Back in the cloud business

In February of 2012 I set up an instance of ownCloud, an selfhostable cloud-solution written in php. It was a good feeling to have it around to store my files, calendars and contacts not needing some service provider I knew too little about to be able to judge if they are trustworthy - like Google, Dropbox, Box.net or Zumo Drive.

When I made the switch to Lumia in December 2012 and shortly afterwards giving Windows a new chance on my laptop, it was easy to switch all of the things I had in my ownCloud to Skydrive and other services provided by Microsoft (yes and sorry, but I consider Microsoft more trustworthy than Google or Apple). All other things just would not work well on a Windows Phone, while Skydrive was well integrated into the operating system.

In December 2013 I switched again - I got my Jolla and there was not a tight binding to Microsoft services at all. I could use the Android apps for those services as Jolla has a compatibility layer for Android, but native applications just work and feel better…

Last week, I reactivated my ownCloud again and was impressed how the software had evolved in few releases and in a short amount of time. Things that annoyed me last time I used it work much better now: Updating was a pain as you needed to replace some files using ftp or ssh and hopefully your server worked afterwards as it did before. Now you can update from within the software - and it worked well without problems!

The services integrate well into my KDE environment and there even is a plugin that will turn your ownCloud into a Mozilla sync server! A newsreader is also available as a plugin. It provides the functionality of Google Reader (which I used before it got shot down) - there even is a excellent client for my Jolla to take my feeds with me!

Short said - I am back in the cloud business - my files are kept on my own server again :-)