From...

by Dan Goodin

(IDG) -- Remember the early hype about how the Internet was going to make us more connected? Students, the thinking went, would access lessons and turn in assignments from the beach; music lovers would buy their music at home instead of at the mall; and your Aunt Millie wouldn't have to pay a visit in order to share pictures of her trip to Disney World.

In reality, it never happened that way. Closed or private networks often prevent students from filing their assignments from home, remote-access technology frequently malfunctions, and incompatible operating systems and prohibitively large file sizes make transferring songs and pictures more bother than it's worth.

But rekindling the hype anew, an array of Web-based services is promising to take the hassle out of storing, transferring and managing files. All of these services act as Web-based hard drives, allowing people to store music, pictures, documents or other digital files online, so they can be accessed from almost any computer connected to the Net.

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Disk Full

On one end of the spectrum are companies like I-drive.com and X:drive, which both offer 25MB of remote disk space for free, and additional space for a charge. Similar companies include SDN Online, Driveway, FreeDrive, FreeDiskSpace and SwapDrive.com. Newcomer Netdrive.com offers 100MB of free storage and doesn't require a browser to access files.

On the other end are MagicalDesk.com, MyInternetDesktop.com, Desktop.com and MyWebOS.com, which offer much more than a blank hard drive. In addition to disk space, these sites serve up additional Web-based goodies, including e-mail, calendars, address books and other productivity software. A number of players in this soup-to-nuts category are building Web-based platforms that could run software built by independent developers, promising to break the market lock of brand-name desktop software giants.

But will any of these services actually make life easier for computer users? On-the-go students and teachers would seem to be especially receptive to the new offerings, but even this group of early adopters say the new services carry their share of headaches.

"For several years, I've tried to do everything digitally, so all of the class materials, tests and assignments are online," says Juli-Ann Gasper, a professor of corporate finance at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. At the same time, she adds, "I did not want to receive 900 e-mails with attachments." Nor did she want to use electronic drop boxes on Creighton's intranet, because the system required students to be on campus to use it.

Gasper tried I-drive, and now all 54 of her students are using the free service, which allows them to drop their assignments into class folders. From there, passwords allow only Gasper to access the papers.

Like most of the other online hard drive players, I-drive allows people to close off a portion of the space to other users ö so term papers remain private, for example ö while leaving other portions open for the syllabus and other shared information.

Still, Gasper says, I-drive has not been easy enough to use. "Right now, we're not saving any time," she says.

The chief advantage of storing files on the Web is being able to access them wherever you have an Internet connection. This is especially useful for people who use one computer at home and another at work, as well as small or medium-size businesses with multiple locations. Online drives are also more convenient for sharing files than swapping floppy disks or sending e-mail attachments and file transfers, methods that can hang up when file types and compression programs are incompatible.

When Vi Nguyen, a Silicon Valley engineer, isn't working at Read-Rite (ironically, a supplier of parts for hard drives), she puts in time at Aid to Children Without Parents, a nonprofit with offices in San Jose, Calif., and Hue, Vietnam. Because the nonprofit could not afford a global network of its own, the group's 10 staff members used to transfer files using e-mail, a confusing process for many staffers.

Nguyen turned to X:drive, which has simplified things considerably, she says. Particularly helpful is a feature that places the X:drive icon on the Windows desktop, which links directly to X:drive.com. Nguyen says she can transfer files from her PC to the X:drive site much more quickly than with other services she has used, including eGroups.com and Internet FileZone.

Yet Nguyen notes that there's still room for improvement. "They solve about 80 percent of my problems, as far as having multiple users access the same files," she says. Problems crop up when Nguyen's colleagues try to access X:drive using older browsers, or while using Windows NT (X:drive says it's working on the operating system problem).

But the benefits of online hard drives seem to outweigh the inconveniences. For one, the services can save downloading time. People who listen to a lot of music in the MP3 format ö which frequently has unwieldy file sizes ö can drop files directly onto Web-based hard drives, thus freeing up their PCs for other tasks. People can even shut their machines off while the files are downloading. Taking the process a step further, I-drive will automatically download files from its site to a personal computer during off hours.

Package Deals

So far, the applications are mostly limited to calendars and address books, and their speed frequently leaves much to be. But for an increasing number of people who want to access Web-based e-mail and other services, the sites offer the convenience of one-stop shopping.

Nobel Coker, a senior systems analyst for a Fortune 500 entertainment company, which he prefers not to disclose, says his employer is strict about what he can do with the company's computer. So when he enrolled in the MBA program at the University of Southern California, he decided to open an account with MyInternetDesktop to handle his personal e-mail, computer files, calendar and other needs. He accesses the services from a computer at school and a computer at work. For him, it makes no sense to use an online hard drive that provides only a piece of what he's looking for.

"Why would I want to go to three different sites when I can go to one?" Coker asks. Still, he adds, given the limited selection of applications available, the benefits of MyInternetDesktop are "mostly potential right now."

Meanwhile, if the data you're storing online is mission critical, a new fee-based service, AtBackup, will automatically back up designated files. AtBackup officials say that the site's backup feature and ability to retrieve files from anywhere on the Net sets it apart from the X:drives and Desktop.coms of the world. "None of those services is able to scan your desktop and recognize when your data has changed," says Jim Till, VP of marketing for AtBackup in San Diego, which charges $99 per year for 100MB of storage space.

It's unclear whether people will flock to narrowly focused sites for storing bookmarks, music or personal files, or whether disk storage space will become just another feature that big Web sites offer. The sheer number of similar virtual disk-drive companies has all the early-warning signs of a market ripe for picking by the big portals, although none of the online hard-drive companies admit they're for sale.

The revenue models for online hard-drive companies are also unproven; they usually involve a combination of advertising, paid sponsorships, partnerships and, in the case of the Web-based software platforms, revenue sharing with application makers.

The best odds lie with companies that partner with others whose services gobble up large amounts of disk space, such as music sites and software developers. Another good bet: set-top boxes and handheld devices, which have little to no built-in storage.