Storing and Working on UR files in the "Cloud"

[tfjern]

As you may have already read, in the next few weeks Google Docs users will be able to upload and store large files online (up to 250MG -- some of my URs are this big).

There are other options available (DropBox, Box.Net, Microsoft Live Mesh, etc.), but it would be nice if we could avoid the headache / chaos of moving large files between computers, using and losing USB sticks, synchronizing confusion, etc., and keep all our large UltraRecall databases in one place (in the "cloud"), and then access them from whichever computer we are currently using at the time, and work on them while online.

Ignore for a moment privacy issues, worries that the Internet may suddenly crash, Google going out of business after being bought and destroyed by China, 2012, WWIII, etc.

I upload my large UR databases into the cloud, where they are stored, and they can be accessed AND WORKED ON from computers to which I currently have access.

The problem with Google Docs, is this from Vijay Bangaru, Google Docs product manager:

"Just because users will be able to store any type of file on Google Docs doesn't mean, however, that they will necessarily be able to work on those files on the Docs cloud, as is possible in the Google suite today with Adobe PDF files, Microsoft Office files and, of course, the native Docs file formats."

"Unfortunately, it's not possible to write Web editors for every file content out there," he said. In those cases, users will be able to access the files online and share them with others, but in order to work on them, they'll have to download them to their PCs and fire up the necessary application.

Kinook, is there any way you could write a Web editor (whatever the heck that entails), so we can realize the dream of storing / working on our beloved and large UR files in one place? I am holding my breath.

[kinook]

Rewriting UR on the web would be a massive effort and is not likely in the near future. I believe that many products like Dropbox support efficient syncing (i.e., block-level deltas) of large files, so taking advantage of that and continuing to use UR for editing locally is probably your best option.

[tfjern]

Well, the "near future" is both vague but hopeful, so ....

I move from computer to computer frequently, and I hate using USB sticks (though USB 3.0 is already here), or any of the other tedious methods now available for moving data from computer to computer.

Having the UR databases in the cloud and accessible at any time on any computer would certainly eliminate a lot of hassles, especially when dealing with large files. Cloud computing, despite all the hype and risks, is what we are all going to end up doing, anyway. Take a look at EverNote: they have almost completely embraced the concept.

[quant]

Before I fully converted to UR, I very much liked mybase specifically because they also were creating web application of their standalone app.

It would be great if UR also worked in the browser.

But in the meantime, I could suggest connecting remotely to your pc, if you can leave it on all the time, for example logmein or myivo. I'm using myivo, and it works fine, it's great that I can access everything and run any app I want.