As part of their broad push for world domination, Google have invaded the land of online forms. The software maker Adobe offers a form solution — constructed in Acrobat, emailed out, then the data gathered via an Adobe server. The Google alternative is much simpler. Users log in to Google Documents, select ‘Create New Form’, choose an appropriate template, then start creating the questions, multiple choices, lists, etc that make up your desired form. Forms also offers logic branching, where the form recipient can jump sections of the form — eg. “if you have completed course A already, go to page 2″. The finalised form can then be emailed directly to your target audience. They fill out the form and the resultant data is sent to a spreadsheet setup in Google Docs. All very simple and very effective. So if you need to gather information from clients, wish to use a form as a sales tool or want to poll your own staff, Google Forms is a compelling offering — oh, and it is free.

After four months of using DropBox as our primary data storage channel, its viability is no longer in any doubt. 100Gb of storage space is beginning to seem a little restrictive, but with that caveat, the service works as advertised, and in an unobtrusive, reliable fashion. If Australian bandwidth was better, the whole concept would be pretty much perfect. We have DropBox linked to four desktop PCs in two locations. The need to keep track of file synchronisation and make multiple backups in both locations has vanished. At the end of each day, we save the working file folder to a backup USB powered hard drive. That, plus four identical copies of the data (one on each workstation) and the copy on the DropBox server (plus  DVD burn backups) makes the data seem quite secure. A skim of the DropBox forums hint at unmet demand for storage solutions larger than 100Gb, so hopefully additional packages will be rolled out soon.

Users of Google documents (or those seeking an alternative to Microsoft packages) will be interested to note the popular Google service now allows for any file type at all to be uploaded. This transforms Google docs into a de facto online hard drive.  Google Viewer will be able to open many, though not all of the common file types people might wish to upload. Users get 1Gb of space for free, then purchase additional memory at 25c per Gigabyte.  Google is working hard to encourage third party software developers to come up with services that add value to the basic Docs product.

As people move more of their information onto the cloud and rely on servers in faraway lands, backups have become an issue. You may elect to occasionally download your online records to your own computer, but if you use a large number of cloud services, the process of backing them all up will soon become time consuming. As usual in such cases of Internet need, geeks have figured out a way to monetise this new service niche. Backupify (a rather unlovely business name) offers a one-stop backup service for all of your cloud services, including GMail, Twitter, Basecamp, Flickr and more. If you are comfortable with their pricing, then your only worry is handing all that potentially personal information on to a third party, whatever their strict privacy policies.

Massive, extremely cheap online storage capacity and increased bandwidth are currently enabling a whole slew of new Internet businesses to carve out fresh niches. It’s like the Cambrian evolutionary ‘explosion’, this time with silicon-germanium rather than carbon. On the subject of carbon, Carbonite is one of those interesting new cloud-based businesses. Users install a small program, indicate which folders they want backed up and then sit back while their data wafts into the ether, settling in the (apparently) secure servers of said company. The program only runs while your machine is idle and only updates changed files. If something at your end eventually goes wrong, the data retrieval process is very simple.

Possible worries include the security of private data, and the rights of those from non-US jurisdictions if something did go awry. Users might also want to limit the amount they back up if their up/down data limits are fairly small. A graphic designer, for example, might balk at tagging folders with multi-hundred megabyte image files.

Assuming Carbonite is stable and here for the long term, approximately AUD$65 per year for unlimited backup seems very reasonable.

If, like me, you spend a lot of time in the cloud, you may occasionally worry about your (over?) reliance on Google’s many cloud products. You may have bookmarks set in Chrome, appointments recorded in Calendar, emails stored at Gmail, documents saved at Documents, blog posts at Blogger and so on. With the exception of fairly rare gmail outages, Google’s service provision and data security performance has been pretty reasonable, But still, but still…

A Google engineering team has set up a site called Data Liberation, aimed at providing users with clear and easy information on how to ‘escape’ from each of the Google services, taking their precious data with them. The stated (and admirable) principle behind this site is: “users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products”.

Google may be about to take over the world, but in this instance at least, they are doing so with a modicum of politeness.

There are plenty of ways of storing files online and accessing them remotely. Some come via email services, or image sharing sites. Other users configure their own server, use space on their isp’s server, or access their work server remotely. For sheer simplicity and ease of use, however, DropBox stands out.  After a very straightforward installation process (for Mac or PC) a DropBox folder appears in your drive tree (you get to choose where). The folder can be managed like any other folder on your computer: dragging files in, creating new folders, opening files and so on. The folder can be a little sluggish with larger files, which is not surprising — it is online. The folder can be shared with others, or opened by yourself from any other location. No more mucking around with ftp or servers, or signing up with another service just to use their online storage. Storage up to 2Gb is free, with paid accounts kicking in after that.

Planning documents such as magazines, handbooks and newsletters can be daunting. Many editors use a form of flat plan to map out the document, showing how one page relates to another, allocating advertising space and the flow of articles.  Flat plans can be set out in programs such as Word, Excel and even InDesign.

A new option has recently become available — the online flat plan. Online flat plans enable a large number of people to access the same file whatever their location, and to quickly map the building blocks of a long document. These document planning solutions are a prime example of web 2.0 at its best — innovative, customisable, updateable and easy to use. Intelligent Flat Plan charges on a per page basis, and the slightly less fully featured Blink Plan charges a monthly rate.

Many Internet Service Providers place a fairly low limit on the size of email attachments they will allow. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) offers an alternative for moving large files, but the receiver needs to have their server configured to receive such files. Other options include uploading files to your own website (if such you possess) and emailing the file location to the intended recipient.  However, if you only need to send large files occasionally, and to a range of people, YouSendIt is a far simpler solution.

At this stage the ‘Lite’ level of service is free. The user simply joins at www.yousendit.com, enters the recipient’s email and a brief message, locates the file (or zipped collection of files) to be sent and presses the “Send It” button. The receiver soon receives an email inviting her to download the waiting file — a one-click process. YouSendit offers pay-per-use services also, featuring document tracking, online storage facilities and the ability to send even larger files.  YouSendIt now offers plugins for use within Outlook, Acrobat, Photoshop and others, so users can send files directly from their native application.

So far, YouSendIt is all upside. Perhaps email as a medium will eventually adapt to the new demands placed upon it, but until then YouSendIt is an elegant stop-gap.