Today's useful software: Foldershare

[sbisson]

I had a couple of hours to kill yesterday afternoon, between meetings, so I sat down in a Starbucks to do some work. Unfortunately the files I needed were on a PC at home, and working with a VPN over GPRS is tedious to say the least...

No need to worry - I'd left the PC on and running Foldershare's satellite - so I could fire up a browser session, connect to my account on their web site, and copy the files I needed onto my PC. I was able to get what I wanted written, and still have time for a venti chai latte and some lemon ginger cake...

Foldershare used to be a pay for service, but after Microsoft bought it, it switched to free. There are OS X and Windows clients, so you can copy between OSes happily - and you can have more than one PC associated to your account. You can use it to automatically sync files between machines, but I'm sticking with just using it as a low bandwidth VPN solution.

A useful widget.

...and no spyware or adware either

Comments

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I have an SSH server running on my 2003 server at home. I can collect files when I'm elsewhere.

[elimloth.livejournal.com]

Mandelbear, Hello? (It's me draco).

Here are a couple of links that go a little deeper:
http://www.itweek.co.uk/pc-magazine/software/2133346/foldershare
https://www.foldershare.com/info/faq/Firewalls.php?#fw01


Delta compression, restartable checkpointed sync, and, most important easy point to point hookup using secure certificates.

Yes, though one could do the same with ssh and a bunch of geek based commands, foldershare lets the masses experience file sharing without the mind numbing configuration hassle. I think this is the salient difference between the linux community and proprietary consumer driven products made by Apple or Microsoft; The former like the neat, compact and option laden approach whereas the latter companies prefer gaining marketshare by making things easier for ordinary folks.

interesting - how does it compare to Groove?

[(Anonymous)]

Interested to know what you think of Groove as a way to sync your docs. I know people that put all their my docs into a groove workspace that they then use from every machine they have - works in the background too and good over http without vpn.

Cheers,
Darren Strange