A Review of Cloud, a great App with an unfortunate name.
So I found a gem of a little App in the Mac App Store that really simplifies my workflow and saves me time everyday. The App is called Cloud. I know, the most generic name possible that is made even worse by an icon that looks just like the icon for MobileMe, Apple’s short lived and much hated service. This will get worse when Apple starts their new iCloud service. But apart from that little problem this App is absolutely brilliant.
To illustrate the utility of Cloud let me give you an example of a situation most people face many times a day. You are chatting with someone on iChat, Skype or your IM service of choice and you want to show them a file on your computer whether it is a picture or a sound. Most people (myself included) don’t use the file transfer options on instant messengers because they tend not to work most of the time.
So you find the item in Finder and either drag it over to Mail or open a browser tab and log into your Web based mail account and upload the file. You then type in the mail address of the person you are trying to share the file with and if you don’t have it you have to ask them for it in chat.
Once the file is sent they have to log into their own mail and find the message you just sent them and view the attachment. All of this takes about five minutes or so and is a pain to do if you have to repeat it many times a day.
This is where Cloud comes in. You install it from the App store and it shows up as a cloud icon in your menu bar.
Now, say you are chatting with someone and you want to send them a file or just show them a picture or share a screen-shot of your Mac.
You highlight the file in Finder and hit Ctrl+Option+R and Cloud automatically uploads the file to the web in a few seconds. This works for files in iTunes and iPhoto as well. You don’t have to right click and locate the file in Finder first. Just select it in the App, hit the shortcut and you’re done.
Once done Cloud gives you a Growl notification and plays a sound to say that the file is ready to be shared and it pastes a URL for the file right into your clipboard so all you do is hit Cmd+V to paste the link in your chat window and the person clicks on it and sees your file.
If you still aren’t convinced you should try using it for a few days and see how much easier it makes sharing files from your Mac with others.
Also, did I say it’s free? You can’t argue with zero dollars.
Some would say that they use DropBox for this but I think DropBox is nowhere as simple to use for file sharing. Even though I use it constantly it is mostly as a means of having a web based backup of the most important files I am working on for when the shit hits the fan. <Dead computer>
It’s the most well thought out App I have used in a while. Your mileage may vary, caveat emptor etc.
Here is a link. Enjoy!
