Motorola has acquired a company called Zector, which is behind the ZumoDrive online storage service and the ZumoCast software which allows users to stream media over the web from a personal computer to a mobile device.

Motorola says it plans to use Zector’s technology to “enhance Motorola Mobility’s mobile content experience and MOTOBLUR service.” In other words, you can expect media synchronization and streaming services to be baked into future versions of the MOTOBLUR software, which Motorola uses on many of its Android powered handsets.

That’s pretty good news for anyone using a Motorola Droid smartphone or possibly the company’s upcoming Android tablet. It might be less good news for prospective ZumoCast users who don’t have Motorola products. While the company will currently continue to support existing ZumoCast users, Motorola is suspending distribution of the software, which means no new users can sign up right now… It’s not clear whether Motorola will continue to offer ZumoCast as a free download for non-Motorola devices in the future, although the press release only says that the distribution is on hold “while enhancements are made.”

No changes are currently planned for the ZumoDrive service.

Zumocast is a new app from the folks behind the ZumoDrive online storage service. While ZumoDrive is designed to let you quickly and easily upload files to the web and access them from any computer as if they were local files, Zumocast is kind of the opposite. You set up the ZumoCast server software on your computer and then you can use the company’s iPhone or iPad software to stream files directly from your PC to your mobile device without uploading them to the cloud first.

The app is incredibly easy to use. Just download and install the ZumoCast desktop software and sign up for a free account. It will automatically look for files in the places they’re most likely to be (such as the My Documents folder if you’re using Windows, although the software is also available for Mac). You can also manually add any folder on your computer to ZumoCast just by right-clicking on it and selecting Add to ZumoCast from the context menu.

The mobile app is divided into Files, Music, and Videos sections, where you can find media files which stream pretty smoothly — although it takes  a few seconds to buffer a file before it will start to play. Audio and video quality appeared to be excellent over my WiFi network. I haven’t tested 3G performance.

ZumoCast for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad is available as a free download from the App Store.

There’s no Android version yet, but there is a ZumoDrive app which offers similar functionality.

via Techcrunch

SugarSync, ZumoDrive, Dropbox, and HomePipe are three apps that let you access files from your computer on your mobile phone. I mean, that’s not all they do. They actually let you synchronize files between computers, and store some of your files on the web — making it easy to access documents, music, photos, videos, or other files from virtually any computer with a web browser. But in the last day or so, we’ve seen updates from all three companies making it easier to do those things with an Android phone.

HomePipe

HomePipe launched its Android app this morning. It lets users access files on their home network on their phones using a 3G or WiFi connection.

You can run HomePipe on any Windows or Mac computer to stream your files over the internet to your phone. HomePipe offers unlimited storage — because files are actually streaming from your home network, not a cloud-based server. Unfortunately, this means that if you turn off your computer, you won’t be able to access your files remotely.

HomePipe for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. There’s also a free app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. You can download the PC server software from HomePipe.net.

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ZumoDrive is a service that lets you synchronize files on your PC with a cloud-based storage system. In other words, click on the music directory on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer, link it to your ZumoDrive account, and you can pull up a web browser on any computer to listen to music, view photos, watch videos, or download files that have been shared.

The company has offered an iPhone app that lets you access your files on the go for a while. Today the company launched new mobile apps for Google Android and Palm WebOS.

It turns out the Android app is a bit half-baked. While I could use it to find files and listen to audio on my Nexus One, things got a little funky when I tried playing long MP3 files (like 30 to 60 minute podcasts). Each time I tried to listen to one of these, I got an error message and lost the ability to pause the playback or adjust the volume. The only way to stop the audio was to kill the app.

I’m not the only person having troubles. Several users left complaints about similar problems in the Android Market.

Fortunately, ZumoDrive for Android handled music files a little better. I was able to stream a few MP3s without any problems, and the ZumoDrive player even showed album art as the music played.

I fired up the ZumoDrive app on my iPod touch to see if it was more stable, and it really was. If you’re looking for a way to stream your video, music or photo collections from your desktop to your iPhone — with the added benefit of web access from any computer, ZumoDrive is a pretty nice solution. I just can’t really recommend it for Android users yet. I haven’t tried the WebOS version.

ZumoDrive offers up to 2GB of online storage space for free. If you want additional storage, you’ll have to pay for it.

The new apps are available from the Android Market and Palm’s App Catalog

You can check out my hands-on video with the ZumoDrive Android app after the break.

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