Doo — Tidy Up Your Cloud
You can flirt with apps — download and delete them to your heart’s caprices — but picking a cloud service is different. It’s akin to choosing a spouse. Your cloud service needs to be compatible not just with you, but your computers, devices and not to mention family members, co-workers or whomever else you collaborate in work and life with.
As more people move their work, business and entertainment to the cloud, you’ll need a service to store and organize your electronic documents, and there are a growing number to choose from: Google and Apple’s iCloud, of course, Dropbox, Evernote and a slew of others. That all adds to the collaborative mess: a co-worker prefers Dropbox, a colleague wants Google Docs. When all else fails, you resort to e-mail — and soon, that tool that once promised convenience has turned into a patchwork of services and headaches. How to keep it all straight? Enter the oddly-monikered “Doo.”
What’s the App?
Doo — available for Mac and Windows 8 desktops, in beta for Android and soon on iOS — is no ordinary cloud-based storage drive. It’s actually more valuable as a file manager. With Doo, there’s no need to struggle and agonize over folders: it corrals information from all your different cloud services — Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Dropbox and more — into one central location. Then it organizes everything for you — all with a powerful ease and simplicity that make it darn near irresistible.
The only sticking point for me was the installation: setting it up on Windows 8 was annoying, mostly because going through Microsoft’s store is a massive pain in the butt. But once it’s on your PC, adding various cloud accounts is simple and easy. Doo then analyzes your files, creating a searchable index that is able to pinpoint key features of your files — such as companies, sources, people, file types and formats — and make shortcuts to sort and find them. With one click, you can pull up all your PDF invoices, for example, taking a lot of the grunt work out of keeping files sorted and organized. The elegant interface, which also lets you leaf through files, combines a tile-based Windows 8 design with clean and simple Google-like lists. It’s systematic for those who like their information laid out, yet visually-oriented and pleasant to look and interact with.
But beyond its data analysis, Doo lets you add intelligent tags to documents, for a powerful way to keep your pile of files tidy. The tagging and indexing are, frankly, amazing: I can search for the name of a law firm or client, for example, and Doo digs up any document that mentions it anywhere, even files I’d long forgotten. For a researcher or writer, it’s invaluable; for a business, it’s a godsend. Even if you’re neither, you’ll still find it convenient and useful — always hallmarks of a good service you’ll actually use.
On top of that, Doo offers selective syncing, so you can pick what documents to automatically sync across platforms. You can also choose what you want to work on locally and then sync manually. It’s a great feature that makes Doo flexible for all kinds of situations, whether it’s work or personal.
You’ll Want It If…
If you’re sitting on top of a patchwork of files scattered across everywhere from Google Drive to Dropbox, Doo is a great solution. It handles your digital sprawl, while playing nicely with existing services. The intelligent search and index is a standout. It coordinates with a number of services to sort and organize files in a simple yet powerful way.
For organizations, the tools are a powerful repository. It works with a number of users and services, adapting to habits and preferences, but its cross-platform nature also makes it easy to organize and keep tabs on shared documents.
It’s Not My Thing, What Else Ya Got?
Doo is a rare app that’s useful and unique. Its data analysis, indexing and search are some of most robust I’ve seen. My only gripe is how it’s limited to small number of platforms. But the company is developing an iOS version, so keep your eye on the radar. Once it goes truly mobile, Doo will quickly gain MVP status.
Of course, you can stick with Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud and a host of others, especially if you tend to create documents directly in cloud services — something Doo doesn’t do. But so far, Doo is one of the few apps that recognize a growing reality: as we move our lives to the cloud, it’s easy for files to sprawl across different platforms and services, mixing private, personal and work — and we need a service to manage that mess.