MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I currently have an iPad, Android Phone and Windows PC. My music, photos and other stuff is distributed between the three devices (as well as a hard drive back-up) or held remotely on Amazon Cloud (some music), Picassa web albums, iCloud etc. I also use occasionally use DropBox..
I have various syncing programs up and running for music and photos. This kind of works but is a little clunky and not great. My perfect scenario is this:
• My own cloud space that does not tie me to Amazon, Google, Apple etc.
• Each device, on whatever platform able to access this Cloud, play the music, look at photos, download for local 'off line' use easily without the need for converting or lengthy syncing
• Each device automatically sync with this Cloud whenever in Wifi range .
• Able to 'download' purchased music etc directly to this cloud.
Basically, I want to move everything to virtual storage, do away with any device storing its own media and easily access everything from any device
Does this exist or is it moon on a stick stuff? Is it even on the horizon?
This is possibly the sticking point? These folk provide the service as a way of up-selling.My own cloud space that does not tie me to Amazon, Google, Apple etc.
You could always do what you want on a server at home.
google drive and google music will do it surely.
Cant vouch for Mac functionality but i rather thought that all the client software needed to live a google life on a Mac was fully available
Its what I use and is completely platform independent. I can access all my shizzle on all my devices, sync from phone and PC and tablet, I can get stuff from any computer in the world whether a mates or a internet cafe. It really does just work.
I should add, I don't mind paying for this.
google drive and music look good. Any first hand experience of this on Mac?
frayed knot
Have looked into similar a year ago and could not really find any cross platform solutions. The closest I came was sugarsync which is a bit like drop box.
Currently have a media server in the house which can be set up to be accessible on the web this does get round the unavoidable upload epic to remote storage. Still clumsy though to move stuff from apple devices using FileBrowser to the server
Let us know if you find any good solutions
Cheers
Hmmm, my, admittedly non-expert knowledge of this makes me think you're asking far too much of cloud-based systems in this country. We do not, at this time, have anything close to ubiquitous cloud-based access to personal media. Putting everything on a remote server, then expecting to have access to it wherever you are, whenever you want it, any time of day or night, is, frankly not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Heavy capping of data allowances by networks, and poor coverage of high-speed data networks, limited availability of quality wifi hotspots all conspire against it. Even wifi gets capped, BT's 'Unlimited' wifi actually has a 10Gb/month limit. You could easily find yourself in the same situation I was in last October, when I stayed with friends in South Devon. Virtually zero network on my phone, unless I walked nearly 100m to the top of the lane, and no wifi access from the main house, meant the only way I could listen to music was either on my little DAB radio, or, fortunately via my 160Gb iPod, which has 14400 tracks on it.
At home, the obvious route is to have a fairly chunky NAS drive, and use it as your personal home 'Cloud', which would stream music etc to your network connected devices, using something like the Western Digital MyBook NAS RAID drive, which has an app allowing access as well.
Travelling, there is a very new answer, only announced in the last few days; Seagate have available a 1Tb portable drive, with wifi and battery allowing 10 hours use, which can stream music and video to network connected devices.
It's about $200:
Seagate's $200 Wireless Plus 1TB hard drive streams content everywhere, includes 10-hour battery
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/seagate-wireless-plus-streaming-hard-drive-on-sale/
Personally, removing all music from iPods is a serious mistake, as there are so many occasions where you'll want to listen to music, and you'll have no ability to find any network to stream from; do you know how much data roaming abroad would cost you? I can see your face now when you get the £2-3000 bill from your phone network!
And how about in the car?
Sorry, but unless you care little for having music available, then that at least should be one thing that you keep on your portable devices. My phone has about 1200 tracks on, my pad none, because its not a practical music player.
My iPod is also a back up device too, or at least until my music library exceeds the capacity of my iPod Classic, which will be later this year.
Ubuntu One?