Tag Archives: cloud

Google Drive vs Dropbox, Amazon, or Microsoft Sky Drive for Cloud Storage?

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Google Drive Storage

There was some great news from Google this week concerning cloud storage, and while it isn’t up to what I want in replacing your hard drive, Google Drive is a great step forward in drive cloud storage with 5GB free, and apparently I’m grandfathered in to my 20GB $5/year plan (see screenshot below). Finally Google put some effort into developing something we can truly use instead of trying to beat Facebook or Twitter at social networking. Eventually, this type of storage is going to do away with our need to keep purchasing more and more hard drives to store our files with only a small flash drive needed on the system for the OS. I have almost 8TB’s of data stored on local hard drives at this point, so this lousy 5GB of storage won’t help that, but it’s a start.

If you aren’t familiar with using cloud storage, until now, there was really only one real option, and that was Dropbox. Yes there are those like Box.com and Amazon Cloud Drive (provide 5 GB), and Microsoft’s SkyDrive (offers 25 GB) who just made some nice improvements this week, probably in anticipation of the release of Google Drive. Each of those have some significant disadvantages, and I don’t ever really consider them to be viable options because of their limitations or issues. Apple’s iCloud is great for backing up devices, but it doesn’t even offer an option for drive storage in the cloud. While I love Dropbox, the basic computer user still isn’t really familiar with Dropbox, and they are with Google. That doesn’t make Google better than Dropbox, but it does make Google Drive easier to integrate with your friends or family to share files. So which one is better, Google Drive or Dropbox? There services seem to be almost identical, but Google has some significant advantages over Dropbox.

Google Drive Storage 20GB $5 year

The biggest news, at least to me, about the Google Drive launch in the fact that they are going to allow you to keep up to 100GB of data stored for a reasonable price of $5.99, it’s just too bad once you get above that, it’s outrageous, but that too will change. This is great on multiple levels, and something probably only Google could do with some massive data centers that companies like Dropbox, and perhaps even Microsoft, just don’t have. When you are looking at possible server farm potential for cloud storage, the biggest possibilities right now are Google, Amazon, and of course Apple who just built a massive cloud server farm in North Carolina, which is even visible from space now. All of this is good for those who want all files stored in the cloud instead of on local home hard drives that fail.

Advantages and Disadvantages in Google Drive vs Dropbox

  • More storage – 5GB of Storage on Google compared to 2GB on Dropbox (you can gain more on Dropbox)
  • Blanket Existing Coverage  - most of us already use Google for just about everything from email to Internet searches
  • Google Recognition – sometimes this is negative, but in this case, everyone has heard of Google, tech-nerds know Dropbox
  • Integration and Development in OS – both have ability to run within MAC OS-X or Windows but Google has greater development potential. The biggest plus here is with Google Docs and other Google products.
  • Automatic Syncing – both have this as well, that’s the point of cloud storage
  • Works with iOS and Android – both have this too (Google Drive says coming soon on iOS), but the Dropbox versions could use some better features, hopefully Google will do this
  • Backup – this is a big question for me, what happens with my account and my files if the company goes Chapter 11. Google has less chance to do this.
  • Potential Increases in Storage – Google is known for increasing storage size constantly, and to me, the more storage the better
  • Integration with Google Apps – Not sure how soon this is on their radar, but at work we use a Google App account
  • No URL Links – Dropbox just released this feature this week, a feature that lets you have a unique URL for each file. I see no mention about this in the Google Drive information but it has to be in the works, they couldn’t have just overlooked this feature. For now, I only see this available on Dropbox.

For now we all have to wait until Google actually rolls it out instead of just giving us the information, and of course, they developed the Android OS before the iOS, so us Apple iPhone and iPad users will have to wait even longer. Still, it’s a step in the right cloud storage direction!

T-Minus 10 Days and Counting Plus it Rained :: Friday Feet

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Another last minute Friday Feet but it’s still Friday for about another hour. Last Friday I was talking about how it hasn’t rained at our place in forever, and this week it rained off and on all week. My day today started out with rain and ended with rain and our pond in the photo from last week has more than quadrupled in size, what a difference a week can make. Today’s Friday Feet comes from looking towards our house at the same pond as the rain clouds moved across the property. The shot was taken with my iPhone after hours and hours of cutting grass in 100% humidity right before the heavy rain came back.

This week has been crazy busy as we (Cornerstone) continue to prepare for becoming a multi-site church and I can’t believe there are only 10 days left before our team leaves for Africa. I would like to say I’m ready to go and have everything done that needs to be done but that probably won’t even be the case come next Monday when we leave for Atlanta.

Fog on a Never End Cycle of Rain in the Southern Winter

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Fog on a never end cycle of rain in the south in the winter. You can see the puddles around the tree swing, and the dreariness in the air. Somewhere Spring is coming.

Learning About Yourself Through Twitter Word Cloud?

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wordle

Anyone else besides me love word clouds?  I like them for many reasons but if they are not contrived of a set of words you put in manually, it may actually tell us something about ourselves.  These of course are not scientific, but there are many API applications that will put data from parts of your online life that will automatically generate words from your own networking.  Wordle is one popular one that I have posted here before but this morning I visited HubSpot’s Twitter Grader for @scottfillmer and forgot they had a word cloud for your tweets.  If you haven’t checked out HubSpot, they have some really neat tools for blogs and all things online.  My HubSpot word cloud went something like this.

hubspot grade

This word cloud is specific to my Twitter posts.  Funny if picked up the smilee, which I use far to often, but most of the time that is part of who I am.  What fascinated me about this list is how big the word CAN’T is on my list.  I think that is probably referring to other posts because I am all about the CAN so it was wild to see that in the list.

Taking a look at my Wordle which I do from time to time is a little more of an eye opener.  The wordle cloud takes the text from your blog or other related feed site.  I have a little twist on this wordle.  I did the cloud in black and white and then went in and did a bit of personal evaluation and circled or underlined some words in red.  How small have I made God on my blog?  Small enough to have to use an arrow to show where it shows up on my cloud.  Same thing with my wife (Deb) up near the top of my blog.

How about Christ, or Jesus?  Couldn’t find them on the word cloud other than the word Christmas, amazing.  Some would argue that it’s a blog, it doesn’t have to be about my wife, or Jesus, or God, or Ministry, but it is what we make it.  A blog can serve many purposes and focus on many subjects.  The words below are obviously what my blog has focused on recently (it takes the words from the last 10 posts I believe).  I don’t think it shows a right or wrong, but a way to look at what is important on this particular blog.  If my wife, or God is important for me on this blog I guess I have work to do.

Some other observations about the wordle are things I didn’t think about.  The word children’s and children are pretty prominent, have no idea why, we have no kids at home and don’t really do much with kids, but there it is.

Of course you may be asking why post this anyway.  Well, the focus of my blog changes from time to time.  I realized the only thing that stays the same is who I am, Scott Fillmer, and that is not something I can do anything about, after all, I am me, but to evaluate and refocus on a blog once in a while is a good thing.  Over the next few weeks I will have a few posts to show and explain the direction I am looking at taking my blog (it’s not to different than it is now) and hopefully I can get more personal with what is important in my life, many of which are the small words on the screen above.