[e1miran]

Over the last few months I've been able to mostly accomplish my goal of keeping/syncing media and other content in the cloud and not storing it directly on the phone. My reasoning is mainly because of having only a 16gb ip4 (with 138 apps at last count), and wanting to keep enough unused space for shooting video and stuff. This has also required me to sync less, if at all. I wanted to share what I am using and others could also chime in. Hopefully, I'm not duplicating another thread (I searched but didn't find one).

I've been able to accomplish my goal by using the following:

Contacts/Notes/Calendar - synced with gmail

Photos - upload to Picasa using Web Albums app. This app does a great job of duplicating the stock Photo app's functionality for viewing pics. Picasa unfortunately caps video uploads at 100mb, so I need a better solution for video. Any ideas?

Files - Combination of dropbox and google docs. Using ReaddleDocs or Quickoffice to access/edit the files.

Movies - Air Video app - not technically the cloud, but I have access to about 30 titles without syncing and they're not on my phone.

Music - Audiogalaxy app - not technically the cloud, but I now have access to 18000+ songs without syncing and they're not on my phone.

Of course, I am at a disadvantage if I'm ever without a WiFi or data connection/signal. But, this has worked for me well so far.

[tonydeli7]

Nice!
You could upload your videos to Youtube and mark them as private..

[rstark18]

Contacts/Notes/Calendar - synced with gmail

Photos - upload to Picasa using Web Albums app. This app does a great job of duplicating the stock Photo app's functionality for viewing pics. Picasa unfortunately caps video uploads at 100mb, so I need a better solution for video. Any ideas?

Quick question about your Gmail setup. You say contacts, notes, calendar. How are you syncing, exchange or imap or both? With exchange you lose the ability to sync notes. With imap you lose the ability to sync contacts. If you setup both (using the same account login) it screws up mail attachment sending.
I currently use Gmail exchange for mail, contacts, calendar and I use yahoo imap for my notes.

As far as pics and vids. I was using Flickr Pro but didn't renew the pro version because I wasn't really using it like I thought I would. With both Flickr and Picasa the problem I have is the limited space (1gb for Picasa, 200 most recent images for Flickr).
Another thing to consider is if your upload to Picasa is your only backup then that is risky. If for any reason Picasa accidently deletes you images, you have lost everything. That would hurt. Always have multiple backups!

[GuyZ]

Thanks for the tip.

However, it sounds like quite a hassle. I think periodical backups or some kind of network sharing (and automatic backups) of the iTunes media folder would be the best option. Dropbox is great, but it lacks the capacity to hold all of my stuff.

It shouldn't be hard to develop an application to automate the process, but I'm not sure how much access you get without having a JB iPhone.

[mockinmaro]

Youtube offer video upload feature and it gives a specific link that belongs to the youtube account.

[iphone4jailbreak]

nice, thanks a lot for sharing buddy !!

[e1miran]

Quick question about your Gmail setup. You say contacts, notes, calendar. How are you syncing, exchange or imap or both? With exchange you lose the ability to sync notes. With imap you lose the ability to sync contacts. If you setup both (using the same account login) it screws up mail attachment sending.
I currently use Gmail exchange for mail, contacts, calendar and I use yahoo imap for my notes.

I sync using both as you suspected. What attachment sending issues do you have? I haven't encountered any. I'm using IMAP for Mail and Notes and Exchange for Contacts and Calender. It's true that I lose push email this way, but it's not too big of a deal for me. My main issue is that I use a different "reply-to" address instead of the gmail one. Exchange always defaults to the gmail address and that's an issue for me.

As far as pics and vids. I was using Flickr Pro but didn't renew the pro version because I wasn't really using it like I thought I would. With both Flickr and Picasa the problem I have is the limited space (1gb for Picasa, 200 most recent images for Flickr).

I pay $5/yr for 20gb of additional space from google. This is automatically shared with all google services, such as Picasa and googledocs. I find this to be a very economical solution to the limited space for pictures.

Another thing to consider is if your upload to Picasa is your only backup then that is risky. If for any reason Picasa accidently deletes you images, you have lost everything. That would hurt. Always have multiple backups!

Good point and reminder.

[e1miran]

Thanks for the tip.

However, it sounds like quite a hassle. I think periodical backups or some kind of network sharing (and automatic backups) of the iTunes media folder would be the best option. Dropbox is great, but it lacks the capacity to hold all of my stuff.

Actually, I don't find it much of a hassle at all. Not much more than using multiple apps that just need to be initially configured.

Also, my main concern has less to do with syncing and backing up (which is important) and more to do with remote access and freeing up space on the device itself. But, you do make some good points, thanks.

[e1miran]

You could upload your videos to Youtube and mark them as private..

True. I have to give youtube another chance. I was not initially satisfied with the quality.