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LogMeIn uncloaks cloud storage bypass

'Cubby' offers peer-to-peer syncing through, but not always on, a cloud

By now you know the prosumer cloud storage schtick: an agent on your device monitors a designated folder and copies everything in it to the cloud, from where any other device running the service's agent and logged in with the same account sucks down that file so it is available locally.

The likes of DropBox, Google, Microsoft, SugarSync and Box.net are all in this game and try to differentiate themslves with the quantity of free storage on offer and pricing for capacity beyond the freemium service. The term “DropBox for the enterprise” is also being bandied about a bit of late, to denote solutions that offer more security and manageability than is offered by the consumer-grade services initially offered by those mentioned above.

Which raises the question of just why LogMeIn, most-often characterised as a remote access vendor, has just uncloaked its consumer-grade cloud storage Cubby?

The answer lies in its ability to synch peer-to-peer instead of always depositing data in a cloud. Run the Cubby app on more than one device and you can instruct the service to shuttle files between them, all without counting towards the 5GB of free cloud storage capacity the company offers. The catch is that this service, dubbed DirectSync, is only available to those who stump up the $US6.99 required for a paid account, which yields 100GB of space.

Ironically, SugarSync started with this idea back in about 2006, a time when Gmail's big inbox still raised some eyebrows. Cubby tries to go a little further by also offering versioning, to enable access to iterations of documents as they evolve. Beyond that there's also the usual share-by-URL feature, the ability to designate more than one folder as the source of documents to be uploaded and the chance to apply passwords to individual foldes stored in the service.

Those inclined to promote the service on LogMeIn's behalf will be rewarded with up to 25GB of cloudy capacity, gratis, as each referral earns extra capacity. Cubby says that's more than DropBox and others will give away for pimping their services.

Cubby clients are available for Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android. ®

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