A lot of applications are moving to the cloud. Some have desktop applications and in some cases, you need to access your files from the web. Remembering which site you need to see your file is a big inconvenience. Otixo is working on solving this issue for cloud service users.
Otixo is a hub for all of your cloud-based services like Dropbox, Amazon S3, Mobile me and Google Docs. It’s like a common dashboard which lets you manage and transfer files between services. For the power user of cloud-based services, Otixo is a huge time saver.
How to Connect your Cloud Services to Otixo
The setup of Otixo is really easy. What you will need to do is sign up for an account. There is nothing out of the ordinary here. Email address, a password, and your name are all that’s needed.
After you confirm your email and login, you will see a list of services off to the right side. Click on one to authorize Otixo to have access to the files stored on that particular service.
I chose to use Dropbox and Google Docs for this article because they are pretty common. The others should sync the same way. Start by clicking on the Google Docs icon. A window will pop up and ask you to name the Google Docs account. If you manage several Google Docs accounts that are not in sync with each other, name them appropriately so it is easy to tell them apart later.
When you press Authorize, you will be asked to grant access.
When you grant access, you will see a list appear with all of the documents you have stored in Google Docs.
Continue to add accounts the same way. Here is how the Dropbox process looks. It is very similar.
Log in with your Dropbox credentials or create a new account.
Then authorize Otixo to have access.
Then, just like before, you will see the files and folders populate the window.
Using your Cloud File Hub
Now that you have a common access point to all of your files, you need to know how to use them. If you right-click on a file, you will get a contextual menu with options.
Alternatively, there are icons in a navigation-type bar above the file window that do the same thing.
Here is an example of the preview window. If it is a picture file you will see something like this. If it is a text file, you will see the plain text doc. However, if it is a document file from Google Docs, you will not see a preview.
To share a file, you can click the Share icon and see this window. Just fill in the info and email the link. You can also set the link to expire and password protects the file.
Desktop access
If you prefer not to access the site every time you need to access your files, you can also use their API to access your files like a mapped network drive. The directions are in the link on the bottom left of the Otixo page. Here is a quick run through on how to do it.
Go to your “Windows Network Places”. I was able to right-click and select “Add network location”.
In the setup wizard, I added the link to the Otixo instructions “https://app.otixo.com/webdav”.
You will need to log in with your Otixo credentials. Then you will see all of your accounts like they are a drive on your computer.
That’s all there is to it. Pretty easy, huh?
Conclusion
Taking control of your cloud storage will become more and more important as time goes on. We will be doing less from the office and more while mobile. Getting a grip on your cloud-based services now will keep you ahead of the pack. Otixo lets you do just that, with considerable easy and a lot of conveniences.
