Is the idea of cloud storage a bit foggy to you?

Brio Technologies — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 03:53:50 +0000

Do you remember the days where it was conceivable that you could buy a computer and actually have to worry about the amount of hard drive space that was on it? Perhaps you still do because you do not realize the amount of overwhelming options you have at the tip of your fingers. Personally, It has been quite some time since I have saved any document to my computer. If I had to guess, I would say that I live 80 - 90% in the cloud at this point. I was sitting at my desk the other day, and realized that I had a flash drive in my top drawer. I bought this thing last year. It's a 4 gig flash drive, and I paid something in the ballpark of $40.00 for it. Today, you can find that same flash drive on Amazon for $15.00. If there is one thing that has become cheaper over the years regarding technology, its storage. The funny thing about it is that while storage is becoming cheaper, software is becoming lighter, or smaller.

So, you may be asking, what do you use PLeo? The answer... I use a few services. First is Google Docs. There have been significant enhancements with the Google docs service over the course of the past few years. You can now upload any doc, pic, or video to the cloud, keeping your machine clutter free. All you need is a Google account, which is totally free. You can always upgrade the default amount of space for a fee as well.

The next service is Evernote. Evernote can be found at www.evernote.com. Evernote is a unique note taking utility that allows you to upload docs, presentations, video, and voice clips to it's web service. One of the great things that Evernote has to offer is their Apple, and Andriod interfaces. They make it super easy, and really kind of fun to throw a new note up to the service via your phone. The other thing I like about this is how it also caters to the users that like a local application to work in as well. Although you don't need to use the native app, it does add a nice, robust feel. The basic plan for Evernote is free, and that allows access to all the features with a 250meg data restriction a month. If you are primarily using this for text notes, you should never go over this. Premium membership is only $5 per month.

The last service I want to discuss is probably the one I use the most. It is Dropbox. You can find it at www.dropbox.com. The simplicity of dropbox is the thing I love about it the most. Once it is downloaded, it will show as just another folder that you can save documents to. This then syncs up to the cloud service, which you can access via the web, or automatically access from any other machine that you have dropbox installed on. Dropbox also allows you to share public links to files using a very simple right click feature that generates a url that anyone can go to and share your file. The other great thing about Dropbox is the price. It is 100% free for 2gigs of storage. You do have the option to buy more space for a monthly subscription, or you can earn more space by referring friends to Dropbox.

So hopefully my suggestions have helped clear some of your questions up, but as always, please feel free to leave a comment.

Opening Post

Brio Technologies — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 05:25:24 +0000

Hello everyone and welcome to the Brio Blog! Please check back here as I will be posting Tech reviews, and upcoming important events that are taking place regarding Brio tech, and the tech world in general. thanks for checking it out, and feel free to leave a comment.