Compare SkyDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox

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You have your files, photos and documents on your home computer that you would like to access from other locations on different devices. Dropbox has been the de-facto choice for long but that could potentially change as Microsoft and Google have just entered the arena with the launch of Windows Live SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively.

The three services are very similar – you get online storage (you can access your files anywhere) and file synchronization – edit a document on one computer and the changes are propagated to all your other computers almost instantly.

Let’s see how these online drives stack up against each other:

SkyDrive vs Google Drive vs Dropbox

Supported Platforms

Dropbox is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, BlackBerry and Android devices. Windows Live SkyDrive is available for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone devices while Google Drive is currently available for PC, Mac and Android phones /tablets. All services do offer a web mobile version that can help you access your files from the web browser of any mobile phone.

The other important difference is that Dropbox is also available for Windows XP and Linux while SkyDrive is not.

Storage Limits

Dropbox offers 2-3 GB of free online storage storage, Google Drive offers 5 GB while SkyDrive, if you are new, offers 7 GB of storage space.

You can upload files of any size to Dropbox through the desktop client while that limit is 2 GB in the case of SkyDrive. Both SkyDrive and Dropbox let you upload files up to 300 MB from the web browser while that limit is 10 GB in the case of Google Drive.

Storage Plans

If you are running out of storage space on SkyDrive, you can buy an additional 20 GB for about $10 per year or 50 GB for $25 per year. Dropbox Pro offers 50 GB of storage space for $99 per year while Google Drive offers an extra 20 GB for $2.49 per month.

See detailed comparison of pricing plans.

Built-in File Viewers

Both SkyDrive and Dropbox web apps have built-in file viewers for most common file formats including Office documents, PDFs, videos and images. Google Docs supports even more formats – including Photoshop mockups and AutoCAD drawings – and no wonder that you can also view these files in Google Drive without additional software.

Unfortunately, maybe because of licensing issues, none of these drives will stream MP3 songs in the browser – you will to have download the MP3 file locally to play the audio.

File History

Your free Dropbox account will save any file’s history for 30 days meaning if you accidentally delete or change a file, you can easily restore the previous working version for the next 30 days. SkyDrive and Google Drive also store the previous versions of all files though they have not exactly specified how many reversions are preserved.

If you delete a file or folder inside SkyDrive web app, it’s gone forever whereas in the case of Dropbox and Google Drive, the files are moved to the Trash from where they can be easily restored.

Account Security

Since your Google Drive is connected to your Google Account, you can apply 2-step protection and non-authorized user won’t be able to access your online file even if they are aware of your Google username and password. This extra layer of protection is not available to Dropbox and SkyDrive users.

Google Drive and Dropbox also maintain a detailed log of every single change that was made to your files (or account) but this seems to be missing in SkyDrive.

File Search

This is one area where Google Drive has a definite upper hand.

When you search for a file on Dropbox.com, it returns results where the file names matche your search keywords. SkyDrive lets you search the content of documents that are in common Microsoft Office formats. Google Drive goes a step further as it can even read the text content of scanned documents and photographs using OCR. That is, if you have saved a photograph of the whiteboard to your Google Drive account, you should be able find that image by text without having to remember the filename.

Offline Access

The mobile apps of Dropbox and Google Drive let you save any document or file on your mobile for offline use.  Such a facility is not available in the iOS apps of Windows SkyDrive though you can always export the document to another app (like iBooks or Good Reader) from SkyDrive and access it offline.

Selective Sync

If you have multiple computers, all these “online drives” will copy your files across all your machines. Sometimes, you don’t want this to happen and both Dropbox and Google Drive offer you an option to selectively synchronize folders per computer. For instance, you can tell Dropbox not to download your family photographs folder on the work computer.  This saves bandwidth and your hard disk stays light too.

Selective Sync is however missing in SkyDrive.

What I like about Windows SkyDrive

SkyDrive offers plenty of storage space but the best part is that the SkyDrive web app lets you access files and folders of all your other computer right from within your browser. You just need to have SkyDrive on these machines and you can then easily access any of their files from any other computer, anywhere simply using your Windows Live ID.

SkyDrive is an absolute must-have service for Microsoft Office users because it gives you the ability to edit documents in the web browser while preserving all the formatting.

What I like about Google Drive

Google Drive offers the most pleasing interface, the search feature is brilliant and the new grid view lets you quickly browse your stored files visually. You can email any file from your Google Drive account to another user as an email attachment, a useful feature that’s missing in all the other online drives.

If you live in the Google ecosystem and do not have Microsoft Office on your computer, skip SkyDrive and go with Google Drive.

What I like about Dropbox

The basic Dropbox account offers a mere 2 GB of storage space but you can easily increase your account space to 16 GB by referring a couple of friends to Dropbox. Also, you can find tons of apps that make the Dropbox service even more powerful and useful.

Google Drive and Windows Live SkyDrive are extremely promising services but none of them support as many platforms as Dropbox does. The best part about Dropbox is that it just works and it won’t be easy even for Google and Microsoft to build the kind of developer ecosystem that currently exists around Dropbox.

Ref:Digital Inspiration.

Middleman Syncs Virtually Any Device with iTunes on a Mac

Mac only: iPods are great, but if you want to sync your music with another device—like a Sansa Clip or an Android phone—iTunes doesn’t exactly have your back. Middleman is a free service for iTunes that syncs a playlist of your choice with any USB mass storage device.

Android now have apps like previously mentioned iSyncr to sync their devices with iTunes, but those of us using plain ol’ USB drives or other USB-based MP3 players are still left out in the cold. We just want something simple and free to copy our music. Middleman hopes to fill this void. It isn’t the prettiest or the most feature-filled, but it’ll sync your music to nearly any device with little hassle.

Middleman: Sync Any USB Mass-Storage Device with iTunes

Version: 0.2
Released: March 31, 2010
Updated: May 9, 2012
Creator: Whitson Gordon, Updated for Lion by Max Czarnecki
You can still download the old, Snow Leopard-compatible version here.

License: GNU Public License

What it does: Lets you select any playlist from iTunes and sync the tracks contained within to any desired folder on your USB mass-storage device.

Installation: Middleman is a Service that can be launched straight from iTunes. To install it, just mount the DMG, drag the Middleman_temp file to the Library folder in “Macintosh HD”, and double-click on the “Sync selected playlist” file.

As always, we recommend you make sure all your data is backed up before using a new program that moves your files around. We’ve tested this pretty thoroughly, but you never know what could go wrong.

Usage: Middleman requires a bit of initial setup. Due to the nature of iTunes and Middleman, you can only sync one playlist to your device. If you try to sync a second playlist, it’ll delete tracks from the first playlist. So, if you aren’t syncing your entire library, create one master “Sync” playlist with all the tracks you want on your device. My preferred way of creating the master playlist is to create a smart playlist that includes all the playlists I want to sync, but you can do this any way you want.

To sync, mount your device and select your master playlist in iTunes (or, if you’re syncing your whole library, just select “Music”). In the menu bar, go to iTunes -> Services -> Sync Selected Playlist with Middleman. Middleman will prompt you for the folder on your device in which you want to sync your music. You can select any folder you want, including the root folder of your device—it will not delete the contents of the folder you choose; it will put the music in another folder named “Middleman” inside of it. It will use your existing directory structure for artists and albums, so I highly recommend you have the “Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized” box checked under Preferences > Advanced in iTunes.

Middleman will show a dialog that says it is gathering information, which may take a few minutes depending on the size of the playlist you’re syncing (the spinning gear in the menu bar shows that it’s working). When it’s done, your device will begin syncing (you’ll see it all happening in a Terminal window), showing you the progress track-by-track. As always, the first sync takes a while, but subsequent syncs will only transfer new or changed songs (and will remove from the device songs no longer on the master playlist). When it finishes syncing, you may close or quit Terminal and unmount your device.

Note that Middleman doesn’t sync any playlists, just the tracks listed on the playlist you sync. I couldn’t find an easy way, with my knowledge and skill set, to sync the playlists themselves too. For now, you’re best off using something like iTunes Export, which will convert any number of playlists from iTunes to .M3U format and put them on your device if you so choose. Keep in mind you’ll need the tracks on those playlists synced to your device for them to work.

Middleman is a free download for Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion only. Middleman was made in Automator, using a number of Applescripts, and relies heavily on rsync, which is built into OS X. If you would like to view or edit the workflow in Automator, just navigate to ~/Library/Services and double click on the Sync Selected Playlist with Middleman workflow.

Bug reports and feature requests: I’ve thoroughly tested Middleman on my machine and a few others, but it’s had little exercise outside of that. If you find a bug, have a good idea for a new feature, or know a little about Applescript and Automator and have a suggestion/improvement to offer, leave a comment below.

Download Middleman for Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard

Download Middleman for Mac OS 10.7 Lion

 

Ref:LifeHacker

Jailbreaking Your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad [iOS 5.0.1]

Jailbreaking is a process that changes little by little with each iOS upgrade. Rather than always publishing new guides, we’re simply going to keep this one up to date. If you want to jailbreak your iOS device, you’ve come to the right page.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Although you can jailbreak both A5-based and non-A5-based devices running iOS 5.0.1, the method differs. Be sure to follow the instructions for your device.

Current Untethered Version: iOS 5.0.1
For additional jailbreak options for older versions of iOS, please see the list at the bottom of this page. As this guide is updated, previous versions of the guide will be archived there as well.

Current Tethered Version: iOS 5.0.1
We do not recommend tethered jailbreaking, as it requires you to connect your iDevice to your computer to boot it every time. This is especially bad with new operating system releases, as they tend to freeze up a bit more. You probably don’t want your device freezing up and becoming unusable while you’re out and about, so you really should wait until an untethered jailbreak is available for iOS 5. That said, if you’re jailbreaking for development purposes or carry a laptop with you everywhere, this post will show you can do it.

Not sure if you should jailbreak?
We love jailbreaking our iDevices, but it’s not for everybody. If you’re not sure, you should read both our reasons not to jailbreak and why jailbreaking is awesome.

How to Jailbreak Older (Non-A5-Based) Devices: The Step by Step Process

The video above will show you how the whole process works, both on your computer and your iOS device, but read on for the steps for non-A5-based devices.

1

Before getting started, make sure you are running iOS 5.0.1, as this jailbreak will only work on iOS 5.0.1 and not 5.0.0. If you’re still running 5.0.0, update to 5.0.1. Also, be sure your iDevice does not run on an A5 chip. (This means iPad 2s and iPhone 4S’.) Any earlier device that can run iOS 5.0.1 should work just fine. (This means the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 GSM, iPhone 4 CDMA, iPad 1, iPod touch 3G, and iPod touch 4G.)

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2

Download redsn03 0.9.10b3 for Mac OS X or Windows.

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3

Connect your iDevice to your computer, open up the redsn0w application, and turn off your iDevice.

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4

On the redsn0w application window you’ll see a Jailbreak button. Click it. You’ll be told you’ll need to put your iDevice into DFU mode and to click the Next button when ready. When you are ready, go ahead and click it.

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5

Hold down the power button at the top of your iDevice for three (3) seconds. Next, continue holding down the power button but also hold down the home button for a total of 10 seconds. Finally, let go of the power button but continue holding down the home button for another 15 seconds, or until redsn0w changes screens and tells you it’s exploiting your device for the jailbreak.

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6

Once redsn0w has finished doing its business, it’ll ask you what you want to do for this jailbreak. By default, only Cydia will be checked. Most of the other options are irrelevant, but you might want to check Enable multitouch gestures if you want additional multitouch gestures on your iPhone or iPod touch.

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7

Wait a few minutes for the jailbreak to finish and for your iDevice to reboot. Once it has booted, you’ll see the Cydia icon on your home screen (although it may not be on the first page, so look around). Open it up and you’ll have access to a bunch of jailbreak hacks.

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And you’re done! Launch it and you’re ready to go. Not sure what to do next? Check out our jailbreaking tag page for some ideas.

How to Jailbreak Newer (A5-Based) Devices: The Step by Step Process

The video above will show you how the whole process works, both on your computer and your iOS device, but read on for the steps for A5-based devices.

1

The greenpois0n absinthe method is pretty simple. You just plug in your iPhone or iPad (there’s no need to enter DFU mode or even turn it off), open the absinthe jailbreak app on your Mac or Windows PC, and click the jailbreak button.

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2

Wait for a while. Your device will go into a fake restore session and reboot. When it reboots, DO NOT TOUCH IT. The jailbreak process isn’t over yet. You will be notified on-screen when absinthe has finished its work. It will tell you to find the quote-unquote jailbreak app on one of your home screen pages. The app is not labeled jailbreak, but rather absinthe. Tap that app and it should cause your device to reboot with the jailbreak complete.

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3

If that doesn’t happen, however, just open up the Settings app on your device and flip the VPN toggle switch to on (it’ll be towards the top of your main settings options). You’ll receive an error, which you need to dismiss, and then after a few seconds your device will reboot.

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Once you’re done jailbreaking, you’ll now find Cydia on one of your home screen pages. Open it up and start installing whatever you want. Not sure what to install first? Check out our jailbreaking tag page for some ideas.

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Jailbreaking Options for Older iOS Devices

• Jailbreak for iOS 4.3.3 (the faster, easier, JailbreakMe Method)
• Jailbreak for iOS 4.3.3 (the old-fashioned, redsn0w method)
• Jailbreak for iOS 4.3.2
• Jailbreak for iOS 4.3.1
• Jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1
• Jailbreak for Apple TV 2G
• Jailbreak for iOS 4.1
• Jailbreak for iOS 4.0 and 4.0.1
• Jailbreak for iOS 3.1.3 and 3.1.5
• Jailbreak for iOS 3.1.2
• Jailbreak for iOS 2.2.1
• Jailbreak for iOS 1.1.4

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Accessing a Home Laptop Remotely from Android

Consider this: You’re on vacation in the Maldives, when your office calls, with an urgent request for some files and information. These happen to be on your laptop, which is at home! If you’ve had a holiday ruined like this, here are some simple steps that help you connect to your remote laptop securely, if you have left it on and connected to the Internet — or if someone at home can switch it on for you.

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For clarity, we have used a scenario where you have a smartphone running Google Android, and will use that to access your laptop, which is running Ubuntu Lucid. The laptop is connected to the Internet via a broadband connection, and the phone has some wireless access (Wi-Fi, 3G, GPRS, etc) to the Internet. The basic idea in this article can, however, be extended to different operating systems and client devices.

So let’s go through the steps in the procedure to set up remote access in this scenario.

Get a DNS name for your home network

1. You can have someone at home determine the external IP address (assigned by your ISP to your broadband modem/router) using a website like whatismyip.com. However, handling IP addresses is somewhat more difficult, compared to using hostnames — say, laila.dyndns-server.com. Also, some ISPs often automatically reset your dynamic IP address, even without you rebooting your router. Tracking the changing IP in this case becomes a challenge. Is there a simple workaround to this problem? Yes! With dynamic DNS update services, such as DynDNS, you can create a free account, and assign a unique host-name to your external IP address. This way, you don’t need to juggle IP addresses. To update the free DNS service with the latest-assigned IP address, a scheduled job should run on a machine in your home network, at intervals you specify (an hour or so, perhaps).
2. In our scenario, we created and placed a dyndns file in the /etc/cron.hourly/ directory. The script, along with detailed instructions on setting up and working with DynDNS, is available on this article.

Set up the router for external access

Each machine in your home network will usually be assigned a unique, private IP address that is not directly accessible from the Internet. To allow incoming requests from the Internet to reach your laptop, you need to do some configuration on the router, which is the gateway between your private network and the Internet. This is done in the administrative interface for the router.

Some routers have it under the Network Address Translation (NAT) tables for the router, some in other pages. You could look up the documentation for your router to learn how to set up a port forwarding rule; before you can set it up, you need to have the following configuration done, so you know the target internal IP address and port number for the rule.

Static IP address for the laptop

Most home networks use IP addresses that are automatically assigned by the DHCP service on the broadband router. In this case, depending on the order in which systems are started up, the IP address assigned to your laptop could change, which means your port-forwarding rule will direct incoming connections to the wrong computer. Thus, it is important to give your laptop a static IP address.

In our scenario, we will set a static IP address in Ubuntu using simple command-line methods, as the UI-based Network Manager in Lucid is reported to have several issues. See this article for detailed instructions on how to do this.

While following the procedure, we recommend that you assign a high address number for your laptop, to ensure that the DHCP-served (by the ADSL router) addresses (which start at the lower end of the range) do not create an IP address conflict with another system. In our scenario, we have used the IP address 192.168.1.250.

SSH server on the laptop

This is one of many services that enable remote connection to your system. We installed OpenSSH for Ubuntu Lucid, with the following command:

$rg@laila: sudo apt-get install openssh-server

The SSH service on the laptop was left at the default configuration, listening on port 22, since it is on a private network and not directly accessible to the Internet.

Firewall configuration on the laptop

If you have a firewall set up on the laptop, remember to allow access to the SSH service, using iptables or other equivalent but more friendly options. We use the ufw (uncomplicated firewall) command in Ubuntu to open the SSH port, 22:

$rg@laila: sudo ufw allow 22    Sample result: Rule updated

Choose an external port number for the router

While the easy approach might be to use the same SSH port 22 in the forwarding rule as the port to connect to on the router’s public (Internet) interface, this is a bad idea. Crackers and others routinely have automated probes checking well-known ports such as 22, 80, 3306, etc, to see if they are open, and then attempt various attacks on them. To avoid this happening to your home network, choose a non-standard arbitrary high number for the port (ours is 10102).

Set up a port-forwarding rule on the router

With the above configuration done, you now know the information required to set up the port-forwarding rule, so go ahead and do that.

Install client software on an Android phone

In our case, we installed ConnectBot, which is a simple-to-install SSH client for Google Android-powered phones. After installation, ConnectBot appears as a nice desktop icon, with fancy shortcuts, and maintains a command history.

One of the most useful features is its support for SSH key-based authentication, which is inherently far more secure than password-based authentication. Here’s how you set up this feature (details are very well illustrated here):

1. Using ConnectBot, create a public key to be used with the remote (laptop) SSH server, with an algorithm such as 1024-bit RSA.
2. Copy the public key that’s stored in the Android phone’s memory.
3. Connect to the SSH server using your regular username and password.
4. In your home folder, create the folder .ssh, if it does not exist. In the .ssh folder, copy the public key file, renaming it to authorized.keys, and set its permissions to be readable and writeable only by the owner (your login).
5. Test the connection by logging out of the SSH session, and reconnecting. If the key setup is fine, you will not be prompted for the username or password.
6. Once this is working, disable password-based authentication for the SSH service: run sudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config. In the editor window, search for a commented line, #PasswordAuthentication yes. Make a copy of this line just below it, delete the leading #to uncomment it, and change the Yes to No:

   PasswordAuthentication no

After this, restart the SSH service on your laptop, and once again check that you can log in to the laptop from the phone. Disabling password authentication is good since even if you have a weak password for your regular login, scripted ‘dictionary’ attacks will no longer work.

Test the remote access!

Finally, you must test your setup by actually accessing your home network machine from a different network, to ensure there are no unexpected connection problems. You could test from your office or coffee-shop Wi-Fi connection, or over your mobile service provider’s data connection (3G or GPRS, for example).

Transferring files

The main reason for this setup is to let you remotely access your laptop, and send the urgently required files to your office. There are multiple ways to achieve that; you could copy the files to your Android phone and mail them to the office, or transfer the files directly from your laptop to your office network.

In our case, we used the scp (secure copy utility) to copy the files from the laptop directly onto a publicly-accessible Linux SSH server in the office (the last two octets of the address are obscured on purpose):

$rg@laila: scp -P 22 violin root@69.89.xx.xx:/

Illustrations

Figure 1 shows the connection to the DynDNS hostname laila.dyndns-server.com, to the non-standard port 10102 we configured as the external port on the router, by using key-based authentication. Thus, no username or password is seen.

Figure 1: Connecting to the laptop from ConnectBot

Figure 2 shows a successful login to the remote (laptop) SSH server.

Figure 2: Authenticated SSH session

Figure 3 shows that the scp command was used to copy a file to the office network (the publicly-accessible Linux server 69.89.xx.xx).

Figure 3: Copying files to the office network

REf: Rajeshwari Ganesan, Geetika Goel