TrueShare Blog » file linking

Feature Spotlight: Using PhotoShare to Share Pictures

ericmatt — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:02:28 +0000

Today there are many ways to share pictures with friends, family, colleagues and clients. Images can be found everywhere online, and any social media site worth its salt provides a photo album or gallery application. With such an emphasis on sharing pictures, and so many outlets to do so, it can be hard to decide where to upload your image files.

I am a bit more traditional, and maybe even conservative when it comes to posting photos of my friends and family on the web. It seems safer to just make copies of pictures and pass them out at the next family function. Unfortunately, that’s not very cost effective or timely.

Email has come a long way as far as using attachments to send large files is concerned, but it is very inefficient unless you have the time to send three pictures per email. If you’re trying to share a vacation’s worth of photos, email is not an option. Online profiles usually provide an outlet for pictures, but they frequently limit images by size and sometimes dimension. Dedicated photo sites are also great for sharing, but are often inadequate with security. I’ve read stories of personal pictures ending up in advertisements in foreign countries despite strict copyright protection.

The solution for me is a widget within the TrueShare online file system called PhotoShare. Not only can I safely keep my pictures in online storage in their original resolution, but I can share them with friends and family without allowing the rest of the world to see. It’s actually a revolutionary concept: A photo album that doesn’t take up shelf space (or disk space for that matter) and is accessible to anyone I choose, at any time.

Here’s how it works: I use TrueShare to send a direct link that’s associated with the photos I took last weekend to my sister. Yes, this is cloud computing, but it’s simple and easy to understand. TrueShare, in this instance, acts like a virtual thumb drive or a virtual hard drive “in the cloud”. My sister just clicks the link and there are the 150 photos I wanted her to see, viewed from their online storage through a flash viewer that starts automatically. The images are also not downloaded to her computer (unless she wants them to be) so they don’t take up any space. No more worries about attaching pictures or navigating complicated websites where pictures can be stolen.

Of course sending a direct link is not the only way to use PhotoShare to share pictures. If you have a website, a blog, or even a newsletter, you can link a PhotoShare album easily using a simple image tag. There are also embedding options for website integration, and slide shows you are able to connect to your blogs, sites, and articles. So if you’re like me, and need a way to share your photos efficiently and affordably, check out PhotoShare. It’s changing the way we view things!

The TrueShare PhotoViewer provides the ability to show and even distribute your images anywhere on the web that you have the need. Blogs, Newsletters, E-mail, Web Pages, Squidoo Lenses, etc.

Each PhotoShare viewer can be set up with a number of configuration options. You can:

Allow viewers to download one or all of the (full-size) images from the viewer
Set up a number of different picture transitions
Allow printing of the image from the flash viewer

The need for an online file system

ericmatt — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:27:40 +0000

More and more we are seeing everyday computer tasks moving online. Email has been online for ever. More recently, streaming music and video has become common online. Now-a-days even productivity applications are available in the browser (Google Docs and Zoho, for example). There has long been talk of a ‘cloud’ OS. A system that would remove ‘your’ computer from the hardware you use to access it. With such a system, it wouldn’t matter whether you were at home, at a friend’s, a coffee shop, on your laptop, or your smart phone – your programs and files would always be there. Well, we are seeing our programs move online, so what about file hosting and data storage?

Online file storage has been around for awhile, but it’s not really the same as an online file system. You can upload songs or pictures, but most sites that offer this treat your files as media and give you ‘albums’ or ‘playlists’ for music or photo sharing but you can’t save other file types and there is not always a good way to organize and manage them. These sites are also more focused on sharing, so security tends to be an all or nothing proposition. What we need is a true ‘online file system’, one that gives you a folder tree and multi-user access with controls and permissions just like a traditional OS does.

At TrueShare, our online file system lets you build a folder tree just like you would on your Windows©, Mac©, or Linux© machine. Business accounts can manage multi-user permissions similarly to how you manage network drive access. The next step is to build direct connections between your online programs (or other websites that generate or require files from you) and your online storage. Eventually, the hardware that you use will be reduced in role to just running the browser. You could receive a large spreadsheet from a business associate, save it directly to your online file system, open it in the online spreadsheet editing software of your choice, edit it, save it back into your online file system, and then make it available to coworkers. This could all be accomplished from a coffee shop computer or even your smart phone, since the file never has to be transferred to the local file system of the hardware you are using. We’re not quite there yet, but “total cloud computing” is approaching fast and an online file system is the missing link.

A Direct-Link to your files from anywhere

ericmatt — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:56:34 +0000

Here goes…my first official blog post…I hope it doesn’t suck…but sink or swim I’m diving in…

If I had to define the TrueShare Direct-Link feature in alphabetical order, I would say that it is a cool, easy, effective, efficient, flexible, fun, liberating, powerful, and secure way to share files on the Internet.

Any of the files stored on your TrueShare drive are accessible from anywhere you need them through a Direct-Link. As the name implies, this feature provides a hyper-link to an individual file that can be used like any other hyper-link on the Internet. It’s too easy. Just click on the file action menu for a specific file and select the Direct-Link option to access a pop-up window that allows you to create (or delete) a link to the file. You can then copy/paste this link anywhere you need it. For instance if you wanted to include a picture in a blog post you could simply paste the Direct-Link into the image tag of your blog editor and your image will present in your blog without having to upload it to your blog host. There is also a Direct-Link Manager where you can manage links to all of your files so it is easy to store and manage links to entire collections of files.

You can use a Direct-Link for any files that you want to share on the net.

Here are a few examples of how you can use Direct-Link to provide access to your files:
Provide PDF downloads from your website
Embed a video in a newsletter
Email a link to a large file
Post pictures to Facebook

No matter what the use is, Direct-Link is an awesome feature that significantly simplifies and greatly extends the ability to share files online.

But don’t take my word for it, share a file with someone today and see for yourself just how fun it is.