Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Crate, Ge.tt & Min.US 3 New File Share Methods

culled from my daily feeds this item from the folks atmakeuseofdotcom

Posted: 28 Mar 2011 04:30 PM PDT
storage share filesWith the advent of HTML5, which enables websites to do amazing things, the realm of file-sharing sites has definitely grown with newer options that make the whole experience a lot more seamless. You can drag and drop onto websites, in interesting ways you couldn’t (or could with limited results) with the web apps you may be used to, like the defunct Drop.io or Mediafire. It may be easier to use desktop programs, like Dropbox (which you now use to sync foldersoutside the main one), but it never hurts to explore other alternatives that offer similar features.
We’ll take a look at some of the newer web-based storage and file-sharing sites that despite their simple looks, offer convenient drag-and-drop, as well as, shortened URLs and statistics (something that most desktop programs don’t provide yet).

Crate

storage share files
With Crate, you get a beautiful and ad-free site where you can upload files of up to 50 MB by drag and dropping them onto the website and copy the shortened link to share with whomever. You can have up to 6 different crates or workspaces for a total of 200MB of storage space, which you can track if you sign up for a free account. Once signed in, you can see the number of views and downloads for your files. Though you can share an entire crate, you can’t download it since you still have to click on each file to download it. You will also need a compatible browser to get the most of out Crate, as you can’t drag and drop files in IE9.
store and share files

Ge.tt

store and share files
Here is another simple, real-time sharing website, which has a focus on letting you share your files quick and move on. With Ge.tt, you can select files  or can drag and drop them onto the site (if you have a supported browser), and then share the shortened URL like the other apps in this list, but a cool feature is that you don’t have to wait for your file to finish uploading before users download them.
You also don’t need an account to start uploading files, but acquiring a free account enables your files to live longer than 30 days, plus you get live statistics. You can also add or remove files,  but any files that stay inactive in your account for more than 3 months will get removed. Like Crate, Ge.tt doesn’t allow the download of an entire share, so if you have multiple files to share, other users will have to click on each file to download them all.

Min.us

storage share files
Min.us started as a super-easy way to share good-looking image galleries, but nowadays, the storage service has expanded and thus, it now accepts other types of files, such as documents, and videos. You can drag and drop or select your files. Then, you can instantly view your file, add or remove files, as well as download the entire share, which will be in the form of a zip file. You can use the service without signing up, but with an account, you’ll have a a profile at http://min.us/u/YOURusername like this one, where you can publish files and galleries.
Be sure to explore Steve’s article as he reviewed Min.us in more detail, back when the service was mostly for displaying great image galleries.
Behind minimalistic looks, these 3 sites offer plenty of features and could be great alternatives to Drop.io. I say, using any of these sites is as easy as using Dropbox’s Public folder, but let’s hear from you. What do you use to share your files instantly?
Image credit: Shutterstock

Monday, March 28, 2011

Barlow Shanghai

The Journey

I am winding up the same place I began
And now it seems at last I understand
So when I die at least I'll know the way
The water rose, the water fell
And in the end it's just as well
Since everything that happens is a wave...

                  J.P. Barlow, P. Bolger


Friday, March 25, 2011

sendoid 1 gb peer to peer file transfer fast and FREE

Culled from my daily feeds this item reported by Jennifer Van Grove of Mashable


endoidQuick Pitch: Sendoid allows for instant and private large file transfer in the browser.
Genius Idea: Peer-to-peer file transfer.

With the sudden rise of Chatroulette, the world was exposed, for better or for worse, to the peer-to-peer possibilities of real time media flow protocol (RTMFP) technology — the technology that establishes a direct connection between two individuals.
Sendoid, a Y Combinator startup, is applying the same peer-to-peer technology to a far less visually arresting purpose: file transfer. The peer-to-peer system, which forgoes cloud or server storage entirely, lets users transfer gigantic files in the browser in seconds and at no cost.
Veteran file-transfer service YouSendIt charges the user $14 to move a 100 MB file, with the transfer taking about 24 minutes, as Sendoid co-founder John Egan said during the startup’s Demo Days presentation. The same file is transferred in 35 seconds free of charge via Sendoid.
With this in-browser transfer experience, the user selects a file and gets a link to share with the recipient. Upon receipt of the peer link, the recipient is securely connected to the sender’s machine, and the file is transferred directly from the sender to the receiver without passing through Sendoid’s servers. It’s this peer-to-peer exchange that makes Sendoid so fast.
Sendoid’s browser-based file transfer service maxes out for files around 1 GB, but the startup also offers a desktop application for transferring files of unlimited size. There’s no cost for either option, and Sendoid has no plans to introduce fees based on file size or transfer frequency. “It shouldn’t cost money to send a 1 GB file,” says Egan. “It just doesn’t make sense anymore. The technology has caught up.”
The file transfer experience heretofore has been clunky, client-based, slow and expensive for end users. Plus, Sendoid believes the demand for sending larger files, especially in the form of high resolution digital photographs, is growing. For these reasons, Egan and fellow co-founder Zac Morris believe the startup is launching at just the right time.
“The technology is here now to move large amounts of data inexpensively,” says Egan. “And this is about the moment in time when file sizes for consumers are crossing the threshold [in size] and are no longer able to be transferred through traditional means.”
Sendoid has moved roughly 250,000 files — an early sign that Egan’s predictions about changing consumer behaviors are fairly accurate.
The just-launched startup is currently operating on seed funding from the accelerator program, but it’s currently in talks with several interested investors and will likely raise a substantial round in the weeks ahead. Eventually, Sendoid will introduce for-charge premium features that provide additional security or support file grouping.
Image courtesy of iS