SugarSync, ZumoDrive, Dropbox, and HomePipe are three apps that let you access files from your computer on your mobile phone. I mean, that’s not all they do. They actually let you synchronize files between computers, and store some of your files on the web — making it easy to access documents, music, photos, videos, or other files from virtually any computer with a web browser. But in the last day or so, we’ve seen updates from all three companies making it easier to do those things with an Android phone.
HomePipe
HomePipe launched its Android app this morning. It lets users access files on their home network on their phones using a 3G or WiFi connection.
You can run HomePipe on any Windows or Mac computer to stream your files over the internet to your phone. HomePipe offers unlimited storage — because files are actually streaming from your home network, not a cloud-based server. Unfortunately, this means that if you turn off your computer, you won’t be able to access your files remotely.
HomePipe for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. There’s also a free app (
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/homepipe-free/id358195485?mt=8) for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. You can download the PC server software from HomePipe.net (
http://www.homepipe.net/).
ZumoDrive
I covered ZumoDrive back in March when the company launched the first versions of its mobile app for Android and WebOS. The ZumoDrive service lets you synchronize files from your computer to the web and access them on mobile devices.
This week ZumoDrive updated its Android, WebOS, and iPhone apps to add support for uploading and downloading pictures and videos from your phone. You can also now share content from your phone.
ZumoDrive also says that media streaming has been improved on the Android and Palm clients, while the Phone app now lets you use password protection.
The ZumoDrive app is available as a free download from the Android Market, iTunes App Store, and Palm App Catalog. You can sign up for a ZumoDrive account for free and get 1GB of web storage. If you need more storage space, plans range from $3/month for 10GB to $80/month for 500GB.
Dropbox
Dropbox (
http://www.dropbox.com/) is a popular file synchronization service that lets you synchronize files and folders on your desktop with a web-based storage space. Users can store up to 2GB of data in the cloud for free, or you can upgrade to 50GB for $10/month or 100GB for $20/month.
Once your files are online, you can access them from any computer with a web browser. And last night Dropbox officially launched a client for Android — it had previously been available only to a small group of beta testers.
The Android app is free, and it lets you access all the files and folders stored in your Dropbox account.
You can also upload files from your phone — making them accessible on other computers.
Dropbox for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.
There are desktop clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.
SugarSync
The folks at SugarSync (
http://www.sugarsync.com/) launched version 3.0 of their Android app. It features a redesigned user interface, the ability to check the file upload and download status, and performance and stability improvements.
There’s also an email auto-complete feature that will make it easier to share files with contacts from your phone’s address book.
SugarSync offers a variety of pricing plans, ranging from 30GB of web based storage for $5/month or $50/year to 250GB of storage for $25/month or $250/year. You can sign up for a free trial, but there’s no ZumoDrive-like free version for folks who just don’t need that much storage space.
