The cloud may have taken a huge hit post NSA snoopergate, but there are still compelling reasons for using online storage and apps, even if it’s better to avoid putting your extra private data up there. For instance we love the ease and value of Amazon S3, and Google Drive, Dropbox and Sky Drive are great services for storing and collaborating on files with clients and colleagues.

But one of the big problems is the fact that there are so many different services competing for our attention. As well as the ones we’ve mentioned there are FTP services, other commercial services such as Picasa, Box, Sugarsync etc etc. It can be really confusing trying to keep tabs on where everything is, and what passwords work where and suchlike.

Which is where Otixo could come in handy. This cool service promises to unify and simplify your online data life, by giving you a single sign on dashboard from where you can preview, search, copy/move and share your files with other cloud services and other people.

Two very neat features of the service is the copying and moving of files between your cloud accounts, which can save time and a heap of bandwidth. The new mobile apps also add another powerful tool to the list, because nowadays so much impulse work is done using a smartphone while on the go, and having just one dashboard for this kind of data sharing has got to be a huge win win for a lot of people.

The downside is you have to pay, but there are a couple of nice options. You can either buy particular apps on a once off basis (e.g. $9.99 for the Android app) or you can pay a monthly sub of $9.99 and get full access to the dashboard on any device, any platform. Nice idea, and there’s a 14 day free trial available from the site.