Excellent way to store, edit and share your files
Written: Nov 21 '07 (Updated Nov 21 '07)
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Photo and video files keep getting bigger, forcing you to adopt one of three strategies. You can upgrade your PC or hard drive, upload your files to an online storage site, such as box.net, or give up files and working on files on your PC altogether and simply upload your files to online photo and video editing sites such as flickr or youtube or to online productivity suites such as zoho.com or docs.google.
I prefer the latter option because you don't need to store your files locally and you don't need to buy software, the software simply sits in the browser. Best of all, you can easily collaborate with others on your files.
But until option three becomes really established I stick with box.net as the intermediate solution. Box.net really is one of the best, if not the best, online file storage sites. First, uploading your files is quite easy. You either manually upload each file individually or you chose drag and drop, meaning that a small browser window opens which loads a java applet which allows you to drop your files or folders onto the little window and voila, your files are on box.net. Downloading your files from box.net is a bit more tedious unless you sign up for one of the premium options. In basic mode, you can only download files one at a time, in premium mode you can download an entire folder.
Once your files are on box.net, you can easily move them around to new or existing folders, you can tag them, rename them, what not. It all goes quite smoothly thanks to some excellent and smooth ajax programming (I guess). A really cool feature of box.net is that you can edit the files online. You register for online applications through the "openbox" feature. I, for example, chose "picnik" as the third party photo editor. It is really amazing, you select an image, click on the arrow on the icon of the image, and select edit. This then brings you to the picnik site where your picture is ready to be edited with an amazingly smooth and powerful online photo editor. Once you're done you'll notice that your original photo has been replaced with the new version (but you can also chose to have it saved as a copy). This openbox feature is really cool and is a bridge between scenario 2 and 3.
Also, if you have a word document on box.net and you signed up for zoho.com as an openbox app, a click on your file will open it in the excellent zoho.com online office application (there is another on also available, but I forgot the name).
It is also very easy to share files with openbox. You just select your files or folders and copy them to the shared folder, or public folder, and your invitees can access the files.
What is lacking is obvious access of your box via webdav, meaning that you cannot simply map box as a virtual network drive on your desktop. But since box.net is very smooth and powerful, navigating the box.net site is actually easier and more powerful than the windows navigator or apple finder. So why bother accessing your box from an archaic finder or explorer window?
I like box.net a lot. The website is fast, smooth, intuitive. I might even consider to upgrade in order to be able to download entire folders or to collaborate with my colleagues on work documents. However, this feature will not be very useful anymore once online office suites such as zoho.com and docs.google.com will mature, because you would not have to deal with local files anymore at all. If, on
the other hand, other openbox applications will appear, I think box.net will be a winner and should be considered by anyone wishing to go beyond the limitations of doing everything on their desktop computer.
Recommended:
Yes
What product did you purchase or try to purchase? box.net
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jierik
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Location: lost in the midwest
Reviews written: 41
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