ExpanDrive

Will WebDAV continue to be available for BingoDisk users? (If not, I personally will have no use for the service.)

We’re not planning on supporting WebDAV anymore – the clients most users access WebDAV with are rather subpar and provide an inconsistent experience. Sorry about that.

My sole reason for paying for bingodisk was the WebDAV support. Will I get pro-rata refund? If not, that sucks.

still unclear what happens to us bingodisk customers. we lose webdav, but what do we gain?

@Keith – we’ll make you whole, we’re still figuring out the mechanism.

@tdawg – you’ll gain drive based access via ExpanDrive, along with SFTP/rsync support, web based file access and more. BingoDisk is just a webdav account with quota informaiton

If bingoDisk continues, but with ExpanDrive access as opposed to WebDav access, I would expect that we’ll see much improvement. The native WebDav on Windows is pretty sucky (my webDav connection to bingoDisk crashes WinExplorer about every other time I use it). My ExpanDrive access to StrongSpace has had some problems as well, but they are far fewer.

@larry hit’s the nail on the head. WebDAV on Windows is insufferably bad, it’s better on Mac – but not by much.

Thanks for the clarification, Jeff. I appreciate your position on this, and I totally agree that WebDAV is horrid. I just happen to need WebDAV, as I use BingoDisk for a specific application that requires it.

Your product seems compelling. Best of luck to you with this acquisition.

I signed up for Bingodisk on Tue, Aug 11 before announcement was made. The main reason I went with Bingodisk was so that I could use the Public URL feature so my Web pages could access my JPEG files on Bingodisk. Will this service still be offered?

I’m excited to see this and I’m hoping you guys can put out a great project! Hopefully I can test out the service soon and consider bundling it into my workflow.

Great to hear the billing side of things will be worked out one way or another. Echoing A. Miller, I used Bingodisk WebDAV for one application only – Omnifocus – that required it for Webdav sync outside of iDisk between the Mac and iPhone. My experience with WebDAV and iDisk, which I believe is based on it, has always been horrible. Bingodisk WebDAV worked fine for the minimal requirements that Omnifocus needed it for.

If Bingodisk WebDav is going, can anyone recommend an alternative?

If you are a Bingodisk customer and are unhappy with the transition, please send in a ticket and we (Joyent) will make you whole. We are sorry for the loss of the WebDAV service, but confident Expandrive’s service and upgrade will more than make up for it.

Jeff, with WebDAV dropped, will Strongspace offer an option for “guests” to download files without login (or a simple generic login) required (as opposed to old Strongspace practice of having to grant specific credentials to specific users)? I am thinking about something like Apple’s iDisk.

Well, I’m a Linux(Ubuntu) – BingoDisk User … and I understand that I’m gonna loose everything : rsync simplicity, webdav access from anywhere, any MID in the world. Who should I thank ?

@Gerald - You’re still going to have rsync support on Strongspace and SFTP/SCP/Web support from anywhere. Other than the lack of WebDAV we intended to improve and support every aspect of the existing service.

@Bijan we’re still working out those details but it’s on the drawing board

I’m not an owner of the ExpandDrive software. During the transition I assume there will not be any deal for people from StrongSpace to get a discount on the ExpandDrive software, can you confirm?

Re WebDAV – I use the services of http://mydisk.se for free WebDAV hosting so that I can host my own Mozilla Weave links. So far that site has worked fine for my purposes. They offer a “Free 2GB Account” plan so you could test out their services. Per their website “The price for a 5GB account is 50 € per year.”

@Colin: We plan to give all Strongspace customers a free version of ExpanDrive that works just for Strongspace.

I’m curious to know if the Strongspace servers will reside in the same data center as the servers that store the Joyent Connector data. Thanks!

Hi. I sent this note via email six days ago and have not heard back. I don’t find that unacceptable at all, given the circumstances (you must be swamped), but I thought I might be able to get a reply if I posted it.

I have only been a Joyent customer for a year and a half but use Bingodisk h-e-a-v-i-l-y. It hosts most of our streaming audio content, serving content to several web sites. About a year ago we started adding images and then, later, complete pages onto our Bingodisk space. There are, probably, many dozen absolute URLs, image and audio tags resolving to content stored on our bingodisk account. I was hoping to get a message from you saying that Bingodisk was not going anywhere and that everything would continue to work as it had been. But certainly seems that will not be the case. Can you please advise? It will take us (me!) a LOT of time to go through and, first, find all of our pages pulling content from BingoDisk and, secondly, to then change the URLs to pull content from – what? — Strongspace? !! Or perhaps I won’t even be able to do that any longer?? I started moving content to another provider but it is INCREDIBLY slow going, even with just a few GB of data. Please advise.

Also, I downloaded the ExpanDrive software and it would not launch. I am just a poor boy, and am on an older iBook using 10.3.9. Even though I believe your system requirements indicated your software would work with this older OS it did not launch. Can you advise regarding this, as well?

Thank you!!

I also sent an e-mail 6 days ago and haven’t gotten a response. Unfortunately, this screams of the typical buyout where the customer gets lackluster support from the new company.

As others have asked above without response, we purchased BingoDisk so that we could have public URLs to our files. This allows us to send a direct link to the file or host the file on our site.

As ExpandDrive has described it “BingoDisk is just a webdav account with quota information”. That’s exactly what people wanted when they signed up for BingoDisk.

ExpandDrive, don’t lose sight of what BingoDisk customers want.

@jd – I’ve got a response back to you, not sure what happened! We’re not 100% sure what we’re going to do in that regard, but we’ll have some way for you to keep your existing BingoDisk URLs. And yes, Strongspace subscribers will receive copies of ExpanDrive for their service.

@iPhrankie – sorry you didn’t get a response, I know there are some messages I’ve missed or didn’t have a great answer for and then forgot to come back to. Trying the best we can! We’re not continuing BingoDisk as is – we’re combining BingoDisk and Strongspace into the same service, but we’re not continuing WebDAV support. I know this is a deal breaker for some users, but Joyent promises to refund you or otherwise make you whole. It’s our goal to provide a much better online disk thank BingoDisk gave – WebDAV was one of the biggest limiting factors. The Windows client is nearly unusuable and the Mac client is prone to locking Finder hard. We plan to have public links integrated, and like I mentioned to JD, we are working on a way to keep your old BingoDisk links alive. Again, sorry for the lack of response.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for the reply. I did not receive an email from you, and even went through more than 600 filtered messages in our Postini account (nothing from the expandrive.com domain). I am very grateful for your online reply.

In the email Joyent sent out on August 13, it was noted that “If you don’t want to transition to the ExpanDrive service, and you want your data, make sure to retrieve it by September 30th”. I am presuming I am going to want to transition to your service, but is there really a Sept 30 deadline for finding a new provider if that were not to be the case? What timelines have you established for the transition? Have you (are you?) taking physical possession of hardware and, if so, when and how – and will there be downtimes? When do you think you will know enough about what your new service will look like to allow current customers to be able to make these decisions? Joyent has redirected the log in for Bingodisk so it seems they are, at least starting to, wrap up their involvement and moving on (yes, I can still access my drive space by FTP and the URLs are working).

Thanks!

JD

Thanks for your reply Jeff.

In the end, I think we’ll be able to live without WebDAV.

It’s wonderful to hear you are going to preserve the public URLs and keep the existing URLs going. This is a major plus for us and we’ll be happy to embrace ExanDrive as the new provider.

Thanks.

I’m another one looking for an alternative. Installing software on my machines to connect to your service isn’t acceptable from a client security standpoint.

I’ll be submitting a ticket for a refund. Losing WebDAV is going to lose you a customer.

@jd – can you email me at jmancuso@expandrive.com and I’ll let you know

@iPhrankie – it’s going to be a much better service

@Doug – I understand where you’re coming from, but I think more users will be happier that they’re not bound to WebDAV. Sorry about that

I need some clarification on what is going on right now for Strongspace users. I can no longer access my account, and was unaware that there would be downtime so soon. Can someone please clue me into how to get started with the new product? This is really frustrating.

Darin - We’re still working on getting our transition path finalized.

Apparently Strongspace had a short amount of unexpected downtown last night – Joyent is looking into it. Sorry! Your service will remain in tact.

-Jeff

Hi Jeff – just a follow up. After seeing your post from Aug. 27 I emailed you at about noon that day. In an earlier post (Aug 24) you mentioned that you sent an email which I did not receive, so I wanted to check with you in case you had responded to my Aug 27 email because I have not received any email from you. Thanks. JD

I’m a lifetime Joyent customer and haven’t received any email from ExpanDrive. Should I be concerned?

I’m glad that the new Strongspace service will have the public folder feature. I am a lifetime Strongspace customer, but also subscribe to Bingodisk because of this feature. Will I have the chance to migrate my Bingodisk files to the new Strongspace at some point? I won’t need to pay for Bingodisk separately if the new SS will have the public folder option too.

Thanks JMO

Also…is the Bingodisk source code still going to be open sourced?

Dear ExpanDisk,

The only reason I have been using BingoDisk is for it’s WebDAV facility which I need for synchronising my library in zotero:

http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/4836/bingodiskcom-for-zotero-webdav-storage/

I have only been using BingoDisk for a few months and other than the fact it’ll no longer be available after 30th September I’ve extremely happy with the service. However, when I signed up that was for a whole year but for most of this my account will unusable for it’s intended purpose. An earlier comment indicated that “…Joyent promises to refund you or otherwise make you whole” Do you have any further details on this, i.e. who do I need to get in contact with to arrange for a refund?

Many thanks, Dan.

lifetime joyent customer here too, looking at their tweets looks like they’ve been caught between supporting Snow Leopard and StrongSpace v2.

Hopefully we’ll get some nice ‘welcome to your new StrongSpace’ sometime quite soon…

Fingers crossed :-)

Another Textdrive/Joyent lifetime customer awaiting news on the transition and turn-over.

This population would appreciate a blog post specifically outlining how and when we’ll be accommodated. I think we are many hundreds of users. Not all of us actually had active BingoDisk or StrongSpace accounts, but were planning on making use of the services at leisure, so we’re not necessarily an active user population right now. Many thanks.

Good Morning,

I have been a user of strongspace to support my basecamp account? How will that work going forward? I have about 4 years of files that I actively use and can’t afford to be cut off from them or not be limked to basecamp account…I’m not a web guy so please share with me in plain english how it will continue to work like it does currently (Or help me understand what alternatives I will have going forward).

Kind Regards

Sterling

I’m also a lifetime Strongspace and Bingodisk customer.

I haven’t yet received any email with the initial migration of the lifetime customers as was posted a month ago. Are there any news on the status of the migration?

Kind Regards, Fernando

I’m also a Joyent lifetime customer (don’t you love us?). My demo for ExpanDrive just expired. Would I be reimbursed if I were to purchase a license? I’d really like to continue using this product.

Same as Fernando. Could we please get an update email as some sort of indicator of what may be going on with the “transfer of power” and a timeline of when to expect something. It seems the first email may have gone out prematurely.

We are strongspace users and don’t really if we are lifetime or not, but we do know that we have 2 5gb spaces on strongspace with files we use for weekly production. We have not gotten any email on this migration. We have not received any notice on how to access anything on Expandrive. What do we need to do in order not to loose any of our files. We intend to go with Expandrive, if you would only tell us how.

Our production proces is on a weekly cycle with many users, in multiple locations. We need lead time in order to make this transition without interrupting our production.

What should we do.

I’m another Joyent lifetime customer who hasn’t hear anything about this transition in a while. An official update on the transition would be very much appreciated.

Once again, lifetime Joyent customers (read: venture capitalists) are left in the dark. This pattern is really starting to become a parody.

Closing off comments on this thread, to open a new one.

We’re behind schedule moving everyone over – many apologies for the poor communication. We’ve responded to all emails we have on record, please get back in touch with us at support@expandrive.com, or myself personally at jmancuso@expandrive.com if you have any quesitons.