Doctape, the iOS application to open everything from everywhere

It’s becoming increasingly common: many users have accounts on more and more cloud storage services, and that means having our data always at hand but divided into many different spaces. Some initiatives such as Jolidrive are very welcome in these cases, although nobody has tried to go a step further. Until now, because we have a new rival among the services that bring together the “drawers” of the internet : Doctape .

Doctape serves as an iOS application (there are also versions for OS X and other platforms) from which we can open files from several services at the same time: Dropbox , Facebook , Gmail , Box , Github , Google Drive , Instagram , Flickr , Picasa , SkyDrive or any image from the internet or from the photo reel of our device.

We can mark each file with labels in the style of how we will be able to do it soon in OS X Mavericks, upload the files we want by sending them through a mail, and download them in the format we want as it happens in Google Drive. The conversion is done on the fly, from your servers. They also assure us, through a separate section of their official website, that our data is effectively encrypted and they make use of the SSL protocol so that no one can get their hands where they don’t belong.

The main advantage is that we can use Doctape’s own file conversion system to obtain compatibility that, according to its managers, no other mobile application has. An internet connection is required as file conversions are done from the cloud, but we gain the ability to open Office, OpenOffice, Photoshop, vectors, video and audio files in various open formats, CSV files… there are up to 80 file types that cannot usually be used in iOS unless you have specialized applications for it and Doctape makes it possible.

And that’s just the point: Doctape is free but allows only two file conversions per day . If we find ourselves in need of more conversions, we have an in-app purchase that allows us to become ‘Pro’ members for 0.89 euros. This way the application is not bad as a professional solution, but its price also makes it affordable and accessible for anyone who is comfortable with this system.

We cannot omit another crucial advantage for many: Doctape is present as a web page and as an extension of Google Chrome , so if for whatever reason we are forced to use a Windows or Linux computer we will still have access to the files stored in its cloud. It is, in short, a storage service that combines with the rest of the most used storage services on the network.

DoctapeDescarga
The only thing that surprises me is that we have two different applications : Doctape Files To Go to upload files to our space (which by the way is 5 GB for the free accounts) and DocTape Viewer for the visualization of files that we have distributed in the cloud storage platforms. Both are free and both use the freemium model to make a profit, so I don’t see why they couldn’t combine the two functions in one portal to simplify things. Also, their two icons look very similar, and can cause confusion.

Doctape Files To Go is universal, while DocTape Viewer is available for iPhone only. Both can be installed on any terminal that can run iOS 4.3 .

Official site