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

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rickmb
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.

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mindstab
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 :)

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GoodIntentions
If you aren't adverse to rolling your own solution, do what I do - a really
cheap UK hosted VPS + rsync.

I can get at it from my phone or desktop and it costs next to nothing.

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savrajsingh
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. :)

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tlianza
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.

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callahad
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.

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yurisagalov
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 :)

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knes
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!

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crazygringo
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...

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j_s
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?

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crazygringo
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...

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plessthanpt05
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).

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mmahemoff
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.

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rjb
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.

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richardw
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.

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pestaa
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.

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sil3ntmac
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

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tar
Too bad it does not have a Linux client.

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ctdonath
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.

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twodayslate
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

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hsshah
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!

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twodayslate
Cubby's p2p information can be found in their FAQ

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bsimpson
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.

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

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ctdonath
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).

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notatoad
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?

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kaitnieks
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.

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

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

