My second post as guest blogger on Forbes.com as first appeared at: http://blogs.forbes.com/laurayecies/
You may be one of the millions of people who purchased a new tablet or upgraded your smart phone or computer recently. Now you need to migrate all your data to your new device. You also want to make sure you have access to all the same information – your most recent versions – regardless of which device you are on, and that your digital data is secure. Enter the Cloud. The Cloud is a hot topic these days, in part because it makes solving these access and security issues so easy.
With the Cloud, your entire library of work and personal files are available to you at a moment’s notice. If you’ve got an Internet connection, you’ve got a mobile office. Just log on to your Cloud service from any device and you’re good to go. And if you don’t have an Internet connection, you can work offline and rest assured that everything will be synced automatically the next time you connect.
And since devices come and go, and crashes happen, the importance of an automatic, continuous, real-time backup for all of your files is of paramount importance in today’s world.
So whether you’re already enjoying the benefits of the “Cloud” or not, here are ten tips to get you started or to improve your experience:
- Choose a Cloud service compatible with PC and/or Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry Operating systems. The Cloud is about making sure you have access to your digital data. You may change your mind over time as to what type of device you want to use or you may add new devices to your portfolio. Be sure to choose a cloud service that has software for ALL the devices you might use – PC and/or Mac, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.
Read the rest of the article here.
Laura Yecies | The Kitchen Sync 
It would be useful if you elaborated more on security. I personally would like to see cloud storage solutions provide an encryption option that not only encrypts data in transit but also at rest. I am not going to fully trust a cloud storage solution with my most important to files until I am confident that nobody but me can access and use them. Right now all vendors require me to trust them that their employees or their suppliers (say like Amazon since many storage vendors use Amazon S3 for the back end) won’t access my files, even though they have the ability to do so.
Frank, thanks for the feedback on this important topic. With SugarSync, files are encrypted in transit and at rest. For the cases where we store user data in Amazon, Amazon has no way to see the data. For support purposes a small number of SugarSync employees can decrypt files however our policies around this are extremely strict. Users always have the option of encrypting files before syncing them using, for instance, the password feature in Microsoft Office or something more powerful such as TrueCrypt or PGP. In the future SugarSync is investigating offering a private-key option for users.
I only have a couple of main issues with suger
1. no ‘pause’ ability – as we can’t setup and manage which folders to sync without starting the app, would be nice to put it on hold until we are ready? Other have this ability.
2. this is a biggy. A changed file get’s uploading completely instead of only the changed parts. Not good for bandwidth, ours or yours. Again, other do this.
Tried posting on main ss blog, but moderators never published my comment 😦
Thanks Vincent for the feedback. “Pause” is definitely in our feature development queue. Syncing the “delta’s” is currently part of SugarSync – I’m wondering why that is not what you are experiencing. Please get in touch with support so we can troubleshoot.