This post is authored for the Yahoo Developer Network Blog

When we were given the chance to bring ZumoDrive to Yahoo Mail, we were excited by the possibilities. ZumoDrive is a cloud storage service that gives you access to your files anywhere, with powerful sharing capabilities. Our goal is to make using the cloud easy for everybody, and to explore ways to integrate the cloud into services people use every day. With the Yahoo! Mail platform, we are now able to integrate online storage and sharing directly into Yahoo Mail.

Using ZumoDrive you can quickly upload and share your photos, videos, and documents through our web interface or desktop client. Once your files are uploaded to your ZumoDrive, you instantly have access to them on any computer you may be on.

Upload the photos from your latest trip into a folder and ZumoDrive will automatically create a slideshow for you that you can share with your friends or embed in your blog. Share a folder of documents with your coworkers. Instantly, they will be able to add the folder to their own ZumoDrive, creating a collaborative environment where everyone can contribute to documents or add files for everyone to see.

Get ZumoDrive Desktop for even more powerful features. Drag and drop files of all types and sizes straight into your ZumoDrive and then access them from anywhere. You can use all of your desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office, Picasa, iTunes and many more to open, view and edit the files in your ZumoDrive. Any changes you make will be synchronized on every device you use; even the files you shared with others will be updated instantly.

Integrating ZumoDrive with Yahoo Mail opens up many possibilities. Our app “Share It” makes it simple to share any documents, photos, or those tricky to send attachments directly within Yahoo! Mail. Even those large files that used to be a pain to attach now becomes a breeze to share. It’s all integrated with Yahoo! Mail too; simply select files and click send, and a new email will be created along with links to those files. The experience is made even better when you already use ZumoDrive; now all of your content is at your fingertips right inside Yahoo! Mail, ready to be shared. Also, unlike email attachments, files shared with ZumoDrive can be changed even after the email is sent.

As time goes on, we plan to add more ways to connect your inbox to your files. When you receive attachments in an email, simply drag the message to the ZumoDrive app to add them to your drive. We will be adding more sharing features, allowing more ways to protect your files, and connecting your email conversations to shared folders. We will also let you track the status of your shared files, letting you know when someone views or edits your documents.

We are excited to be bringing ZumoDrive to Yahoo! Mail and continue to look forward to the possibilities that the application in Yahoo! Mail brings.

Netbooks have recently become the fastest-growing category in the PC market, with 35 million units predicted to ship this year.  But should netbooks be cheap small laptops or can they, like the iPhone, make you go wow? 

A number of industry reports contend that netbook sales are eating into traditional notebook sales.  While it’s not entirely clear how many netbooks serve as notebook replacements versus supplements, it’s obvious that the big industry players are concerned about the increasing commoditization of the market as netbooks grow in popularity. Microsoft and others have referred to the problem publicly in recent times.

This situation presents PC manufacturers with a confounding dilemma.  Do they fight the battle of low-margin machines by simply trying to produce the best netbook in the market or do they limit the capabilities of their netbooks to protect their sales of full-fledged notebooks?

We think there’s a third alternative which is much more enticing for the consumer and the manufacturer –  make a netbook that is a pleasure to use and can serve as a gateway to lucrative subscription services. The model would be much like that of the smart phone - subsidize the hardware and make money on the services.

Amazon is doing this with the kindle, selling a device which has large amounts of residual revenue by simply making it easier for people to buy and read books.  Apple did this twice – first with the iPod by making it easy for people to consume music and then with the iPhone and its 15,000 apps.  The key is that the buying experience has to be seamless and the additional items affordable.  Think of buying songs for in iTunes or apps in the Apple App Store for $.99. 

This could certainly be done with a netbook.  Imagine a sexy, highly usable netbook that you could get for $99 and then begin easily adding apps, services and content.  Would you be willing to pay a few bucks for 3G service so you were always connected?  What other services would make sense with a stellar netbook?  We can think of many, including ZumoDrive.

With Zumodrive, we help people store, access and share the bits of their life – their music, their memories and their ideas. People don’t want to think of where all this is stored and how to take it all with them on their various devices. They just want to know that it is all constantly protected, always accessible and easily shareable.  We have leveraged the cloud to make this more of a reality, and we would love to see cool netbooks where ZumoDrive could be added for a few more bucks with a click or two.  Would you be willing to pay a few more bucks to always have access to all your personal content?

We’d be thrilled if the PC industry focused on making netbooks better and delivering a great mobile experience on them, and we’ll do whatever we can to make that experience even better.

I recently read an interview with Steve Jobs in 1985 just as the Mac was launching. Here is an excerpt…

I think the design constraint of simplicity or invisibility is at the heart of what make technology consumable by everyone. Think about GUI’s, think about Google and search, think about the iPhone. Every time there is a significant breakthrough in ease of use you get 10x number of users.

For us, the key focus has always been to make our service completely transparent, so you don’t even know it’s there.  We want our users to enjoy the power of the cloud without having to change their behavior.  The way we do this is to tie each and every one of your current application directly to the cloud so you don’t have to change the way your work. 

Kevin Toffel emphasizes this when in his video review of ZumoDrive in jkontherun.  He keys in on the coolness of playing iTunes from your laptop or netbook without having to store the songs locally.  There’s definitely a lot of buzz around this particular application, but ZumoDrive can do this with effectively any application.  This is because ZumoDrive integrates directly with your computer’s file system, which all the applications on your computers happen to already use.

Just as with iTunes, ZumoDrive lets you work on Word, Powerpoint and Excel files in the cloud without doing anything differently than you have in the past.  We’ll continue to explore new ways we can tie the cloud even more tightly with applications involving videos, photos and other file types.  After all, it’s all about the apps and we'll strive to make it as transparent as possible to for them to use the storage in the cloud.

Well, it appears that billions of dollars from Obama’s stimulus package will be going towards making broadband connectivity more prevalent.  But I’d be willing to bet it will be a long time before I’m truly “always connected.”  I still find myself unable to access the Internet now and again from my laptop and smart phone, and it’s hard to believe this will change overnight.  To address this reality, we architected ZumoDrive to work well with whatever connectivity you happen to have: Wifi, 3G, EDGE or, God forbid, nothing at all.

First of all, when you access content, Zumo will intelligently adapt to your current connectivity and use.  For example, if you play a song on your iPhone while you’re on edge, we’ll transcode the song to a lower bit rate.  Similarly, if you’re viewing pictures in a browser, we don’t download the entire 6MB image. This is not rocket science, but when done right, it makes all the difference in the user experience.  You don’t have to sit around waiting for downloads to finish.  Also, those of us who have to pay for bandwidth will save a few bucks.

ZumoDrive also caches your frequently-used content locally, so the next time you access the content, you need not touch the network. So after awhile, even if you’re disconnected, you’ll usually have all you need.  Cody Overcash describes this well in his ZumoDrive review.

Going forward, we are going to make the cache “predictive.”  Since ZumoDrive is installed across devices, it can observe when you play a song, view a picture, read a file anywhere and use that information to proactively move the most important files to your many devices when connectivity is good and cheap.  So on a netbook, if Zumo is configured to just take up just 2-GB of storage capacity, we will move up to 2-GB of the stuff that you have recently accessed to the netbook. That’s actually a reasonable amount of space if you’re using it wisely.  That way, you’ll usually be accessing files locally, which really helps when you don’t have the luxury of wifi.

We call this architecture Hybrid Cloud Storage, and its key value is to deliver a superb use experience while minimizing bandwidth limitations and costs.  Many other cloud-based services assume you’ll always be connected and won’t care about how much bandwidth you’ll consume.  For some people that may be the case, but we wanted to do something for the rest of us…

TechCrunch broke the news of our launch yesterday. Since then there has been a lot ofchatter and reviews of the service, both positive, and negative.

So far the strongest complaint we've heard in the blogosphere is that we are not being transparent about pricing. Some even viewed it as a scheme to fool users to sign up. But I assure you that was not our intention.

This launch came as a pleasant surprise for us. We knew we had something unique, but didn't expect so many people to understand our vision on day one. The private launch was initially intended to find a group of folks that would help us better define our direction, not as a way to market the product.

With that context in mind, disclosing the pricing up front is something we've completely overlooked. That is our fault. To rectify this, we have just posted the pricing info here, and also linked it from the home page.

I hope we haven't lost your trust, and we are looking forward to helping you make the move to the cloud.

David Zhao, CEO