Linux can do this out-of-the box without having to give Big Brother access to your private files.
sshfs and you're done. Is there sshfs ported to Maemo?

Actually I don't need a Linux client. I prefer to just access my files as a remotely mounted disk. Is that possible?

sshfs messes with the mtime just like FTP (does it not? and I don't like that.

Anyone knows if they provide API's?
Would be nice if some noble soul could actually implement something like that for linux

"Based on information you have provided, you are not eligible to have a Nokia account or to use Ovi services."

Well, that pretty much concludes my test of Ovi files

Sounds interesting. I have to say that I never bothered to use Nokia services before as I never quite saw the point. There are usually more popular and better services that do the same thing and work better.

That said, 10GB of free online storage plus the ability to browse your entire computer on top of accessing files and folders that you uploaded to Ovi Files sounded great. I know that there are ways to do this without having to go through a third party service but a turn-key solution is always good. Plus the fact that it's a Nokia solution dedicated to mobile access surely means that it's tightly integrated within Nokia's smarpthones, right? So I signed up and gave it a try yesterday afternoon.

The signing up, downloading of the Mac software and setting up was surprisingly quick and straightforward. Very unusual for Nokia. Unfortunately, that's where the good things ended.

Ovi Files relies on a small deamon running on your computer to provide remote access and to upload the files and folders that you've marked for anytime access to the Ovi servers. It crashed 3 times in the first 4 hours I used it. The one time when it managed to run for a whole 2 hours without crashing, it turned out that it wasn't actually working. Although it claimed to be connected, the Ovi File web interface couldn't see my computer and my anytime files were not getting uploaded. When I went to quit it to see if a restart would help, it froze and crashed. This morning, after I woke up my Mac, it claimed to be connected but was once again not actually working. When I went to quit it, it once again froze and crashed.

It's without any doubt the worst, buggiest, most unstable piece of software I've used in a long time. I hope that the Windows version is better, although my experience with Nokia Windows software has always been really bad.

The experience you get when trying to access your files from your phone isn't any better. As far as I can see, there isn't any native client available for any platforms. All you get is a bog-standard web interface. What a massive missed opportunity here...

No surprise with the web interface. It's quite bad. Performance varied widely over the few hours I tested but, more often than not, it was awful. It often took more than a minute to simply display the home page. Clicking links to navigate through the file system was sometimes quick but it often took a minute or more before the next page appeared. It was quite buggy too. When trying to view ebooks (PDF), some would open fine but some would cause the web interface to get stuck for 2 or 3 minutes and then display a message indicating that an error occurred with Ovi Files. And that was when accessing files that had been uploaded to the Anytime service, not even trying to access file on my computer.

The site's usability isn't any better than the rest. The mobile version uses the tiniest of the tiniest of fonts, making reading text and clicking links a real pain. The desktop version looks a lot better but is even more of a pain to use as it relies on frames and double-clicking, which requires you to use the browser's hover mode.

To be fair, I should mention the couple of things that are actually not that bad. Ovi Files will let you read PDF and Office documents online without having to download them. Sounds great since many Symbian phone haven't got a built-in PDF reader and even the N900 hasn't got a built-in free Office reader. Of course, they didn't really think this trough. All you get to navigate your documents are Next and Previous buttons. There's no way to jump to a specific page and no overview or summary view that would let to jump to the section you want to see. Given the sluggish performance, you can forget about quickly checking out that bit of info you need from section 5 of this document you forgot home.

Another feature worth pointing out is that you've not restricted to download individual files. You can download whole folders too. In that case, Ovi Files will package the content of the folder in a zip file and let you download it. Only small problem here: many Symbian phone don't have a built-in unzip functionality and the N900 doesn't either. Quite a big oversight here if you ask me. Xarchiver together with the command line zip program managed to unzip an MP3 album just fine though.

The nail in the coffin for Ovi Files is probably this paragraph from the T&C:

"However, by submitting Material to the Service you grant Nokia a worldwide non-exclusive, assignable, fully paid, royalty-free, perpetual and irrevocable license to use, copy, publicly perform, display, distribute and modify the Material, and to prepare derivative works thereof, or incorporate the Material into other works as well as sublicense the same."

In other words (and correct me if I'm wrong here), any file that I upload to Ovi Files or access via Ovi Files can then be used, modified and distributed anywhere, anytime and in any way they want by Nokia. Isn't this scary? We're not just talking about your holiday pictures here but *all* of your personal files.

So Ovi Files was yet another complete failure by Nokia for me. And it's not like if it was an early preview of a new service. It's been around for quite a while now and even used to be a commercial service before they made it free. I really would have been raging if I had paid for that.

It's all a bit sad though. Ovi Files is a great idea. Had they had a great native mobile client, stable desktop client, and good performance, it could have been a really breakthrough service. It's quite frustrating to see that Nokia actually has a great vision and loads of great ideas for the future of mobile technologies but always fails badly when it comes to execution. Will this ever change?