FolderShare

November 14, 2005

I ran across a brief blurb on Digg.com about FolderShare now being free since Microsoft had bought it. I had not run across FolderShare before and was intrigued by the marketing literature:

FolderShare™ allows you to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends. You no longer need to send large files via email, burn them to CDs/DVDs and mail them, or upload them to a website. FolderShare allows you to share and sync important information instantly with anyone you invite, making it the perfect solution for personal or small business use.

One of the things that really intrigued me was this statement:

Unlimited file space - Store as many files as you wish; you are only limited by the storage capacity of your device

There were many times I thought of using some type of subscription service to additional space, but was never impressed with the thought of having to pay good money every month to access 100MB worth of files. That’s partly the reason I have a static IP at home so that I can do all my own web hosting with no restrictions. I’m not using it for too much, but my brother has 5GB of pictures (non-porn) hosted with me. So FolderShare seemed especially intriguing given that it is free and unlimited space.

Anyway, I installed it on my home PC last night and was quite underwhelmed. I kept looking for some type of interface to select files to share but couldn’t find anthing and according to the literature, I needed a second machine added to the account for it to work.

So, here I am at work and I decided to give it a try. Some of the comments on the Digg post were skeptical that it would work through firewalls, proxies, etc. Once installed however, I didn’t have any problems connecting to my machine. I still wasn’t sure what to expect since I hadn’t configured anything at home. I kind of expected to find an empty folder with some message to configure it to share files. I certainly wasn’t expecting to find that I had complete access to all files and folders through the FolderShare web interface. That is pretty sweet!

Taking a step back, it now seems pretty obvious how it works. Basically I’ve got two peer to peer servers set up that are communicating with each other. For some reason, I thought that files would be stored elsewhere. This seems like the ideal situation for p2p and I can see why Microsoft has invested in it. Especially with the memo sent out by Gates and Ozzie a couple weeks ago.

Has anyone else tried out FolderShare? What are your thoughts?

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Posted by Matt Smith | Filed Under Recommended 

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