Now that you have accounts on Dropbox, Box, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Flickr, SoundCloud, Facebook, Instagram etc. etc., you may be feeling that your files, videos, and pictures that you’ve uploaded are too scattered and out of control.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could access everything from a single screen, have it all in one place? This is exactly what free web service Jolidrive can do.
There needs to be a name for these services, which we will call ‘Cloud Aggregators’. We’ve previously mentioned free tools that do this, most recently with ‘CloudKafe’; (and the now strictly paid app Otixo, which nixed its free plan). The concept is simple enough: allow the app access do your Dropbox, Facebook, Gmail, and other accounts, and you can browse the files uploaded to them from a single interface. Not only is it convenient, but it gives you the sense that you are in control of your files.
The Jolidrive user experience:
is generally an excellent one. The interface looks great, and general, and many of your files/images/videos can be viewed right from the interface. But not all of them (which is one area where the service can be greatly improved – see below).
Wish list (or how this service can be even better):
- Support for multiple accounts of the same service: which is to say, the ability to link to both my Dropbox accounts, Google Accounts, Facebook accounts, etc. Jolidrive devs take note: this will make the service a LOT more desirable instantly.
- The ability to transfer files files from one service to another: it is really strange that you can’t do this with an aggregation service like this. It would be better if the file transfers were done straight, without having to download to your browser first, but at this point any such option would be a great feature.
- Viewing files uniformly in the Jolidrive interface: while you can view all images straight in the Jolidrive, as well as YouTube videos, Soundcloud audio files, and even Office files such as Powerpoint, it seems that it works for some services but not others. (For example, aside from images, clicking on any Dropbox file will open the Dropbox interface, rather than playing it in Jolidrive). It would be great if Jolidrive supported a wide range of file file previews uniformly, or if it gave a choice between opening a file on the Jolidrive page vs. opening the cloud service where it is located.
- More services: would be great, although I expect that they’re working on this one.
- Mobile apps: naturally.
The Verdict:
A great service that should become better, given that cloud aggregators like this one seem to be on the increase. If they only would read my wish list above and implement it, they would have one awesome product 😉 !
If you’ve tried this one as well as previously mentioned CloudKafe (or just this one alone), we would love to hear your comments/opinions below.
