Digg users were all over a new file sharing site that seemingly popped up overnight called File Dropper. It’s a completely free service that will let you upload as many files as you would like, and they can total up to 5GB each.
The whole point of the service is to make the process drop-dead simple, and they really do just that. You can’t create an account, remove files that you upload, or anything like that. There are no privacy options, encrypted URL’s, and for some odd reason no progress bar for your upload. So if you’re uploading a 5GB file you’ll have no idea how long it will be until it’s actually done.
One of the things that I do like is that you can upload a file from your computer or just provide a link to the file elsewhere on the Internet. After the upload process has completed you’ll be given a link to share with anyone that you want.
As of right now it looks like the service is completely ad-free, but it’s unlikely that it will stay that way. There’s next to no way that they could afford to foot the bandwidth bill every month without some kind of revenue coming in… just as we’ve seen with DivShare.
And if you go looking around the site you’ll see no mention of limitations, which means your files may stay online forever or they could be deleted tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll really be using the service, but I might if I have an unusually large file to share.
The website itself is horribly slow to access, so what should it be with up/downloading to it? I’ve always been aware of those services which promise heaven and handle it often so poorly …
BTW : I’m a addict of Cybernet, but may I ask why its’ RSS feeds are so filled with pics? This seems to be the fact of more and more feeds, when a feed’s purpose I believe is not to replace the site’s pages but to resume them. So many pics make the RSS rendering sometimes very slow, as it sums the pics of numerous other pages! I suggest cutting off pics which are too large and/or not fully required. Don’t you agree?
I think the site is slow because so many people are accessing right now.
We could probably whip up an excerpt-only feed, but a majority of feed readers enjoy having the full feed rather than have to click through to the site. We’d obviously enjoy having just partial feeds because it would mean more traffic, but having full feeds is kinda the norm these days.
…and on top of the other issues with FileDropper, what about file management?! What about a way to delete (or otherwise “manage”) a file once it has been uploaded? I’m not uploading ANYTHING that I can’t later control. There needs to be user accounts and file control before I come on board!
A previous article on cybernet made me discover [adrive.com] and i really like that site. I use it for all my file sharing needs.
I did mention in the article that it is lacking any method of managing or removing files, but I suspect they will come out with something later on.
That is definitely a great service, but if you were sharing a bunch of larger files you would quickly eat up your account space. That’s where FileDropper would come in handy.