Four Ways to Put Your Stuff in the Cloud

The technology industry brings us a smorgasbord of wonderful stuff that goes on forever. I'm profoundly grateful. But I've never understood its long-standing infatuation with one of its most famous inventions: buzzwords. About 90% of the ones it creates are confusing rather than clarifying, especially since few catch on with the non-geek majority. Cloud computing -- the most pervasive buzzword du jour -- is particularly pointless. Cloud is a synonym for the Internet, a concept we've all understood reasonably well for 15 or more years. Why rename it now?
The fact that I grouse about the terminology doesn't mean I'm skeptical about the idea it describes. Actually, I love the idea of keeping photos, music, video and other files on the Internet. Doing so means I can get to my goodies from my laptop, my smart phone and my iPad, without trying to remember which items I stored where. And having an online backup or two of essential files is a humongous relief if your hard drive goes kerflooey -- as so many drives will, sooner or later. (See "Amazon's Cloud Music and Storage: A Good Start.")
Putting your digital possessions in the cloud isn't tough. There are a bunch of sensible ways to do it, each with its own upsides, plus a downside or two. Herewith, a quick guide to four of them.

1. Sync everything everywhere.

The simplest way to store your stuff in the cloud is to keep saving it on your computer's hard drive, just as you've been doing forever. All you need is a synching service that instantly and silently clones the contents of folders you specify to all your computers as well as to an online drive where everything's available all the time.
Box.net and SugarSync will give you 5 GB of space for free, which is more than enough to judge whether their offerings will make your life easier. (Longtime fan favorite Dropbox offers a more parsimonious 2 GB; it also suffered from an unnerving security glitch last month that briefly let anyone log into any account without providing a password.) Besides providing software for Windows PCs and Macs, all these services have apps for iPhones and Android handsets that give you on-the-go access to the files you've synched from one or more computers.
The biggest gotcha with synching is that it can get unaffordable fast, especially if you want to shuttle copious amounts of disk-hogging videos as well as relatively slender files such as photos and MP3s. If I wanted to use SugarSync to back up the entire contents of my MacBook Air's solid-state drive, I'd need to spring for the 250-GB plan, which costs $24.99 a month or $249.99 a year. Instead, I'm selective -- I make do with the 30-GB version, which is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. (See TIME's special report on the top iPhone applications.)
One other tip: synching services only work if you're running their software on all your computers and it's functioning properly. I've occasionally discovered that such utilities have quietly conked out without me noticing. It pays to check them from time to time to make sure they're moving files back and forth as promised.

2. Use one or more online storage services for little or nothing.

With services such as Box, Dropbox and SugarSync, you've got two options: limit your uploads to a few gigabytes and pay nothing, or pay a monthly fee for more space. Or you could ignore them altogether for one or more services that provide more spartan online storage at much lower price tags.
Last week, for instance, Amazon.com started allowing anyone who pays for its Cloud Drive service to upload an unlimited quantity of music. There are some catches, but for $20 a year you can store all your MP3s on the Web, plus another 20 GB of files of any type -- a good, budget-minded alternative to a synching service.
Read about the promise and pitfalls of cloud computing.
For photos and videos, Google's Picasa Web Albums service is even more tightwad-friendly: 20 GB of storage costs a measly $5 a year. And you might not even need to pay that much, since photos of less than 2048-by-2048 resolution and videos that run for less than 15 minutes don't count against your freebie allotment of 1 GB of space.
And then there's Microsoft's SkyDrive, which gives you 25 GB of Web-based space for anything, for free.
All these services have a no-frills feel compared to their pricier rivals. Cloud Drive and Picasa don't do fancy automatic synching of files of all sorts, and SkyDrive does it only for 5 GB of files, and only in conjunction with a low-profile Microsoft service called Live Mesh. But if they give you what you need, the price is certainly right. (See the top 10 Apple moments.)

3. Put a hard drive on the Web.

I have more than a few tech-savvy friends who instinctively bristle at the notion of entrusting their prized files to a SugarSync, a Google or anybody else. Rather than pay for the privilege of uploading data to distant servers in undisclosed locations, they prefer to keep it at home under their own supervision. Fine. It's possible to do that while also putting your files in the cloud, by using a storage device that piggybacks on your home network's Internet connection to make your content available (with password protection) on any Net-connected device.
Storage systems that do this abound, such as Western Digital's My Book World Edition and Iomega's Home Media Drive Cloud Edition. I like Buffalo's CloudStor, which starts at $159.99 for a version that packs a 1-TB hard drive. Its built-in software, powered by a clever service called PogoPlug, makes setting up the drive and reaching your files from any browser just about painless, with no knowledge of networking minutiae required. All 1 TB (or more) of disk space is up for grabs -- a mammoth amount of real estate by cloud-based storage standards.
My major reservation about these gizmos is the same one that makes them appealing to many folks: they don't duplicate your files to a remote server. For priceless treasures like your best family photos, you don't just want to have a backup -- you want backups of your backups. And -- not to get too depressing here -- it's best if some of the backups are stored somewhere other than your house, just in case disaster strikes. Unlike my more paranoid pals, I'm comfortable allowing outfits like SugarSync and Google to manage my data. They'll surely do a better job of backing everything up than I would if left to my own devices. (See the all-TIME 100 gadgets.)

4. Put your computer on the Web.

Still reading? Maybe you don't care to use a fully Web-based service and don't want to invest in a networked storage device. If so, you still have options in the form of software that can put the contents of any PC on your home network onto the Internet. For instance, PogoPlug (the software I admire in Buffalo's CloudStor) is also available as a stand-alone, downloadable version for Windows and Macs. Install it on a computer and run it at all times, and it gathers up all the photos, music, videos and other files on the computer and lets you access them from any browser and from PogoPlug's apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android. As with the CloudStor version, it's about as hassle-free as networking gets, and there's a less-powerful free version.
Even more than with networked drives, it's important to remember that the PogoPlug software isn't a substitute for a backup strategy. And it requires you to leave your computer on, something that's more plausible if you own a desktop PC that stays put than if you tote a laptop.
If none of these approaches appeals to you, there's another viable strategy: wait. Even more options are on the way, the most notable of which is Apple's iCloud service. Due this fall, it aims to deliver the simplest, most comprehensive approach to storing data on the Net, at least if you're equipped with a full complement of Apple devices, such as a Mac, an iPhone, an iPod Touch, an iPad or any combination of those products. Steve Jobs, as you'd expect, says that iCloud "just works." If he's right, count me in -- but until then, I'm a happy SugarSync customer.


[ McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist; on Twitter, he's @harrymccracken. His column, also called Technologizer, appears every Thursday on TIME.com.
See pictures of the history of the computer.
See TIME's Pictures of the Week. ]