You've likely heard about Ubuntu One by now - we've mentioned it a couple times here on Download Squad, and it's now making regular appearances on Karmic Koala beta desktops everywhere.

Canonical made it clear from the get-go that Ubuntu 9.10 was going to pack plenty of cloud functionality for both desktops and servers. One piece of that puzzle is CouchDB, which developer Elliot Murphy was overjoyed to announce has slipped in under the wire to beat the Karmic code freeze.

In his exuberance, he made the following statement:

"...and by the time Ubuntu 9.10 is released on October 29th every single Ubuntu user will have an address book stored in CouchDB that replicates with one.ubuntu.com, and Tomboy notes that are replicated via a web API at the application but then stored in CouchDB and carried along in the CouchDB replication that we have set up."

What Elliot meant, unfortunately, was that every Ubuntu user can -- not will -- have their data replicate. That tiny slip-up touched off a bit of crapstorm, with users at LWN reacting strongly to the implication that their data would be piped to Ubuntu's servers. Murphy later added a revised comment to the thread at LWN apologizing for the confusion.

Moral of the story: be extra careful when talking about private user data and cloud storage -- seems like it might still be a bit of a touchy subject.

Dropbox, the über-slick cloud storage and backup app, now has an iPhone version. You can use the iPhone app to get to your Dropbox on the go, sync media files from your phone to your Dropbox, and share links. You'll need a free Dropbox account - which comes with 2 gigs of storage space - to use the iPhone app, but you can sign up directly from your iPhone.

The iPhone app works with Dropbox's photo gallery feature, so it's easy to upload and view photos on the go. You can also download any of your stored files that you can view on an iPhone, which strikes me as pretty darn brilliant: now, instead of just using Dropbox to back up your computer, you can use it to back up all the media on your phone, too.

If you're away from a computer and your iPhone's music and photos get wiped, they'll still be safely waiting for you in your Dropbox.

Update: Although you can obviously store music (and anything else) on your Dropbox account, there's not actually a way to sync music to your iPhone via Dropbox. Oops. Photos and videos definitely work, though.

The federal government -- alongside everyone else with web access and a pulse -- seems to have taken a sudden interest in adopting cloud computing technologies. Late yesterday saw the launch of Apps.Gov, an internet portal built to allow government organizations quick and painless access to purchasing cloud services for their operations.

Partnering with companies like Google, VMware, and Salesforce.com, Apps.Gov aims to provide government agencies a streamlined method of purchasing, provisioning, and maintaining cloud-based applications. This is achieved in part by the fact that the applications featured on Apps.Gov have already gone through the federal examinations necessary to allow for procurement, saving agencies time and duplicate effort.

Apps.Gov is starting out small and will expand as they collect feedback and usage metrics; however, the Feds are looking at a very tall goal of reducing the number of taxpayer dollars required to operate the various IT departments that keep the government running.

[via ZDNet]

Before I get started, yes, I do realize that this is not Engadget. However, TonidoPlug is a bit of a different situation for us. It's an excellent example of a software product making the jump to hardware -- and doing it well.

In case you missed the earlier posts, I took a look at the Tonido beta a while back. Anyone who is leery about offering up confidential documents and media files to the Cloud Gods, Tonido is for you. If you can read and follow directions and spare some of your valuable time to configure the suite, it's a simple, secure, and effective way to rock a cloud setup without giving up control and complete privacy.

Here's a quick recap of what Tonido provides:

• File sharing
• Photo gallery
• MP3 streaming with playlist support
• Thots, a simple blogging platform
• A collaborative workspace with calendar and task management

As for the plug itself, it utilizes Marvell's Sheevaplug base running the 1.2Ghz Foreceon processor with 512Mb of DDR2 memory and 512Mb of flash storage onboard. Ubuntu 9.04 provides the embedded software muscle and leaves plenty of room for expansion.

Here's an idea I wish I had thought of first: instead of backing up files from your PC to the "cloud" of some online storage service, create a way to back up data from cloud to another. Gladinet's already doing it (for Google Docs users, anyway). With the latest version of Gladinet, you can back up your Google Docs data to Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Box.net and more. The backup process can also be automated, so it'll take place behind the scenes, with no work required on the user's part.

Sure, backing up Google Docs might not be such a big deal, but the principle is solid. Arguably, the toughest thing about selling new users on the cloud is convincing them that their data will be safe when it's not stored on a device they can see. The extra security of being able to back up crucial data to multiple systems, in case one provider has an outage, makes the cloud look a heck of a lot more reassuring to the unconverted. For now, though, it's just a good way to back up your documents.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

First, Tonido let you set up your own, private cloud. It's been an excellent fit at the office, providing plenty of useful collaboration features at no cost and with very little learning curve for our staff.

Now, CodeLathe has rolled out a new plug-in feature which allows your Tonido server to act as an OpenID provider. Instead of relying on someone else's server, just activate the Tonido service and you can being using yourname.tonidoid.com:10001 instead.

As they describe it in the official blog post, "Tonido OpenID is unique in the sense that it is a truly a decentralized and private OpenID provider. What it means is that Tonido OpenID does not use any third party server to manage your identity." To install, just head to your Tonido admin panel and open the apps page.

On to the hardware: TonidoPlug is similar to Pogoplug, which allows you to share your files via the internet. TonidoPlug goes a step further, offering all the core Tonido functions: Photos, Jukebox, Webshare, Workspace, Thots (blog), Explorer, Torrent and Search.

The Plug runs on an embedded Ubuntu Jaunty base, and retails for $99USD. That's not too shabby for a device which adds a ton of functionality to your existing USB hard drive.

Today, Mozilla Weave took another step forward. The browser synchronization add-on is now at version 0.6 and better than ever.

Apart from the old Weave sync kung fu - bookmarks, history, and passwords - the newest version can now keep your Personas up to date across multiple machines. Performance has gotten another boost, and there's a new about:weave page that allows for easier management of your preferences and Weave account.

[update] The first-time sync also now includes the option to specify which direction you want to sync. That's a welcome change, since it means no more deafult Firefox bookmarks sneaking into my Weave profile in the cloud.

Need to sync files across machines? Need to access those files on your mobile devices? SugarSync to the rescue. There are currently SugarSync clients for WinMo, BlackBerry, iPhone, Mac and Windows, and starting today, Android phones (Android netbooks too, if they ever appear).

The apps are free, but you pay for storage, starting at $4.99 a month. You can try it free for 30 days, or keep it free with a mere 2GB of storage. You get 30GB for the $4.99 price. SugarSync hasn't yet replaced my current favorite, DropBox, but in light of Apple's iDisk app release, it seems there are more options for syncing files than ever. Here's to choice!

Syncplicity, an easy-to-use file syncing service similar to Dropbox or Sugarsync, is recalling its Mac beta version for more work. The beta will end for current users on July 31st. To their credit, the Syncplicity team was running a real beta, and the point of a beta is to identify problems that real users have with your software in the wild. Unfortunately, in this case, there were so many problems that it's going to take a complete rewrite to fix them.

This move isn't going to affect Windows users of Syncplicity, and the company is offering refunds to current subscribers who were running the Mac beta. There won't even be a timeline for the relaunch of Syncplicity for Mac until early next year, so it would be smart to start investigating competing services if you've been relying on it.

[via Just Another Mobile Monday]

Drop.io is known for having one of the best, most simple file storage interfaces out there. They've already expanded into file sending (usend.io) and tweeting (tweet.io), and music playlists are the next thing on the hit list. Enter playlist.io. It gives you 102mb of space to upload audio files into a playlist that you can play or redownload from anywhere.

Once your music is uploaded, you can customize the look of your playlist, or subscribe to it in RSS. Possibly the coolest feature is Dropcast, which lets you subscribe to your playlist as a podcast in iTunes. Forget turning Playlist.io into the next Megaupload or Rapidshare, though. It's not searchable, and they have a one-click takedown policy.

We've covered Box.net before -- the file storage site with collaborative tools and a really great iPhone app -- today the company has launched a redesigned site and even more tools to make online collaboration easier and more effective.

Last year, Box.net added the ability to let users invite other collaborators to view or edit documents. Coupled with Box.net's OpenBox platform, you have a really slick light content management system that allows you to store, share, and group edit documents, spreadsheets, images and more. Today, even more features have been added to aid in project and team management.

Some of the highlights:

• Profile pages for each user that can be customized to show their role in the current project and their contact information and recent project activity
• Discussions that can take place across your shared workspace. You can also comment on individual files
• Bookmarks -- it sounds simple, but it's actually pretty cool because you can share a URL and the rest of the group can then comment on it and its findings.
• Updates - you can see updates across all your various projects to see what the newest discussions, edits and uploads are, all from one page.

Many users have the same problem when it comes to configuring a backup application: they forget to add one important file or folder to the job. Backblaze - a new online backup service - thinks they have a solution to the problem.

Unlike most applications where items to be backed up must be manually added by the user, Backblaze works by automatically excluding the junk it knows you don't really want to back up anyway. Gleb from the Backblaze team explained it like this:

"The reason we took this approach was that most users would get stuck at the "pick what files and folders to backup" step. They either didn't know how to navigate the file system (try finding your PST file), or their files were not organized, or they just didn't have time."
By default it won't back up operating system, application, or temp files, and you can add any other exclusions you like via the settings screen.

Now, if you're like me and confined to 30kbps upload your initial backup is going to take a while - four days in my case. Once it's done, Backblaze keeps things efficiently in synch by performing differential backups. Your data is encrypted prior to uploading, transmitted securely via HTTPS, and users that demand added security can add their own private key.

Tag clouds are a great way to visualize content. Sites like Flickr, del.icio.us as well as a little blog called Download Squad use clouds. The larger the word, the more popular it is compared to the rest.

Now what if you wanted a cloud of your very own? One way to go about this is to enlist the help of Wordle. Put in a bunch of words or enter your del.icio.us user name and based on the information you've provided Wordle will generate a cloud for you.

The clouds generated by Wordle are for display purposes only. You won't be able to click on a word and have it go to a particular site. It's just mainly for fun. And you got to admit, a bunch of words all mashed together looks rather interesting.

So you want to start your own blog. One of the first things you'll have to do is decide which blogging application you want to use. There are a ton of options, ranging from the incredibly simple (LiveJournal), to the infinitely customizable (WordPress). But one of the easiest blogging clients around is Google's Blogger.

Blogger is not as easy to customize as WordPress, but Blogger's simplicity also makes the process of setting up a blog a lot less daunting. You can literally start blogging within minutes of signing up for a Blogger account. Google will also host your blog for free, which means you don't need to pay for domain registration or web hosting. WordPress does also offer free hosting, but WordPress doesn't allow free account holders to include advertising. Blogger does. So if you have dreams of quitting your day job, but don't want to pay a few bucks a month for web hosting, Blogger provides a good way to test the waters.

But while Google offers a handful of widgets for customizing your blog, if you really want to make your web site your own, you're going to have to get your hands dirty editing your blog template and adding some HTML and JavaScript code. Fortunately, you don't have to know much about HTML or CSS to implement the tweaks in this guide. As long as you're handy with the copy and paste keys, you should be all set. So let's get started.