The Era of the Hard Drive in the Sky has Begun!

Yesterday, Google announced Google Drive, a cloud storage system that is among the most anticipated features of any software system, ever. Industry analysts, pundits and gadflies have been predicting the eventuality of this capability for years. In it's initial launch incarnation, Google drive is simple to install and easy to use, and as far as I'm concerned, totally lives up to the expectations built-up around it! Out of the gate, anyone who signs up gets 5GB of online storage for free. Upgrade to 20gb, 100gb or even a terabyte for very affordable incremental fees. It makes storing files to the cloud and syncing them among multiple devices seamless (PCs, Macintosh and Android Smartphones today, Apple iOS and other OS/devices later). Google Drive acts just like another drive on Windows or the Mac. You can copy or move files to it, and even create new files and folders in it. I installed it on my Macintosh first, and when I logged in, I just saw all my Google Docs files in a native OS window on my MacBook Air. It could not have been simpler.

The timing of the Google announcement may have been planned to steal the thunder of a Microsoft announcement only two days earlier-- of a similar solution, the new version of SkyDrive, which gives MSFT a competitive offering in the cloud storage arena. Notable in the announcement are new storage applications, new support for devices running Mac OS X Lion and iOS, as well as support for Windows phones. SkyDrive automatically synchronizes the devices to which it is connected. Files and folders are organized in SkyDrive in the same manner to which we've all become accustomed on our local devices.

While Google and Microsoft are well-known as rivals to one another, they are both equally wary of startups who might come along and eat their lunch. In this case, those companies are Dropbox and to a lesser extent Box (formerly box.net). Dropbox was founded in 2007, and has a good head start on both of the (in the case of MSFT relatively) new competitors. Dropbox has more than 25 million people using the service, which works on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, as well as with mobile apps on iPhone, Android and Blackberry. Drew Houston, Dropbox's Co-Founder and CEO, upon hearing the announcement of Google Drive, tweeted, "In other news, @Dropbox is launching a search engine." I'm not sure if this response is hubris or real fear. Prior to the announcement, Dropbox's private company valuation was speculated to be about $4 Billion. It remains to be seen if it can maintain that sky high valuation in light of the fact that two of the biggest tech companies in the world just came out with respective "features" that come close to duplicating Dropbox's entire business. That is sort of the key: for MSFT and Google, this is a feature among many thousands of other features, not the whole company or even the most important part. On the flip side, though, Dropbox has been expecting this kind of competition for a long, long time. Now its here and it is formidable. For example, Google Drive's pricing is roughly 1/4 of Dropbox's pricing today. That could dramatically change the game, in terms of acquisition of customers for Google, and loss of revenue for Dropbox. Furthermore, the integration between Google Drive and Google Apps, though a bit minimalistic today, is already very useful for companies like my own who have been using Google Apps almost exclusively for the last couple of years.

For consumers of this technology, it's going to be exciting to watch this competition between industry giants. In addition to simple storage and backup in the cloud, these services offer great collaboration and sharing possibilities-- both intracompany and between companies. It's hard to believe that in this day and age high-tech companies would still be using technologies like FTP to share files, but they are. Replacing such primitive services with these new technologies is good for everyone-- the creator, the user, the printer, the IT guys, everyone. With the large files we consume daily in the graphic arts industry, these services offer a really affordable and easy to use alternative to old fashioned, error-prone methods that our customers don't want to understand and shouldn't have to!

iPad is... Printing (via AirPrint)

I must say I was pretty blown away when I first saw the Apple "iPad is Amazing" commercial, although since I've seen it about 1,000 times now, I find the music a little annoying. What impressed me about it initially is the fact that it starts out with an "iPad is..." premise, and the first thing it proclaims the iPad to be is, printing! I never doubted that Apple knew the lack of printing was a big gap at launch, but it's still nice to see them promoting it in a big way in a major TV commercial that has now been seen by millions and millions of people. And putting it before the other "amazing" things about the iPad, in fact, is kind of amazing. If you haven't seen the commercial, check it out on YouTube, here.

So let's talk for a moment about what makes this possible on the iPad, which is the technology called AirPrint, requiring Apple IOS 4.2 or later, and an HP ePrint-compatible printer. Today, AirPrint itself only works with HP printers that support ePrint (more on this later.)

According to HP, ePrint evolved from CloudPrint, an innovative technology created by HP Labs, the company's central research and development group. Apple AirPrint on an IOS 4.2 and later device (like an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) finds printers on WiFi networks and then allows printing text, photos and graphics to them without the need to install drivers or special software.

iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users running IOS 4.2 and later will find a new print function within apps on their device. They can simply tap the "action" icon, then tap the "Print" button, configure printing options, then tap "Print".

A printer must be specifically ePrint enabled. Printing to a device attached to another computer is not possible with AirPrint. There are now several HP printers that support ePrint, and HP maintains a growing list of such devices. The latest one to catch my eye at this writing is the Laserjet Pro CM1415FNW, which is an amazing color laser desktop MFP, at a very attractive price, with an incredible feature set. I believe this is the first Laserjet to support ePrint, the other printers being inkjets. Get the datasheet here.