WEBVTT - TechStuff Goes for a Google Drive 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:02.880 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:08.960 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:17.640 tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody, 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.080 and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.040 and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:27.120 Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland, Mr. 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:30.160 And Mrs Dursley of Number four Private Drive. We're proud 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:32.840 to say that they were perfectly normal. Thank you very much. 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.360 You know that quote was positively magical. Thank you. I 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:40.159 just joined Potter Moore, so I had to. I know, 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:45.200 I just gave it away Chucks. So today, tech stuff fans, 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:47.920 we're all gonna go on a little Google Drive. Oh cool? 0:00:47.920 --> 0:00:50.400 Are We're gonna talk about those robotic cars that don't 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.000 need drivers except you know, when they're sitting in the 0:00:53.080 --> 0:00:57.200 seat and they watched the car where you're in somebody else. No, 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.640 that's that's not what my notes are on. I was 0:01:00.640 --> 0:01:03.960 talking about Google Drive, you know, the cloud storage Google 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:09.280 Drive announced on a Well, this will be a fun podcast. 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.679 We're gonna see what our notes show. Um No, really, 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:14.280 we're gonna talk about Google Drive today. And the day 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.200 we're recording this podcast. Just in case you guys are curious, 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:19.200 I know that you'll be listening to it quite a 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:21.520 while afterwards because we record so early in advance. But 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.840 it's April seven, the day we're recording this, So it's 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:29.240 just three days after Google finally officially announced and launched 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:31.920 Google Drive. Right. It was sort of a one of 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:35.080 those closely guarded secrets like that everyone knew about, and 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:37.440 everyone knew about like the iPad for two years before 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:39.479 it was released. Right. Yeah, people have been talking about 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:42.800 Google having a cloud storage service for for a couple 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.680 of years now, so this was and even Google made 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:47.720 reference to that. But before we really get into what 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:50.200 Google Drive is, we should probably talk about what cloud 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:54.440 storage is in general and why it's important. Uh, cloud 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:57.560 storage is pretty it's a pretty simple concept. The idea 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:01.800 is that you can store data on servers in the cloud. 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.680 So you're talking about using someone else's computers to store 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.799 your information, and you can access the information over the 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.960 Internet using some sort of interface, usually web based, and 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.600 they call it the cloud, of course, because the Internet 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.960 is a nebulous group of machines and it's just sort 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.080 of out there, always changing like a cloud. So yeah, so, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.400 and and the idea being that it's also kind of 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:28.840 like a cloud in the sense that you can access 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.400 it from any machine that has that Internet capability. Right, 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:36.080 it may require a special app depending upon the type 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.480 of cloud storage. Uh, because not everything is web based. 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:42.440 There are a lot of different desktop clients that you 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.720 can have that will allow you to store information to 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:49.840 a cloud drive. So it lives on your computer's desktop 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.679 as if it were a regular file folder. Right, So 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.799 you think of your your regular hard drive folders that 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:58.359 you would go into to look at various files, like 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:00.640 you might store all your pictures in in a pictures 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:03.000 folder and all your videos and a videos folder, that 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:06.440 kind of thing. Um, a cloud storage drive might show 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:09.040 up on your desktop as if it were a regular 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:11.760 folder on your computer, but instead of living on your computer, 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:16.360 the information gets sent over the Internet to a a 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.919 remote machine and it's stored on that machine. And there 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.280 is an identifier that links that particular file to you 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:29.240 as a user, a registered user of that service. And uh, 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:31.239 in fact, when I say it lives on one machine, 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.960 that's not entirely true. Almost every cloud service, in fact, 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:39.240 every reputable cloud service out there uses redundant measures so 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.320 that the file is on several different machines in case 0:03:42.360 --> 0:03:45.920 one machine fails. I'm real sorry, I only had one 0:03:46.000 --> 0:03:49.000 machine and it went down. Yeah, that would not go 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:53.600 over so well. Uh. Jester's cloud service, Jester's cloud service. Yea, 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:56.640 Sester's never really been up on that whole. I think 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:58.520 I need to. I think I need to register that 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:04.680 domain now, Chester's clouds. We gotta hair a cumula nimbus um. 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.400 So the yeah, the idea is that obviously that you 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.960 would be able to offload storage from your native device, 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:15.760 especially if you are one of those people who has 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.120 lots of different devices and you want to be able 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:21.320 to access the same information no matter which device you're using. 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.160 Because in the old days, back before a cloud storage 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.200 a couple of years ago, yeah, not that long ago, 0:04:27.720 --> 0:04:30.000 you you only had a few different options. You could 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:35.640 save something to a physical medium, so a disk for example, 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.160 compact disc or a floppy disc way back in the day, 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:41.599 or a thumb drive something like that, and then you 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.640 could pour that over to another device, pull it up 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:47.880 from the physical medium, and then work on it that way, 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.280 save it back to the physical medium and then go 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:52.279 back and you know, it, it was a little cumbersome. 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:54.400 It also meant that you would often end up with 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:58.240 lots of duplicate copies of a particular file, and if 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:00.360 people made changes, then you had to figure all, right, 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:03.280 which one of these copies has the most recent, most 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:05.640 relevant changes, and then I have to get rid of 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:08.520 all the others or else I'm going to confuse them. All. Yeah, 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:09.960 you have to go through and you you end up 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:12.960 looking at creation dates and when things are modified. Wait, 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:17.160 that was done at nine, Okay, I can get rid 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:19.080 of that one. And it takes forever, and and it's 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.120 particularly difficult if you have more than one collaborator. Right, So, 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.440 if Chris and I were working on a document, it 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:28.280 would be frustrating for us to try and and we're 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.840 both working on copies of a document, we're both making changes, 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.880 be very frustrating to cohlate those changes and figure out 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:37.480 you know, which ones are relevant and which ones are 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.880 the most recent. Uh, and may very well be that 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.839 a change I make makes a later change that Chris 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:48.039 makes irrelevant. So the idea behind cloud storage is it's 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:50.440 not and it's not always connected, but there's a lot 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:54.640 of work around collaboration in cloud storage so that if 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:57.320 you have multiple people who need access to a particular file, 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:02.200 you are able to share that file across several instances, 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:04.799 and you might even be able to have multiple people 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:07.240 work on that file at the same time, and those 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.159 changes will be reflected more or less in real time 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:12.760 for each person. So that way, if Chris Word did 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.479 make a change to a sentence within that file, I 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:17.800 could actually see him making that more or less in 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.480 real time. This is particularly true with Google Service because 0:06:21.520 --> 0:06:25.520 Google Drive has been very tightly integrated with Google Docs. 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:28.520 In fact, it's kind of superseded Google Docs in a way. 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:33.719 But other services also offer similar features. UM And just 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.120 to clear things up my my joke about a couple 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.400 of years ago, of course that the cloud is uh 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:42.560 much older than that. We've been using variations on cloud 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:46.760 services for many years now. UM. In fact, I don't 0:06:46.800 --> 0:06:50.839 think I think it really proceeds labeling things as cloud, 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.080 which is really sort of a convenient marketing term for 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.359 for services such as these. UM it gives you it 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:01.800 when people mention the cloud. It it basically serves as 0:07:01.880 --> 0:07:05.600 a a hint to say, hey, the materials or software 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.120 is being stored on servers on the Internet, not on 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:11.679 your computer. So it's it's sort of a short marketing 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.920 shorthand for these services. But yeah, I mean we've talked 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.640 about Google Docs many times. I mean it predates the 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:22.280 beginning of our podcast, so um. And there were many 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:26.239 services using those kinds of uh, those kinds of technologies before, 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:29.080 but in recent uh, in recent years, there have been 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:34.920 several services that take advantage of cloud storage. Specifically, um, 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:40.240 not simply to store the software as a service, you know, 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.240 or or the documents that you use, say in Google Docs, um, 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:47.160 but to upload and download your own file so that 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.480 you don't have to use a physical medium. You don't 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:51.800 have to worry about losing that that flash drive you 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.600 carry in your pocket or your bag. Um, you don't 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:56.800 have to walk a disk from one place to another 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.880 or worry about it if you want to, say, work 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:03.040 on a graduate school assignment on your lunch break at work. 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:04.920 I don't know anyone who would have done that at 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:08.000 how stuff works, except maybe me a couple of years ago. 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:10.040 Or you just happen to have like a whole bunch 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.200 of really powerful magnets nearby and you don't want to 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.119 use magnetic storage on turn it, I had my flash 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:16.720 drive in my pocket when I went for the m 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:18.600 R I I was thinking, I was thinking of the 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:22.000 old old floppy disk days. I actually did lose data 0:08:22.000 --> 0:08:24.840 on a floppy disk because uh, floppy disk had a 0:08:24.880 --> 0:08:26.760 little bit of a close encounter with a magnet and 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:30.560 that was enough to ruin it. Yeah. But um, yeah, 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:35.520 I mean these these services were being marketed specifically as 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:39.080 a hey, you can store stuff here, and and um, 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.880 the services in question, many of them came from from 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.840 the little guys. We're not talking about Apple or Google 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:50.679 or Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft. These were all independent 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:54.080 vendors and they would offer and they still do offer 0:08:54.280 --> 0:08:56.840 a free tier of service for a small amount of storage, 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.439 and then you could upgrade for a certain price per 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:01.520 month you could get more storage, and for more than 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:04.400 that you get more storage. And they they basically would 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:06.360 work that out in businesses. If you really needed a 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:09.240 whole lot of cloud storage, um, you know, you could 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:11.640 do that. But gradually the big players have been getting 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.680 into the game. And that's why, uh, everybody has been 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:16.640 expecting Google to do it, because I mean, hey, if 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:21.280 anybody's got server storage and data centers, it's Google. Yeah. 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:26.240 It turns out that storage is relatively inexpensive, so very 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:28.760 very inexpensive over the last few years, right, So, so 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.000 for a business to enter into that and just purchase 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:36.640 a lot of different servers specifically to save information from 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.880 from users, Uh, it's not as big a barrier as 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:44.640 some other forms of internet based businesses. However, it does 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:46.760 mean that you have to create these systems in place 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.080 for things like security. You need to have you know, 0:09:49.240 --> 0:09:54.640 the important things for cloud computing involved security accessibility. So 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:56.960 you want to make sure that whatever your system is, 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.640 it's easy to access on multiple platforms. So that means 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:06.480 you want people to be able to access it via PC, mac, smartphone, tablet, 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:09.400 lots of different devices can connect to the Internet now, 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:12.880 so you want to be able to give your users 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.640 the freedom to be able to access the information over 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:18.760 as many of platforms as possible. You know, the more 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.800 convenient your services, the more valuable it is to the customer. 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:27.040 So so security and accessibility and uh, just that that 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.079 whole accessibility slash convenience and just the whole idea of 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.839 giving a certain tier for free so that you you 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.640 show people how valuable the services now and and we 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:44.240 should clear this up. Cloud storage is not necessarily all 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.200 about backing up your data. Although people have used it 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:52.000 for that kind of purpose, it's really more about, well, 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.760 there's certain documents or certain files that you may want 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:58.120 to have stored in the cloud because you want to 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:01.040 have easy access across multiple devices. You may want to 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:03.960 share that with other people, and it's a lot easier 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.600 to do that when it's on a web based drive 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:09.240 than it would be on your own computers. So let's 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:11.520 say that I've shot a video and I've got this 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.120 video living on my computer, emailing that video out to 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.800 all the different people I want to see it. Uh, 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.200 maybe I don't want to upload it to something like YouTube. 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:23.679 Maybe I just want to send that directly to a 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.720 few people. Well, for example, what if you were trying 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:29.120 to preview a video with the people you were working 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.439 collaborating with it on, right, exactly, you're not ready to 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:33.840 make a public yeah exactly. Yeah, you might need to 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:36.240 still do some edits. You may you may just be 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.920 looking at this with your friends and say just just 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.839 doesn't feel snappy enough. Do you have any suggestions? So 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.280 in that case, yeah, you wouldn't want to necessarily uploaded 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:47.560 to YouTube. I mean you could upload YouTube and make 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.080 it private and then send out the link. But but 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:52.560 if you just would rather skip that step and and 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:55.880 just keep it in pre production mode, UM, then a 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.480 cloud drive would be very useful. You could send out, 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.199 you could share the link to that file within your 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:03.760 cloud drive, and then other people could go to your 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.040 cloud drive and view that one particular file without having 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.160 access to anything else that's in your cloud drive. So 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.560 all they would get is access to whatever file you 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.920 permitted them access to. Now, you might be able to 0:12:17.040 --> 0:12:20.760 set some permissions on files so that they are publicly available, 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:24.480 which means that anyone who could visit your drive would 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.160 be able to see that particular file, But in most cases, 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.000 I think people just have special permissions for particular folks. 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:32.719 And then and of course you can always say that 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.640 where only you have access to it, there's no need 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.839 to you know, you're not forced to collaborate, right. So 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.839 those are the that's the basics around cloud drives. And 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.480 one of the reasons why I think cloud drives are 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.840 getting more important is that you're starting to see, right 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.360 about the time we're recording this podcast, in particular, you're 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:54.120 starting to see some some devices come out besides ones 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.160 that come from a company company that rhymes with Shmapple 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:02.600 that that don't have expand memory as a feature. So 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:04.480 so in other words, there's no slot for you to 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.520 put a memory card into. Well, we've already talked about 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.520 ultra books, um, which don't have in general, don't have 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:15.040 optical drives. You know they they save space, save energy 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.920 um by not having that. And you know where you 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:20.800 have a limited amount of storage on board. So you 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:23.600 could use something like a flash drive or a portable 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.880 drive where you have a connection, um, but you you 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.120 do need something to store files on otherwise you know 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:32.000 you're really not going to be able to create stuff. Well, 0:13:32.280 --> 0:13:36.480 although granted most ultra books probably have significantly more storage 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.120 on board than your typical at least you're free tier 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:42.440 of cloud storage out there. Oh yes, definitely. But things 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:44.840 like smartphones, I mean, here's an example. I'll give a 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.400 real world example because again this is a recording this 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.760 and this phone was just announced on T Mobile was 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:56.200 the HTC one S. It's an Android based phone running 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:00.920 ice Cream Sandwich. It has sixteen gigabytes on board memory. Alright, 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.200 sixteen gigs on board memory, No flash drive, no, no 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:06.920 smart card drive at all, So you can't add more 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:10.160 memory to it. That sixteen gigs is all you get. However, 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:15.160 ht C one S also comes with a trial period 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.160 with Dropbox, which is another cloud based storage system, and 0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.280 we'll talk more about Dropbox a little bit later in 0:14:21.320 --> 0:14:25.120 this podcast. So in this case, you're talking about a 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:29.800 smart phone that is encouraging you to use cloud based 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:33.680 storage rather than some sort of physical media. So that 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.360 way you have this this your information is backed up 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.600 into the cloud, and theoretically when you are ready to 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.600 upgrade your phone or switch phones, or maybe you lose 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:44.200 your phone you have to get a new phone, you 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:46.920 would still have access to that information because it exists 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.440 on the cloud, not on a physical device in your hand. 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:51.560 I mean it's it's on a physical device, it's just 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:56.160 that physical device belongs to some other company. So that's 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:57.920 one of the other reasons why cloud storch is so 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.360 important is that we're starting to see manufacturers kind of 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:06.360 offload features onto the cloud so that they don't include 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:08.880 them in the phone itself. It helps a little bit 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:12.080 with phone design because it means that you don't need 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:14.960 to build in that feature. You can actually make your 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.200 phones slimmer and sleeker. I mean, Apple has been doing 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.240 this for ages, but other companies are starting to do 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:24.920 the same sort of thing. Now, that's enough about cloud 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:27.520 storage in general, I think, unless is there anything else 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:29.840 that we need to talk about. There was one other 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:31.800 thing I didn't want to uh to pass over it 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.080 too much is UM. And this is something we've visited 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.720 several times too, is the aspect of privacy. UM. You know, 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:41.000 a couple of years ago when we were talking about 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.400 this UM, you know, when it was starting to become 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:46.240 a public topic. You know, hey, what is cloud storage? 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.920 What it was cloud computing? UM. You know, people didn't 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:51.880 really get that, and then when you explain it, they'd 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.600 start thinking about the documents that you would store up 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.880 there and privacy what if somebody hacks in UM. I 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:01.400 think it's obvious at this point that the convenience, UM 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.680 and accessibility of cloud storage has made it we were 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:07.760 We've gone so far now that I don't think we're 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.120 going to go back UM. But it's obviously. I just 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.400 think it's interesting to note that at this point we 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:16.480 are you know, there are things that we look at, 0:16:16.520 --> 0:16:20.560 you know, whether this this particular company is more likely 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.040 to have good security and privacy than the other company. 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:28.760 But um, yeah, that's it's the security of these cloud 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:35.040 storage uh services has become sort of a given. Oh well, 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.200 you know, if they're going to offer this, they better 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:40.040 be offering security because I'm going to use the service 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.760 and you know, that's something I look for before I 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.480 do that, so that that doesn't even seem that seems 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:47.680 like a given now when before people are going I 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:50.400 don't know if I want to do this or not. Yeah, 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:52.720 we can talk a little bit about Google's approach to 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.240 privacy and security. In fact, we will have to because 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:58.760 there is a controversy that we we will have to address. 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:01.160 But before we do that, let's get into the basics 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:04.840 of Google Drive. So it is built directly into Google Docs. Now, 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.119 so Google Docs the if you were to open up 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:09.520 a Google Docs account, so which is just your regular 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:11.560 Google account, that's what it's attached to. So if you 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.800 have a Google account, congratulations, you have a Google Docs account. 0:17:15.240 --> 0:17:17.520 You can go to Google Docs and create a document, 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.240 whether that's a word document, word being, word processing document 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:23.600 not where it is in Microsoft word, but a word 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:28.200 processing document, presentation, spreadsheet, you know, all the basic types 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:33.199 of office documents. Google has the those as features. If 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:34.920 you were to create one and save it, it would 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:37.960 save it into your Google Drive account and you would 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:43.320 automatically get the the base free tier, which for Google 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:47.160 Drive is five gigabytes of free storage. And the nice 0:17:47.200 --> 0:17:49.840 thing about this is that that doesn't count any of 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.280 the documents in your Google Docs, so it doesn't know 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:56.000 I didn't know that. That's interesting. That's good to know, 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.800 uh the now. What you can also do is you 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:03.439 can download a client onto your desktop that allows you 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.720 to drag and drop files from your computer into your 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.040 Google Drive so that you can easily port over. If 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:15.159 you've got, say, uh, photo album on your computer, and 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:17.200 you like the photo album and you want to keep it, 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:19.600 but you don't really want it taking up space on 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.320 your local hard drive, you could copy it, or not 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:25.960 copy it, but move it over to your Google Drive 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.000 and it would store there. It would have you have 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:30.879 a folder within your Google Drive where you could access that, 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.200 and you could access it with any web connected device. 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.000 That at least any web connected device, either through the 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:41.640 the web system or depending on the device, you might 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.560 have a dedicated app that would let you access it. 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:47.359 So for example, Google Drive, you can do that on 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:49.960 PCs and max uh, and you can do it on 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:54.080 Android phones and they're working on but at the recording 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.200 of this podcast, they were working on an iOS app 0:18:57.680 --> 0:18:59.720 so that you would be able to access it easily 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:04.760 through your iPhone or iPod Touch or iPad. And they 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.600 also from what I understand, I did see an article 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:10.720 on a Linux website the other day that was quite 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:14.840 upset that there was not compatibility built in for Linux 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.200 as in as in a and a dedicated application. From 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.480 what I understand, they're working well too. Um. Of course, 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:24.280 you know, if you're using Linux now and and you've 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.479 probably already tried to use your your Drive with it. 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.320 If you're you know, a Google customer, um, you can 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:33.880 of course use the web version. Um. But but they're 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:36.159 working on a dedicated app. From what I understand, that's 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.720 that's the nice thing. Yeah, even if your your device 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.120 doesn't have a dedicated app, you can still access Google 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.639 Drive through the web portion like you open up a 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:46.760 browser and you can go to Google Drive that way. 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:49.399 It's not quite as convenient, it's not as user friendly. 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.119 Uh So, I mean that's why everyone wants the app, 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.440 because then you know, you bypass that step of having 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:58.679 to go through the web. It's just like having an 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.280 app on your phone access a web based email client 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:04.159 so that you don't actually have to open up a 0:20:04.200 --> 0:20:07.159 browser and navigate to the email. You just open up 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:10.520 the app and there you are, same sort of thing. Well, 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:15.159 there's some other interesting aspects that are unique to to 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:18.760 the Google Clown Drive because there's you know, like we said, 0:20:18.760 --> 0:20:20.919 there are a lot of different companies out there that 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:24.320 offer comparable services, but they don't all have the same 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:27.399 feature set. One of the things that sets Google apart 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:31.840 is no surprise search. So let's say that you have 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:34.399 a lot of files in your Google Drive. Let's say 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:36.399 let's say that you are one of the people who, uh, 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.080 you're you've got to upgrade your account because you've got 0:20:39.080 --> 0:20:41.399 a lot of data, and you've got lots of different 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:45.240 kinds of files. You've got picture files, videos, text documents, 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:49.800 all that kind of stuff, and scanned documents so maybe 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.679 PDFs or other forms of scanned documents. You have it 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.600 all in your Google Drive, and then one day you 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.720 need a specific file and for the life that you 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:01.960 can't remember why folder you saved it in, and you've 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:04.000 got so many folders in this drive. It's going to 0:21:04.080 --> 0:21:06.679 take you forever to find it. This is something that 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:12.240 does not happen on an infrequent basis at Shase Strickland Um, 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.480 because I am very very good at filing things away safely, 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:19.639 so safely I will never find them again. So Google 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:23.240 Search is built into Google Drive, and they have gone 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:28.520 so far as to start developing recognition software so that 0:21:28.680 --> 0:21:30.919