WebProNews

Tag: file transfer

  • Dropbox Adds File Requests For Collecting Files From Groups

    Dropbox announced a new feature for file requests so users can more easily collect files of any size from groups on any platform regardless of device.

    “Existing solutions to collect files – email, text messaging, social media, FTP servers, or even physically mailing hard drives – are clunky and often limited by file size,” a Dropbox spokesperson tells WebProNews. “Dropbox’s file requests is a simple, seamless solution that eliminates the back and forth and takes care of the organizing for you, right in your Dropbox account.”

    file-requests

    “With file requests, gathering photos, docs, and more from a group of people is simple,” the spokesperson says. “Need to collect bids from your contractor or create a family cookbook for your sister’s bridal shower? Just send out a link, and watch the files show up in your Dropbox for your eyes only. Whether you’re requesting items from your tech-savvy cousin or your tech-challenged mom, submitters won’t even need to create a Dropbox account to partake. The best part? Dropbox takes care of the organizing for you by adding the name of each submitter to the files they send in.”

    To use the feature, just go to dropbox.com/requests to send out requests. It’s currently available to Dropbox basic and Pro users, but will be released to business customers in the next few weeks, we’re told.

    The FAQ has a basic walkthrough for the feature in case you have any trouble.

    Images via Dropbox

  • Chrome OS To Add Android File Transfer

    Earlier this week, Google announced an update for the Chrome OS beta channel, which is just starting to get some notice in the the tech Blogosphere (thanks to Android Police) for one feature in particular.

    One of the highlights Google mentions in the blog post is MTP support in the Files app, which will let users plug in their Android phones, and get files from them.

    As Android Police notes, “It’s not a huge step forward, but the ability to plug in your Android phone and transfer files to and from it is still something worth being happy about, as it shows ChromeOS’ maturity and Google’s push to make it more consumer-friendly.”

    In fact, it’s little things like this that are often the knocks against Google’s operating system. Chrome OS by its very (cloud-based) nature removes a lot of the functionality of traditional desktop operating systems, but with that trade off, offers a much faster and frankly less annoying experience. Chromebooks aren’t bogged down by needless applications consuming valuable resources. That also contributes to longer battery life.

    Google is, however, adding more and more functionalities to Chrome OS as time goes on, and this is a good example of how Chromebooks are becoming more and more useful as time goes on.

    21 million Chromebooks were shipped last year.

    Also in the latest beta update is a set of features to enhance touch screen accessibility as well as some security updates and bug fixes.

    Image via YouTube

  • Anything You Can Bump With Your Phone, You Can Now Bump To And From Any Computer

    Bump announced an update to its web version, which makes it possible for users to bump any files that they could from iOS and Android to and from any computer.

    “Photos, videos, contacts, files…everything,” Bump says in a blog post. “There’s no setup at all — just go to http://bu.mp on your computer, open Bump on your phone, and bump the spacebar key! Bump is now your unlimited USB flash drive that is always with you!”

    “No one ever says ‘I sure look forward to syncing my phone with my computer!’,” the company adds. “We want to change that. Because really, it’s the year 2013 — we have self-driving cars, private space exploration, 3d printers — but most folks have a hard time getting a video taken on their phone over to their laptop. And who doesn’t have a slight twinge of anxiety each time they press ‘sync’ that the contacts on their phone will be overwritten with outdated contacts on their computer? It should be congnitively simpler.”

    Back in May, Bump launched the ability to transfer photos from your phone to the desktop. That was the only kind of file it worked with, and you could only do it from the phone to the computer, and not from the computer to the phone. Today’s announcement is a significant extension of what was available in the past.

    According to the company, the number of users of the web version of Bump has grown 50% in the last two months. This should go along way toward growing that number by a lot more.

  • File Sharing Company Caffeinated Mind, Acquired By Facebook

    Facebook has acquired Caffeinated Mind, a company that makes a P2P file transfer system called Sendroid. The company says it does so by “making transferring any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link.”

    It appears that this is a talent acquisition, however, as Sendroid will be shutting down. Caffeinated Mind Inc. posted the following message to its site (via Jennifer Van Grove):

    CMI is joining Facebook!

    We’re extremely excited to announce that Caffeinated Mind is joining Facebook!

    When CMI first started, we wanted to change the way files moved online. That vision has evolved over the last year through our experience at YCombinator, where since launching Sendoid we’ve moved countless files for our users and then later went on to tackle big data transfer problems for enterprises with Expresso. The journey has been incredible, and we’ve learned more than we had ever hoped while making our little dent in the world.

    We can’t think of a better place to continue this journey than Facebook, where we’ll be developing internal tools to improve the inner workings of the company and product, applying our technical and product expertise to their rapidly growing service.

    Over the next two weeks, we’ll be winding down Sendoid and closing the corporate pilot for Expresso. We’re hyper-concerned about data here, and our users can rest assured that we have fully purged all transfer history logs on our servers and that we retain no personal data from our users.

    From the entire Caffeinated Mind team, we thank our users for helping us to get where we are today!

    Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.