I’ve also got to admit — where is Omnidrive? There was quite a bit of heat earlier on the year about this product. I love on-line storage because the ADHD part of me (its a small part) loves to back stuff up in the case of a catastrophic event, or, well, hardware failure, so I was eagerly waiting … and waiting … to see what its like.
Unfortunately the beta’s closed so I don’t really have any idea (and has been for months).
CNet makes the case that there are quite a few quality competitors these days and describes Omnidrive thusly:
it integrates into your Windows or Mac file explorer, and operates as a virtual hard drive. This means you can drag and drop files to your online drive just like it’s a hard disk connected to your computer, or you can save files to it directly from your desktop apps (but not, alas, from your Web-based apps, although an API makes that theoretically possible). You don’t need the virtual drive to use Omnidrive: you can also access all your files through the Web interface.
With 1 gigabyte free, one has to ask – isn’t this just Gmail Drive Extension? (but with less storage?)
Ok, probably not. There’s a bit of box.net flavour to it as well (from the sounds of it)
With the public beta opening up in a few days we’ll a fuller review at that time.
November 1st, 2006 at 9:49 pm | Permalink
Hi Tony, thanks for the write-up. We assure you that Omnidrive is more than just the Gmail drive extension :) If you would like to get an account before our launch next week send us an email on beta@omnidrive.com and we will send you an invite.
November 2nd, 2006 at 8:51 am | Permalink
Hi Tony,
Given your interest in online storage applications and in particular the UI and application layer above the basic storage function. You’ll find all the management features that allow you to easily handle 10’s or 100’s of thousands of files - as well as all the sharing, linking and embedding features a user would need (photo strips - including audio, filmstrips & interactive play lists). Take a look at http://www.myfabrik.com - check it out we’d love your perspectives…
One additional note - we love the cloud as platform for delivering our services…but we’re totally unique in offering them in a integrated form as a personal web server - running in your home or office. Maxtor Fusion http://www.maxtorfusion.com is a recently launched version of our service integrated into an appliance.
Powerful one, two punch…maybe we’ll make to two aware of each other? Imagine the possibilities?
Best, Mike Cordano - Co-Founder Fabrik
November 3rd, 2006 at 2:06 pm | Permalink
Something you might want to look into while you’re waiting for Omnidrive is Data Deposit Box. They are an online backup service which continuously monitors your computer for changes to your files. THen it computes those changes and backs them up as well. You can restore your files and folders to any computer
November 5th, 2006 at 11:05 pm | Permalink
[...] Omnidrive: Awesome — But Ready For Primetime? November 5th, 2006 at 11:02 pm by Tony Omnidrive is an online storage service that I facetiously asked “where it was” because it seemed to be in private beta for a long time — and was it like the Gmail Drive Extension which is free. After that, Nik C was gracious enough to allow me into the private beta mere days before the public beta for Omnidrive. [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am | Permalink
The demand to store and to back up will rapidly increase and new start up are entering in this business from Europe too: i found two interesting reality in Italy to check: http://www.botte diferro.com; http://www.memopal.com