After starting to use FolderShare again (see yesterday’s article) I’m starting to appreciate all that this thing can do. As Kent asks, why is this such an seemingly ignored service from Microsoft? There’s a lot of power here.
Rich, in a comment on yesterday’s article brought up an interesting thought — wouldn’t it be cool to get box.net to work with FolderShare? At first blush, they’re very similar, but at second look not as much as I originally thought.
I’m a long time user of box.net [1] and tend to use it as a “virtual USB stick.” Upload stuff to it and that stuff is available anywhere I can grab a web browser. It integrates nicely with most of the ajaxy web start pages (netvibes for example) and is easy to use. It offers some sharing type features but I’ve never had the urge/need to actually experiment with them.
The key is that your box.net data is online and “in the cloud”. If you didn’t upload the file to box.net, you won’t have access to it.
I keep all of my toolkit programs on my box.net account. I keep a handful of “important” documents there as well. The integration with MS Office and Zoho are positives too. I don’t use those as often as I thought I would, but they both do get used. Oh, and I just noticed there’s some Open Office integration that I hadn’t previously noticed.
FolderShare works a bit differently. I see it more as an online sync tool. There are 3 things you can do with it:
- Sync folders amongst your machines
- Share and sync folders with friends
- Access all files on one of your machines via the FolderShare website
See, with FolderShare no data lives “in the cloud” — it’s all on one of your computers. FolderShare just enables you to get or sync that data from the computer. If that computer is offline or not connected to the ‘net, no syncing is going on.
For instance, I’ve found this to be a good way to keep a subset of my mp3 collection synced between home and office. I also like the ability to pop onto the website and grab any file off my home machine that I might need. Saves on having to plan ahead…
Comparing and contrasting the two services I can easily spot pros and cons for both. Sure, FolderShare gives me access to all my files — but not if the computer is off or has lost its Internet connection. In that case box.net shines — but only if I remembered to upload the file in the first place.
While we’re at it, what about Omnidrive?[2] This is a service that I used to use a lot but just sort of drifted away from.
I’d say it is most similar to box.net, but with some interesting twists. For starters, there’s a client (currently just Windows and Mac) that can be installed. The client treats your omnidrive online storage as just another hard drive. Drag and dropping files work as expected and editing a document on the omnidrive “drive” is seamless as well. Really rather slick.
Omnidrive, like box.net, offers Zoho integration. There’s also an interesting podcast fetch/storage thing that I need to check out one of these days. Both Omnidrive and box.net offer developer APIs.
The client isn’t mandatory though; there’s also a web interface that works largely as you might expect. And, of course, there are the obligatory social/sharing features that I’ve yet to experiment with.
Pricing
Both box.net and omnidrive start with free 1GB plans and both offer larger plans for pay. Omnidrive starts at $40/year (10GB / 20GB month bandwidth) and box.net starts at $80/year (5GB / unlimited bandwidth).
FolderShare is currently free — keep in mind though, they have no storage costs. All storage is on your machines.
Wrap Up
Hmm, this became more of compare/contrast article than I originally intended to write. Although the notion of combining box.net and FolderShare is intriguing (and the genesis of this topic drifted article) I just can’t see it being practical — without storing an entire in-sync image of my PC’s online. And that would be a bit nuts, eh?
I see that I need to look again at Omnidrive a bit and maybe chose between it or box.net. I also intend to use and explore FolderShare more.
Any thoughts on these comparisons or contrasts? Drop a comment!
[1] – Previous mentions of box.net
[2] – Previous mentions of Omnidrive
Possibly Related posts:
July 4th, 2007 
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without storing an entire in-sync image of my PC’s online.
Now that’s as big a non-sequitor as I’ve seen on your blog in probably ages.
You don’t use foldershare for entire drives as it is now do you? You use it for specific folders. You just mentioned such an application with clients.
Now, envision a world where you’re not a system administrator but you want multiple people to have access to files and be able to edit them and have only the one copy but you aren’t the host and don’t always leave the host computer on.
Now box.net is the host and foldershare is the syncing option you would use, just like you are already doing. I’m merely substituting (wanting to) box.net “for the directory housing the document library” (that’s from your previous article)
Changing the directory that foldershare looks at from being C:\documents\shared to being http://www.box.net\simplerich is, or should be academic in today’s world of interconnectivity and webtops.
Mirror the whole drive indeed. More coffee, less art sir!
Sure you do! In fact, I even mention it in the article:
I really like that feature of FolderShare. From a browser, get to any file on the PC running it.
*ugh* You don’t HAVE to share entire drives, you can select to only share folders. You’re doing this on purpose.
You know what I mean about sharing only specific folders.
The Browse Computers thing is an option that can be disabled, and not the one I find most useful and I hardly ever use it. It may even be turned off on my desktop out of an abundance of paranoia that someone’ll find a way in while I’m out of town for two weeks and can’t update the software.
This is the South, and sometimes battery back-ups don’t last as long as power outages due to weather. If that happens the computer is gone. It’d be nice if foldershare would sync “MongoFolder” with box.net/mongofolder and then when I powered on the main computer it’d sync it up. While I was driving around pretending I’m doing something, my employees could access MongoFolder whether my home computer’s rebooted itself or not, and they’d all get the most current copy automagically through the magic of syncing.
(For anybody getting ready to suggest google docs or zoho docs… some of our spreadsheets are a bit complicated and both online apps weep into their cups if I try to open them.)
I understand that use of FolderShare to share/sync folders.
However, what I *really* am intrigued by is the notion of accessing ALL drives and data from my machine running the FS client.
What you’re suggesting is rather slick… and with a bit of foresight, Omnidrive with the windows client might be interesting (offline mode)?
oh – lol, once again we use two tools for very different things. I don’t like the option that you DO like and vice versa hehehe. I knew there had to be some sort of gap.
I can’t remember what it was about Omnidrive that I didn’t like, but I’ve installed it and removed it at least twice that I can think of. There’s something about that one that I dislike relatively quickly enough to make me remove it almost immediately. For the life of me I can’t remember what it is, only that as soon as I installed it last time I realized it right away and whatever it was that I didn’t like was still there lol.
Hey guys, Nik from Omnidrive here.
Chris – windows client can be accessed in offline mode.
We are actually working hard towards our 1.0 release, which will be late-August. We have the 0.8 release next week, and today we published an interim release of the Windows client which you can take a look at:
http://www.omnidrive.com/blog
Rich: can you remember what it was that you didn’t like? If you get a chance, try out the new windows client which we published on the blog today. If you have any issues or feedback, I would really like to hear about them
Feel free to join the forum over on the site or email me on nik at omnidrive.com
Another sharing files solution not appearing in your list:
http://www.pando.com/what
Omni drive doesn’t sync to folders on my computer.
I can’t find what “Live Folders” are in the FAQ, but I’d hoped it was a syncing folder. It’s not.
Shift-click doesn’t work to select multiple objects, but CTRL-click does.
The forums tell me that the files I download from omnidrive (when I choose Synchronize All (It’s a choice I have to make every time to sync, it’s not automatic) are automatically saved for me locally in C:\Program Files\Omnidrive\{username}. But I keep finding them in C:\Documents and Settings\HP_Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Omnidrive\simplerich which is completely different. When I look in the folders, the files aren’t there! Just filename placeholders. The files aren’t synchronized at all, in spite of the name. Merely the folder names, and file names are synced up.
It all seems sluggish. When I right-click and ask it to delete a file it can take up to 5 seconds to get the “Are you sure you want to delete this” prompt.
As I read the forums (No search feature I could find for the forums, ARGH!) I get the impression that the omnidrive really wants to be a virtual drive that the computer can use that is off-site, just like real physical drive.
This is a giant very cool step for me having a hard drive that I can access anywhere I have internet access. That’s very cool. However, I am often in remote locations where I don’t have internet access, and I’d like local changes made to my local copy with my remote, non-internet-connected machine to be able to sync up when it is later connected to the internet.
As good a product as Omnidrive is. It doesn’t appear to be, at present, the key to my lock. It’s a key to someone’s lock… just not mine. It may be that it will never be the solution I’m looking for. There are very fine programs and websites that do very fine jobs at what they do that don’t address my very specific concerns and wants. If I use a screwdriver to pound in a nail it’s not the screwdriver’s fault it’s not a hammer. It’s my fault for trying to make it into one. I suspect that is the problem I’m running into here as well.
Hello,
I think you should try steekR. It has all the advantages of Box.net (the beautiful interface, the ease of use), Omnidrive (the windows client) and FolderShare (it backups ans syncs your files). You have 1Gb for free without BW limitations. Here : http://www.steekr.com