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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
Turnkey: Build LAMP Server in Under 10 Minutes
Turnkey Linux is a virtual appliance library that integrates and polishes the very best open source software into ready-to-use solutions. Each virtual appliance is optimised for ease of use, and can be deployed in just a few minutes on bare metal, in a virtual machine, or on the cloud.
Before we get into setting up our own LAMP Virtual Server using a preconfigured ISO, let us evaluate our options.
Prerequisites
- Virtual Machine software: VMWare Player or Oracle VirtualBox? For the purposes of this article, we will use the free VMWare Player 3, which you can download from here.
- Download the LAMP server ISO image from Turnkey’s website.
- Once the above ISO has been downloaded, place it on your desktop or home directory.
- A host operating system — Linux, Windows, BSDs or whatever. Unfortunately, I’m using a Windows host as I write this article, since I don’t currently have any Linux host at my disposal.
Installing into a VM
- Launch VMWare Player.
- Click the Create a New Virtual Machine option.
- You will now be presented with the New Virtual Machine Wizard, as shown in Figure 1, asking for the install source (your optical drive, or an ISO image), or whether you would like to install the OS later. Choose the last option, and click Next.
Figure 1: New Virtual Machine Wizard - In the Guest Operating System screen (see Figure 2), choose Linux, and Ubuntu, and click Next.
Figure 2: Choosing a Guest Operating System - Give the VM a name, and click Next.
- Now, you need to allocate disk space. As you can see in Figure 3, I have chosen 8 GB; feel free to choose whatever is appropriate for your environment, and click Next.
Figure 3: Disk Configuration - In the final screen of the wizard (Figure 4), click Customize Hardware.
Figure 4: Final screen - We need to set up our Turnkey LAMP ISO as the media to boot from (see Figure 5). Click New CD/DVD, and in the Connection section, choose Use ISO image file; click Browse and navigate to the location of the Turnkey Linux LAMP ISO, and choose it.
Figure 5: Set up an ISO image location - Now, click OK twice, and click Play Virtual Machine.
- At the Turnkey Linux bootloader screen (see Figure 6), choose Install to Hard disk and hit Enter.
Figure 6: Install to hard disk –- LAMP Stack Boot splash - Follow the on-screen instructions, and choose to install with auto-partitioning. Choose the second option that shows up, Guided Partitioning — Use Entire Disk.
- When it comes to choosing the GRUB installer, choose Yes.
- When the installation is done, click Yes to reboot.
- Enter the passwords for the root and mysql users, when prompted.
- The Backup and Migration utility (TKLBAM) doesn’t require setting up an Amazon EC2 instance. It works with local installations just as well. However, if you wish to store your backup data on Amazon, you need to subscribe to Amazon’s cloud storage service. Click Skip for the time being…
- You will now be prompted to install security updates; please choose Install, as it is a one-time operation. Once the updates have been applied, you should see a screen like the one shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: TKL LAMP Appliance Services Console
Checking it out
Do a test connection to the appliance by visiting the IP address mentioned in the console, which may differ for your installation. Figures 8 and 9 show the server home page and Apache service status.
Figure 8: Turnkey Linux LAMP home page
Figure 9: Apache Web server status
To make things even more user-friendly, Turnkey Linux has included the famous Webmin (Web-based server administration for managing Linux servers) as part of this appliance. To access the Web Console, from the home page click the Webmin icon. You will be asked to accept the security settings; do so and you will be taken to the Webmin login page.Log in as root, with the password you set during the first boot. The Webmin home page is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10: Webmin home page
Now wasn’t that a breeze? You now have your personal LAMP stack up and running, ready to serve your websites…
I hope you found this tutorial informative and feel free to share your feedback.
ref: Anil Mahadev
Sajeel Irkal 