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I'm very excited about this! I've been waiting for something like this for a long time! To me, the power here is in using the technology to foster local, huma

I'm very excited about this! I've been waiting for something like this for a long time! To me, the power here is in using the technology to foster local, human-scale interaction. Intranets are totally underutilized. How many people do you know who can reliably transfer personal files over a local area network? Not nearly as many as those who know how to use google or send an email... that's absurd to me, given how ancient of an application file sharing is. It's my opinion that the survival of the internet may very well rest on p2p webs like this.

sjellis 10y ago
"Intranets are totally underutilized. How many people do you know who can reliably transfer personal files over a local area network? Not nearly as many as those who know how to use google or send an email... that's absurd to me, given how ancient of an application file sharing is." It's crazy to me that there AFIAK aren't AirDrop clones. That application alone would make this awesome, and it will probably just one of the big use cases for this. I'm also really pleased to see Mozilla producing this kind of innovation. I'm a Firefox user at home, and am starting to get really excited about Rust, but it has felt to me like the organization has been flailing for a while.
- origami777 10y ago
  I'm curious how you would use this. What files would you share and with who? I'm so used to sharing via cloud services and chat apps that I really don't know who or what I'd use this with. Just curious what situations this would come in handy for you.
  - rjmunro 10y ago
    How about a video of my kids with my Mum who has come to visit? Uploading and downloading the file to a cloud service will take a while. Many will reencode the video and loose quality. I then have to communicate a URL, rather than have my mum just look in a flyweb (or airdrop or whatever) place on her machine.
- floatboth 10y ago
  Of course there are AirDrop clones. http://instashareapp.com http://instashareapp.com — oh wow their current slogan is "better AirDrop for mobile & desktop"! There are also open source WebRTC based ones like https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop
  - sjellis 10y ago
    I wasn't aware of SnapDrop, so thank you for that. I'm aggressively uninterested in proprietary desktop software these days, outside of work.
- plausibility 10y ago
  >It's crazy to me that there AFIAK aren't AirDrop clones. Little know, but there is! Snapdrop[1] does this via WebRTC. Pretty nifty, but I've rarely ever seen it mentioned or used. Solves the XKCD problem, at least for intranet stuff. [1] https://snapdrop.net https://snapdrop.net + https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop
espadrine 10y ago
The issue with file transfer in particular is that it is often asynchronous: you send a file from your phone, and then, you might go for lunch - outside of the LAN - or they might be off that day. You end up needing a human protocol: ask the receiver if they're ready, send it, wait for the upload. It is almost simpler to use a USB key, and certainly simpler to rely on a Dropbox-like. I read flyweb as being part of Mozilla's IoT effort, to make it easy to convert your phone into a remote control. See for instance this video they made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5DEGvqDb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5DEGvqDb4
- Symen 10y ago
  Well, with some laptop lacking USB-A ports I can see FlyWeb to be more practical for simple, quick and occasional file transfers. Also, most people have cheap, very-slow USB flash drives, so transfering via the network (even wireless) could be faster for larger files. Another thing to consider if you compare it with cloud solutions is that you don't have to find a second channel to send the shared link (which may require both person to e.g. login on their webmail, spell their email address to one another, etc).
- omribahumi 10y ago
  Also, Dropbox can sync over LAN https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/137 https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/137
  - macawfish 10y ago
    That doesn't mean much to me: > Dropbox needs to maintain a connection to the Internet in order to determine when to sync. To take advantage of LAN sync, all computers need to be connected to a LAN and the Internet at the same time. Stuff like syncthing/btsync is much more radical in that you don't have to assume that the internet as we know it even exists.

sjellis 10y ago

"Intranets are totally underutilized. How many people do you know who can reliably transfer personal files over a local area network? Not nearly as many as those who know how to use google or send an email... that's absurd to me, given how ancient of an application file sharing is." It's crazy to me that there AFIAK aren't AirDrop clones. That application alone would make this awesome, and it will probably just one of the big use cases for this. I'm also really pleased to see Mozilla producing this kind of innovation. I'm a Firefox user at home, and am starting to get really excited about Rust, but it has felt to me like the organization has been flailing for a while.

origami777 10y ago
I'm curious how you would use this. What files would you share and with who? I'm so used to sharing via cloud services and chat apps that I really don't know who or what I'd use this with. Just curious what situations this would come in handy for you.
- rjmunro 10y ago
  How about a video of my kids with my Mum who has come to visit? Uploading and downloading the file to a cloud service will take a while. Many will reencode the video and loose quality. I then have to communicate a URL, rather than have my mum just look in a flyweb (or airdrop or whatever) place on her machine.
floatboth 10y ago
Of course there are AirDrop clones. http://instashareapp.com http://instashareapp.com — oh wow their current slogan is "better AirDrop for mobile & desktop"! There are also open source WebRTC based ones like https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop
- sjellis 10y ago
  I wasn't aware of SnapDrop, so thank you for that. I'm aggressively uninterested in proprietary desktop software these days, outside of work.
plausibility 10y ago
>It's crazy to me that there AFIAK aren't AirDrop clones. Little know, but there is! Snapdrop[1] does this via WebRTC. Pretty nifty, but I've rarely ever seen it mentioned or used. Solves the XKCD problem, at least for intranet stuff. [1] https://snapdrop.net https://snapdrop.net + https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop https://github.com/RobinLinus/snapdrop

espadrine 10y ago

The issue with file transfer in particular is that it is often asynchronous: you send a file from your phone, and then, you might go for lunch - outside of the LAN - or they might be off that day. You end up needing a human protocol: ask the receiver if they're ready, send it, wait for the upload. It is almost simpler to use a USB key, and certainly simpler to rely on a Dropbox-like. I read flyweb as being part of Mozilla's IoT effort, to make it easy to convert your phone into a remote control. See for instance this video they made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5DEGvqDb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5DEGvqDb4

Symen 10y ago
Well, with some laptop lacking USB-A ports I can see FlyWeb to be more practical for simple, quick and occasional file transfers. Also, most people have cheap, very-slow USB flash drives, so transfering via the network (even wireless) could be faster for larger files. Another thing to consider if you compare it with cloud solutions is that you don't have to find a second channel to send the shared link (which may require both person to e.g. login on their webmail, spell their email address to one another, etc).
omribahumi 10y ago
Also, Dropbox can sync over LAN https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/137 https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/137
- macawfish 10y ago
  That doesn't mean much to me: > Dropbox needs to maintain a connection to the Internet in order to determine when to sync. To take advantage of LAN sync, all computers need to be connected to a LAN and the Internet at the same time. Stuff like syncthing/btsync is much more radical in that you don't have to assume that the internet as we know it even exists.