Cloud Services Soaring In Popularity

Friday 25th May by Stephanie Clark

HelloFax is currently used worldwide, and has obtained a remarkable amount of traction particularly in Silicon Valley, where it is used by number of startups and even some larger companies. When asked what's it's like to have a company with the primary goal of ultimately ending the industry its a part of, Walla compared HelloFax to its new partner Google. The company actually stopped working on the fax portion of its service over a 12 months ago, and is now focusing development efforts on e-signatures.

Along with Google Drive, HelloFax is also incorporated with Dropbox and Box. If you register for the service nowthrough Google Drive you can obtain 50 free fax pages per month as well as unlimited signature requests and document signing.

It feels as if general replies to Google Drive have been good, but not great: That Google's service is a fine player among its peers, but not noteworthy enough to generate a massive, digital rush to Google's servers. We've rounded up a few of the more substantial criticisms that may be keeping Drive from dominating, all areas that Google could stand to manage if it wants the prettiest cloud in the sky.

Both Microsoft and Google got their acts together and released Dropbox-like applications for their online storage services, SkyDrive and Google Drive respectively. Why has Dropbox been triumphing in this area? Fantastic convenience. Just save a file into the Dropbox folder on your PC or Mac, and it syncs everywhere, even iOS and Android mobiles. No official Windows Phone 7 client yet; but nothing is perfect.

Now both SkyDrive and the brand-new Google Drive are equally advantageous, though with variations in platform support. Apple iCloud is also worth an mention, considering it syncs across iOS and Mac devices. So too is Box, though it's doubtful either Box or Dropbox enjoyed the recent launches from the big guys.

There are numerous distinctions between such services described. Simply though, if you use a specific platform or application like Apple, Google Apps or Microsoft Office, it makes sense to choose the service that aligns with it. If you want generic storage and don't care who provides it, SkyDrive is best value and it's surprised this has not been more widely observed in reports on the new launches.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2c2817%2c2403713%2c00.asp

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