4 ms·

Actually I'd say 90% of the file sharing problem is not yet solved. It won't be until I can attach a 1 GB file to an email message, hit 'send', and have the re

Actually I'd say 90% of the file sharing problem is not yet solved. It won't be until I can attach a 1 GB file to an email message, hit 'send', and have the recipient(s) be able to retrieve it as easily as they could if I'd sent a 1 KB file. Dropbox does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. They've made a good stab at solving the in-cloud backup problem, but their one-way, account-centric nature makes them nearly useless at the core business of sharing files. There is still plenty of room for innovation in this space. Make large email attachments Just Work(tm) somehow, and you will own the planet.

stfu 15y ago
Absolutely this is a very good point and often over overlooked. Plus I would argue that up until recently the whole file sharing industry was living by some form of "illegal" filesharing (rapidshare, megaupload, etc). Systems like dropbox are most likely benefiting from the same idea but making the whole thing more "private" among friends and therefore making it less obvious. I still can't see there any substantial market in the filesharing area for normal users outside of the classic movie and music sharing. It is not like we are all now operating with music and video master files and need to juggle 1gig+ data files around.
icebraining 15y ago
SkyDrive's integration with Hotmail seems to mostly solve that problem, from what I can tell. You can "attach" an Office doc or image in the email composing interface (just like a normal attachment) and they'll be uploaded to SkyDrive and linked to in the email. The problem is that you need control over the email clients to really have a shot at solving the problem.
- mike_esspe 15y ago
  Or your should have them interested in your API (profit sharing?)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
bartl 15y ago
What I don't like about Dropbox is that it downloads every file from a common folder (shared with other people from my group) to my local computer, whether I'm interested in it, or not. It should just give me access to it, in the cloud, not just download everything behind my back and using up many, many megabytes, on my rather limited diskspace. (Diskspace is always limited, no matter how large disks get.)

stfu 15y ago

Absolutely this is a very good point and often over overlooked. Plus I would argue that up until recently the whole file sharing industry was living by some form of "illegal" filesharing (rapidshare, megaupload, etc). Systems like dropbox are most likely benefiting from the same idea but making the whole thing more "private" among friends and therefore making it less obvious. I still can't see there any substantial market in the filesharing area for normal users outside of the classic movie and music sharing. It is not like we are all now operating with music and video master files and need to juggle 1gig+ data files around.

icebraining 15y ago

SkyDrive's integration with Hotmail seems to mostly solve that problem, from what I can tell. You can "attach" an Office doc or image in the email composing interface (just like a normal attachment) and they'll be uploaded to SkyDrive and linked to in the email. The problem is that you need control over the email clients to really have a shot at solving the problem.

mike_esspe 15y ago
Or your should have them interested in your API (profit sharing?)

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bartl 15y ago

What I don't like about Dropbox is that it downloads every file from a common folder (shared with other people from my group) to my local computer, whether I'm interested in it, or not. It should just give me access to it, in the cloud, not just download everything behind my back and using up many, many megabytes, on my rather limited diskspace. (Diskspace is always limited, no matter how large disks get.)