26 Apr 2012

Google Drive (bye bye Dropbox issues)

With the introduction of Google Drive, an online storage facility, I can at last overcome my issues with Dropbox and my VLF grabber. With Google Drive one can store up to 5GB free and more for a fixed price. With the PC or Mac add-on, the drive appears as a file(s) on the computer into which documents can be saved in the normal way. These then appear/sync on any PCs when you sign in to Google Drive.

The bonus is that you can make any file public and get a URL that others can go to. This means that a saved .jpg screen shot of a VLF grabber can be saved to a unique filename on the PC which then is visible to the world if they know the URL. From a webpage I can point people to the URL and they can see the screen grab as it is updated regularly.

I could do all this with Dropbox until about 4 months ago when it started playing silly and refused to sync on my WinXP PC complaining of a registry issue. Despite trying all sorts of recommended fixes none worked and I gave up on Dropbox.

In the coming weeks I will be mounting a more permanent E-field probe which will be connected to the PC whenever it is running and the VLF spectrum view(s) will be available on my sub-9kHz website.
at

6 comments:

  1. AnonymousThu Apr 26, 10:20:00 pm GMT+1

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousThu Apr 26, 10:21:00 pm GMT+1

    Looks interesting Roger. I've never had any problem with Dropbox, but I'll certainly give Google drive a try. Initially I thought you referring to GMail Drive

    http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm


    which uses your Gmail account as a pseudo filesystem, storing files seamlessly as attachements in emails addressed to yourself. I've tried it and it has a few uses, but the official Google Drive looks more like a drop in replacement for Dropbox.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousThu Apr 26, 10:33:00 pm GMT+1

    Oh, just read this:

    --------------------------------------

    Another issue is that Google may trawl your data to personalise your advertising and so on, which is uncomfortable – though when it comes to paid-for or educational services, Google says:

    Note that there is no ad-related scanning or processing in Google Apps for Education or Business with ads disabled

    -------------------------------------------

    On the Guardian's website:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/apr/25/google-drive-cloud-storage-compared

    Now, that to me sounds a bit iffy....

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousFri Apr 27, 06:42:00 am GMT+1

    Only Dropbox tries (yet mostly fails) to support Linux natively. Linux support should be important to you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Casey BahrFri Apr 27, 05:35:00 pm GMT+1

    Well, for better or worse I just installed it. Will save me a lot of running around with USB flash drives from one machine to another, hi! I could use the LAN, but inevitably the machine I want is off.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousSat Apr 28, 08:49:00 pm GMT+1

    I've just installed it too, but I don't really know why, other than to give it a try, as Dropbox does everything I need and is cross-platform. Got to try things, though, just for the experience!

    ReplyDelete