April 3, 2011

Compared to Amazon, other companies are idiots when it comes to cloud computing: Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 are powering many Web 2.0 startups and with introduction of Amazon Cloud Drive also end users, not just startups, can take advantage of superior cloud computing.

Unfortunately for iPhone and iPad users there isn’t an Amazon Cloud Player for iOS yet, it’s available only for the best smartphone operating system on the planet (i.e. Android). However there is a way to use Amazon Cloud Drive on iPhone and iPad devices!

First you need to go to www.amazon.com/clouddrive and sign-in with your Amazon account:

What you see is the standard user inteface of Amazon Cloud Drive where obviously you can’t do everything (like uploads) but you can view documents and play media – all types that can be opened and recognized by Safari mobile inside of iPhone and iPad.

There are, however, some tricks that you must consider to play or open files from the Amazon Cloud Drive.

First you need to select the folder using the left side tree view and not the list of folders on the right:

Now you need to select given file (but only one!) and tap on “Download” button:

… and now given file (here an MP3 file) is open and is playing:

It works the same with documents (here: PDF) that you need first to select (only one selection) and tap again on “Download” button:

… so that they open for viewing via built-in document viewer of Safari (or rather of iOS to be precise):

… and notice that you can even “Open in..” given document either in iBooks or in other apps that recognize given file format… what practically means that any file format can be opened and viewed on iOS – provided you have apps that register themselves for given format to iOS/Safari and can view/play it.

Conclusion: clearly and without a doubt Amazon Cloud Drive is the best cloud storage on the market, in my opinion, and they offer even 5 GB free storage (not counting MP3 music purchases via Amazon MP3 store) so indeed you can put a lot of files there and you can easily access them in mobile way, wirelessly, on your wonderful iOS devices like iPhone or iPad.

See also Alli’s post about SafeSync, which she believes to be clearly and without a doubt the best cloud drive.

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