This thingy I ran into is kinda neat. When you’ve ever had to send huge files over email for some reason, you know that simply isn’t a good idea. First of all it’s soooo bloody slow it makes you want to help and push the packets out, and second you usually run into some sort of limitations on some mailserver not allowing you to send files over 10MB or something like that.
It makes sense though, you just should use email for that, it’s not meant to do that, that’s why they invented FTP for instance. But anyway, it’s so convenient to send files over email right, so another interesting option is YouSendIt, where you can upload huge files, and have it send an email telling whoever you want where they can download the file using a convenient weblink.
So what’s the big deal? Nothing really. If you’re any bit tech savvy you’ve been doing this for years by uploading your files over FTP on your webspace and sent out the direct links in your emails. But you know what? Lots of folks ain’t that tech savvy, or don’t even have webspace! Really, it’s true, some poor people out there simply do not have webspace! I know, it’s a sad world we live in, but fortunately through services like this, even those poor sods can now upload huge amounts of por.. euhm, files without the need of their own personal webspace, and without really having to figure out the inner workings of the obscure FTP protocol.
Sweet innit!?
The cool part however is that you can upload files up to 1GB. Now that’s what I call webspace! Another cool thing is that you get a copy of the direct link, which you can send to whoever you want, whenever you want, or paste it in an IM window, or whatever.
I only see one problem with it. The way it’s set up makes it easy to abuse it in various ways. The user agreement of course indicates you shouldn’t be using it for filesharing or any other illegal activities, but since the whole weblink think is more or less private as long as you keep your links to yourself, it’s really easy to use if to distribute large files, like lets say, movies ripped from DVD…
So, enjoy, for as long as it lasts :)
Edit:
I just noticed that the files do expire at a certain point, which makes it harder to abuse the service. I got this message as I tried to download a testlink I still had in my inbox.
Your file has expired!
Unfortunately your file has expired. A link is valid for 7 days or 25 downloads, whichever occurs first. Once the link expires, the file is automatically deleted and cannot be recovered.