Cubby Is Like Dropbox... If Dropbox Also Had Free, Unlimited Syncing

http://lifehacker.com/5907654/cubby-is-like-dropbox-if-dropbox-also-had-free-unlimited-syncing-and-weve-got-invites?utm_campaign=socialflow_lifehacker_facebook&utm_source=lifehacker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

by Wump • 14 years ago

70 47 14 years ago

lifehacker.com

laserDinosaur• 14 years ago

It's X, like Y, but with Z!

rhizome• 14 years ago

"Free, unlimited" gets my spidey-sense tingling.

dain• 14 years ago

I agree. I like to pay Dropbox because in doing that I know what I am getting. I know they aren't selling my data, or my privacy because I actually know what I am purchasing. I am giving my money over to them for a service they offer. "Free, unlimited" is just something that I have a few concerns with. The first, would be that I have no idea how they make their money (probably advertisement?), but if not they are perhaps selling your data or privacy to third parties. Of course, there is an option that it is run by someone with just so much money that they don't mind giving it all away for free. But that is very rare. The second concern I have is how long can a free and unlimited service stay up. This is why I have moved my stuff out of Bitcasa after testing it, even though after an SSH I realized I had over 300 Terabytes to store items. I just can't justify those sorts of things though in my own sense. So yeah, I agree spidey-senses be a tinglin'.

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

Based on little I'm thinking "it's Skype, but for data" where the service is driven by free point-to-point file transfer, but related buffering/storage or other "hey that's great but I'd pay for..." services tacked on (like Skype's X-to-phone paid services - dirt cheap, but cumulative).

rprasad• 14 years ago

It is free and unlimited to the extent that your bandwidth is free and unlimited. Cubby is basically just a program that transfers files from one computer to another; it doesn't need to use the Cubby servers for that. 5gb of online cloud storage is also provided, but additional storage beyond that is not free or unlimited.

franze• 14 years ago

in the twothousandzero years i read "free, unlimited" and thought "sounds like an awesome deal"

now i read "free, unlimited" and i think "not worth trying, will be gone soon"

strange how perceptions change over time

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Did you or your repliers actually read the OP's link?

The cloud storage is not unlimited.

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

Excellent. Been looking for a Dropbox-easy way to move large amounts directly between machines (here's hoping it doesn't require passing all of it thru a central server) without having to park it in a size-limited cloud. There was a nifty USB gidget that was close, but required $99 hardware and did route everything (albeit encrypted) thru a host.

New iMac coming soon! great time to test Cubby.

twodayslate3• 14 years ago

I really like Cubby and I think it has a lot of potential. I've been using it for about 3 weeks now. The only problems I have seen is that it notifies you every time something is updated. This includes temp files. This gets rather annoying. I also wish I could start paying for a bigger plan now :P

hsshah• 14 years ago

Do you know how the non-cloud aka computer-to-computer syncing done? Particularly, is the data cached in some intermediate server? I love the idea and would use it if the answer to the above question is No!

twodayslate3• 14 years ago

I don't know that. I know AeroFS uses P2P.

twodayslate3• 14 years ago

Cubby's p2p information can be found in their FAQ

savrajsingh• 14 years ago

Things have come full circle. This sounds a lot like Foldershare.com -- they offered virtually unlimited syncing of folders between machines, but with no cloud backup. They were acquired by MS in 2005. I used Foldershare before I signed up for Dropbox, and in parallel with dropbox, for a while. :)

tlianza• 14 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. Then, if you recall, when they were acquired the "5GB of cloud storage" feature was exactly what Microsoft added and called it "Live Sync." Then they merged it with Mesh, killed Mesh, and called the merge "Live Sync." Then they killed all of it and started pushing SkyDrive.

And now SkyDrive is news. And this solution, which is the same as the old solution Microsoft had, is also news. Somehow.

plessthanpt05• 14 years ago

dropbox, you've been really good to me, but the competition has really got you in the crosshairs.... (and i'm a linux user, which doesn't even work with this [yet?...or google drive], but the competition really has become pretty serious lately).

dasil003• 14 years ago

There were 100 cloud drives before Dropbox, now there are 1000, but still I don't see any exodus from Dropbox.

mmahemoff• 14 years ago

The more competitors Dropbox gets, the more fragmented the whole thing becomes, which in that sense helps Dropbox. I look at Cubby and think "not another cloud storage", there's no point for me even if it's "better" because I'd have to convince everyone I work with to use it. I'm already sharing various folders with other people on Dropbox, the switching cost is large and only GDrive looks like a true contender as something that many people will end up using or at least will bother to install if I need to share something with them.

rjb• 14 years ago

I completely agree. The more competitors, the more fragmentation, the better for Dropbox.

Something primitive in me starts to kick in when this occurs. I start to question the trustworthiness, validity, and longevity of "other services", which in turn only bolsters who I know best, or even just first. Everything else becomes the proverbial Brand X.

sil3ntmac• 14 years ago

I'm guessing they probably just p2p the files between the computers (with setup help from cubby's servers).. pretty neat way to offer a free feature

mindstab2• 14 years ago

And only Windows and MacOSX support, unlike dropbox's: Windows, MacOSX, Linux, iOS, Android and Blackberry.

The reason Dropbox will continue to prevail over these offerings is its ubiquity. iCloud? Mac only? Ha! Useless to me. This? No Linux or Android support? Still useless to me. Not worth another second thinking about.

Not to deride Cubby too hard, I'm sure it's another neat thing, but I get tired of people thinking any of these things have a shot at dethroning Dropbox. They put a lot of work into being as cross platform as they are (I presume (since no one else has matched it)) and they deserve their top spot.

rickmb• 14 years ago

Anything that doesn't require you to submit to centralized storage under third party control (euphemistically known as "the cloud") has a shot at dethroning Dropbox.

Especially outside the US, where people, governments and businesses are becoming increasingly weary of having their data stored where US government agencies can get access with little to no legal process.

When companies start using "not stored in the US" as a selling point for their services you have a serious problem.

mindstab2• 14 years ago

fair enough to some extent. However since I can't run the software at home, at work, or on my phone, it's still not even on my radar so my point retains some of its validity :)

herval• 14 years ago

I frankly don't know a single person outside the US who's worried about things being "stored in the US" (nor see the majority of people caring at all about where "in the cloud" is their stuff). But I guess that's just my gut feeling vs yours, in this case..

Shorel• 14 years ago

Modify Tortoise SVN to behave like a Dropbox client.

Now anyone can manage their own servers, and have several directories/folders synchronized.

Problem solved

cube13• 14 years ago

Cubby does appear to have an iOS(http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cubby-app/id512952416?mt=8 ) and Android(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logmein.cu... ) client.

pazimzadeh• 14 years ago

Why all the lime green?!

chime• 14 years ago

> And only Windows and MacOSX support, unlike dropbox's: Windows, MacOSX, Linux, iOS, Android and Blackberry.

Supporting various platforms takes time but it's not that difficult. It's just milestones on a long roadmap that takes time and resources. In the long-term, products compete on many different grounds but cross-platform support is rarely the key.

Dylan168072• 14 years ago

Last I checked Dropbox's android support was just an app version of the website with no syncing. That barely counts. The desktop/server linux support is pretty good though.

mertd• 14 years ago

That is a feature. You don't want your mobile device frivolously syncing every single file that gets changed. Most don't even have the capacity to hold all your Dropbox quota.

callahad• 14 years ago

I wonder how this differs from AeroFS (YC S10).

...I also wonder what the heck Yuri and co. have been up to for the past few months. Things have been awful quiet over there.

eps• 14 years ago

At the very least Cubby benefits from a mature infrastructure that LogMeIn sits on. From what I've read they have numerous geo-balanced (akamized) data enters, each with multiple levels of redundancy and overlay routing, i.e. the whole nine yards. Also being a publicly traded company makes them more accountable and well-behaved.

On the other hand AeroFS appears to be an extension of an offline/LAN utility to the cloud, whereby Cubby is the other way around. They had the client-server setup with p2p connectivity and extended it to the LAN context.

yurisagalov2• 14 years ago

AeroFS treats the cloud as just another peer. You can use it, if you want, or you can just use your own devices. Heck, you could install AeroFS on an AWS box backed by S3FS[1] or equivalent and have your own private cloud :)

[1] http://code.google.com/p/s3fs/

yurisagalov2• 14 years ago

Yeah, you are of course (and unfortunately) right - we've been eerily quiet as of late.

The short of it is: We've been quietly working on a major overhaul of many internal components (improvements to the networking stack, syncing stack, and the way sharing is done). Unfortunately some of the changes are so fundamental that we're not able to do our usual continuous deployment and push the changes incrementally. Instead, we'll be having a major release sometime in the (near? :) future which should provide dramatic improvements. We've been using the new client internally for a few weeks now and so far we love it. I hope you do too (I know, I know, once it's out!)

I usually try and engage actively with the community, but for the past few months I've also been very busy recruiting and building out our team (http://www.aerofs.com/careers.pdf -- we are still hiring!), so my own communication with the external world has been limited. We're working on addressing this as well :)

knes• 14 years ago

Loved the idea of aeroFS but it was too slow & buggy to use compare to a solution like Dropbox in my case. But I'll make sure to try the new version when it comes out!

tar• 14 years ago

Too bad it does not have a Linux client.

crazygringo2• 14 years ago

Serious question: can it do unlimited syncing between your computers if they are rarely on at the same time? If I sync between my laptop, open sometimes during the day, and my desktop, turned on only at night?

That would really be a killer app, if a master list of files was stored on Cubby's servers, and it would transfer only things that had changed to the servers, waiting to be sent to the other computer whenever it was turned on...

j_s• 14 years ago

Isn't this basically DropBox (2GB + referral free spacce), and the 5GB you get for free on this new Cubby service? With both you pay more for the space you use as it syncs across devices as they are on...

I guess you're asking for this functionality as part of the free service, moving things through server-side as they sync?

crazygringo2• 14 years ago

Exactly, using the server-side not as a permanent mirror, but just using that 5GB or whatever as a "holding space" only for files that are currently out-of-sync. Once they sync, delete from server...

notatoad• 14 years ago

i don't use windows live mesh, but my roommate does and from what he's told me it sounds exactly like this. does this do anything other than windows love mesh does?

kaitnieks• 14 years ago

Windows Mesh had a bad habit of locking files unnecessarily when I was working with them, which got in my way and I had to get rid of it. Mesh sounded better on paper.

bsimpson• 14 years ago

I tried SugarSync and Syncplicity before settling on Dropbox. I don't trust either of them with my files, but I've been a happily paying customer of Dropbox's for 4 years now.

I care way more about not losing my work than I do about $10/month. Cubby may have an uphill battle ahead of it.

Nux• 14 years ago

Yet another Amazon based file thingy. I'll pass.

richardw• 14 years ago

Slightly off topic: Why does Sugarsync get such little love? It lets me sync/backup arbitrary folders rather than dumping everything into one, so I don't have to remember to put stuff into the One True Folder (which Dropbox, GDrive, Skydrive etc all do), or run things live from there. But I hardly ever hear about it on hacker news. Just wondering if there are known issues with their approach.

Edit: I see now Cubby does the same thing. Like.

pestaa• 14 years ago

I tried it and liked it, but the lack of an automatically public folder with URLs I can type from memory was a deal-breaker.

Cubby Is Like Dropbox... If Dropbox Also Had Free, Unlimited Syncing

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