[Discuss] Ubuntu One file services

Sat Apr 19 13:28:44 EDT 2014

I agree that Canonical's cloud storage service was perhaps a bit half-baked.
I think they hoped to become the Ubuntu version of iTunes or google play
with their music store and subscription services.
The trouble is that everyone already has a music source and all they needed
was a little bit of file storage/sync for low/no cost.
Personally, I only started using it because I didn't know Dropbox had a
free subscription level.
Now that U1 announced they're shutting down, I just installed,Dropbox and
copied the contents of my U1 folder over, made a new link on the desktop to
it, done. Now I won't miss it when it's gone.
They are virtually indistinguishable services, for my purposes anyway. The
only difference is the name of the synced folder.
Stu

On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 12:00 PM, <discuss-request at blu.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: End of the line for Obi100/110 (Tom Metro)
>    2. Re: Google Voice, VoIP providers (Tom Metro)
>    3. Re: Fwd: Ubuntu One file services (Tom Metro)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 15:42:42 -0400
> From: Tom Metro <tmetro+blu at gmail.com>
> To: L-blu <discuss at blu.org>
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] End of the line for Obi100/110
> Message-ID: <53502EB2.4020501 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Rich Braun wrote:
> > For a couple of years, I've been using the Obihai Obi110 VoIP device
> > to serve as my phone gateway.
>
> I've owned an Obi110 since a few years ago when Ted Roche tweeted about
> getting one. I have it set up as a backup line and only use it
> occasionally, but a colleague also got one, and uses it as a primary line.
>
> It's an impressively capable analog telephone adapter (ATA), especially
> for only $50, with a fair bit of programmable capability, but it has
> always fell a bit short of what I'd like, due to not using open source
> firmware, and thus being limited to the features the manufacture feels
> are worthy.
>
> That aside, I bought the Obi110 to use as a general ATA, not exclusively
> as a hardware device for getting free calls through GoogleVoice. I've
> always had it configured with multiple providers, and don't consider its
> usefulness all that diminished due to the loss of GV.
>
>
> Dan Ritter wrote:
> > You won't find anything as easy to use, but you can get almost all of
> > the functionality from Asterisk, especially with one of the wrappers
> > like PBX In A Flash (PIAF), which comes as Raspberry Pi images,
> > BeagleBone images, VM images, or installable Linux packages.
>
> Hardware costs have come down quite a bit in the few years since the
> Obi110 came out. You can create a device with a pretty powerful cell
> phone SoC at the same price point.
>
> So I've been waiting to see someone come out with a fully open
> hardware/open source ATA. Perhaps this won't happen because the market
> for wired phone services is just shrinking too fast. Perhaps the best we
> will see are D-I-Y solutions like what Dan describes where you buy a
> BeagleBone, case, power supply, load PBX In A Flash onto an SD card, and
> and plug some IAX FXO (phone line) and FXS (extension) interfaces.
>
> It'll take you some time to pull together, configure, and debug, and it
> won't be doable for under $50. The bare BeagleBone alone will cost you
> that.
>
>  -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
> "Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
> http://www.theperlshop.com/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 16:32:39 -0400
> From: Tom Metro <tmetro+blu at gmail.com>
> To: L-blu <discuss at blu.org>
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] Google Voice, VoIP providers
> Message-ID: <53503A67.302 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Chuck Anderson wrote:
> > I use Callcentric.
>
> I use Callcentric as well. Quite good feature set, and quite good
> support...providing there hasn't been a hurricane. :-)
>
> Hurricane Sandy demonstrated just how poorly Callcentric's
> infrastructure able to withstand damage to their data center. They had
> all their eggs in one basket. They were not geographically distributed.
>
> Because of this, I wouldn't trust them with a ported-in line.
>
> This is a problem with virtually all VoIP providers: it is very
> difficult to tell from the outside whether the company has a
> geographically distributed, carrier-grade setup, or merely a handful of
> virtual machines running in the cloud with leased lines from a wholesale
> carrier.
>
> (Callcentric was actually somewhat vertically integrated in that they
> didn't outsource the POTS connectivity, which is why they had their data
> center located in a building shared with other telecom providers, and
> why it wasn't trivial for them to just buy space in other random data
> centers.)
>
> We really need a "Consumer Reports" equivalent for the VoIP industry
> with knowledgeable people that actually go and visit the physical
> operations of providers to see the design of their infrastructure, and
> review their disaster recovery plans.
>
> On the other hand, do people still care enough about land line service?
> A big reason why people are fine with taking a chance on an unknown VoIP
> provider is that it is a cheap way to keep getting calls at their old
> land line number, which they hardly ever use any more.
>
>
> Rich Braun wrote:
> > ...due to and end-of-life announcement for XMPP protocol (for reasons
> > that are vaguely related to some unspecified need imposed by Google
> > Hangouts technology)...
>
> The discontinuation of XMPP support is no more fishy than Google's
> decision to use it in the first place for VoIP. While yes, it is an open
> protocol, and yes it had provisions to carry voice, clearly SIP was and
> is the dominant open protocol for VoIP.
>
> For a short while during the transition period between Grand Central
> (the company Google acquired and turned into GV) and Google Voice, they
> actually supported SIP. But then dropped it. Supposedly because they
> wanted to integrate with Google Talk, their chat client. Right from that
> point Google was hinting that they were more interested in being an IM
> provider with voice added-on, than in being a first-rate VoIP provider.
>
> Your Obi, and other similar devices, access GV by pretending to be a
> Google Talk client. It's sort of a hack, and causes complications if you
> try and also use that same account for IM. You pretty much need to have
> a dedicated account for GV use.
>
> Now with the transition to Hangouts, Google is going even more
> proprietary. Phasing out XMPP and dropping support for exchanging IMs
> outside the Google universe.
>
> There are some small time providers that provide SIP to XMPP gateways (a
> service in the cloud) as a means of using generic SIP hardware with GV.
> It's possible that we will see them reverse engineer Hangouts and build
> an equivalent service for that platform. (Maybe they'll use a cluster of
> Raspberry Pis running Android and the official Hangouts app. :-) )
>
>
> > Frankly, GV just simply *blows away* all rivals in terms of
> > features/capabilities/everything-- regardless of price.  The fact
> > that it's been free for years is beside the point.
>
> That it has been free has been the only compelling feature, in my
> opinion. I have had a GV account longer than I've had an Obi, but I've
> never been all that impressed with it. The features always struck me as
> rather bare bones, although that did lend a cleanliness and simplicity
> to it.
>
> I'd be curious to hear you elaborate on what you see are the unrivaled
> featured. I've only been a light user of the service, and could
> certainly have overlooked things.
>
> I've never felt confident enough in Google's commitment or support for
> GV to risk porting a number to the service. It makes me cringe a bit
> when I hear people saying they use GV for important things, like their
> business. If the service goes out, can you reach a support person in
> minutes? How long will it take Google to address a problem you are
> having with a free service? I imagine they have exemplary overall
> uptime, and fast response for problems that impact thousands of users,
> but how about problems that impact only you?
>
> As for features, I feel there is more capability in my free Callcentric
> account than with GV. But the free Callcentric account doesn't include
> free POTS calls.
>
>
> Dan Ritter wrote:
> > The major missing functionality is transcription of voice mail,
> > which has never worked well for me on GV anyway.
>
> True, but those transcripts never fail to be hilariously entertaining.
>
>
> > Instead I have voice mail encoded to mp3 and attached to an email...
>
> The provider I use for my business line, VirtualPBX, also provides this.
> Which means UI can go for moths without needing to login to their UI. (I
> don't necessarily recommend VirtualPBX. Their support is horrible. But I
> haven't found a better option for the price/feature combination.)
>
>  -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
> "Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
> http://www.theperlshop.com/
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 17:07:24 -0400
> From: Tom Metro <tmetro+blu at gmail.com>
> To: L-blu <discuss at blu.org>
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] Fwd: Ubuntu One file services
> Message-ID: <5350428C.9020905 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> David Kramer wrote:
> > You know, just Thursday I was talking in another group I'm on the Board
> > of about the dangers of using free services from other companies for
> > mission-critical things like meetings and backlogs.
>
> Free just means that it is a bit more likely to not be a sustainable
> business. Free alone is not the problem.
>
> As John points out, you're describing a more general problem with all
> cloud services.
>
> The ideal model is open source hosted in the cloud. (Assuming it is for
> something for which the privacy and security implications of using the
> cloud are acceptable.) That way you get the convenience of outsourcing
> the setup and maintenance costs, but in the event the service goes away,
> providing you can backup your data, there is a plan "B" where you
> migrate to private hosting or another provider.
>
>
> Ubuntu One wrote:
> > We are writing to you to notify you that we will be shutting down the
> > Ubuntu One file services, effective 1 June 2014.
>
> I can't say I was all that surprised. I never understood why Canonical
> wanted to get into this business, nor why an end-user would prefer to
> use Canonical's service. Did it offer anything unique or special?
>
> I get why Canonical wanted to provide a good user experience with a well
> integrated cloud storage, but if all they were going to offer was
> yet-another-cookie-cutter storage service with a weak security model,
> then what's the point? Just create drivers for Drop Box and other
> popular services.
>
> As best as I could figure they created Ubuntu One primarily for the
> stream of revenue they hoped the premium subscriptions would generate.
>
>  -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
> "Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
> http://www.theperlshop.com/
>
>
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-- 
Thanks,
Stu

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