Tubes: Friend-to-Friend File Exchange Made Easier
March 29th, 2007 (12:48pm) Judi Sohn 9 Comments
Peer-to-Peer file exchange is nothing new. Enthusiasts have been getting their media (and getting sued over getting their media) via P2P services for years. What’s a more recent trend, and one that keeps the lawyers away, is P2P-like services that are personal and direct. Instead of opening your data up to the world, you are directly connected to the digital media carried on your friend’s computer and you have total control over who connects to you and downloads what you have to share.
Tubes is one such Friend-to-Friend service, treating your collections of connections to your friends/colleagues as if they were IM buddies. It’s that simple. GigaOM covered the application’s launch a few months ago. Instead of exchanging text snippets of thought, you’re “conversing” in files. Read on for an overview of the latest Tubes beta. It should also be noted that Tubes drew WWD’s attention by recently announcing that the service now caters to Mac users. But there’s a catch…
Add Tubes like you add IM buddies. Tubes can be based on an individual, a topic, an application or whatever you like. Create a Tube around a work project and then invite your colleagues to join. Drag & drop files, any files, onto the Tube’s icon and that media is quickly pushed to everyone you’re sharing with. If they are not already a Tubes user, they receive an email inviting them to download the software and be connected to the Tube.
The actual files are stored locally on your hard drive, and kept in sync through the Tube service. Installation is smooth, friendly and simple. Aside from sharing photos and videos, there are practical applications for the web worker. I can see using a Tube to keep the latest versions of key documents in sync between multiple co-workers or clients, while at the same time sharing photos with friends and family. Quite often these applications force you to decide whether it’s for work or “play” by how it’s configured. You can have work and personal buddies mixed together in your IM list, why not in your file sharing client? The interface is playful enough to appeal to the casual user, and clean enough to be taken seriously by folks wanting to get work done.
Tubes is in beta, so it does have its quirks. For starters, you can’t direct the storage file to another drive or location. It sits in your “My Documents” folder and you’re stuck with that. You do have the option to select whether or not you want to automatically fetch every file in the Tube, or pick what you want to store locally (helpful if your friend decided that 35 GB of data just had to be shared in his Tube). There doesn’t appear to be an easy way of telling when new content has been added, as the interface just gives an overall file count. In my testing, the application did hang during sync a few times, requiring me to close and re-open it to successfully update the file count and complete the sync.
Tubes requires Windows XP or Vista and Microsoft .NET Framework. But wait? Didn’t I say that it now caters to Mac users? Here’s the catch…Tubes has optimized its features for Parallels, bypassing direct Mac OS X support altogether. That means that if you are on an Intel Mac, and if you have Parallels installed ($70 for the software, $200 give or take for the operating system) then running the free Tubes application is a no-brainer. You can drag & drop files right from the Mac OS X Finder to the Tubes window, either in Coherence mode or in OS Window mode. Only you can decide if that’s enough Mac compatibility to try this service. Could this signal a trend for Windows-only developers that won’t bode well for those allergic to Microsoft’s operating systems? Maybe.
9 Comments Post your own comment
PXLated says: March 29th, 2007 2:22pm
I don’t consider that Mac compatible at all. Sorry Tubes, you blew it so far.
Steve says: March 30th, 2007 4:43am
Just to be clear, we’re not bypassing Mac support - In face, we intend a native Mac version soon. In the meantime we did something most small companies don’t do - we took the extra time to make sure our Windows product would would flawlessly for Mac users using Parallels. Most companies, including Apple with Boot Camp, won’t “support” products intended for a different platform but we actually made improvements in the product just for this purpose.
We thought it was important to tell the Mac world that even small developers like us are beginning to move to the Mac and are doing extraordinary things to support them.
BTW, I use a Mac Book Pro for everything I do. I run both Boot Camp and Mac OS X and Parallels. I use Tubes - running on my Mac desktop - to stay connected to the desktops of all my family, friends and colleagues - it is a great way to synchronize files from either OS and is the way I keep my home computers (all Macs) synched with my team’s office computers (all Windows)
links for 2007-03-30 « the adventures of a baby codemonkey says: March 30th, 2007 4:47pm
[...] Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Tubes: Friend-to-Friend File Exchange Made Easier « Peer-to-Peer file exchange is nothing new. Enthusiasts have been getting their media (and getting sued over getting their media) via P2P services for years. What’s a more recent trend, and one that keeps the lawyers away, is P2P-like services that are p (tags: tools downloads) [...]
Judi Sohn says: March 31st, 2007 7:21am
Steve, thanks for the comment!
I think it would help if you made it clear on your site that you consider this a “bonus,” for lack of a better word, for Parallels users and that native Mac OS X support is still in the product’s future.
Your link reads, “Tubes Now Accessible to Mac Users” which I’m sorry to say I find misleading. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say “Tubes Now Optimized for Parallels Users on Mac OS X”? I know it doesn’t sound as catchy, but I know that if I clicked that link and found that “accessible” meant purchasing $300 worth of software that may not even be an option on my non-Intel Mac, I wouldn’t be happy.
There are many Mac OS X users (many of whom read Web Worker Daily) who have absolutely no intention of letting a Microsoft operating system touch their precious fruit, and would not consider virtualization support a true move to the Mac. Obviously, I’m not one of them since I easily spend 60% of my day in Parallels. But us dual OS folks are NOT the majority. Not even close.
A View from Home » Is virtualization enough for Mac development? says: March 31st, 2007 9:19am
[...] week, I posted a review on Web Worker Daily of Tubes, a new friend-to-friend file sharing [...]
Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Egnyte Combines Backup, Sharing, and Search « says: April 13th, 2007 9:01am
[...] which just went into beta. They’re playing in the same general space as Microsoft Groove or Tubes: applications that let you designate information for sharing on one computer, back it up into the [...]
GigaOM » P2P, now for Pretty Much Everything says: April 15th, 2007 11:45pm
[...] Personal P2P: P2P sharing of photos, videos and other files with family and friends is becoming increasingly common place. The list of start-ups chasing this nascent market is growing by the month. Tubes is the latest to join the party. [...]
Beautyfil Mind » Blog Archive » Egnyte Combines Backup, Sharing, and Search says: April 16th, 2007 2:48am
[...] which just went into beta. They’re playing in the same general space as Microsoft Groove or Tubes: applications that let you designate information for sharing on one computer, back it up into the [...]
Web Worker Daily » Archive Six Offbeat Ways to Share Files Online–Free « says: November 28th, 2007 4:00pm
[...] is a P2P-like, free service you can use to securely share files and media with others. One of several interesting aspects of it is that it can generate an on-the-fly web site for you [...]