By Nick Peers
It's safe to say that cloud computing can handle the extraordinary. The Internet as a storage medium has dozens of possibilities, and boundaries are constantly being pushed to link up the cloud to your desktop: get lightning fast protection against the latest threats (Panda Cloud AntiVirus), synchronise files and folders between multiple computers effortlessly (Windows Live Mesh or IDriveSync), collaborate remotely (TeamDrive) or just have quick and easy access to various cloud-based storage providers (Gladinet Cloud Desktop).
Sometimes though, you don't want to push boundaries. If you're the kind of person who likes to share files -- images, video or documents -- with friends, family or co-workers, then we have a cloud-based solution that is simple, neat and quick. There's nothing particularly revolutionary or sophisticated involved, just a neat, tidy and effortless solution. Say hello to CloudApp.
Here's the thing: sharing files over the Internet can be a troublesome thing. Send them by email? That assumes people are happy to receive attachments in their inbox, assuming, of course, the email program allows the file through in the first place.
Okay, so upload the file to your web space and share it from there then? You need a FTP program, and even after the file's been uploaded you've got to provide the link. It's not a big deal for the occasional file, but if you're regularly sharing documents, photos, music or whatever with others, you'll find that time soon adds up.
Simple, Effortless and Quick
This is where CloudApp comes in. This cloud-based storage medium exists primarily for the effortless sharing of files. Sign up for a free account and you can quickly and easily share up to 10 files per day at a maximum size of 25MB, or pay a monthly fee of $5 for a Pro account where the number of files are unlimited, and each one can be a whopping 250MB in size.
Once signed up, you need to download an application: Mac users have the official CloudApp program, while Windows users can try out FluffyApp, which works in a similar way.
So, how does it work? Each app places an easily accessible icon on your desktop -- CloudApp plonks it in the menu bar; FluffyApp opts for the Taskbar's Notification area. Then just drag the file you want on to the icon and it'll automatically upload to your shared space. Even better, a shortened URL link pointing to the file is copied to the clipboard, so once you've dragged, just paste that link into your email message or chat window and your friends can quickly access the file just like that.
You can assign keyboard shortcuts, take screenshots of your desktop and upload those and more besides, but at its heart, CloudApp does one small thing exceptionally well. The only question is, what are you going to do with all that time you've saved?
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