‘File Sharing’ Articles
Written by Mark on 26 September 2009
One of the requests I hear from people is they want to backup up their files (MP3’s, videos, photos, and documents) but be able to also view them on different computers, wherever they might be: across town or across the world.
Are you looking for a way to backup and sync files between Windows computers? Looking to have a safe way to view those files remotely, from anywhere? Want to share those files with others? Syncplicity is set up to do that, with a lot of extras!
Take a look at how easy and versatile Syncplicity is:
- 3GB cloud-based web space
- Windows XP or Vista
- View files online (download from anywhere)
- Edit your files to Google Docs, Picnik, or Scribd (no need to have those installed on the computer you are using, great for on-the-road use)
- Sync between computers
- Auto-backups
- Share files and folders with others
The cost for all those features? FREE! Need more space? Get 50GB of space, more than enough for most people’s collections for just $10 month!
So, check out Syncplicity and see how easy it is to backup and sync your computers!
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Looking for FREE set-it-forget-it backups; check out our article on Mozy.
Tags: backup, free, sync, windows
Posted in File Sharing, General, small business, technology | No Comments »
Written by Mark on 21 March 2009
drop.io has to be one of the simplest sites I’ve ever seen. It’s gotten more bells and whistles over time, but still, it’s dead simple to set up a place on the Internet to share your files. And it’s FREE! Here’s how it works:
Visit their site
Either accept the random drop site name they [...]
Tags: File Sharing, HMAUS, mac
Posted in File Sharing, General, interaction | Comments Off
Written by Mark on 19 March 2009
If you are like most people, you have a work and home computer. They may even be on different platforms — like a Mac at home and PC at work. There are several solutions out there, but the one I want to discuss is Dropbox. Dropbox allows you to easily set up a “cloud” storage space that can sync between your computers. That’s 2GB of FREE storage that you can share, backup, or sync files with.
You can set up hidden or public folders, even share your photos with others through Dropbox. And, best, it just seems to work. I’ve used it since it was beta, and I’ve only had 1 problem with it. And that just was because I was running an older version on one of my computers. Upgraded and all worked fine again!
How does it compare to some other solutions? It’s similar to both Syncplicity and Microsoft’s livemesh, though for me, both of those solutions were more difficult to get set up (and for livemesh, a pain on updates).
If you are looking for a fast, free solution to file storage and syncing, check out Dropbox.
Tags: cloud, dropbox, sync
Posted in File Sharing, interaction, technology | No Comments »
Written by Mark on 03 October 2008
Not long ago, in order to share a photo with someone online meant you sent them an email with an attachment of that image. This is great for one or two people, or for one or two images. Times have changed and it’s considered by many to be normal to share your photos with the world now. Photo sharing online means that you upload your images to a website and then share that location/URL with your friends or co-workers, conference attendees, or the world.
First, what are the benefits of sharing online?
- You don’t have to burn copies of CD’s of your photos collections for others to see. Instead, simply give the people the URL and they can view them easily themselves. And, most of the sites offer photo printing so the visitors can order copies of the images THEY want, instead of getting ALL of them.
- You don’t have to try to manage your photo inventory yourself. Upload to one of the websites, and let them store the photos there. (Be aware that you may not be able to get the ORIGINAL sizes back off some of the websites, so it’s best have a backup of the original that you keep.)
- You don’t have to worry about clogging someone’s email with tons of photos. Just a link in an email and you are done.
What are some of the photo sharing websites?
- Flickr — one of the best known for sharing with the public in general. In fact, many organizations have a Flickr account to help publicize events. Free for a limited number of images/month. Not the easiest to do “private” photo sharing, more of “open” sharing.
- Shutterfly — this is a personal favorite of mine. You can upload as many photos of whatever size you want. (They have a “Shutterfly Studio” application to upload whole directories quickly.) Easy to set up private shares. Free. Visitors can easily order prints.
- Picasa Web Albums — if you love Picasa, then this can be an easy choice, built right into the application. Free.
- SmugMug — similar to Flickr but with more control on the look/feel of the pages and on privacy. Paid accounts only.
- Kodak Gallery — similar to Shutterfly but visitors have to create an account to view your photos. Free.
As you can see there are lots of options, and that’s only a small sample of what’s out there. Maybe you have a recommended photo-sharing website?
Some Photo Sharing Websites
So, the next time you are tempted to send someone 30 photos in an email, or burn a CD full of convention photos, STOP! See if sharing the photos online might save everyone some time!
Tags: digital photos, sharing, uploads
Posted in File Sharing | 1 Comment »
Written by Mark on 30 September 2008
As more people take digital photos, they realize that the size of the image is often too large to send by email. Plus they may want to crop or edit those images before sharing with others. For Windows users, a simple and free solution is Picasa by Google. It works really well, allowing you to resize, do basic editing, and email or upload images for sharing. And while iPhoto is also great for categorizing photos, along with basic editing, it means you have to learn a completely different system on Mac platforms.
That’s where www.Picnik.com comes in very handy. Being an online resource that allows you to upload, edit, resize, and then save those perfect images back to your computer, means that anywhere you might be — so long as you have an Internet connection — you can tweak those photos. That means if your images are too large to email and you don’t want to set up a drop.io type account or use Flickr or MobileMe to share them with friends, you could just RESIZE them online with Picnik to email them with others.
If you visit www.Picnik.com you’ll see that you can do a lot of editing with images right over the Internet. 
Just click their “Get Started Now” button to start editing your images. It will ask you to create a FREE account, which is a good idea, but, if you just want to edit the images without an account, scroll down a little bit on that “Sign In” page to see “Or Try It Out” to bypass registration.
From there, just upload the image you want to work with. Once uploaded, Picnik gives you lots of options — editing, resizing, even adding fancy filters and affects on the image — all for free.
So, if you’re in a hurry and can’t find a good photo editor on the computer you are using, visit www.Picnik.com.
Tags: digital photos, image editing, sharing
Posted in File Sharing | No Comments »
Written by Mark on 22 August 2008
As you may be aware, file sizes are getting larger and larger now a days. Years ago a floppy drive held less than 2 Megabytes, which seems pretty small when one photo on a digital camera can be that big now. And video sizes get REALLY big really quickly. A ten-minute video can be 500 Megabytes or more.
As you are also probably aware, most companies have a limit on attachment sizes in email. The reason for this is pretty simple; server space. (If someone sends a large file to all the staff, that suddenly eats up a lot of disk space on the server.) If the organization uses Exchange, often that limit is 5MB or less.
So, how can you send big files then?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: drop.io, email, File Sharing
Posted in File Sharing | No Comments »
