Consolidated Cloud Contraptions

I got an email from AppSumo Pixelied. The main topic was their roadmap. Dawood Khan, CEO and co-founder, had some interesting bullet points:

Hey Mitchell,

I've been told Sumo-lings love transparent roadmaps.

In case you didn't know, we have our public roadmap with all the important features and updates that we will be rolling out in the next coming months.

Check out our roadmap HERE. 

Here are some of the important highlights from the roadmap:

• 3D & Realistic Mockups
• Logo Creator
• Live Collaboration with Team Members
• Custom Brand Presets
• Text & Shape Masking
• Dropbox & Drive Integration

The last one made me reply to his email:

Hi Dawood,

Now I would love to see the return of a Jolidrive-like product, especially one that would encapsulate OneDrive. I hate OneDrive ... I have business and personal accounts and can't be bothered with all of the login credentials and account-switching.

I use Microsoft (MS) products like Excel, Word and Access. MS is very heavy-handed about trying to get me to use OneDrive as the default place to store files. That kinda of infuriates me. You see, I like to store client files separately from personal files and, unless my clients initiate folder sharing on one of the cloud platforms, I do not trust 3rd-party storage to handle confidential files.

From a user standpoint, Dropbox is the easiest platform: I don't keep live work on it, but when I want to retrieve or share files, I do so within my preferred file manager (Xyplorer.) And, while Dropbox does offer to integrate with MS products, that only happens if I open the file within the Dropbox ecosystem--my sync folder or in the Dropbox web app.

Next in ease of use is Google Drive. My only complaint is that Google Docs and Google Sheets are native to Google and must be converted to MS for downloading. Other files work like Dropbox.

To be honest, I'm sure that, if I worked at it, I would realize that OneDrive is pretty similar to the other two. However, I just can't get past the unholy account credential mess. I can't even describe the frustration coherently. Essentially, it is equivalent to hurling epithets and/or the laptop.

Getting back to Jolidrive. You have to comb through the past to get a sense of what it was about. Here is one such enthusiastic article on Engadget, along with a more somber one from omg! ubuntu. The death knell is sounded on jolicloud.com, with an invitation to check out Polite.

A Zapier expert could alleviate the pain. However, integration is not as nifty as assimilation. Ask the Borg.

Having missed the point of the email, I never sent that reply, after all. I purchased Pixelied from AppSumo. Said purchase puts me on the email list (maybe I opted in, I don't remember.) Khan's use of the term "Sumo-lings" made me think the email was from AppSumo and, therefore, was a reference to a product hunt.

Something made me click on the link to the roadmap. I scratched my head in confusion (I don't use Trello). Eventually, it dawned on me that this roadmap was for the on-going development of Pixelied! Duh!

I'm posting this anyway, because I want to share my thoughts about cloud drives in general, and bemoan OneDrive in particular. If you were confused while reading this, imagine how befuddled I was when I realized my mistake. LOL

So, nobody's working on a Borg-like Consolidated Cloud Contraption...

{Rolls up sleeves}