TheSMESpace Blog

If you are like me you have several email accounts, some free, some not, and many of these you probably have email accounts where you store email locally and others where you have email stored on the server side.

As always with any form of data it makes sense to backup, and where better to do this than to Amazon S3. SMEStorage allows you to backup any email account to Amazon S3 via SMEStorage, or if you subscribe to our OpenS3 beta service, using your own Amazon S3 Account.

Once you have your email backed up, if you need to, you can access email items through your iPhone or share items through Facebook, or just so know you have it all backed up….just in case

We recently announced that we had launched our OpenS3 beta. The purpose of OpenS3 is to allow any Amazon S3 user to be able to access the SMEStorage platform and take advantage of all the channels and features we have. This means if you would like to have access to your Amazon S3 files via your iPhone for example you now can. If you want to share your Amazon S3 files or use them on Facebook you can , and much more.

After you have registered for the beta, using OpenS3 is simple. You merely enter your Amazon S3 keys (and choose to store them on our servers or not. If not you will need to enter them each time you access your account) and then we import the metadata from you S3 file to the SMEStorage platform. We don’t move the files themselves or change them in anyway. This means you can still access them from any other S3 tool that you choose.

Once you have synchronised you can then choose to change your filenames and store the files in a proper directory structure. Again this will not change the core S3 files. We overlay a proper directory structure on top of S3.

Once you have completed this process you can use the rich SMEStorage filemanager to access all the additional functionality that we provide over and above Amazon S3 such as being able to back up any email account to S3, easy file sharing, unique url for each file, Public files, Business Groups, Faxing, and integration with Flickr, PicniK, Zoho etc.

If you have favourite videos that you want to post to videos or if you have uploaded them to other sites and do not want to upload them again we have done some integration to support 3 of the top video site:

Google Video: Just use ‘google’ ‘/google’ within tags to enter the video key. You wil then be prompted to upload screenshot for the video picture and we’ll embed the video from Google onto SMETube.

Dailymotion: Just use ‘dailymotion’ ‘/dailymotion’ within tags to enter the video key. As above you will be prompted to upload a screenshot for the video picture and the video will be embedded.

YouTube: Just use ‘youtube’ ‘/youtube’ within tags to enter the video key. On the following screen click upload and the video will be embedded straight from YouTube. We will capture a screenshot for the video in most cases, where we cannot you will be asked to upload a picture.

A new file uploader for the SMEStorage site has been implemented. There is a graphical upload bar with real-time uploading stats for the files. It should also be quicker - enjoy !

SMEStorage is now integrated with ScribD using their iPaper API which allow PDF’s to be viewed inline within the browser from SMEStorage without having to download them to view them. This compliments existing integration within the SMEStorage platform that allows users to view and edit Microsoft Office documents and view and edit graphic files.

It’s now possible to import your AOL xDrive files to the SMEStorage platform. Once you have logged in, just look for the “AOL xDrive import” link. Now, despite the announcement from AOL that xDrive is to close down, xDrive users have an easy option to migrate their files.