MALE SPEAKER: Shanghai GDG is a very
interesting developer community.
FEMALE SPEAKER: I'm glad somebody
has asked this question.
MALE SPEAKER: And this is where the magic happens.
FEMALE SPEAKER: This is primarily a
question-and-answer show.
So if any of you out there would like to ask questions--
STEVE BAZYL: Hi, everyone.
This is Stephen Bazyl here for another "Google Developers
Live." Today we--
or me, rather, since this is a solo endeavor--
I'm going to be taking a look at an OS 10 app for Google
Drive called Archy.
Basically what Archy is is a full implementation of the
Drive web interface, but done as a native
application for Macs.
And I thought this would be a good comparison since a few
weeks ago, we did an app review of an Android client
called ASTRO, which is a file manager for Android devices,
which did a lot of the same functionality in terms of
implementing access to Drive as a file system from within
their application.
And it'd be a good comparison to see how that translates
over to a full desktop application.
So the Archy application-- is going to to take a look at
their website really quick--
it is still beta.
It's very early access right now.
But as an OS 10 user myself, I have to say it's actually
really nicely done application.
I take a little bit of issue with their "bringing Google
Drive to the humans" claim.
Google Drive is a pretty usable product as is.
But for those who do enjoy having a desktop client, it is
something to take a look at.
There are also a couple other applications
that are very similar.
One in particular that maybe we'll do an app review of
sometime in the next few weeks, is collections.me, and
very similar functionality in terms of bringing Drive
contents and uni file management to the desktop
experience.
But I already did install Archy here.
And you can take a look at the application.
I have one little nit in just the dimensions of the UI.
It's a little narrow for me.
I prefer to go a little widescreen.
But you can see here we actually
have our Drive content.
Authentication was very easy.
It's using OAuth.
And the first thing that happens when you launch the
app for the first time is, it will present a pop-up webpage
for entering your Google credentials.
I already went through that.
But we can see here, it connected to my account.
And of course, we can click on files.
It will launch them in whatever the native
application is for that type.
And you can also do things like create new files.
In fact, you can even create new Google
documents, for example.
And I'll just do this.
We'll just create this.
And the nice thing is for the native Google Doc formats,
when we try to open that, it's actually going to launch this
in a web browser where I can then go edit this file.
So, a pretty nice experience for working with native Google
Doc formats and also pretty nice for working with a file
on your desktop.
Of course, we have the Sync client.
If for whatever reason you're not using that, and you just
want to quickly add something to Google Drive from anywhere
in your file system, you can just drag
something right into Archy.
And it will just do an upload into Google Drive.
In fact, let's go over to drive.google.com, and we
should see that content there when that loads.
There are some things that Archy did in the UI that I
think are actually pretty cool and a little bit different
than how we do navigation on Google Drive itself.
So one is we have some really nice quick views here for
accessing our content.
If I want to quickly find my starred items, I can
click on the star.
If I want to look at folders I have in here, and
Trash and so on.
And the one that's really cool, actually, is this
Contacts view.
So one of the permissions Archy asks
for is Google Contacts.
And it pulls in a lot of information here.
So you can actually see we get a nice profile view.
We can see pictures of the people from our Contacts.
And the even cooler part is, it will actually show you how
many items you have shared with each of these users.
So we can see here I have this Demo account on one of our
domains that have, it says, 98 shared items.
I can just drill into this, and it will show me all of the
items I have shared with that account.
So that's actually really a nice navigation feature that
they added, which is not something that is easily seen
in the Drive web UI, so kind of a pretty
cool innovation there.
And likewise, I can go click on my wife, see what I have
shared with her, and so on.
It's a pretty well-done application.
If you take a look at their menu options, if you have a
lot of different things, they've built in the Google
Drive sharing.
So you can see here, I could actually just click on the
little Share icon, and I can just
share it my other account.
And they'll manage that.
And of course, that will do the same sharing that happens
if you were to share this through the web UI.
You can do it from here.
We can get the link for that file, change visibility--
if you want to make it public, available on a domain--
all of those are here, changing ownership.
And pretty much anything that you can do in the Drive UI or
through the Sync client you can do through Archy.
And they actually integrated some contact management.
A little bit of a UI issue in that this is grayed out unless
you happen to be on the Contact view.
But if I want to create a new contact for, I don't know--
Hopefully there's nobody named Joe at exemple.com.
But we can add that, and that's going to be added into
my Contacts, synced in there.
So that same contact information is now, of course,
in Gmail, on my phone, wherever.
So overall, it's a really nicely integrated experience.
I haven't really run into too many issues in using it so
far, other than just a few minor issues with
how the UI is done.
You can see here, here's that file I uploaded earlier.
And overall, it's really cool.
I did mention earlier there's one other application that, if
you are interested in a desktop experience for Google
Drive, that might be another interesting one to check out.
And possibly we'll do an app review of this.
Maybe we can even do a little bit of a head to head and see
which comes out on top.
But Collections is also worth investigating and trying out
if you have a chance.
This one goes a little bit beyond just Google Drive.
It does Facebook and Instagram and everything.
But a really cool idea for giving it that desktop view of
all your files, in the cloud, no matter where
you're coming from.
But for Archy, it's a really solid application.
I would like a little bit more flexibility in the UI and just
to be able to change the view--
maybe do a tile view, like we have in the Drive web UI-- for
a little bit more visual browsing.
But other than just a few minor issues, it's a really
cool application for Mac users, which I am.
And I probably will be giving this a try at home a little
bit more and seeing if it sticks.
So "good job" to the guys that work on Archy.
And that is it for today.
Thank you, everyone.
And we will see you next week.
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