TheSMESpace Blog

SMEStorage has now been moved to the SMEStorage site and all future blog posts on SMEStorage will be posted there. The blog address is:

http://blog.smestorage.com

The Blackberry mobile version has just entered pre-Alpha status. Most of the API functionality is complete and now it is just a case of building the UI. It should be ready for a mid May release.

This will mean that soon Blackberry owners will be able to view/manage/access their files directly from their device for any of the following clouds:

Amazon S3, Google Docs, RackSpace Cloud Files, Microsoft SkyDrive, Microsoft Live Mesh, Box.net, MobileMe, FTP, Gmail, and WebDav clouds.

You can view a short video of this here.

Recently Mezeo announced themselves to the market as serious Enterprise Cloud storage provider. We have interacted with the Mezeo team to get an evaluation account so we could validate SMEStorage’s interoperability with Mezeo and we are happy to state that Mezeo works very well with SMEStorage over WebDav.

To use SMEStorage with Mezeo, you need to register for a WebDav Account and also ensure you have an account or an eval account with Mezeo. We worked with an evaluation account to test this and the WebDav endpoint for this is https://eval.mezeo.net. Your authentication details are those that Mezeo provide.

Once  you are setup you can use your Mezeo account with our Windows Cloud Explorer and Windows Tools (which include virtual drive, shell integration and Sync centre), Linux, using the Linux Cloud Drive, and Mac using the Mac Tools, as well as being able to use your account with our iSMEStorage iPhone application.

We have changed some of the features in our Google Docs cloud beta. Google Docs enables you to upload files of any type, but for files it supports, such as office files it can enable you to edit these in Google Docs. To enable this to occur Google converts the document and then if you want it back into a .doc format or something else it enables you to export it. However, formatting can be lost when Google converts such documents as Google does not recognise all word processing formatting. If you just store the documents as a file however then you cannot edit these documents in Google Docs. You are just using it as a storage repository.

As different users want to do different things we have enabled you to have a choice as to how you want to store your documents with Google. You can choose to convert the document when it is loaded to Google or you can choose not to. You can edit the default behaviour from:

My Account->Providers and choose the Google Docs provider.

Here you can choose to change the behaviour as to whether it converts or not. The default is that it does not.

If the document is unconverted you can edit it in Zoho Docs direct from SMEStorage and save it back unconverted to Google Docs. You can do this as many times as you wish. As it is unconverted you cannot edit it in Google Docs however.

If you choose to convert the document on upload then you will be able to edit the document in Google Docs. You will also be able to edit it in Zoho from SMEStorage. There is however one glitch or bug. You can edit it in Zoho from SMEStorage one time only. After this it can be edited in Google Docs but if you download the document from SMEStorage you are unable to open it in MS Office. You are also unable to edit it in Zoho for a second time. You can however choose to export the document to word from the Google Docs web interface and it will open in MS  Office fine. It seems this is a Google Docs API issue for documents saved to Google Docs from Zoho. We are pursuing a workaround to this which we hope to have in place early next week that will remove this issue so that there will be full interoperability between Zoho and Google even if the document is converted. Once resolved we will issue another post.

UPDATE: The above issue is now resolved and you can now have convert on for Google Docs upload and then edit documents with Zoho, and you will then be able to re-edit them in Zoho, edit them in Google Docs, and also download from SMEStorage in the correct format.

The recent release of the iPhone iSMEStorage version 1.02 with its support for video uploads to any cloud has been highly publicised and reported upon and it has been video reviewed on a couple of sites. Below is a video review featured on Vodpod.

We have released the 2nd update of iSMEStorage, the SMEStorage iPhone application to the Apple App Store.

This features:

Updates:

- Ability to disable/enable auto-sizing of font in Settings

- Chunking for large PDF file viewing in local files viewer

- Now able to upload Videos as well as photos for phones with Video capability

- ‘iPhone Photos’ renamed to ‘Media’ in ‘Main Menu’ - Revised link for “Shared by SMEStorage”.

- Quick start guide copied on startup to local files files folder for new users. - Version number now displayed on App About page

Fixes:

- Fixed issue relating to uploads for some clouds that some users have been having.

- Fix to stop large videos crashing in local folders when viewing

- Fixed issue of not removing filter when doing a sync

The Joomla File directory component created by Roman Gelembjuk has been updated after after the LatinhackTeam found an issue with a Local file inclusion vunerability.

The new file is now downloadable from our tools section of the SMEStorage site and from Roman’s site and you should upgrade this if you installed the prior version.

The third beta of our Linux Cloud Drive is now available for download. This version fixes some version issue when launching documents and files directly from the Cloud Drive and then saving them back.

The Linux Drive gives access to the following Clouds as a virtual drive within Linux:

• - Amazon S3
• - RackSpace Cloud Files
• - Google Docs
• - Microsoft Live Mesh
• - Microsoft SkyDrive
• - MobileMe
• - FTP
• - GMail Cloud
• - Email Cloud
• - Any WebDav enabled cloud

A brief demonstration of the drive can be seen in the video below:

As a Cloud vendor, one of the most repetitive things we get asked is about Security, and this is often followed by “where are my documents stored” ? Rapidly followed by a soliloquy  of questions relating to this, i.e. “How can I prove what country I was in when I signed and uploaded them” “Where where they actually deposited” etc.

These are fair questions, and we don’t pretend to be experts in legislation for document storage which can vary depending on the Industry. What we can do however is try to make our platform easier for you to get these answers. To that end we have added integration with a GEO Location Service for all files that are uploaded. Using a GEO Location service enables us to figure out where you were when you uploaded a document and to what endpoint the document was sent to. We can then store this information with each file.

To access this information all you have to do from the File Manager is click “Show File Info”.  There is an example screenshot of this below:

You can see from this Screenshot where the file was uploaded from, and where it was uploaded to, down to the town, country and Country with detailed latitude and longitude. You can also see which Cloud. In the screenshot above this is stored on the SMEStorage Cloud which is underpinned by Amazon S3.

This service works across all 10 clouds that we currently support, if you upload your files to your cloud via SMStorage. If you upload them direct with your Cloud Provider then we will still have some file meta-information but there will be no GEO information.

Note that your file may not end up being stored at the endpoint in which the file is accepted, but you can prove the location at which the file was uploaded and accepted, and with vendors such as Amazon you can choose which region your file storage is restricted too.

The SMEStorage iPhone Application, iSMEStorage has been approved by Apple and is in the App store. As per our previous blog post you can see a video on the functionality of iSMEStorage below, and you can purchase the App directly from here.