TheSMESpace Blog

The below blog post is taken from a recent blog by Roman Gelembjuk which we liked and thought it was worth re-posting here:

I have tested a lot of tool and services to store files online. I chosen SMEStorage.com and use it now. I found most problems of online storage services is the speed of accessing the file. If you need to get some file from your cloud you must:

• Start The browser
• Open the site (ex. smestorage.com)
• Login to the site
• Open the page with the relevant files
• Also, sometimes you must to browse folders and this is a new page/data loading for each folder

What do you do if you have to get 1 file very quick and with a poor Internet connection?

I found a simple solution that works fine with slow connections, and this is a combination of the Linux Drive from SMEStorage.com and Midnight Commander. The Linux Cloud Drive is a  tool that mounts the SMEStorage file system to the local file system (on linux). SMEStorage provides a cloud gateway in which it syncs the file meta-data from different storage clouds but all the files continue to reside on the original storage platform. The Cloud Storage Providers SMEStorage currently supports include Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files, Box.net, MobileME, Microsoft Live SkyDrive, Microsoft Live Mesh, GMail-as-a-Cloud, Email-as-a-Cloud, FTP-as-a-Cloud, and any WebDav enabled cloud.

It is possible to browse many different storage clouds using the SMEStorage Linux Cloud Drive with any filemanager after it is mounted. Usually, linux filemanagers (in different distributions) try to preload some files (documents, images) to create thumbnails . This is fine if the files are stored locally but not good if they are not, because of the time needed to load all the file information from the remote server .

I found an easy solution to prevent this - using Midnight Commander. This filemanager doesn’t load any files . That is why it works very fast with file systems that are not local. So now when i want to get some file very quick from my cloud I Run SMEStorage Linux Drive, mount it and the run Midnight Commander, browse the relevant folder, and get the required file. This is very fast!

We’ve finally submitted the SMEStorage iPhone application to the Apple App’ Store. We now have a period to see if it is accepted or rejected. It is not unusual for apps to get rejected so we have our fingers crossed ! In the meantime you can have a sneak preview of the application from the video below:

For many of use in the office using Mac’s we’ve yearned for some tighter integration with SMEStorage and the Mac. You can choose to use the Windows explorer via Crossover or WINE with the Mac and it works nicely, and you can also use the Firefox plug-in which also works really well, but having OS level integration is always nice.


Snow Leopard has enhanced the integration of the automator services into the OS which makes it much easier to provide contextual functionality.


Using this method there is now available an add-in for users of SMEStorage to be able to upload their files directly from the Mac to their chosen cloud of choice (and we now support over 10 storage clouds), and after the file has been uploaded a unique link for the file will be copied to the clipboard.


You can view a video below that show this working with Google Docs:

The SMEStorage multi cloud platform now supports Google Docs as a Storage Cloud. This means you can take advantage of SMEStorage clients, tools, and additional services that are enabled when you sync your Google Docs Cloud with the SMEStorage Platform via the SMEStorage gateway. This includes

and there many features in the platform which are added including encrypion of files, RSS documents feeds and more.


We have put together a short video that shows some of the features and clients of SMEStorage working with Google docs below. After clicking play, wait 5 or 6 seconds for the video to buffer the stream:

We have released .Net API for SMEStorage and can be downloaded from google code. The multi cloud API provides a single .Net interface to access over 10 cloud providers including Amazon S3, Microsoft SkyDrive, RackSpace Cloud Files, Mobile Me, Box.net + more.


The package also includes a complete sample application and comprehensive documentation. You can download the Microsoft help file from here. Now we provide API libraries for Perl, PHP, ruby, .Net and REST. We soon will be releasing an Objective-C library

We have updated our multi cloud storage API manual to version 0.7. Our multi-cloud API provides a single rest based interface to access over 10 cloud providers including Amazon S3, Microsoft SkyDrive, RackSpace Cloud Files, Mobile Me, Box.net + more.


This update has now had more detailed examples added as to the request and response of each of the API functions.


All our client tools are built on this API, as is our forthcoming iPhone application which should be in the App store in January.


In January, as well as this REST based API, we will be putting on Google Code a complete library of .Net classes that provide the same API functionality but in C#.We will also release the Objective C libraries used to build the iPhone application at a later date.



SMEStorage multi-cloud API Manual 0.7 -

In the last few hours we suffered from a sustained Denial of Service attached in our servers which manifested itself as a particularly nasty SYN attack. The attach was a pretty new method of trying up resources and it took us a little while to isolate the attack and then apply some measures at the hardware level to ensure this particular form of attack is catered for in the future.

Thanks for bearing with us !

Similar to the WordPress plug-in we released that enables you to share files stored on various cloud files, we have also now done a similar plug-in for Joomla. The plug-in will enable you to share  your cloud files on your Joomla site.


How does this work ? SMEStorage provides a  gateway in which we sync your file meta-data but all files continue to reside on your storage platform. In this way we are able to offer value added services and clients to your existing storage provider, and provide a single cloud file system which enables you to manage all you files in one file tree.


One of the many value added services we provide is the ability to share files. There are many ways to do this, including RSS, email, Twitter, URL with Private contacts etc, and the Joomla plug-in is now another way.  Also note that files that have been made public, and can therefore be shared on Joomla, can still be encrypted, so you can have private files publically available that you can choose ony to share with your userbase.


To get started, download and install the plug-in, and then register for an account on SMEStorage. Select the account that matches your cloud provider. In the process of setting your account up you will do a file meta-data sync and your files will then be available in the Cloud File Manager. From the File manager you can choose to make the file public. This post steps through how to do just that. Once the file is public you can choose to make it visibile on your Joomla site.


If you want to encrypt your files then upload them via SMEStorage to your cloud provider of choice and choose encryption at the point of upload. Don’t worry if your underlhying cloud provider does not support encryption it does not need to. Remember your password for the file though as we don’t keep it ! Once the file is uploaded to your cloud provider via the SMEStorage cloud gateway you can make it public and it will be available just like any other file.

We’ve released the second of our WordPressPlug-Ins which enables users of different Cloud Storage Providers  to make files available for download on a WordPress Blog.


The extension supports all the clouds that are available via the SMEStorage Gateway API which include Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud Files, Box.net, Microsoft SkyDrive, MobileMe, GMail-as-a-Cloud, Email-as-a-Cloud, FTP-as-a-Cloud, and any WebDav compatible storage Cloud.


To enable your files to be shared on the WordPress Blog you need to make the files public within SMEStorage:


1. Use the SMEStorage File Manager to navigate to select files to make public. Please read this blog post for more information on how to do this. Files set to be public can then be made available from the Plug-In.


2. Login in to WP-Admin. At the bottom of your dasboard on the right hand side you will a ‘SMEStorage Public Files option’. Click on this. Here you can enter your SMEStorage username and how you want the files to be selected for display i.e. via tags you have assigned to them or * for all public files.


3. Now go to Appearance-Widgets and choose where you want the widget displaying your files to be.


The Plug-In was developed using the SMEStorage multi-cloud API.


The Plug-In is available for download from the WordPress extensions site.

One of the added benefits of the Microsoft Live SkyDrive support that we recently announced is thatit becomes accessible via the SMEStorage rich multi-cloud API becomes available for developers who want to access Microsoft Live SkyDrive programmtically. On the API’s Google Code site, as well as a detailed manual, there are PHP, PERL, and .Net examples and sample applications, and soon there will follow fully featured .Net & Cocoa libraries. Remember also, that the sames API also supports Amazon S3, Box.net, RackSpace Cloud Files, MobileMe, WebDav, Gmail Clouds, Email Clouds, FTP Clouds as well as Google Docs and Evernote. Expect to see support for at least two more storage clouds before the end of the year.


Many of the above storage clouds not only lack a proper file system (file support, but no folders, with only basic operations) but some, such as MobileMe, SkyDrive, GMail etc, lack any sort of API at all. That’s why we built the SMEStorage Multi-Cloud File System. We built it to enable us to have a universal API to support the storage clouds we plugged into our platform for our own purposes. Indeed it is what all our client tools are based on.


Given that is it is proven and more feature rich than the alternatives we made the decision to make it available as a generic storage cloud API for those wishing to use the SMEStorage platform as a Gateway to support multiple Cloud platforms in their applications or services. It supports multiple connections and multiple users and it does not impact the actual files themsevles as they are still stored on the original cloud service. SMEStorage merely keeps information about the metadata of the files and enables a file system, with services, on top of the remote storage cloud.


In the case of SkyDrive the lack of an API means our implementation is tightly coupled to Microsoft’s web implementation. Any major changes could render the API temporarily inoperable, but we are committed to make the necessary changes to continue support of this Cloud Provider as we move forward in our pursuit of supporting all major storage clouds.