Within the next few decades, all of our files will be in the cloud (and, although they’ll be used in a technical sense, we think the concept of files will disappear from the user’s perspective – sometime back we wrote an article about it). But we can start relying more heavily on the cloud already.
Here’s our top 6 reasons for using the cloud.
Reason 1 – Data Scatter
The best reason to use cloud storage services is data scatter. Our stuff is all over the place: in different cloud services, the rest scattered around our various hard drives in different and complicated folder structures. Cloud storage offers a centralized location that can be accessed from anywhere, any time, and ideally from any device. This is already a huge improvement from local storage.
But the rise of cloud storage services could also cement the end of the need for adding human-made structures to our data. What do we mean by that?
The only reason we had folders to begin with was to make our files easier to find. If I create a new folder for each “subject,” then I know exactly where to look to retrieve files. The problem with this is that it’s a pain to create so many folders, and constantly update them to reflect our organizational preferences. Besides that, it often doesn’t make sense. Some documents just don’t obviously belong in any specific folder.
The only barrier to “dumping” our files in locations used to be organization. Search functions were inefficient, thumbnails were slow and hard to view, and they weren’t easily organized and displayed in any intuitive way (often alphabetical or by creation date, but with no overlaying timeline to organize them).
But all this has changed. Realistically speaking, there is only need for a few basic kinds of folders – namely, the ones that appear on the left side of your Finder window on a Mac (Documents, Photos, Music, etc.). And we think that in the future, it makes sense that each of these folders will be handled by a cloud-storage service that is specifically geared toward auto-organizing and displaying these types of files. That is, one service for your documents, one service for your photos and videos, and one service for music, etc. We’ve designed Loom to fit this role for photos and videos.
So cloud storage solves data scatter on two fronts: it centralizes your data in a device-agnostic way, thus always accessible, and it can organize it and display it in a manner specifically designed and suited for that particular type of media, so that you no longer have to do anything besides “place” your files to get a basic and efficient organizational structure. Each cloud storage service is thus like an external hard drive with its own operating system.
Reason 2 – Infinite Storage Space
Managing storage space is a huge pain in the ass. It’s one of the digital era’s greatest drags. Nothing is worse than going to take a photo and seeing that you have no more space on your phone. Cloud storage removes those limitations at a minimal cost, or at least at a cost that reflects that amount of benefit we’re getting.
Storage space considerations also castrate the technology we use. For example, GoPros can now shoot at 4k resolution, which is amazing except for the fact that it can become a pain to find storage for all of that data. What’s the point of having such high resolution if the amount of footage we can take is limited by storage considerations? Cloud storage will allow us to maximize the potential of our hardware technologies.
Reason 3 – Safe Backup
Any reputable cloud storage service is creating backups of your backups on redundant servers. How often is that possible on your desktop or laptop? Plus, deleted files sitting in your trash still take up space, and emptying your trash erases them forever. At Loom we can retrieve photos and videos that our users have deleted ‘forever,’ just in case, and other cloud services offer this as well.
And of course there are the inevitable hard drive crashes, stolen laptops, natural disasters, computer explosions.
We think the future of storage is hosting in the cloud. The extra cautious will keep physical copies in their drawer someplace, but it will actually be pointless.
At Loom, our plan is to offer our users the ability to have a “snapshot” of their entire library – with all their album structures in place – which they can put directly onto an external hard drive. We’ll even do it for our users and send the hard drive, password protected, in the mail, so they literally never have to mess with backing up again.
Reason 4 – Syncing Sucks
We think the concept of user-initiated syncing absolutely sucks. It’s a vestige of an unconnected world, a product of a time when we were only connected when we could sit down and use the internet. Let us clarify:
When we say syncing, we’re talking about the idea of having a locally stored “library,” i.e. a collection of files somewhere on our hard drive, which we then use to make sure all our other devices match it (or draw from it). iTunes does this. The real iTunes library is located on my computer, and then if I want those items on my iPhone, I have to sync with my iTunes library by manually re-syncing. If I forgot something, I have to re-sync. And so on for all my devices. And if I’m not near one of my devices and I want to access my files, I’m out of luck.
But if your iTunes library was stored completely in the cloud, all of your devices could draw freely from it without regard to which device you’re using. You could even sign in and access it online. You wouldn’t have to sync anything. And you wouldn’t take up space. It just makes sense.
We’re not trying to get down on iTunes, it’s just a good example of why we think user-initiated syncing won’t exist in the future. iCloud is a step in the right direction, but it’s still not device- and OS-agnostic, so it potentially creates as many headaches as it solves. Also, even within Apple devices, iCloud limits what can be stored there to what has been purchased through Apple’s various stores, which only compounds the problem of data scatter. Finally, the biggest problem with iCloud is that users aren’t really clued in to what’s going on – they don’t understand why their albums that they create on their iPhone photos app is not being synced with iCloud, for example.
We think that all syncing will eventually happen behind the scenes, automatically distributing files from the ‘base’ in the cloud to all of the user’s devices as the user updates and maintains that base. Syncing isn’t something the user should think about at all, and putting the base in the cloud is the best way to accomplish this seamlessly.
Reason 5 – Easy Sharing
This one is obvious. If I’m not relying on any locally-stored data to access my files, then neither does anybody else that I’d like to share my files with. I don’t have to worry about sending large files, I can just send people links to get those files from my cloud storage, just like I do when I access it.
Also, cloud storage can provide easy-to-program, lightweight connections to social networking sites, meaning two things: we can share our content more easily, directly from these cloud storage services, and the services we use can easily and quickly adapt to the changing landscape of popular social media channels (the mobile space moves more quickly than the desktop/laptop space).
Reason 6 – Editing and organizing, on the go
We don’t spend as much time on desktops as we used to, and we never will again. By using cloud storage services, we create two ideal scenarios. The first is that we can easily tackle the remaining organizational problems that are a natural result of even having files and data, on the go. That means editing, organizing, and deleting files in our libraries, anywhere we are. For example, I could use the time on my morning commute on BART to edit my photos. I don’t need to transfer them over to my iPad to do it. They’re just there.
The more lightweight we can make these tasks, the better. We mentioned it above, but cloud storage services are like a giant “folder,” only along with all the benefits listed above, they’re like a folder that has been specifically engineered to deal with the type of data you’re putting in it.
Those are just six reasons that we think cloud storage is the future of file management. And we think that it’s a pretty bright future – simpler, easier, and with more space.
Here’s our top 6 reasons for using the cloud.
Reason 1 – Data Scatter
The best reason to use cloud storage services is data scatter. Our stuff is all over the place: in different cloud services, the rest scattered around our various hard drives in different and complicated folder structures. Cloud storage offers a centralized location that can be accessed from anywhere, any time, and ideally from any device. This is already a huge improvement from local storage.
But the rise of cloud storage services could also cement the end of the need for adding human-made structures to our data. What do we mean by that?
The only reason we had folders to begin with was to make our files easier to find. If I create a new folder for each “subject,” then I know exactly where to look to retrieve files. The problem with this is that it’s a pain to create so many folders, and constantly update them to reflect our organizational preferences. Besides that, it often doesn’t make sense. Some documents just don’t obviously belong in any specific folder.
The only barrier to “dumping” our files in locations used to be organization. Search functions were inefficient, thumbnails were slow and hard to view, and they weren’t easily organized and displayed in any intuitive way (often alphabetical or by creation date, but with no overlaying timeline to organize them).
But all this has changed. Realistically speaking, there is only need for a few basic kinds of folders – namely, the ones that appear on the left side of your Finder window on a Mac (Documents, Photos, Music, etc.). And we think that in the future, it makes sense that each of these folders will be handled by a cloud-storage service that is specifically geared toward auto-organizing and displaying these types of files. That is, one service for your documents, one service for your photos and videos, and one service for music, etc. We’ve designed Loom to fit this role for photos and videos.
So cloud storage solves data scatter on two fronts: it centralizes your data in a device-agnostic way, thus always accessible, and it can organize it and display it in a manner specifically designed and suited for that particular type of media, so that you no longer have to do anything besides “place” your files to get a basic and efficient organizational structure. Each cloud storage service is thus like an external hard drive with its own operating system.
Reason 2 – Infinite Storage Space
Managing storage space is a huge pain in the ass. It’s one of the digital era’s greatest drags. Nothing is worse than going to take a photo and seeing that you have no more space on your phone. Cloud storage removes those limitations at a minimal cost, or at least at a cost that reflects that amount of benefit we’re getting.
Storage space considerations also castrate the technology we use. For example, GoPros can now shoot at 4k resolution, which is amazing except for the fact that it can become a pain to find storage for all of that data. What’s the point of having such high resolution if the amount of footage we can take is limited by storage considerations? Cloud storage will allow us to maximize the potential of our hardware technologies.
Reason 3 – Safe Backup
Any reputable cloud storage service is creating backups of your backups on redundant servers. How often is that possible on your desktop or laptop? Plus, deleted files sitting in your trash still take up space, and emptying your trash erases them forever. At Loom we can retrieve photos and videos that our users have deleted ‘forever,’ just in case, and other cloud services offer this as well.
And of course there are the inevitable hard drive crashes, stolen laptops, natural disasters, computer explosions.
We think the future of storage is hosting in the cloud. The extra cautious will keep physical copies in their drawer someplace, but it will actually be pointless.
At Loom, our plan is to offer our users the ability to have a “snapshot” of their entire library – with all their album structures in place – which they can put directly onto an external hard drive. We’ll even do it for our users and send the hard drive, password protected, in the mail, so they literally never have to mess with backing up again.
Reason 4 – Syncing Sucks
We think the concept of user-initiated syncing absolutely sucks. It’s a vestige of an unconnected world, a product of a time when we were only connected when we could sit down and use the internet. Let us clarify:
When we say syncing, we’re talking about the idea of having a locally stored “library,” i.e. a collection of files somewhere on our hard drive, which we then use to make sure all our other devices match it (or draw from it). iTunes does this. The real iTunes library is located on my computer, and then if I want those items on my iPhone, I have to sync with my iTunes library by manually re-syncing. If I forgot something, I have to re-sync. And so on for all my devices. And if I’m not near one of my devices and I want to access my files, I’m out of luck.
But if your iTunes library was stored completely in the cloud, all of your devices could draw freely from it without regard to which device you’re using. You could even sign in and access it online. You wouldn’t have to sync anything. And you wouldn’t take up space. It just makes sense.
We’re not trying to get down on iTunes, it’s just a good example of why we think user-initiated syncing won’t exist in the future. iCloud is a step in the right direction, but it’s still not device- and OS-agnostic, so it potentially creates as many headaches as it solves. Also, even within Apple devices, iCloud limits what can be stored there to what has been purchased through Apple’s various stores, which only compounds the problem of data scatter. Finally, the biggest problem with iCloud is that users aren’t really clued in to what’s going on – they don’t understand why their albums that they create on their iPhone photos app is not being synced with iCloud, for example.
We think that all syncing will eventually happen behind the scenes, automatically distributing files from the ‘base’ in the cloud to all of the user’s devices as the user updates and maintains that base. Syncing isn’t something the user should think about at all, and putting the base in the cloud is the best way to accomplish this seamlessly.
Reason 5 – Easy Sharing
This one is obvious. If I’m not relying on any locally-stored data to access my files, then neither does anybody else that I’d like to share my files with. I don’t have to worry about sending large files, I can just send people links to get those files from my cloud storage, just like I do when I access it.
Also, cloud storage can provide easy-to-program, lightweight connections to social networking sites, meaning two things: we can share our content more easily, directly from these cloud storage services, and the services we use can easily and quickly adapt to the changing landscape of popular social media channels (the mobile space moves more quickly than the desktop/laptop space).
Reason 6 – Editing and organizing, on the go
We don’t spend as much time on desktops as we used to, and we never will again. By using cloud storage services, we create two ideal scenarios. The first is that we can easily tackle the remaining organizational problems that are a natural result of even having files and data, on the go. That means editing, organizing, and deleting files in our libraries, anywhere we are. For example, I could use the time on my morning commute on BART to edit my photos. I don’t need to transfer them over to my iPad to do it. They’re just there.
The more lightweight we can make these tasks, the better. We mentioned it above, but cloud storage services are like a giant “folder,” only along with all the benefits listed above, they’re like a folder that has been specifically engineered to deal with the type of data you’re putting in it.
Those are just six reasons that we think cloud storage is the future of file management. And we think that it’s a pretty bright future – simpler, easier, and with more space.
No comments:
Post a Comment