A paid service to merely move files between the proprietary storage containers of all the different services you use?
Decades after the concepts of filesystems were established, we're stuck in an ecosystem where our new tools can't easily get to generic storage without paying, thanks to the fact our platform du jour only exists because of years of pounding a square peg into a round hole?
Exactly. The point of moving to the cloud is that your are giving your data to company X, company Y, etc. Of course, both company X and company Y would like all your data, so company X will make super hard to move data to company Y and vice versa. So you are stuck.
And cloud services are mixing "storage service" and "software as a service" so in order to use service of company Z (like project management or something like that) you need also give data to company Z. Which is hard because your data is with company X.
Long story short: I also fucking love the cloud: we kinda went backward in time.
Our business uses all 3 services - altought Google only for email,calendar etc. and we have a small pain of having files in Dropbox but not integrated with Basecamp. Looking through your website I am not sure I would use your product.
Here are the reasons:
- Looking at the 60 second video got my head spinning without actually figuring out how it works
- I am not sure if I could trust you with touching my data
- I am not sure what are the advantages of having file synced between basecamp and dropbox
- don't want to commit to using platform which will be paid service if I don't know pricing yet
> I am not sure if I could trust you with touching my data
That's the part that kept me from signing up for a trial account, too. For example, I'm sure there's a good reason why the 37Signals login is required instead of the API key, but I couldn't find an explanation for it anywhere.
I completely understand your concern about trust. As of now, we are small (just two of us). But we worked in small and big companies handling very sensitive customer data with integrity and professionally. If nothing, you can check out our linkedIn profiles. Also, you can always call us or email us to learn more how we operate.
We hope that trust in our company will come with time.
Regarding 37signals requiring login/password, our service does realtime continuos synchronization and that cannot be achieved using only the API.
We also have Chrome extension which embeds Dropbox/SugarSync/Basecamp into your Google Docs interface: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search?q=cloudHQ Kinda cool (useful if synchronization is not really what you want)
Regarding pricing, we will have a free version - my idea is that cloudHQ will be free if services used are free (i.e., if you don't pay 37signals, you don't pay us).
Obviously the best solution to this kind of problem is a third-party backend storage service that all services will back up to. However, everyone wants to "own your data" so that's never going to happen. What if someone wrote an open source cloud filesystem that anyone could run on their own servers, so that you could basically point Dropbox, Google Docs, etc. to your personal "storage box" that you rented from AWS and all your storage was mounted in all SaaS apps that you use?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 39.0 ms ] threadDecades after the concepts of filesystems were established, we're stuck in an ecosystem where our new tools can't easily get to generic storage without paying, thanks to the fact our platform du jour only exists because of years of pounding a square peg into a round hole?
I FUCKING LOVE THE CLOUD.
And cloud services are mixing "storage service" and "software as a service" so in order to use service of company Z (like project management or something like that) you need also give data to company Z. Which is hard because your data is with company X.
Long story short: I also fucking love the cloud: we kinda went backward in time.
Here are the reasons:
- Looking at the 60 second video got my head spinning without actually figuring out how it works
- I am not sure if I could trust you with touching my data
- I am not sure what are the advantages of having file synced between basecamp and dropbox
- don't want to commit to using platform which will be paid service if I don't know pricing yet
It's one of the most frequently requested items on the Basecamp forums. People tend to get a little upset that it hasn't been done already.
http://answers.37signals.com/basecamp/873-dropbox-integratio...
That's the part that kept me from signing up for a trial account, too. For example, I'm sure there's a good reason why the 37Signals login is required instead of the API key, but I couldn't find an explanation for it anywhere.
I completely understand your concern about trust. As of now, we are small (just two of us). But we worked in small and big companies handling very sensitive customer data with integrity and professionally. If nothing, you can check out our linkedIn profiles. Also, you can always call us or email us to learn more how we operate. We hope that trust in our company will come with time.
Regarding 37signals requiring login/password, our service does realtime continuos synchronization and that cannot be achieved using only the API.
We also have Chrome extension which embeds Dropbox/SugarSync/Basecamp into your Google Docs interface: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search?q=cloudHQ Kinda cool (useful if synchronization is not really what you want)
Regarding pricing, we will have a free version - my idea is that cloudHQ will be free if services used are free (i.e., if you don't pay 37signals, you don't pay us).