For the Paranoid

Dawn Foster — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:00:35 +0000

When was the last time you backed up all of that precious data you carry around on your laptop or have stored away on the desktop? What if your house or office burned down — would your backups go up in flames, too? For many of us, making backups is like making a will: we know we’ll eventually need one, but we don’t really want to think about it, so we keep putting it off. It sometimes takes a catastrophe before we get our act together and come up with a backup strategy.

I started my career as a UNIX sys admin, so I know the importance of having good backups, and I’ve seen so many horrible things happen to good data. As a result, I’ve learned to be pretty paranoid about backups. I even had my own little catastrophe a few years ago, when I was using Mozy to back up my data. I was taking frequent backups, and I had even tested my solution by restoring a few files; however, when it came to doing a full data restore, Mozy failed me. I was eventually able to get my data out of Mozy, but it wasn’t an easy process, and it took too long to get my data back. Now I have a two-pronged backup strategy that even the most paranoid among us should appreciate: a combination of on-site, full system, incremental backups, coupled with cloud backups.

On-site, Full System, Incremental Backups

Your full system, incremental backups should be a way to quickly recover from a complete data loss due to hard drive failure, computer theft, flying computer knocked off of a tall table or porch, small child who dumps a whole glass of orange juice into your laptop, etc. Since I have a MacBook, I use Apple Time Machine to back up to a terabyte hard drive sitting on my desk. It does hourly backups whenever I am at home and hooked up to the drive. This is my solution for when I need to do a full restore of my entire computer. By having it on a local hard drive that I control, I can quickly do a full restore without having to wait for anyone else to find my data or deal with any network-related slowdowns.

However, this solution has some serious limitations. If I have a home disaster (fire, flood, volcano, earthquake, etc.), I could easily lose my computer and my backup at the same time. I’m also highly mobile and often working on local files from business trips, vacations and coffee shops between meetings, so I don’t want to rely on a hard drive at my house for backups when I’m on the road.

Cloud Backups

Now that the full backups are taken care of, you need something that will back up all of those critical files even when you are away for a week at a conference, at a client site, or even just working remotely from coffee shops all day. My second backup solution is using JungleDisk, which backs all of my important files up to Amazon S3 every six hours. I only back up my documents and a few other critical files. In a pinch, I can restore my operating system and applications from other sources, so to keep costs down, I only back up the things that I create and that could not be easily recovered by some other means. Because I’m careful about how much data I back up to the cloud, the whole solution only costs me a few dollars a month and only takes a few minutes to complete. In addition to being able to save my data from some terrible catastrophe, I can also save myself from silly little mistakes even when I’m on the road. If I accidentally nuke a file, I can still get an older copy from my backup.

Yes, I could always be a little more paranoid, but I have a backup solution that is practical, relatively easy to maintain and seems to cover all of the most likely data loss scenarios. On the other hand, I also find that backups are becoming a little less important as I move more and more of my information into the cloud. Gmail and other online data storage mean that I have less on my hard drive, but what I do have is important, and I want to be confident that I can recover it.

How do you back up your valuable data?

Photo by Flickr user gregw66, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Synchronize Files Online With Nomadesk

Thursday Bram — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:00:41 +0000

If you’re on the go, there are several options for managing and synchronizing your files, but Nomadesk manages to stand out from the crowd with several handy features. The service uses a desktop application to manage files (available in both Windows and Mac flavors), although an online dashboard is also available.

Back Up and Synchronize in the Same Place

Having a backup of the documents you work with on a regular basis is crucial — but why does it always have to be a separate application from whatever process you use to access your files when you’re on the go? Nomadesk makes sure that you can safeguard files and make them accessible at the same time. The service offers unlimited backups and guarantees that every time you add a new file or make a change, your file is backed up on redundant servers in the cloud.

In part, I think Nomadesk’s approach comes from the fact that it considers digital nomads the company’s target market. For individuals traveling only with a laptop, this service is ideal, no matter where you go. Even if something happens to your laptop when you’re on the far side of the globe, you can quickly recover your files — you just need to find another computer with an Internet connection. Of course, Nomadesk offers tools for synchronizing files across multiple computers, as well.

File Sharing Made Simple

Many of the other tools currently available for sharing documents and other files often require the people that you share files with to also register as users. With Nomadesk, however, a new feature allows you to share an entire folder — no matter the size — with anyone who has an Internet connection. As long as you’re logged into the tool’s desktop client, you can create a link to share any folder. From there, it’s just a matter of sending that link to whoever you want to have access to it.

To have access to the folder sharing feature, you do have to be signed up for the team version of Nomadesk ($15 per month), rather than the personal version ($50 per year).

Unlimited Usage, With Restrictions

Nomadesk does offer unlimited backups and doesn’t limit the size of files you share, but the service does have a “Fair Usage Policy:”

Although we do not set fixed limits on storage or bandwidth, we might intervene in the spirit of “fair usage” if we see a customer dramatically exceed the storage amounts of an average Nomadesk customer.

The phrasing of the policy is fairly vague — there’s no definition of what might be considered excessive or average. If you think that you might fall into the category of a heavy user, not having a clear definition of the upper limits of Nomadesk’s service could be a problem in the long run. It seems like a problem like that would be caught during the 30-day free trial, but there’s no guarantee.

Are you a digital nomad? Does Nomadesk meet your backup/syncing needs?

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Orggit: Your Firesafe in the Cloud

Nancy Nally — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:00:04 +0000

We all know that we should safeguard our critical data and documents in case of a disaster. Yet way too few of us follow the best practices of having these items backed up and kept in multiple locations. As a Florida resident conscious of the threat of hurricanes and wildfires, I know I should be better at doing this. But I hadn’t found a really good way to do so until I was given the chance to try out Orggit.

Some Monsanto executives learned the value of safeguarding their data the hard way when they couldn’t access key information they needed during the chaos after 9/11. So in 2003 they founded Morgan Street Document Services to help individuals and businesses protect their important documents from disasters. Orggit was launched recently to bring this service to a wider consumer audience through a user-friendly interface.

Unlike storage and sync services such as Dropbox and Sugarsync that are just storage space for files, Orggit has a user interface that allows for organizing various types of information records.

After logging in, users are greeted by four tabs across the top of their Orggit home page:

Wallet: This section stores information about all the cards you might carry in your wallet. It is organized using tabs down the left size for various types of cards, and each tab’s contents appear in the main area of the screen when selected. Each card type’s fields are customized to hold standard data types for those cards, including customer service numbers. Images of the cards can even be added. A “wallet report” can be printed containing details of all of the stored cards to use as an offline back-up or for reference in filing a police report or canceling stolen cards. This section of Orggit is similar to a Palm app that I used to have that is now available for a variety of mobile phones called SplashID. However, SplashID syncs only between a desktop and mobile device with no cloud backup of data; that redundancy is a key feature of Orggit.

Medical: This section contains a service I’ve never seen offered by any other back-up or storage service: 24/7/365 ICE (in case of emergency) medical record forwarding. It allows a user to create and store a complete medical history for themselves, including scanned documents. This history can then be downloaded in a nicely formatted PDF form for sharing with healthcare providers. Orggit will also fax or email it 24/7 to healthcare providers that request it in an emergency if they provide Orggit the member ID number found on the ICE wallet card that is mailed to every Orggit member. The card provides instructions on how to call and retrieve the records, or report a lost wallet.

As someone with a complicated medical history involving several chronic conditions, I love the idea of healthcare providers being able to access a comprehensive healthcare record for me if I have a problem away from home. My one complaint about this section is that the date fields for items require complete MM/DD/YY date entries and it can be hard to be that specific about things that were a long time ago. It would be helpful to be able to enter an incomplete date, such as just the year, or just month/year. What I’d like to see added would be more fields for recording routine doctors’ visits, and events such as routine illnesses or symptoms. Perhaps a calendar or journal function in this section could serve for those purposes.

Accounts & Codes: Designed to store logins, this is the least robust of all the service’s sections. It keeps a single alphabetized list of your logins. Clicking on the item will take you to an entered URL but won’t log you in. For day-to-day password retrieval, this can’t compete with applications like 1Password for Mac or even Firefox’s built-in password manager. But it has some advantages those sorts of programs don’t, such as the cloud storage of the data and being able to make it visible to other family members in case of emergency.

Filing Cabinet: The filing cabinet is designed to store scanned copies of important documents, similar to Dropbox and other storage services. However, unlike Dropbox, it doesn’t sync files with edits in another location. This lack of file syncing to an offline source in Orggit’s filing cabinet is not as big a deal as it might seem. Most of the files that Orggit is intended to store are scans or PDF’s of static files such as legal documents that would require creation of a whole new file if they were changed. They also aren’t documents that are typically updated that often.

Using the filing cabinet is simple. There are buttons for its drawers across the top of the page. Six drawers are already named and come configured with pre-named folders to suggest contents for them. Users can add a seventh drawer or tailor the existing ones to meet their needs. Basically, the drawers and folders are just a user-friendly way of representing a file storage structure to users.

The iPhone app is a nice addition to the service but not a key component of it. It has the ability to trigger the faxing or mailing of medical reports from its emergency section. The iPhone app also gives you the ability to use your phone’s camera to take pictures of your ID cards rather than having to scan them or use your camera. The camera can also be used to update family members’ profile pictures. You can also create a custom home screen for your phone using one of your pictures that includes a banner with instructions for accessing the Orggit ICE service.

The app is very limited in function beyond those nice features, however. Information cannot be added or edited (besides adding the photos), only read. And there is no access at all to the filing cabinet.

Orggit has the capability of holding virtually the entire identity of a user if they use the service to its full potential. The site obviously requires a high level of security. So before I commit a large volume of my data to the site, I wanted to know what security measures are in place to protect my data — and me.

The Orggit’s representatives that I contacted say that the site uses the same standards of security as the National Security Agency to secure customers’ data. They have servers in multiple locations, and those servers are behind a firewall and use the highest-grade Extended Validation SSL Certificates from VeriSign. Orggit also says it encrypts all member passwords, security questions and phishing images with AES 256 bit encryption, “rendering brute force attacks unfeasible.” They also use the VeriSign Extended Validation green address bar to signify to users that they are connected to a legal web site.

Although at first glance Orggit may seem oriented towards personal use, it can have several important business applications. The wallet tab and the ICE service can provide extra security for road warriors. One of the filing cabinet drawers can be configured to hold work documents (an especially critical mission if you are self-employed and have documents like tax returns and articles of incorporation to protect).

Orggit costs $49.99 for an annual subscription. The subscription includes the company’s free iPhone app ; the addition of up to nine family members on the account; auto-reminder service for expiration dates of credit cards, drivers license and passport; 24/7/365 ICE medical records forwarding service; and 5GB of storage space. Added family members must have an email address and get their own “wallet,” medical and accounts/codes section; the filing cabinet is shared between all users. The primary member controls whether family members can see each other’s data or not, and whether they can see the shared file cabinet.

It does take time to enter all of your critical data into an application like Orggit. But in an emergency, having access to that data via Orggit will make the investment of that time seem like a tiny price to have paid.

Do you keep important documents safe with off-site backups?

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Carbonite for Mac Finally Released. Worth the Wait?

Judi Sohn — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:00:46 +0000

Even though web workers tend to do almost everything online, we still have files on our computer that matter. At one time or another, we’ve all probably learned the hard way what happens if our backup strategy isn’t automated or tested. With that in mind, there’s been a crop of web services over the years that try and make the backup process as simple as possible. Install, sync, forget about it…if you have decent broadband, of course.

Carbonite has been a popular choice for Windows users for quite some time because you pay one price ($54.95) for a yearly subscription and that’s it. There are no additional fees for storage or bandwidth. It’s easy to install, easy to configure, and doesn’t seem to drag a computer down while it works in the background.

It makes a simple mirror of your files. Change a file, and the new version replaces the old one on the server. Rather than backing up on a set schedule, it detects when files change and automatically backs them up, meaning that there is little chance of losing an important file because it was lost before the next scheduled sync.

Carbonite has been teasing Mac users for well over two years with the promise of a Mac version. The wait is over. Is it worth it?

Carbonite for Mac installs (and uninstalls) very easily onto a Mac running OS X 10.4 or 10.5. While the PC version sits in the taskbar, the Mac version is configured via a system preference pane that you can set to access from the menu bar.

By default, Carbonite backs up every file it finds in the User folder, except for applications and system files. You can also manually select additional files to back up (or not back up) through the Finder, although in practice this didn’t work for me. To restore, you access the “Restore” tab in the preference pane and select the files you want to copy back.

Carbonite is not meant to create a full drive backup. For that, look to Apple’s Time Machine or SuperDuper and back up to an external or network drive. Online backup services are best for recovering specific files lost through corruption or accidental deletion, not for complete hard drive meltdowns.

The problem with Carbonite for Mac is that we’ve moved on. What seemed like a life-saving service two years ago now feels kind of ho-hum and a bit too pricey.

Carbonite’s big downfall is that it’s licensed per computer only. If you have a desktop computer and a laptop, you need to pay another $54.95 to back up the second machine. You can’t share common files between machines. You can have multiple machines on your account, but each needs its own license. Depending on how you work, that can get expensive.

New to Carbonite is the ability to browse and download backed-up files through a web interface. Unfortunately, in my testing I found accessing files this way to be painfully slow.

There are now more choices for Mac users for automated online backups, including my personal favorite: Jungle Disk. It provides a very easy-to-use interface for automatically backing up files to Amazon S3 storage space. It’s not quite as brainless to configure as Carbonite, and you have to pay Amazon for the storage (my invoices have been averaging $9/month for about 30GB of files from two machines). But it still has a very easy-to-use interface, and it’s far more flexible than Carbonite. For example, with Jungle Disk you can specify how many backups you wish to save, so you can go back and restore an older version of a file. Carbonite has no such option. Also, side-by-side, it feels like Jungle Disk uploads much faster than Carbonite.

I installed Carbonite a few years ago on my mother’s Windows-based computer. It was — and is — a perfect solutions for her, and was quite handy when she accidentally lost a folder full of important files. If your mom is a Mac user, I would recommend Carbonite for her, too. It does what it says it will do, and it does it well.

But for a web worker needing easy online backup, Carbonite is a bit too lightweight for its price to be taken seriously.

What’s your favorite online backup solution?

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