Six Offbeat Ways to Share Files Online–Free
November 28th, 2007 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 6 Comments
The web is now full of various free solutions you can turn to to share files online with co-workers, but they vary in their utility for various kinds of sharing. Some are very easy to jump in and out of, some can take you directly from sharing a file into a full-blown online meeting, some are very appropriate for moving huge files around, etc. In this post, I’ll round up six different, free ways you can share files online, with the strengths of each.
FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox, and is one of the fastest ways to use FTP to share very large files (such as video files) online. It’s basically like having a slick FTP client within Firefox. It handles multiple accounts with the varying login information that they require, supports SSL for secure sharing, and can do directory synchronizations if you want to make sure a series of large files in a directory matches up with another directory.
Tubes 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 and co-workers to use to share files.
Leaf Networks is a free online networking service. It lets you and co-workers instantly create your own private, secure network on the web. It’s also a great way to do secure collaboration from, say, public Wi-Fi hotspots. Leaf is akin to having a LAN that you share resources on, except you can think of the Leaf Networks service as an online hosted LAN solution. You can add others you would like to share files with to your network in a fashion similar to adding buddies to an instant messaging buddy list.
Drop.io was the subject of a recent post I did on online storage. This very unusual application is a good one to turn to for very quick-and-dirty files you want to share back-and-forth with co-workers or clients. When you upload a file to Drop.io (a drop), it creates a web site to store it in. You can password protect the files, and just provide a link to your intended recipient for accessing the file. There isn’t much security beyond passwords, but neither you nor your recipient has to register to do a fast file exchange.
In the same post I just linked to above, I also discussed Xdrive, which gives you a whopping 5GB of online storage that you could use to share files with others by simply sharing login information.
Finally, what if you don’t really need to actually transfer files to others but you want to view them together from remote locations? My free tool of choice for Windows, Mac, and Linux users for that is Yugma. It’s actually a full-blown online meeting application but it makes it super easy to transfer control of various desktops around a virtual meeting and share information.
Do you have any good tips on free ways to share files and collaborate?
6 Comments Post your own comment
someone you don't know says: November 28th, 2007 8:43pm
I was browsing around the Tubes web application, wondering if this was a VPN or if they were sending all your personal files to one of their servers and storing it for you. The problem with these type of applications is your personal documents aren’t your personal documents anymore, they are with some corporation somewhere with people you’ve never met.
On the page “What is Tubes,” I got my answer. They do store it on a central server. I scrolled a little further and grinned, “Tubes is backed by the Carlyle Group.” That’s a real honest group of people right there; who can be trusted with your personal documents and personal videos (just sarcasm ).
So, go ahead :)
Jimmy Gardner says: November 28th, 2007 9:25pm
Hi Samuel,
I have one more I would like you to take a look at, it is my startup in an alpha mode called MyDropBin (www.mydropbin.com).
It is an easy to use front end to an Amazon S3 account that a user has signed up for. We allow the user to create folders, and upload content into the folders and tag the items as well. The one nice feature is that once the item is in your MyDropBin, there is a one click to send the link to a friends email (we are working on mutiple email addresses). They get an email with the link to the file and click on it to download. The file can be of ANY size, big or small.
In the next release, one cool feature you may like is that there will also be RSS feeds for each of your folders and tags. So if you have the need to share a lot of files/pictures, ect, you simply have you friends subscribe to that particular feed and when you upload an item into that folder or tag, they see it in the feed, click it and down it comes to them.
Like I said we are just getting our feet under us and have some cool new features coming soon.
Regards,
Jimmy Gardner
http://www.mydropbin.com
Mario Olckers says: November 29th, 2007 2:18am
These are good services, thanks for the heads up
i was surprised to see my gmail is now running at over 5Gig storage space and integrated with their other offerings (docs calender reader maps etc) accessed through SSL I am starting to wonder about the business models of many paid for office, collaboration, vpn tunnel intranets and other “enterprise” type offerings
any thoughts on this?
@mydropbin sounds like a very exciting concept will definitely ‘drop’ by ;)
Shawn Honnick says: November 29th, 2007 8:02am
I used FireFTP exclusively. It’s very convenient and does everything I need. If you use it, send the author a donation!
Marc Reidy says: November 30th, 2007 6:17am
Regarding storing files on a service like “Tubes” (see top comment) you could use my software on your own server. http://www.anywheretogether.com. It runs a desktop and mobile version. Plus it comes with 2 free user licenses.
Webworkerdaily reviewed it here http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/05/23/file-management-on-the-go/#more-819
Daniel says: November 30th, 2007 10:56pm
I’d say Google Apps is a perfect way to share
and collaborate office documents. It is integrated into Gmail and GCalendar. I think
it well deserves a place in your list.