CloudBuddy

CloudBuddy has support for Jungle Disk Files

Here I am at CSS Labs, developing components for our very own CloudBuddy… Wonder what CloudBuddy is? Take a look at www.mycloudbuddy.com and I promise, you would want to have a go at it.

And what exactly am I going to write here? After thinking for quite some time, I decided that I could tell you about what CloudBuddy can do with Jungle Disk files…

Here we go… This one is interesting… Jungle Disk Support…

I was going through the users’ feedback on CloudBuddy… One Jungle Disk user had this problem of not being able to view the files that he had uploaded (using Jungle Disk) into S3 using other tools and he had raised an issue on whether this can be handled in CloudBuddy.

And I thought – Why not??

Jungle Disk website briefed me about what Jungle disk is all about, with their encrypted storage mechanism and stuff… And there I found that Jungle Disk gives us his decryption API… A very good gesture indeed…

So, I decided to have a look at the Jungle Disk Decryption API. C# Code, of course… I was just going through the code and believe me, it was Greek and Latin for me the first time I looked into it…

Of course, going through the code written by someone else is always a tough task… I was searching for answers on how I’m going to make it… And the solution was right in front of me… Jungle disk had given a sample application that uses his API!

And that was all that I needed… And the way CloudBuddy was programmed, it made my life all the more simpler… All I had to do is just build a file structure that both the Jungle Disk API and CloudBuddy can understand… Done!! That’s it… CloudBuddy has built-in support for viewing and downloading Jungle Disk files… :-) who else has??

Jungle Disk users, if you wish to try out CloudBuddy to view or download your Jungle Disk files, read on for the instructions…

JUNGLE DISK:

Jungle Disk creates only one bucket per location (US / EUROPE) per user. Hence the user can have utmost 2 buckets.

The 2 buckets are named by (possibly) prefixing “jd2-” and suffixing “-us” (or “-eu”) to the MD5 hash value of the access key provided by Amazon to the particular user.

For example, the 2 possible buckets for a user will look like this :

▪ jd2 - MD5 Hash value of your AWS Access Key - us
▪ jd2 - MD5 Hash value of your AWS Access Key - eu

jd2 – Jungle Disk Version 2
us – Location United States
eu – Location Europe

Jungle Disk considers either or both of the above buckets as Top-Level Buckets and allows us to create infinite number of Sub-Buckets (or Folders, to be more precise) under the Top-Level Buckets.

One important feature about Jungle Disk is that it provides the option of encryption of sub-buckets (folders) and files.

It gives us the option of whether or not a Sub-Bucket (Folder) must be password protected.

Jungle Disk creates a different architecture on how the Sub-Bucket's contents are organized based on whether the Sub-Bucket is password protected or not. And that's where CloudBuddy can make a difference

Here’s what CloudBuddy can do with your Jungle Disk files / folders…

Cool… Isn’t it?... Try CloudBuddy… You'll love it:-)

CloudBuddy Analytics coming soon!

CloudBuddy Analytics is going to change the way you look at your S3 logs. Powered and Analyzed by AWStats, CloudBuddy Analytics will help see all your S3 Access Statistics in just a click of a button. Apart from the standard features of AWStats CloudBuddy Analytics bundles the following features.

* Faster reports, compared to any other out there.
* Multiple Account managements.
* User session maintainance.
* Powered Abyss Web Server and Strawberry Perl.
* Proven AWStats Engine.

You could preview CloudBuddy Analytics here

Microsoft Office --> Save --> On S3 !! CB MS Office Plug-in

True, CloudBuddy by default comes with plug-in for Microsoft Office and get's installed. Now with this feature, you would be able to Save your MS Office files directly to Amazon S3 and open files directly from Amazon S3.

MS Office plug-in has been with CloudBuddy for quiet sometime and it compatible with MS Office XP and MS Office 2007. The state-of-the-art architecture (that's how all of call our architecture!) of CloudBuddy makes it possible for us to write plug-in's for MS Office. I am sure that you now would be hinting about the so-called "State Of The Art" architecture, yes let me tell about that to you. CloudBuddy is desinged and developed to run as a windows service. Once our buddy is installed he starts running as a windows services, thereby offering the option for any client program to access the service and perform the operations that the serivce offers. Thou came up with a novel idea of creating plug-in's for MS Office and thus.

Now, if you are a CB user, you would be able to create documents and save it simultaneously in your local as well as on your cloud bucket!

Happy CB'ing.

Ciao,
CB Team

Is CloudBuddy really feature rich?

We, the CloudBuddy team claim that CloudBuddy is "A true Amazon S3 explorer platform". One of my colluge while over a sip of coffee started debating on the feature list of CloudBuddy. I immediatly did this analysis and wrote down the features what we offer via our buddy. Read the post below and let me know if you too concur with my comments.

1. Local Cache:- CloudBuddy has the option to cache your files during upload. This helps you to reduce the hits to the s3 server when the same files are downloaded. This is a setting that can be enabled/disabled and you need to specify the cache size limit when you enable it. This feature actually saves your time and also the money interms of bandwidth consumption.

2. Runs as a Windows Service:- Once installed, CloudBuddy registers itself and runs as a windows service. This allows you to exploit the entire set of operations / features that CloudBuddy offers by writing plug-in's for your windows client sofwares. One typical example is our MS Office Plugin, that comes as a part of CloudBuddy. By downloading the SDK, you should be able to write plug-in for Windows Media Player to play music / video directly from S3!

3. Configure Multiple S3 Accounts:- This is now there with every other tool, but from the day of S3Fish till CloudBuddy, we belong to the poineers group of having this functionality.

4. Sharing:- This is one cool feature where our team has exploited the offering by AWS towards sharing files. CloudBuddy allows you to share your contents in S3 as URL and Template. For example, you can select a Photo Album Template and share the uploaded photos as an album via the an URL. And this sharing can also be a private URL which expires within a certain time.

5. Share History:- You would be able to view the share history of each and every single object that you had shared via CloudBuddy. What do I get from this? You would be able to view the entire history of sharing a file as well as copy the existing share URL and use to share again rather an creating a new share.

6. File View Vs Mail View:- Now you don't need to download your mail files to the local and view it in your mail client. You can change the view mode from "File View" to "Mail View" from the toolbar menu and view your mails on S3 as you view in your local email client. And ofcourse, you need to download the attachements!

7. Sync to S3:- This feature enables me to keep my back-ups in S3 upto second! Yes, "second"!! I would be able to configure a local folder where I move by back-ups time to time and it automatically sync's the contents of the folder in local to S3 making me feel comfortable about my back-ups.

8. JungleDisk support:- If you were a JungleDisk user and now started with CloudBuddy, never mind about your JungleDisk buckets. CloudBuddy automatically detects a bucket if it was created and used with JungleDisk and with the help of APIs, CloudBuddy de-codes the content of the bucket and displays in the native file format. So, now porting from JungleDisk to CloudBuddy isn't a deal!

9. Drag and Drop:- Yes, you should be able to drag your files and drop it into CloudBuddy bucket explorer window to upload them!

10. Online Software Upgrade Notification:- And yes, we do notify you about our newer version and you should be able to update it online buddy!

And that's the stand-out features of CloudBuddy. Rest of the defacto features are there with CloudBuddy from the begninng. We are still working on a great looking UI and a innovative set of new features for CloudBuddy which we would release quite soon. Watch out!

But I would appreciate if you could comment, "Is CloudBuddy really feature rich?"

Ciao
CB Team

Using CloudBuddy API from IronPython

About IronPython

IronPython is a new implementation of the Python programming language running on .NET. It supports an interactive console with fully dynamic compilation. It is well integrated with the rest of the .NET Framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers, while maintaining full compatibility with the Python language.

CloudBuddy 1.4 Beta has been released

Download it from here.

New Features

1. Support for multiple views (FileView and MailView)

a. FileView is the default one and it lists the files that you have stored in your s3 account.

b. MailView helps you to look at a preview of your emails that are stored using CloudBuddy's outlook plug-in.

2. Mail Explorer in Oulook Plugin

3.Right Click Copy public/private URI to clipboard

Issues Fixed

1. Plug-in not being loaded in some machines during Ms-Office applications startup

2. File upload shows wrong progress

3. API related dll's are bundled together

Enjoy CloudBuddy and let us know your feedback.

The CloudBuddy count down...

CloudBuddy is all set to be released 25-Nov-2008.

CloudBuddy, a personalized tool to work with Amazon S3 buckets, makes it easier for you. Just try it from http://www.mycloudbuddy.com/ and you would love it. It is absolutely FREE to download and use.

Happy buddiying...