We’ve written about using PrinterShare to share printers in the past, but Google Cloud Print is a much easier alternative. After you share your printer with someone, they can print to it from their web browser – you can even print to your own printer from a browser if you’re away from your computer.

Setting Up Cloud Print

You’ll need the Google Chrome web browser installed to set up Cloud Print. After it’s installed, launch it and open its Options page.

Click over to the Under the Hood tab and scroll down; you’ll find the Google Cloud Print option hidden near the bottom.

Click the “Sign in to Google Cloud Print” button and you’ll be asked to register your computer’s printers with your Google account.

Sharing the Printer

Click the Manage Your Printers link after registering your printers to access the Cloud Print website. You can also access this page by clicking the Manage Print Settings button next to Google Cloud Print on the Under the Hood page.

The main window here shows a list of print jobs, but you won’t have anything here yet. Click Printers in the sidebar and you’ll see a list of printers on your current computer.

Select a printer and click the Share button to manage its sharing settings.

Type an email address into the box and click Share. This box will automatically autocomplete addresses you type from your Gmail contacts, so you can also start typing a contact’s name to find their email address.

Google Chrome must be open on your computer so it can forward incoming print jobs to your printer. Don’t worry, though — if Google Chrome is closed or your computer is turned off, print jobs will be saved in Cloud Print’s queue online. They’ll start printing automatically the next time you launch Google Chrome.

Accepting The Shared Printer

The person you share the printer with can sign into their Google account and access the Google Cloud Print website. They’ll see an indication that they have a new printer.

First, they’ll have to accept the shared printer.

The printer will appear in their list — a face icon superimposed over the printer’s icon indicates that it’s a shared printer.

Printing A Document

The person you share the printer with can click the Print button and select “Upload File to Print” to upload a file from their computer and print it on your printer.

You should be able to upload any PDF or DOC file — hopefully, Google will add support for additional file types in the future.

The “Other Ways to Print” option takes you to a page that lists ways you can access the shared printer from other devices. Google Cloud print is integrated into the Gmail and Google Docs mobile webpages for smartphones and Cloud Print apps are available for iOS, Android and Mac.

Cloud Print isn’t only for sharing your printer with other people; it can also provide access to your printer from other devices. You can use the apps to print from your smartphone or tablet or use the website to print when you’re away from your printer.

Future Features

Google Cloud Print is currently in beta and is evolving quickly. Currently, it supports both Windows and Mac. Linux users can’t share their printers yet, but they can still print using the Cloud Print webpage. Some printers even include Cloud Print support out of the box, so you can connect them to your network and use them without setting up Google Chrome. Expect more printers with integrated Cloud Print support in the future.

Have you tried Google Cloud Print sharing yet? Let us know how well it works for you in the comments.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

You’ll need a Windows Live account to start making full use of SkyDrive. For those too lazy to read – there’s 25gb of storage, web-based versions of popular Office apps; collaborative editing that doesn’t require everyone to login; and an iPhone app you should probably avoid for now.

Web-Based Office Apps

In SkyDrive, you now have access to cut-down versions of popular Office apps, to both create and edit documents without the need for a full offline Office suite (though you can at any point open your SkyDrive files in regular Office apps, then seamlessly save back again). Personally, I’m not a fan of Google Docs, so if your documents are predominantly MS formats and you’d like to move into the cloud without the hassle of importing and exporting etc, this is a great solution – and free.

The web-based versions work across OS, taking advantages of new HTML5 standards rather than Silverlight, so that’s something to keep in mind if someone mails a Word document to your shiny iMac when you don’t have Office for Mac.

Collaborative Editing

You’ll be pleased to know that the cloud versions of Office now support collaborative editing, or at least a hybrid form of it. First up – this feature isn’t as advanced as say Google Docs, where you can see collaborators typing in real time and changes are done at a character level. Instead, SkyDrive takes the approach of locking certain parts of the document – a paragraph will be marked as being edited for instance. Once changes are available to view, you need to manually click the update changes button.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge step forward in a world where Office documents are still the norm in many companies – and changes at the paragraph level are more than sufficient for most of us. It’s a shame it doesn’t work asynchronously though as manually refreshing things is quite tedious.

Public Share Links and Edit Privileges

Along with collaborative editing comes an easy way to share your files and folders. Three levels of links are available – public, can edit, and view only. You can either share this straight out to your Facebook and Linked In status, or get a regular URL to share in Twitter etc.

One really cool feature is that you don’t need a Windows Live account to edit the documents if someone sends you a link, so it’s a fantastic tool get anyone’s input without complicated sign ups. Compare to Google Docs which requires all collborators to have a Google Account in order to sign in and edit documents, which can be a real hassle with less tech-savvy users.

On the downside, the share links are ridiculously lengthy. I can’t help thinking that some kind of automated link shortening service would have been really easy to add. As it is, a simple view-only link to a photo comes out like this:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=86d16a5e767798c4&resid=86D16A5E767798C4!107&parid=86D16A5E767798C4!102&authkey=!AArcUia4KgCYgbI

25GB Totally Free Storage

Even if you don’t need collaborative features, SkyDrive’s free 25gb is a generous cloud storage locker. It doesn’t sync with your files, so you can offload files totally to the cloud if you want, or just use it for backup. The interface is very Explorer-like so Windows users will feel right at home, but it also works just fine on a Mac. We had a few issues during testing with Chrome though, so stick to Firefox or Safari (or Explorer if you insist).

iPhone App

Unlike Apple’s iCloud service, Microsoft has made a big effort to make the SkyDrive available on other devices. Unfortunately, the SkyDrive app for iPhone is decidedly under-developed – the user interface is confusing at best; files must be uploaded one by one as there’s no mass-upload feature; a manual refresh is often needed to keep it in sync with the web-based version; and worst of all – if you take a photo directly within the app, and it fails to upload (as it often did in my testing), the photo is lost forever – it doesn’t get saved to your Camera Roll as you would expect. I’m afraid I really can’t recommend the iPhone side of SkyDrive until a good update is released. If you must, take the photos with the Camera app first, then do the Choose Existing dialog to upload it.

If you have ventured to try the app out, and can’t for the life of you figure out how to delete a photo from the SkyDrive iPhone app – you need to click the “share” button in the top right and change the thumbnail view to a “Details view“, then you can swipe left to right to reveal Delete on the item.

Though I didn’t get a chance to play with SkyDrive integration on Windows Phone 7, I think it’s safe to assume it’s a more fulfilling experience than the iPhone app; and I think we can also say that SkyDrive is likely to be strongly integrated into the upcoming Windows 8.

SkyDrive is obviously Microsoft’s answer to iCloud and Google Docs, and while iCloud is still the stronger platform in my opinion, it’s limited to Apple devices. SkyDrive is cross-platform for the most part, and has made a valiant attempt to integrate with iPhones too – hopefully an update will tackle the problems I’ve outlined.

For Windows users and Windows Phone 7 owners – SkyDrive is a clear winner. Even if you’re not a big fan of Microsoft stuff, you can’t argue with 25gb free space. Collaborative editing that doesn’t require the user to login to anything is unique to SkyDrive and could be a great feature for many if you’re sharing with less technically capable users or large numbers who you can’t guarantee have Live / Google accounts.

Have you had a chance to play with the new SkyDrive yet? What do you think? How do you compare it to Google Docs, or iCloud?

All of these services are easy to use, but they are true clouds. All of your data is kept in a remote location, which leaves you with limited control over its security and limited storage space. There are only a few cloud solutions that can provide unlimited free storage – and Bdrive is one of them.

A Personal Cloud?

There are two basic types of cloud storage service offered to consumers. True cloud services, such as Dropbox, actually store your files in remote servers, from which they can be accessed at any time from any computer.  Personal clouds, like Bdrive, rely on your own hardware to keep the cloud active.

A true cloud service has many advantages. Your files are always available (in theory) because the servers are always up and maintained by a professional staff. Files can be accessed from any PC with an Internet connection, even if it’s not one you own. Most such services allow for sharing files with friends, as well. Yet there is one major disadvantage with a true cloud, and that’s cost. Maintaining a database with professional staff striving to ensure zero downtime isn’t free, which is why Dropbox charges once you exceed the free storage limit.

Personal clouds such as Bdrive don’t use anyone else’s hardware, so you have an unlimited data transfer limit. This is the most important thing to know about Bdrive. If you don’t need to transfer and share much data, you should just stick with Dropbox (or an alternative) and be happy. Otherwise, read on.

Bdrive Basics

A personal cloud like Bdrive is really just a streamlined way of creating a personal Internet network. In fact, the software goes so far as to offer “server” and “client” versions of the software.

How it works is simple. On the computer with files you’d like to share among multiple PCs, you install the server version. You select the folders you’d like to share and start the server. Bdrive will provide you with a BID (which identifies your server) and that’s it.

Now, install the client on another PC. Enter your server’s BID and presto! You’re connected over the Internet, and you can move as many files about as you’d like. Though I assume there is some limit to the number of connections that can be made to a server but Bdrive doesn’t state what it is, and I didn’t run into it in my testing.

OS Support & Streaming Media

If that’s all Bdrive offered, it’d be just nifty, but the developers have gone further by offering server software for both Windows and Mac and client software for Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android. You can share files between platforms as easily as you can with Dropbox.

Bdrive also supports streaming content from your server to remote devices, such as smartphones. Some users might be interested in this software simply to use it as a remote media server. I found that streaming video was fluid on 4G, but a bit choppy on 3G. This feature also works well on phones connected via WiFi.

Versus Windows Live Mesh

I like the idea of a personal cloud. I have a lot of files that I like to have access to, and I need to access them on both my Windows PC and my Mac. Most cloud services are out of the question because I’d have to pay a monthly fee, and that adds up over time.

Windows Live Mesh has been my weapon of choice as a result, yet that service is not perfect. It can be confusing to set up syncing between folders, and the sync process can become laborious when working with folders that have thousands of files.

Bdrive is a much easier solution, and I’ll probably start using it instead. Setting up the server took no more than a couple of minutes, and within another minute I had installed the client on my laptop and connected it to my desktop. Within a few more, I had it on my phone.

Better yet, you don’t need to have, or log into, an account with Bdrive. Live Mesh requires a Windows Live account to use.

Conclusion

The main disadvantage to this software is that if your server goes down, you can’t access files from any device. This factor alone makes it a solution targeted more towards power users, organizations and small businesses than your average Joe. Yet this is also an extraordinarily simple piece of software, and for people (like me) who need to access my files across the Internet without paying, it fills exactly the role intended.

Best of all, Bdrive is free to download and use. There is mention in the FAQ of “freemium” features that will be coming in the future, but they’re not unveiled yet.

If you decide to install BDrive, let us know in the comments how it went and if you like it.

Images uploaded from the gallery or camera can be scanned with optical character recognition to extract text and save it to a document. Users of Android Honeycomb can enjoy an optimized version of the app for larger screens.

The Interface

The interface of the Google Docs app is clean and straight forward and not too different from the web interface. A visual overview can be found under > Settings > Quick hints.

When you click the little arrow button on the far right of a document, you can preview the respective document and view its details.

Clicking the button will open a little sidebar with document properties, including date last viewed, date last modified, owner, and a list of people who can edit the document. In this view you can also  add collaborators (people or groups), send or share the document, or rename the document. Via the settings button in the top right, you can open or delete the document.

If you want to send, rename, delete, or open a file with an alternative app, press it for a couple of seconds to trigger the menu shown in the screenshot below.

Creating Documents

The Google Doc apps supports creating new documents, spreadsheets, or documents from a photo or the gallery.

When you create a > Document from gallery or photo, the image you choose from the gallery or take with your device camera, can be uploaded as individual file, converted to a Google Docs document and embedded into a new document, or sent to web clipboard, so that you can paste it into a desired location.

When you choose the > Convert file go Google Docs document, the respective photo will be converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR). In theory, OCR is a fantastic feature, but in reality it doesn’t work very well, even with clearly printed text. However, if you experiment with the camera conditions (light, position, size of text), you might be able to get it to work for you. It also is rather unfortunate that the app can not display the source image, which is inserted on top of the recognized text, although it is very well able to display images.

Editing Documents

Editing documents within the app is possible, but it is fairly difficult. Edits can only be done line by line. Finding the right spot can be a bit of a challenge, typically resulting in short flickers of the document and a jumpy keyboard. Moreover, Google Docs does not allow you to zoom in, but forces you to work with the available text size. It must be said though that once the right line or paragraph has been highlighted, moving the cursor to a desired position works very well, unlike in some other apps.

Homescreen Widget

Google Docs comes with a simple homescreen widget. It unites four functions: opening Google Docs, viewing starred files, taking a photo and uploading it, and creating a new document.

In Honeycomb, you can add the widget by pressing an available spot on your homescreen for a few seconds or tapping the + icon in the top right, which opens the widgets gallery. The app is listed as Docs. You can drag and drop it to your desired homescreen.

Verdict

The Google Docs app is great for accessing and reading your Google documents. However, I would not recommend to create and edit documents with it. Overall, I find the app very useful and hope that Google will continue to develop and improve it.

But after subscribing to and exploring iTunes Match, I find the paid service not as useful as Apple’s wireless iTunes syncing, its Home Sharing feature, and music streaming service sites like Rdio.com and Spotify.

iTunes Match

iTunes Match is a music streaming service ($24.99 per year) that essentially allows you to sync all the songs (including the ones you purchased in the iTunes Music Store and ones you imported from other sources such as CDs) from your iTunes Music Library to your iCloud account over Wi-Fi or 3G. In turn, you can access your songs in the cloud from any iTunes supported Mac or PC and on your iOS devices.

With iTunes Match, your song files are not physically uploaded to the cloud. Rather, iTunes scans your iTunes Library and matches your song content with the vast catalog of songs in the iTunes Music Store. The matched music is added to your iCloud account. Songs in your library that are not found in the Store don’t of course get matched, and thus don’t appear in iCloud.

If you’re an avid user of iTunes and customer of the iTunes Music Store, iTunes Match may very well be a useful subscription service for you. In addition to having access to your music in the cloud, the paid service backs up your music to cloud; and if your songs are ever deleted on your local drive they can be re-downloaded from your iCloud.

But there are problems with iTunes Match that you might want to consider. First off, though you can stream your music from your iCloud account over Wi-Fi onto your iTunes supporting computer(s), you can’t stream music in the same way to your iPhone and other iOS devices. You have to actually select and download those songs from your iCloud account to your device, which means that it will take up memory space in your device. In fact, when you turn on iTunes Match on your device, it replaces the iTune library set up for your device prior to iTunes Match.

Wireless iTunes Syncing

With the release of iOS 5 for the iPhone and other Apple devices, you can now sync data between your device and the iTunes library on your computer over your local network.

With this wireless syncing, you can add and delete songs and playlists in your iTunes library for your devices and sync those changes without having to make a wired connection to your computer. In fact, after the initial setup, your iOS device will automatically sync your iTunes library when you have the device plugged into a charger and connected to your local Wi-Fi network.

You can also manually execute wireless syncing in the Summary page of your iTunes or in the Settings app of your iOS device (General > iTunes Wi-Fi Sync > Sync Now). I prefer this approach over iTunes to managing music on my iPhone. This method allows me to select and deselect songs in my iTunes library instead of having to download them (and manually remove them) individually from my iCloud account.

I even use a Smart Playlist in iTunes that automatically removes songs I’ve played on my iTunes and/or my iPhone in the last 2 weeks. When songs are dropped off they are automatically replaced with new tracks from my library.

This wireless smart playlist requires no manual downloading on my part and it keeps my iPhone updated with different music from week to week.

Home Sharing Features

iTunes Match may be most useful to iTunes users who travel frequently and want to have access to their music in the cloud. However, for the rest of us, the Home Sharing feature of iTunes (see here for how to set it up) will probably be sufficient for sharing and accessing all the content in your iTunes library with your computers and iOS devices. With iTunes Match, on the other hand, you can only share your songs, not your other content such as downloaded movies and TV shows.

Streaming Music Services

Lastly, I would argue that streaming music services like Spotify, Rdio, and MOG may be a better and much more affordable option for those of us who have a good Wi-Fi connection.

An affordable $5 per month subscription to one of these music streaming services allows you to stream, commercial free, all the songs and albums in their catalog. For $10 per month you can stream music from these sites to your mobile smartphone. These music streaming sites also have free ad-supported options as well. See my article, The Pros and Cons of Streaming Music vs. Downloading MP3s for more about this option.

So what is your view of iTunes Match, iCloud and other streaming music services. Which do you prefer and why?

As such, your devices should probably be ready and well equipped to make full use of cloud services for your convenience. However, our big and slow desktops and laptops still have many unnecessary components from our long computing past. At least, that’s what Google says.

Google’s Approach with Computers

Google has decided to take a different approach with computers, right down to the hardware. As computing is moving to the cloud, where Google is a major player of cloud services with Gmail, Google Docs, and much more, computers should depend less on data stored on the machine itself but rather put all the data in the cloud.

Plus, most of a modern user’s activities is online, where a browser is used to surf around Facebook, play Flash games, and more. Rarely do they touch other applications, especially any that cannot be replicated through online cloud services (such as Microsoft Office –> Google Docs). With that logic, Google came up with the Chromebook.

The Chromebook

A Chromebook is just like a small laptop, with some key differences. It is relatively thin, and to the untrained eye doesn’t seem to have an operating system. Yes, you heard right, there’s no obvious operating system. Of course there is one, else the device wouldn’t work, but there isn’t a Start Menu or anything else that you recognize as part of your operating system. Instead, all you get is a nice login screen and a browser. That’s it.

Benefits of Chrome

As it’s Google’s device/idea, the included browser is obviously Chrome. Honestly it isn’t a bad thing, as Chrome’s userbase is growing at an exponential rate. Just look at this graph if you don’t believe me! Also, Chrome’s focus on speed and overall performance is a plus for the low powered device (which still sports a dual-core Intel Atom processor).

That’s it; it’s just you and the Chromebook with literally only Chrome on it. While it isn’t meant to replace all your computers (and I don’t see that happening anytime soon), it is a good replacement for netbooks and laptops for those who just use the Internet anyways.

Hardware and Firmware Differences

Because the devices are built for the web (cough, Chrome), Google engineers have taken a lot of effort to take away a lot of system processes that each traditional computer carries out that, in this case, are unnecessary. This includes checking for devices to see which one to boot from and so on. Instead, all these checks are taken out so that the device is ready to log you in after just 8 seconds of booting. And the device is also supposed to wake up instantly.

The Samsung models of the Chromebook get around 8.5 hours of battery life, which should be enough to get you through the day.

Go Worry-Free with Automatized Updates

Also in line with this simplistic approach, Google makes sure that any behind-the-scenes jobs such as updates and corruption protection are taken care of automatically and transparently. Since everything a user does on a Chromebook is stored online, Google emphasizes the ease of simply using a different device (whether Chromebook or not) to get back to the data you’ve always had in front of you in case your Chromebook breaks, gets stolen, or worse.

Pricing and Alternatives

You can see the speed of the Chromebook in the video below, which almost instantly makes me want to go get one, but sadly I don’t have $430 to spend on a Wi-Fi only model just yet (or $500 for a 3G model where you only get 100MB/month for free for two years).

However, I’m doing some research where it may be possible to install the operating system that is on Chromebooks onto your own laptop or netbook, but I need to find out more first. A safer, sure-fire way to get a similar experience is to install JoliOS, which happens to be installed on the other computer used in the comparison video below.

Conclusion

There isn’t much else to say about these little devices, as Google wanted to make them as simple as possible with the “Boot and Go” approach. They seem to be a nice, practical tool for the average user once they get to understand that there are online versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. While this isn’t the perfect device for everyone, it can still be helpful for plenty.

What do you think about Chromebooks? Will they eventually become a tool that everyone can use for anything? Let us know in the comments!

But now those days are getting behind us. Apple has made it possible to walk into an Apple Store, purchase a device and have it up and running by the time you walk out. If you are an existing iOS user, you only have to connect one more time to make the wireless iCloud connection. Afterwards, your eyes may get watery when you open iTunes and see your iOS device(s) connected without wires. But hold on, if you haven’t set things up, there are some things you need to know.

iCloud Requirements

First off, to use iCloud, you will need to have a free MobileMe account. If you’re an existing iOS owner, you probably already have such an account, but if you don’t, you will be asked to set it up when you try to add iCloud to your system.

So now connect your iOS device to iTunes and complete the iOS 5 update. As usual, make sure existing content on the device is backed up by iTunes. After the update is completed, you need to click on the Info menu for your device.

If you plan on syncing your Address Book and iCal Calendar data using iCloud, you will want to uncheck the two sync buttons on that page.

Next, on the Summary page, click either “Back up to iCloud” or “Back up to this computer.” If you want to back up the content of your device to your iCloud device, remember that you only get 5GB of free storage, so depending upon how much content you have on your device, that might not be a good idea. On the other hand, backing up to iCloud means having another place to secure your data. So for the average user, backing up to iCloud should be okay.

If you are an existing MobileMe user, you might have more storage space, that is until Apple closes out all those accounts in June of next year.

Other Options

Notice also you have other options before you apply the iCloud setup. You will want to of course check “Sync with this iPad over Wi-Fi” and probably all the other boxes under that.

In managing your music, you will need to go to the Music section and click “Selected playlists, artists, albums, and genres” if you have a large iTunes library. Under Options, either select “Sync only checked songs and videos,” or “Manually manage music and videos,” which will prevent iTunes from trying to load your entire library onto your device.

The beauty of iCloud is that you can now add and delete songs for your devices over your Wi-Fi network connection. Unfortunately, you can’t do it over 3G. Once you have everything set the way you want it, click the Apply and Sync buttons to make your first iCloud connection.

After your data is restored to your device and it’s restarted, you should be invited to go through the process of setting up iCloud. But if some reason you did the upgrade and skipped this process, you can still go back and set it up using the following directions.

Setting Up An iOS Device

If you need to set up iCloud on your iOS 5 updated device, open the Settings app and tap on iCloud. Add your account and enable all the items you want to sync via iCloud. Do the same for your Mac or PC if you have data you want to sync from there (System Preference > iCloud.)

Enable the data that you want to upload to iCloud and sync between your computer and iOS device(s). In order to use Photo Stream, you will need to enable it also in iPhoto and/or Apple’s Aperture. Likewise, Documents & Data is for use with Apple’s iOS and Mac iWorks apps—Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.

If you scroll down on the iCloud menu and tap Storage and Backup, you will get that described information, as well as an invitation to purchase additional storage.

You can and should enable iCloud Backup, which means the data on your device will back up to your computer or to iCloud your camera roll, accounts, documents, and settings when the device is plugged, locked, and connected to Wi-Fi. Notice also, you can manually “Back Up Now” if you need to quickly push data to iCloud and other devices.

Once the backup is complete, you can tap Manage Storage to double-check that all the items are now backed up in iCloud.

Using iCloud

As stated above, iCloud synchronization works automatically, but you can also go into say iTunes on your computer and manually add songs or apps to your device(s) wirelessly. In my experience, however, the process of re-adding a single app on your Mac to a selected device is a slower process than simply going back into the App Store and locating an app you’re previously purchased and re-downloading it from there.

If you want to access your Mail, contacts, and calendar data online, simply go to iCloud and sign in using your iCloud/MobileMe username and password. You also go there to use the Find My iPhone, and to upload, download, and synchronize your iWork documents.

Sadly, in order to sync iWork documents with iCloud, you have to upload documents to your online account (click on the iWork icon, and then click on the gear button on the upper-right of the page to upload documents to iCloud.) You can’t upload documents to your account from within iWork applications.

If you’ve been using iWork, you will have to switch to iCloud if you want documents to automatically sync to all your iCloud supported devices.

Also, while we’re on the subject, if you’re a heavy iPhone camera user, you may or may not like the Photo Stream feature. It’s great that it automatically uploads all your iPhone photos to your corresponding devices and to your iPhoto/Aperture library.

But though it keeps those photos in your iCloud account for 30 days, it’s almost impossible to delete them from iCloud. You can turn off Photo Stream on your device to keep it from uploading images to iCloud, but it seems that images remain in iCloud until after 30 days.

There’s a lot more to iCloud, but hopefully this article has given you enough to get started. Let us know about your experiences using iCloud.

As Apple explains it, iCloud is a service “which stores your music, photos, perhaps, calendars, and documents and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices.” The service is free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users, and provides up to 5GB of free storage. This MUO article, What iCloud IsAnd Why It Changes Everything, explains in more detail the pros and cons of the service.

If you use one or more output devices you will definitely want to sign up for an iCloud account. However if you are a current MobileMe user you will need to move your MobileMe account over to the iCloud service. While Apple has made the transition relatively easy, there are a few things you need to know.

System Requirements

Before you move your MobileMe account you will need to have your Apple devices upgraded to iOS 5 and OS X Lion. A computer for example not upgraded to Lion will not be able to take full advantage of the iCloud services. See more about the limitations here.

MobileMe Services

If you try to sign in or create an iCloud account on one of your mobile devices, you will be instructed to first move your MobileMe content over to iCloud. This means you can move your MobileMe Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Safari Bookmarks, Fine My iPhone, in Back to My Mac to your new iCloud account.

What you won’t be able move to iCloud are your iWeb websites, existing photo galleries, and iDisk content. This is unfortunate for MobileMe members who have developed and published iWeb sites and photo galleries over the last several years. Apple says you will have until June 30, 2012 to move your content to another server or lose it altogether.

Apple also says that any of your publicly shared iCal calendars will be unpublished in the transition. You will need to share those public calendars again after moving to iCloud.

Additionally, other MobileMe features including Mac Dashboard Widgets, Dock Items, Teachings, References, Mail Accounts, Rules, Signatures, and Smart Mailboxes will not be synched after moving to iCloud.

Start here to move your MobileMe account to iCloud.

Why Apple Made the Move

Because iCloud is an Internet service that automatically pushes your designated content between all your supporting devices, it is clearly better than the limitations found in MobileMe. I have been a long time user of MobileMe and have never experienced major problems with the service. However, the yearly $99 subscription fee seemed excessive for the services MobileMe offered.

Except for iWeb Internet hosting, you could easily find similar MobileMe-like features and services for free on Internet. For example, MobileMe iDisk storage is light-years behind cloud services like Dropbox, which offers 2GB of free service and has much better third-party support and integration with cross-platform applications.

Many MobileMe users probably have found the Gallery feature very useful because it integrated with iLife applications, including iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. This integration made it very easy to upload photos and homemade movies to well-designed MobileMe Galleries. Well, though the MobileMe Gallery feature is no more, Apple has already updated at least one of its iLife applications, iPhoto, for iCloud support.

iCloud users will now be able to use services like iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, and automatic download and purchase of apps and books from iTunes Store. So basically all your designated data will be synced between all your devices–including documents you create in the iWork suite of applications (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers.) You will no longer need to manually add data to say iDisk in order to download them to other devices.

In the next several weeks, we’ll get to see how just how well iCloud works in everyday use. Drop us a comment and let us know how the transition is working for you.

They also added contact syncing with Google and Linkedin. Any changes that happen on one account will happen across the board, making it easier manage your contacts wherever you are. In addition, they have also added syncing documents with Google docs. Anything you sync locally with the Google docs folder will sync to your Google docs account, and vise-versa.

Fiabee already had an app for Google Chrome and Android, and now they have added an app for Windows users. If the browser-based Chrome solution doesn’t meet your needs then this Windows app is just what you are looking for.

Overall, Fiabee is looking like a pretty solid competitor in the cloud market, and with it being free for now, there is no reason not to give it a shot.

Source: TheNextWeb
Image Source: ShutterStock