[blackjack93117]

I loved BOX.net
I love the playbook app. I love the touch friendly web interface - I love that I got 50g free because I use the Playbook app. I recommend it to anyone I have a chance to recommend it to even on here. I was so happy being able to easily view all my docs from anywhere...

I uploaded my life, my business docs, everything. Thought I had a great backup plan.

Now when it was time to do some downloading (not often the case) I discovered it does not maintain the timestamp when the file was last modified! PLUS if you want to download more than one file at a time - its time to pay up! You cant download a folder.

Instead it replaces it with the date and time it was transferred to BOX.net?

wtf is this ??? and no warning. If you relied on this as a backup your files will be a mess!

See
Does Box.net support timestamps?

They are acting like there is no demand to fix this problem???
This canNOT be used as a business tool like this - with multiple collaborators.

Any recommendations for an alternate playbook friendly solution?

[kritikal]

wow that totally blows. Really glad I haven't invested too much in their service, I've only been using it as a lazy way to transfer notes taken on the PlayBook or PDF files so far.

Guess I'll keep using it just for that. The fact that you can only download one file at a time without upgrading is really bad!

[Innovatology]

Give Files & Folders a try. We support multi-file and multi-folder copy and paste, wherever your files are: on your PlayBook, in Box.net, in your Dropbox, in Google Docs or inside a .ZIP file. To Files & Folders they are all the same. This should solve your first issue.

As for timestamps: when we upload to Box.net, Files & Folders passes the correct date & time. However, Box.net disregards this at the moment. Also, the PlayBook SDK we use do not allow us to set the timestamp on files, so when downloading the timestamp will be the time/date of download. We are researching a way of circumventing this problem, and hope to have it available soon.

[FF22]

Oh, what's so bad, you upload 20,000 files trying to get good "payback" from the free 50gigs. Now you spend the next 20 years downloading them one at a time. Seems fair!

It took me a good couple of hours uploading a folder of photos. My dsl upload is obviously not the fastest.

[kritikal]

Oh, what's so bad, you upload 20,000 files trying to get good "payback" from the free 50gigs. Now you spend the next 20 years downloading them one at a time. Seems fair!

It took me a good couple of hours uploading a folder of photos. My dsl upload is obviously not the fastest.

The bigger issue is the fact that they disregard the original timestamps of your files

[blackjack93117]

Oh, what's so bad, you upload 20,000 files trying to get good "payback" from the free 50gigs. Now you spend the next 20 years downloading them one at a time. Seems fair!

It took me a good couple of hours uploading a folder of photos. My dsl upload is obviously not the fastest.

That's exactly right, and apparently their strategy - like the crack dealer - "first one's free"

The bigger issue is the fact that they disregard the original timestamps of your files

Free 50g of storage. Oh you want to get them back? That will cost ya. Oh and by the way - hope you don't mind if we changed the modification dates...on all of your files.

Then they respond with THIS to ticked off users who discovered this gem:

"Thanks for your question Paul. Right now, maintaining file timestamps (for Web upload or sync) has not been an highly requested feature. As with any customer requests, we will consider this feature if there's enough user demand for it. "

With no further reply as more and more ticked off users accumulate in their blog.
Worse then RIM!
.

[PatrickMJS]

box.net... DELETED!!!

[blackjack93117]

OK scary news - I signed up for dropbox, uploaded a file from my PC as a test. While my dropbox folder on the PC shows the correct mod date - I looked at it on the playbook and it shows today's date - went to the dropbox folder on the playbook and it shows todays date as well whats going on? et tu dropbox?

Can someone confirm this? Is dropbox hosed too?

[chiefchie]

In my case, after dropping off a file in my dropbox and downloaded it from bluebox, that file changes time stamp to the time I downloaded it. why bluebox?
My dropbox file keeps the original time stamp though.

[blackjack93117]

In my case, after dropping off a file in my dropbox and downloaded it from bluebox, that file changes time stamp to the time I downloaded it. why bluebox?
My dropbox file keeps the original time stamp though.

Have you tried downloading from the website via playbook? I tried this with a file that shows the correct time stamp in the dropbox, but when I check the actual file date in a file browser on the playbook it shows the download date instead of the creation date.

[SDM7171]

Two threads?

Someone make me a "dislike" icon.

[FF22]

Have you tried downloading from the website via playbook? I tried this with a file that shows the correct time stamp in the dropbox, but when I check the actual file date in a file browser on the playbook it shows the download date instead of the creation date.

The DATE may be something "stamped" by the pb when you download it. Obviously, it does not know from dates out on the web and to it, it is a new file that you just downloaded.

Here's an idea if it works - ZIP the file before sending it to the Cloud. UNzip when it comes back. Hopefully, the contents of the zip file will retain your original date. Obviously one more step and possibly time-consuming.

[FF22]

Two threads?

Someone make me a "dislike" icon.

Magic involved. Waves Harry Potter wand. Poof - you are a Dislike Icon!

BJ's the impatient type. He needs his answer NOW!

[blackjack93117]

Two threads?

Someone make me a "dislike" icon.

Magic involved. Waves Harry Potter wand. Poof - you are a Dislike Icon!

BJ's the impatient type. He needs his answer NOW!

It's a warning - warnings warrant being posted as many places as appropriate
Always thinking of others...sorry you don't like to be warned.

[blackjack93117]

The DATE may be something "stamped" by the pb when you download it. Obviously, it does not know from dates out on the web and to it, it is a new file that you just downloaded.

Here's an idea if it works - ZIP the file before sending it to the Cloud. UNzip when it comes back. Hopefully, the contents of the zip file will retain your original date. Obviously one more step and possibly time-consuming.

Hmm not a bad idea... in fact that could solve the "single file download restriction" thanks F2.

[JBenn911]

Crap !!!!! Thanks for the heads ups....

Guess its time to try Dropbox again..

[Innovatology]

Here's an idea if it works - ZIP the file before sending it to the Cloud. UNzip when it comes back. Hopefully, the contents of the zip file will retain your original date.

If the unzip utility is written in Air, then your unzipped file will have the date/time it was unzipped. In Air we don't have any means of setting the timestamp of a file. The same goes for WebWorks, I think. As far as I know all the unzip tools are written in Air.

We're investigating possibilities of circumventing this problem.

[Innovatology]

Guess its time to try Dropbox again..

The same applies to Dropbox.

[blackjack93117]

The DATE may be something "stamped" by the pb when you download it. Obviously, it does not know from dates out on the web and to it, it is a new file that you just downloaded.

Here's an idea if it works - ZIP the file before sending it to the Cloud. UNzip when it comes back. Hopefully, the contents of the zip file will retain your original date. Obviously one more step and possibly time-consuming.

In the case of box.net - the playbook has nothing to do with it - I downloaded to my desktop.

Not sure about dropbox yet. It seems that the playbook does have something to do with it there...

[FF22]

If the unzip utility is written in Air, then your unzipped file will have the date/time it was unzipped. In Air we don't have any means of setting the timestamp of a file. The same goes for WebWorks, I think. As far as I know all the unzip tools are written in Air.

We're investigating possibilities of circumventing this problem.

Does YOUR unzipper show the contents, including the dates of those files, or does it straight away UNzip when you point at a zip file?

[SDM7171]

It's a warning - warnings warrant being posted as many places as appropriate
Always thinking of others...sorry you don't like to be warned.

How do you conclude that I don't want to be warned? I must have opened both threads to know that repetition was involved, so must be open to the possibility of their being something of potential interest.

If your warning is so fundamental, get it made a sticky. Personally, I wouldn't expect free software to have every bell and whistle - which, given that it appears the other products in the market are equally "flawed", is a valid expectation. Will we be seeing multiple threads for Dropbox, Files and Folders, and Google Docs as well, so that 3 of you can inundate the devs with requests for this function that "everybody wants"?

[Innovatology]

Does YOUR unzipper show the contents, including the dates of those files, or does it straight away UNzip when you point at a zip file?

Both. Files & Folders treats zips as folders:

You can tap the zip to open it, view it's contents, pick which file(s) to unzip, add other files, delete/rename files within the zip etc.

You can also press and hold the zip file to select it, then tap the Unzip button to unzip the whole file in one go.

[blackjack93117]

I just bought files and folders because I love interactive developers, and supporting playbook developers. It's actually very well done and nice interface. Thanks Innovatology.

[egnyteuser]

hi - You should give Egnyte a whirl, Online Storage, FTP Site, FTP Server, File Sharing, Cloud Storage with Egnyte Cloud File Server - real enterprise class file storage and sharing. The timestamp preservation is not a problem if you use their sync feature (optionally you can also use FTP to load files to preserve timestamps). The sync is also more robust than BOX's sync function.

[blackburberry]

Blackjack to your cloud service alternative, I'm experimenting with iCloud and the Playbook. So far they play nicely, however it may not be a solution for anyone without an ios device. Maybe someone here knows a work around. Maybe you know someone that could set you up with an account?
Right now I can tether the PB to the iPhone hotspot and access iCloud to form (a pseudo bridge?). Looking more and more like the best of both worlds.