Whether you're trying to share megabytes worth of music with a friend or send an important document to a coworker, nothing outshines a fast, easy-to-use file-sharing service. Here we've rounded up the five most popular file sharing services.
MediaFire
Users love unlimited storage, and MediaFire offers just that. The service is free, offers unlimited disk space, and requires no sign-up to use any of the site's features. The files you upload, however, can only be up to 100MB in size.(My favorite, I like!)
Windows Live SkyDrive
With an impressive 5GB of free storage space, Windows Live SkyDrive is one new product out of Redmond that's quickly found a place in users' hearts. SkyDrive works on a folder-based system, emphasizing the ability to organize your files in personal, shared, and public folders. SkyDrive requires a Windows Live account to get started, individual uploads are limited to 50MB.(This service is not available outside North America, Damn)
FolderShare
The cross-platform FolderShare is more of a file syncing tool than it is a traditional file-sharing service. (In fact, it's what we used to sync Firefox extensions across the internet.) FolderShare lovers emphasize the ease with which they can share a folder on their desktop, then quickly sync the folder's contents to a friend's computer. All you have to do is set it up, then any file you drag into a shared folder is automatically replicated on computers you're sharing folders with.(Have to download and install a Microsoft software)
Box.net
Popular for its simple interface and large feature set, file-sharing site Box.net provides 1GB of free space. Users love it for its collaboration tools and open format, which enables fun features like mounting you web space on your desktop and web service support, and RSS feeds. Like many other file sharing services, Box.net provides direct links to files so users aren't held up at a landing page to get their download. Box.net's biggest drawback is its free account's file size limit, which sits at a rather paltry 10MB.(Space too small)
Drop.io
Renown by users for its simplicity and impressive interface, Drop.io doesn't require registration for use and specializes in document sharing, offering built-in previews of everything from images to PDFs. The innovative service has recently added a couple of new features, like free sending and receiving of faxes and voice recording. The free account has a 100MB storage limit, so unless you're ready to spend some cash, Drop.io is best-suited for smaller files.(This one is quite okay)
I’m currently using a startup Cloud storage provider called SMEStorage (www.smestorage.com). They have not officially launched yet but these guys have some cool stuff. Firstly their back-end is Amazon S3 so the storage is secure. Currently you subscribe to their service but they tell me they are soon going to open it up so you can enter your own Amazon S3 keys and pay a $1 a month for their services.
ReplyDeleteYou can do all the usual stuff like upload your files, tag etc. They have a nice File Browser. They also allow file sharing via email in which you can set a deadline for the link to the file to expire which is nice. The killer feature for me is the group sharing functionality in which you can create a group, add users to the group and then share a file with the group or individual users - I use this a lot as a mechanism to keep partners up to date with collateral for my business.
They released an API a while back so you can access all these features via their REST API, and I’m currently testing the beta of a Firefox plug-in that uses this API.
Lastly I’m beta testing their IPhone version which I have to say is pretty amazing. This is at http://thesmespace.com/smeutils/msmestorage/.
I thought they deserved a mention as they are taking the cloud storage services and layering useful functionality on top of it.