I remember a few months ago, when the Ubuntu One service was first announced by Cannonical. Many were doubtful of its utility or commercial reliability. At that time, you had two options : the free (as in free beer) one giving you 2Gb of online storage, and the paid one giving 10Gb for 10 US.$ / month. The offering consisted of a “simple” synchronisation service between a local Ubuntu One folder, possibly on many computers, and the online storage (the cloud) along with a file sharing option.
It is true at that time, both functionalities and offerings weren’t “that” appealing to me. But I instantly saw Ubuntu One in the scope of another cloud service, provided by Apple : MobileMe. Say what you want, but the basic features of MobileMe are useful to me, and I really wished Ubuntu One would go somewhere close to providing such services. The good news is… it’s gonna.
With the arrival of Karmic Koala (in beta from this day on), the Ubuntu One client will be included in the default installation. And to promote the service, I may now describe what’s new.
First off, the offerings are changing. The free account remains the same, but the paid account now gives you 50Gb of storage for 10 US.$ / month. Whether it’s cheap or not I leave that to you.
Tomboy notes syncing. This is the most appealing feature to me, as I am a long time user of Tomboy, and I wished there was an equivalent (of working port) for my Windows computer (I now use version 1.0.0 of Tomboy on Windows and it works flawlessly… and even seem possible to sync with Ubuntu One) or my Mac. Once you enable it, your notes will be synced with Ubuntu One and your Ubuntu computers. Just awesome.
Contacts syncing. Within Evolution, it is now possible to sync your contacts between multiple computer. With this new feature, I am doubtful. I use a Gmail account for emailing and even though I like Evolution (seriously, I do), I’ll keep on using my Gmail account as it is currently the best way for me to have my mail and contacts synced on many computers, but also available in a clean and effective webmail.
Bookmarks syncing. With a little help from the bindwood package, you can have your bookmarks synced across your computers through Ubuntu One. Pretty nice.
Another new feature is added to Ubuntu One : CouchDB database service. A powerful database solution that is more aimed at skilled hackers.
All in all, I am very pleased by Ubuntu One and my free account. I’ll definetly use the file sharing, Tomboy and bookmarks syncing features. But will I apply for a 50Gb plan? My current answer will be : not yet. If in the future, and it seems to be the way for the next Ubuntu named Lucid Lynx, it should be possible to share in a graphical way items like pictures. And for that, I am ready to pay for massive online storage. Until then, I’ll enjoy Ubuntu One on my good looking Koala.
