A PR person sent me a wrong link, and I reviewed an old version of Omnidrive. Instead of covering the upcoming release, which will make its public debut on Tuesday, I covered the version that's been in private beta for most of this year. CEO Nik Cubrilovic gave me a call to clear this up and to walk me through the upcoming rev of Omnidrive. I'm glad he did, because it's a much more important product than the one now in use.

The beta of Omnidrive that will be unveiled at the Web 2.0 conference next week is not just an online storage service. It's also a system that integrates the files you've stored on various Web services into one virtual drive, which you can access from your own computer's desktop (or from its Web interface). The service will launch with hooks into Flickr and Zoho, and the Omnidrive team is working on integrating it into other services. The 1.0 release of the service is scheduled for January.

Omnidrive will make it possible to work with online files as if they were on your own PC. When you're done with the file, any changes will be saved back to the online source. So, for example, if you have a folder pointing at your Flickr photos, you'll be able to edit a picture in Photoshop on your PC and not have to worry about transferring it back to Flickr--it will happen automatically. Likewise, if you have a folder pointing to your Zoho Write files, anything you create or edit in the online Zoho application will show up on your Omnidrive, and you'll be able to work with it just like a local file.

Omnidrive technology could also mean that people building new online applications won't have to write uploaders. They'll just hook into Omnidrive. So if you want to use some hot new video editor, instead of uploading your file to that particular service, you'd just specify the file's Omnidrive path.

Omnidrive isn't the only company working on this. Microsoft (Live Drive), Google (GDrive), and Amazon (S3) are all working on integrated network storage. Omnidrive is a small Australian company and can hardly win this battle alone, so it's working the politics in standards bodies to come up with a solution that everyone will be able to use.

Regardless of which standard or company wins out, this is going to be an enormously important shift for Web applications. (Ideally, there will be one online storage standard and not multiple competing systems, but realistically, it's going to be a mess for a while.) Integrated online storage should encourage the development of better applications by removing the need for every company to invent and invest in its own storage and access technology. It will also make it easier for you and me to try out new apps and to manage our online data.

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Here's the Windows version of my Omnidrive...
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...and here are my files in a Web browser
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The online storage service Omnidrive is in private beta right now. This is an eagerly awaited product, partly because the CEO of the company got a lot of cred by writing for TechCrunch until earlier this year. The public beta will launch during the Web 2.0 conference next week.

It's hard for online storage companies to differentiate. Omnidrive, though, has a feature that's missing from many of its competitors: It integrates into your Windows or Mac file explorer and operates as a virtual hard drive. This means you can drag and drop files to your online drive just like it's a hard disk connected to your computer, or you can save files to it directly from your desktop apps (but not, alas, from your Web-based apps, although an API makes that theoretically possible). You don't need the virtual drive to use Omnidrive: You can also access all your files through the Web interface.

Though not completely implemented at this beta stage, Omnidrive also lets you share files and folders with individuals or with the entire Internet. Missing--so far, at least--is the media viewer/music player, which has been promised for the future. And there's no indication of any kind of an included backup program.

The service will be free with 1GB of storage. 10GB will cost $40 per year. Omnidrive's closest competitor (in that it has a virtual drive too, although not one for the Mac) is Xdrive, which offers 5GB free. Xdrive also has a backup program. However, many users (like me) have been so burned by buggy Xdrive software and services in the past that we'll probably never go back, even though all indications are that the newest version is pretty good in addition to being free.

There are a lot of solid online storage products (for example, Box.net has a very attractive online storage site that's well out of beta, and Carbonite, which I'm now happily using, offers unlimited storage for backups). Omnidrive looks like it will be a good product, but it's late to the party.

Related: Hear Tom Merritt and me discuss online storage on the Real Deal podcast.

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Find out what's big in Japan
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The Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies, or CEATEC, got underway yesterday in Japan. While I can't claim to be on the show floor or, truth be told, anywhere near the land of the rising sun, Akihabara News has correspondents onsite. Blu-ray announcements are dominating the coverage, with solid-state storage garnering headlines, as well.

In next-gen optical storage news, Blu-ray looks to be outpacing rival HD-DVD at the show. Hitachi is showing off a number of camcorders, including a model that uses mini Blu-ray discs. Sony announced its VAIO L series all-in-one PC, which will feature a Blu-ray burner, while NEC showed off a sub-$1,000 ValueStar PC with a Blu-ray drive (BD-ROM means reading but, sadly, no writing). Sony also had a pair of stand-alone Blu-ray recorders on display, as did Pioneer, while Toshiba countered with a prototype of an external (USB 2.0) HD-DVD player.

Tired of hard drives that have the gall to spin in order to find your data? Then take a peek at the flash-based drives that TDK and Taiwanese company iNNODISK have on hand. It'll be interesting to see what new laptop designs these small, fast, and durable drives will afford. Perhaps such mobile devices will dominate next year's show.

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When you share a file with Zapr, people get URLs to your PC.
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I got waylaid at the Future of Web Apps conference today by the folks from Zapr. They make a free peer-to-peer file-sharing utility that's not just targeted at real people (as opposed to geeks; see AllPeers) but that I think they could actually use. Sharing a file or a directory does require a download, but unlike most other peer-to-peer sharing systems, receiving a shared file does not. It works through Web links: The application gives a shared asset a URL, which you can e-mail to your friends or post on the Web. People who go to the URL get a Web page served up by your PC, which then allows them access to the files you're sharing.

A big advantage of this concept is that once you share a directory, anything you put in that directory is easily accessible by anybody who has the link. And as long as the files are on your PC, they remain shareable. Free hosted sharing access to your files usually expires after a few days.

The major downside to Zapr is that you have to leave your computer on, although a future enhancement of the product will include paid, Web-based storage. Another big downer: No security, at least not in the current product. If the URL of a shared asset gets out onto the Web, anybody can download directly from your PC. Again, future releases will have security.

If you don't want to run an application to share large files, you might want to check out YouSendIt, which, like Zapr, allows receivers to get files by clicking on standard links. Since YouSendIt stores files on its own servers, you have to upload what you want to share, but then you don't have to leave your PC to allow people to pick it up. The hosted transfer model isn't as flexible as peer-to-peer sharing, but it is easier to use for both senders and receivers.

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Xdrive, the online hard drive, has a nice backup utility.
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AOL acquired online storage company Xdrive a little more than a year ago. Since then, the Xdrive service has suffered from some decay. I tried using it a few months ago and found the software buggy and the Web site too slow to use. In the space Xdrive left in the market, other online storage and backup companies sprouted--many offering for free what Xdrive once charged for.

But now Xdrive is back, with not only updated software (both for your PC and on the Xdrive site) but with a new pricing plan: free. You can get 5GB of Xdrive space for nothing. 50GB will cost you $100 a year. Either way, you get a virtual hard drive on your PC (extremely handy), access to files on your account from any Web-connected computer, and a backup application. You can also flag files for sharing, which makes Xdrive a competitor to file-transfer products such as AllPeers and YouSendIt.

The team at Download.com checked out the new Xdrive and gave it five stars. Xdrive has burned me in the past, but I've always liked the service's (theoretical) integration between the PC-based application and the online service. It looks like it's worth a try again.

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50GB for $40
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Now, the bad news: a Sony product manager stated last week at an event in Sydney, Australia, that the company's first Blu-ray drive for the PC, the BWU-100A, won't play commercial Blu-ray titles. You're stuck playing just your own recorded content for the time being, thanks to the lack of updated hardware and software. HDCP-compliant graphics cards aren't out yet, and there aren't any retail playback apps for Blu-ray drives that can decrypt HDCP. (An OEM version of WinDVD supposedly can handle HDCP, but it's currently available only as part of the bundle with a Sony laptop.) Add this fact to the list of reasons of why you should hold off buying a next-gen optical drive.

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Mozy's clean restore interface
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I am a dweeb about backup. I use FolderShare to synchronize files on my two main PCs, and I pay for Connected Backup for offsite storage. Connected is far too expensive, though--$279 a year for a measly 10GB of storage--and its user interface is awful. So I'm seriously thinking of switching over to Mozy (download), even though it's still in beta. There are three big reasons.

First of all, it starts out free: 2GB of storage costs nothing. Sixty dollars a year gets you 30GB. (Connected charges $800 a year for that.) That means that Mozy is an affordable solution for photo and video backup, while Connected is most definitely not.

Second, the interface is very straightforward. I was up and running with Mozy in a few minutes. Third, it's secure. Data is locked with a private key, to which there is no backdoor. (I have to take CEO Josh Coates's word on this, but it's a good policy.)

Advanced features that I haven't yet tried are the backup of open files, including Outlook (even Microsoft's own FolderShare won't do that), and sophisticated scheduling and bandwidth management (for example, you can tell the system to back up as much as it can between midnight and 5 a.m., then shut off or go into low-bandwidth mode during the rest of the day).

Mozy can't be used for sharing, since it limits users to five restore sessions per month (a session can be one file or an entire backup set). For online sharing, check out Box.net. But as a backup solution, Mozy is tops.

If Mozy sounds interesting to you, also check out Carbonite.

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Fabrik can store all your media and help you publish it
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We are slowly--too slowly--moving toward unified storage: one interface to access our data no matter where it is, be it our computer, a file server we own, a cell phone, or a hosted storage service somewhere on the Net. We need unified storage because managing the file systems and keeping track of what's where is getting way out of hand.

One small step toward unified storage is coming from Fabrik, a start-up run by former Maxtor exec Mike Cordano. Fabrik wants to be your one and only file system. It doesn't quite succeed at that, but the system has some good and useful ideas.

If you put your media files (music, photos, videos) in Fabrik, you'll find it easy to get the code that enables you to publish them to whatever media-sharing service you want--your MySpace or Facebook page, an eBay entry, or a blog. There are plenty of options, more than I've seen on any other system, and more should be added shortly. What's missing is a tool to publish directly to the sites, though, like VideoEgg has.

You can also share items directly, either by creating a stand-alone Web page or by tagging individual items as visible to certain people. However, you'll find Fabrik's native media viewer to only functional, not as attractive or as flexible as the dedicated viewers you'll find on the sites Fabrik helps you publish to.

Fabrik technology will ship first as software built into a line of Maxtor Fusion network hard drives, turning them into Internet media servers as well as drives for your local network. It will also be available from Maxtor as a hosted service. Eventually the hard drives and the hosted service will communicate with each other; very popular files on your network drive will end up getting mirrored onto the hosted service to conserve your bandwidth (similar to Pixpo's architecture).

Fabrik is similar in concept to the Mirra product and service, which is owned by Seagate. Seagate has acquired Maxtor, so we can expect these products to merge. What Fabrik has that Mirra doesn't is the multisite publishing capability.

While Cordano pitches Fabrik as a replacement for media file management on a PC, it can't reach that far yet; whenever you want to work with files on your hard drive, you'll need to use Windows (or the Mac OS, depending). But Fabrik is a decent platform to help you publish your media files to wherever on the Web you want them.

Fabrik will be presenting at the Under the Radar conference on Wednesday. I'll be at the event, moderating a few sessions and scouting out companies to cover. Find me there if you have one.

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Pixpo turns your PC into a media Web server
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Pixpo Web pages are clean and professional-looking
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Pixpo is a neat utility that turns your computer into an Internet broadcast platform. You download Pixpo client software to your PC and point it at your content--music, photos, videos--then program what you want to share into "channels." People on the Net can view or stream your content, straight from your PC.

But who needs it? If I want to share a bunch of photos, I'm going to put them on a photo-sharing site (such as Tabblo, my current favorite). If I want people to see a video I've made, it's going on YouTube if I want it to be public, VideoEgg if not. If I have original music to share, I'll want to put it on a big service like iTunes (if I want to share somebody else's copyrighted music, I'll think twice). And if I do put content on Pixpo and it becomes very popular, there's no way my home PC or Internet connection could handle the load. Furthermore, I have to leave my PC on all the time for people to be able to access my files. (Pixpo plans to cache content that gets too popular for an individual's PC to handle.)

Also, Pixpo doesn't (yet) stream live cameras from a PC. Check out Stickam or Orb if that's what you're looking for.

There are, however, some people who could really use this. If you have a lot of media but a small audience, Pixpo is a good solution. Who fits that description? Photographers, videographers, or anybody who wants to share media with their family and doesn't want to hassle with uploading to a Web-based service, says Colin How, Pixpo's founder. He says it's much easier for professionals, in particular, to let customers view their media straight from their PC than it is for them to hassle with uploading the images and potentially paying for hosting. And since you don't have to upload anything to a service, "publishing" files is instantaneous.

This seems like one of those ideas that threads the needle--fantastic if you fit into the narrow definition of who it's good for, but a bit of a stretch for most everybody else.

On the other hand, this technology could have a big payback for companies currently paying through the nose for bandwidth and storage. YouTube, for example, is spending a fortune to stream all those videos. Pixpo pays nothing for streaming, its users do. So because of the economic benefits of direct streaming, Pixpo is of interest to companies that promote user-generated content (jargon watch: it's now known as UGC).

Ultimately, Pixpo-like functionality should be an option on UGC services such as YouTube. It's good technology, but for most of us, managing yet another sharing service--even if it's one that resides on our own computers--is asking too much.

Pixpo will be presenting at the Under the Radar conference next week. I'll be at the event, moderating a few sessions and scouting out companies to cover. Find me there if you have one.

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The new beta of Windows Live Messenger (get it at ideas.live.com) comes with a very interesting feature: shared folders. With this feature, you designate a folder on your hard disk as shared, and you tell it who you want to share it with. Then, anytime anybody makes a change to a file in that folder, everybody else who's sharing it gets the update on their system, too.

The technology is based on ByteTaxi's FolderShare [download], which Microsoft acquired last year. A synchronization tool like this is very useful. I use the original FolderShare to keep two of my own PCs in sync. I've never considered opening up a synced folder to another user, but I can see how it could be a big productivity and communications enhancer for teams working on projects. An advantage of the sync method is that as long as you are online, you can be guaranteed that you have the latest version of the file. Using a centralized shared directory is awkward (people always forget to update it), and e-mailing files back and forth is far too cumbersome.

The new LogMeIn Backup uses similar technology but allows you to use a portion of a friend's hard disk to store your own synchronized files, for offsite backup. (You can set up encryption so that your friend can't access your files.)

Also, BeInSync [download] just updated its file synchronization and sharing utility. I was not impressed with the previous version of the program, since it moved files from where I had them into its own directories (the files moved back when I uninstalled the product). Perhaps the new version is better.

Ultimately you won't care about where your files are located--on your local machine, a server at home or at work, on the Internet somewhere, and so on. There will be multiple copies of your files out there. Tools like FolderShare will make sure that you're always accessing the most up-to-date versions and will take care of updating the other copies when you're done. There are obviously enormous security and privacy issues with this scheme, but storage is clearly moving off the desktop.

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