CloudBuddy Personal

• CloudBuddy is a free tool that brings the Cloud near to you. It creates an easy-to-use exploration interface for your "Virtual Desktop" on the Cloud. Easy data management, sharing, access, security and whatever you may want to do with your data - Just do it!! CloudBuddy makes your virtual desktop as good as it can get. So set yourself free, and stop worrying about all your important emails, files and folders spread across desktops, laptops, and other devices.
  • Store, retrieve and share MS Word docs, spreadsheets and presentations using CloudBuddy's MS Office plug-in
  • Store, share, retrieve and mange your MS Outlook mailbox, tasks, calendar, contacts etc.
  • Perform usual desktop-like operations like, synchronous upload and download of files, data management and storage, file sharing etc.
  • Manage multiple Amazon accounts.
  • Create/Delete buckets (supports Europe buckets also).
  • Enable/Disable logging status.
  • Create/Delete folders.
  • Download Jungle Disk files from CloudBuddy.
  • Sync local folders to S3.
  • Drag and drop files from windows explorer into CloudBuddy bucket explorer.
  • Cache the uploaded files and reduce the number of hits at S3 while downloading them.
  • Optionally encrypt files that are uploaded into the cloud.
  • Develop plug-ins using the all new Plug-in framework.
  • Enable CloudFront distribution for buckets.
• How do you go about it?
  • Download and install CloudBuddy
  • Login using your S3 Id (for those who don't have an Amazon S3 id, log on and register for an ID and get the access code. Click here to know more and signup for Amazon S3 account)
  • Start using CloudBuddy
• How can CloudBuddy help you?
  • If you are an Amazon-S3 user and store your data on the Cloud, you would also want to have a tool that not only helps you with data management but also provides control
  • * Easy uploading, downloading, sharing, updating of files, managing mails and access controls are some of the vital functions that render your virtual desktop as good as the local machine
• What else can I do with it?
  • Here comes the most exciting part - If you are a developer and playing around with tools tickles you, go ahead and download the CloudBuddy SDK, create interesting plug-ins and integrate them into your applications.

Technology

• CloudBuddy Architecture
• CloudBuddy is developed using a multi layer architecture and built on top of .NET 3.0. The CloudBuddy client is a thin layer which has only UI related logic. The CloudBuddy API layer encapsulates all the neccessary logic to be used by the client layer.
• 
• CloudBuddy Service
• The service layer is implemented using WCF and provides multiple service endpoints for the 'client(s)' to upload,download and create buckets. The service endpoints specify the contract, which defines the business methods of the service class that are exposed and accessible via the WCF endpoints. The Cloudbuddy service is hosted as a windows service and the API layer communicates using NetNamedPipe binding.
• CloudBuddy Service Proxy
• This layer acts as a proxy object, which exposes the service endpoints for the WCF client layer. All method calls to the CloudBuddy Service Proxy would be routed to the CloudBuddy Service and the proxy layer would return the results by the service to caller.The CloudBuddy Service proxy layer communicates to the WCF service layer using the NetNamedPipe binding mechanism, in which service can be invoked as a method call.
• CloudBuddy API Interface
• The CloudBuddy API interface layer hosts the set of APIs for the thin UI client to register and access the WCF Service layer. The CloudBuddy API Interface layer is essentially the WCF client layer of the architecture.The conventional binding model a typical desktop client with the UI is re-architected by introducing the API layer hence making the UI a 100% thin client application. The client would essentially use the APIs to programmatically get the UI rendered and also perform action events.The CloudBuddy API interface layer consists of the UI related APIs, which actually render the total UI to a thin client and the Non-UI APIs perform the action events based on the functionality.
• CloudBuddy Client Layer
• The CloudBuddy client layer is usually a thin layer programmed with C#.NET. This layer makes use of the API layer to get the UI rendered and also submit the action events.
• CloudBuddy Utility Layer
• The CloudBuddy utility layer separates the utility services such as exception handling and activity logging and is accessible across the layers. The logging mechanism uses the Microsoft Enterprise Library Logging Block.The CloudBuddy service layer and API layer have direct access to the Amazon Cloud using REST and SOAP based protocols.
• CloudBuddy Data Flow
• The entire application data flow for CloudBuddy across the layers is illustrated below.
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• • The component registration happens to the CloudBuddyFactory from the client layer.
  • The CloudBuddyFactory registers the same to the Notification handler.
  • Client requests the CloudBuddyUIFactory to render the UI.
  • The CloudBuddyUIFactory calls CloudBuddyFactory to access the service to get the UI and renders the same.
  • When a user action is performed on the client, the client posts an asynchronous / synchronous message to the CloudBuddyService through the CloudBuddyFactory layer.
  • The CloudBuddyFactory layer makes a call (REST / SOAP) to the Amazon Cloud to get the required details.
  • The same call is posted to the CloudBuddyServiceProxy (generated layer), which acts as a proxy object to the service layer.
  • The CloudBuddyService layer makes a REST based call to the Amazon Cloud and performs the service request.
  • On completion of successful execution of the task, the CloudBuddyService layer passes the response notification via the Notification handler to the CloudBuddyFactory.
  • CloudBuddyFactory passes the notification to the corresponding registered client component.

Quick Tour

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Introduction

CloudBuddy is a free bucket explorer tool for Amazon S3. Now you can

    Manage multiple S3 accounts

    Place your desktop on the Cloud and perform usual desktop operations like,      Upload & Download files synchronously, data management and storage, file      sharing etc.

    Store, Share, retrieve and manage your Outlook mailbox, tasks, calendar,      contacts etc.

    Store, retrieve and share Word docs, spread sheets and presentations using      CloudBuddy's MS Office plug-in.

Obtain S3 Account

Get an Amazon S3 account. Click here to sign up (Already a user, click next to proceed)

Installing CloudBuddy

Download and install CloudBuddy from here

Getting Started

Obtain the access key and the secret key from your AWS account site.

This is the primary configuration section where you need to register your S3 Accounts in order to use CloudBuddy. CloudBuddy supports multiple S3 accounts.



Select Access Identifiers link to view your access key and secret key.


The red color circle in the below screen indicates your access key and secret key.

Understanding the Bucket Explorer

Bucket Explorer provides various tools to support S3 related operations. To use these tools, first select the desired S3Account and Bucket. The name of the S3Account and the Bucket can be changed at any point in time during the usage.

Understanding the Ms-Office Plug-in

CloudBuddy comes with MS-Office plug-in to manage/share your emails, documents, workbook, presentations ...etc on the S3 Cloud directly.

MS-Outlook

  Upload one or more emails to a desired location on the S3 Cloud

  Download one or more emails to your outlook folder directly from the S3 Cloud



MS-Word

  Manage your word documents directly on the S3 Cloud



MS-Excel

  Manage your excel workbook directly on the S3 Cloud



MS-Powerpoint

  Manage your presentations directly on the S3 Cloud