The feedback we’ve received from our previous Roadmap Post and poll has been loud and clear. Although there is strong interest in everything we mentioned (and more) the top requested feature by far is Sync. That’s great feedback to have and tallies well with the informal feedback we’ve gathered from users. A few folks have suggested that with some improvements to the network drive feature, such as offline support, that Sync wouldn’t be necessary, but we think each feature has unique advantages.
Network Drive Advantages:
- Can be used for “archiving” of files by moving them completely into the cloud
- No initial sync process when connecting from a new computer, you only download what you need
- Works better for large amounts of data, since you only need a small cache on each machine
- Doesn’t waste bandwidth syncing files you may never access
Sync Advantages:
- No need to move your files – you can sync them from their existing locations
- All your content is available offline
- Updating occurs in the background so the latest version can be opened quickly
- Can be used for profiles, configuration files, and other application-specific items that can’t be “moved” to a network drive
- Easy concept to understand, even for non-technical users
Given the strong interest in Sync and the unique advantages it provides, we’re going to strongly consider including it as part of our roadmap, while also continuing to improve the network drive.
I also wanted to give a quick update on Cloud Files. As of Tuesday, the optimization work has been completed and we’ve re-opened creation of Cloud Files online disks to all Jungle Disk users.
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Shaun said,
April 9, 2009 @ 3:50 pm
Sounds great!
I’d personally love a complete revamp of the main program interface… I don’t think it would take much work to see huge improvements. The Config interface is fine, but the main interface is, in my humble opinion, just bearable.
Jeremy said,
April 9, 2009 @ 3:54 pm
WOOOOHOOOO!
I might be slow or overlooking something or not looking hard enough, but is there a road map someplace we get to see? Just wondering what kind of guesstimation there is to when we can see this
Man I have been waiting to hear the results! Glad to hear on both the network drive and sync things
Scott H. said,
April 9, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
As always, you guys rock!
Even though you didn’t ask, how about a Readynas plugin? Its obvious Netgear is bullish on cloud backup given their new service in conjunction with Elephant Drive. You said it best, JD should be our one stop shop!
David said,
April 10, 2009 @ 9:19 am
I’ve been with JD since the very beginning, and sing it’s praises often. My only concern is that this new feature will take away from other items which I think need to be focused on.
My main concern about JD, and call it superficial if you like, is the Mac client. IMHO it looks like someone took a PC app and hacked it to bits to get it to run on a Mac. It’s functional, but barely tolerable in terms of appearance and fluidity with the OS. I had high hopes when a new Mac developer was hired many months back, but we’ve seen a total of 1 visible improvement to the Mac interface since then. -and that was the ability to hide in the dock and add a menu item, which still doesn’t work great.
I understand that interface design is probably at the very end of the list of important things to work on for the JD team, but in my opinion it is important, and should be put higher up then it is currently, at least.
I’ve tried many times to move over less tech savvy friends and family to JD and S3/Cloud Files from services such as Mozy and Backblaze; each and every time I get the ‘you wan’t me to use that ugly thing?’, ‘but this other app is in my system preferences and just has a few buttons, and just works’.
Design and first impression is important, so much so that I think many apps live or die by it – and I don’t believe it’s just superficial, it is one with ease of use.
When you go to buy a new house and find the toilet isn’t affixed properly to the to floor – you wonder what other invisible things need fixing. When you install JD on a Mac and see that the interface is so, well Windows, you wonder what else is JD half assing? Maybe the toilet is the only broken thing in the house – Maybe JD runs flawlessly and the app is just a bit ugly… but maybe not? Why leave any doubt?
Jungle Dave said,
April 10, 2009 @ 9:50 am
@David – we plan to continue to improve the user interface on all platforms. We’ve given special attention to Mac over the last year, adding Menu item support, Growl, and a few other Mac-specific features. We may never look quick as slick as Mac-only apps but at the end of the day we’d rather spend the time building features for all platforms rather than optimize the UI for one. When Jungle Disk is working well, ideally it’s something you’ll never even need to look at.
Michael said,
April 10, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
How about some Windows Home Server love? We’re still on S3… =(
Jungle Dave said,
April 10, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
@Michael – This poll was mainly about the Desktop/Workgroup features. The Home NAS product is on a separate tract and is making progress.
formless said,
April 11, 2009 @ 7:24 pm
synch! synch! synch!
Andrew said,
April 12, 2009 @ 10:10 am
Sounds really great. I have been using Live Mesh and I really find the concept of sync exciting. The problem with Mesh is that it uses up a lot of resources compared to JD and also adds stuff like remote desktop access that I don’t want or need.
Khürt Williams said,
April 13, 2009 @ 6:45 am
@David,
I just setup JungleDisk on a 3rd Mac in my house. I used the JungleDisk Monitor interface for about 5 minutes. I might not see that interface for the rest of the year.
Jason Litka said,
April 18, 2009 @ 10:18 am
How about clients for mobile devices? I’d love to be able to access my files from my BlackBerry.
MacMacken said,
April 18, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Is there any way not to have the Jungle Disk Monitor running in the background all the time? Just imagine all applications would have their background process running even if there are not in use …
Jungle Dave said,
April 19, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
@MacMacken – If you download the USB version, it functions like the pre-2.5 versions of Jungle Disk – you can exit the application and it will not be running in the background.
Neville Burnell said,
April 20, 2009 @ 4:08 am
I’d like to see the following in the workgroup/whitebox edition:
1) per subaccount quotas
2) per subaccount access expiry datetime
3) per subaccount backup report email address
Jason Litka said,
April 20, 2009 @ 5:01 pm
Also, how about support for files larger than 5GB, over-the-wire compression, and deduplication.
MStormO said,
April 24, 2009 @ 3:45 am
It seems like each SetAttribute and Create Directory command, at least to Cloud Files, is sent individually, and the jungledisk/junglediskmonitor waits for a response on each before the next one. This makes at least the initial upload of big file trees extreme slow, since latency plays a huge role. It would be nice if you guys could support bulk uploading of commands, or pipelining, to minimize the effect of the latency.
My general upload throughput is good enough though, at ~7500kbits/sec. It’s just the file tree manipulation which kills my performance.
Thanks for a really product though!
Dopamine said,
May 1, 2009 @ 7:08 pm
Shaun, you said that “the main interface is, in my humble opinion, just bearable” and needs a complete revamp – of course I respect your opinion, but it really surprises me! I absolutely love the JungleDisk GUI – love at first sight. I find it elegant, intuititive, powerful… a funny contrast with your take on it.
(The one exception is perhaps log management, which is ugly as sin at the moment.)
Is there anything specific you dislike? Maybe it can be addressed ad-hoc, without hurting the wonderfulness of the GUI as a whole…
Kevin said,
May 4, 2009 @ 11:54 pm
Hey Jungle Disk Gang…
to paint a quick picture… we have homeshoring user across the US and other parts of the world. Jungle Disk keeps us and our “design” content on network drives using JD. It’s fantastic and everyone loves it. Sharing is so easy.
I do see a need in our setup where we would like to have specific files with SYNC activated within a network drive setting.
Having a choice of either sync or network drive doesn’t make sense to me because you need them to work together in isolated instances.
Example…. I have a material library on Jungle Disk which we all have copied to our workstations. We all create new materials and individually upload them. This particular folder would benifit greatly using SYNC because I wouldn’t be missing anything and other users would have everything I’ve just created.
Olivier said,
June 5, 2009 @ 5:08 pm
I’ve just been hit by one of those situations where sync is crucial and would save us a lot of time…some of our users are starting to use their laptops more as the weather gets better and better.
1) We backup the NAS to the cloud and it’s already a hassle because some files may not be available right away for our mobile workforce
2) Mobile users don’t need to have the whole NAS on their drive, so they use the network drive functionality
3) Whatever they put on that network drive is never replicated back to the NAS and is thus not made available to the rest of the team.
Dan said,
August 6, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
Can you give an estimate of when you will be releasing a Sync version? I’d like to stick with JD, but am really missing a sync capability. Should I stay or should I go?
Al Whatmough said,
August 31, 2009 @ 11:26 am
Yes, please an update on when sync will be out. I work on editing large video files so local access to the files it a must.
I am going to be selecting a service within the next few days and caching is a MUST
Some services do something they can “local cash” I think that is brilliant. The best would be if you could select folders you wanted to be able to cache locally, and the ones that didn’t matter.
Jungle Dave said,
August 31, 2009 @ 2:10 pm
Sync will be in the next major release of Jungle Disk, a beta of which will be out in the near future.
Glenn Briskin said,
September 17, 2009 @ 4:51 pm
I’d like jd to be able to send a file to my email address using a pre setup email entered during config.
AA said,
October 3, 2009 @ 11:28 am
When the beta whit Sync will be available?