16 BEST cloud apps you should be using right now

Insync

If you find yourself wedded to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, you’ll know that the service has two shortcomings. First, all of your data is stored on Google Drive, so if you lose your connection you can’t carry on working. Second, you have no local copies of your files. Google’s synchronisation tool doesn’t actually synchronise your Google Drive documents to your PC or Mac – it simply creates a series of links on your local machine that opens them in the browser in the regular Google applications.

Insync overcomes both of these problems by copying down each of your Google files to your local machine, optionally converting them to Microsoft Office formats. That means you can work on them even when you don’t have a network connection, and the changes will be synchronised back to the server the next time you log on.

Moreover, by synchronising and converting your files in this way it creates true local copies of your documents rather than simply links to them, which means that should your account ever become inaccessible, or someone gains access and causes damage, you’ll still have a copy of all of your vital data to hand.

Pricing depends on your Google Account type. You can try it free for 15 days, after which ‘consumers’ must pay a one-off $10 (£6.19) fee for lifetime synchronisation, while for business users who are hosting their own domains on Google Apps it’s $10 a year to cover up to three Google Accounts, either of which strikes us as great value for money.

Draw.io

Draw.io is one of the many cloud applications that can store its data in your Google Drive account. It’s a tool for creating technical drawings, of the kind you’ll frequently see used to describe an organisation, process or network.

The default workspace includes an array of common symbols such as clouds, people, arrows, rounded rectangles and so on, each of which can be dragged onto your document canvas. Grab handles on the sides and corners lets you reposition and resize them to get the precise layout you’re after, and you can add text, colours, gradients and images imported from your local computer.

The results are saved as XML by default, so they’re highly portable, but if you prefer you can alternatively export them in a range of common formats including PNG, PDF and SVG.

Wunderlist

The key responsibility of a task manager – and the one criteria on which it will live or die – is its ability to keep you aware of all of your current jobs wherever you happen to be. Wunderlist fulfils that role more than any other, with dedicated clients for Windows, OS X, Chrome OS, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Windows Phone, Android tablet and Android smartphones. You can also log in through a regular browser and maintain your task list online.

As well as allowing you to knock out quick one-line reminders, Wunderlist lets you add notes to more fully describe what needs doing (including sub-tasks that should be completed before an overall job can be started), set reminders and fix due dates. You can group them into discrete lists, and thus keep your personal and business jobs separate, and view both impending deadlines and jobs that need to be done within the next week for a better overview of what’s coming over the horizon.

You can share lists by email and print them out, and invite friends to contribute to your list, at which point they’ll be able to add to, delete from and check off items, making it a first class tool not only for personal reminders, but for organising working groups, too.