randall pustular: Cloudier puts the power of CloudApp in the palm of your hand

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Cloudier puts the power of CloudApp in the palm of your hand

Confession: I don't use CloudApp. It's one of those things that I think is absolutely brilliant, but is ultimately just one more thing, and I never found time nor place for it. Until Cloudier.

Developed by Jackie Tran and Benjamin Mayo, Cloudier takes the web-bound CloudApp service and brings it, beautifully, elegantly to your iPhone. While that might not sound like much, given how many terrible web front ends we've suffered through in mobile, rest assured it's a tremendous achievement.

Launch Cloudier, log in with your free or paid CloudApp account, and you're ready to rock. A + button lets you add Images, Videos, Text clips, and Bookmarks. Choose one and start uploading. (I do wish there were a back button on the left side of the menu bar here, as I've clumsily hit the wrong type a few times and had to X out completely and start again.)

Cloudier: Add files

For Photos and Videos, you can take, choose, or just grab the latest addition to the camera roll. That last option is becoming increasingly common in apps, and is a great time-saver. For Text you can compose a new document, revert to a previously saved draft document, or grab the clipboard content. For bookmarks, you simply paste or type in a URL. You can't upload audio files, but you can browse any you've uploaded via the web.

Browsing options include All, for every one of you CloudApp'ed files, as well as separate categories for Images, Bookmarks, Text, Archives, Audio, Video, Other, and Trash. There's no search or filtering feature that I could find, but you can toggle between file name list and thumbnail grid views.

Cloudier: Content

Once you've found the content you're interested in, you can get basic info on it, trash it, toggle its privacy, or take action on it via a customer action that includes share to Mail, Facebook, and Twitter, copy link to clipboard, save to Camera Roll (if appropriate), copy image (if appropriate), and Rename.

There's also a Settings pane that lets you log in or out of different accounts, and view account details if you need them. You can default privacy status on or off, which is something all to often overlooked. There's a slider to control if, and how much, compression gets applied to your uploads. You can automatically have upload links copied to your iPhone's clipboard for quick and convenient sharing outside the Cloudier app, and you can choose to archive multiple files. And, of course, there are links to support and to the developers' contact information. All incredibly thoughtful, and amazingly well presented. (Look no further than black status bars throughout...)

Cloudier: About

Bottom line, Cloudier is so well thought out, so well designed and implemented, it makes me wish I had more use for CloudApp. If you are a CloudApp user, and you have an iPhone, Cloudier's ease, elegance, and sheer joy of use make it a no brainer. Utilities like this, that save and improve time, are worth far more than money.