The Hindu : Business : Secure P2P file sharing tool

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 09, 2004

Business

Business

Secure P2P file sharing tool

THIS WEEK's column features a secure Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing program that allows you to share files with any netizens you invite.

Many neizens, in their daily life, use more than one computer — at work, home and the like. In this scenario, if you want to work with a file created on one machine — say the one at office — from another — say at home — , you need to transport it to the second machine.

Though it is still feasible to transfer the file through the good old floppy disk, nobody likes this method these days as there are other better ways. For instance, you can keep all your files on a web server or an FTP server so that they can be accessed from anywhere any time.

Such server-based solutions, however, have their shortcomings.

First, you have to maintain an account with a server. If the server is down, your access to the files will be cut.

Also, if you want to provide access to others to do some collaborative work, you will have to provide them the complete details of the server.

What you need then is a solution that enables you to transfer files directly from one machine to another instead of routing them through a server.

The solution should also allow you to provide controlled access for other specified members of your team on your terms. That is, instead of the usual client/server solution, you need a peer-to-peer solution that lets computers share resources without the intervention of a centralised server.

As explained in earlier issues of NetSpeak, the P2P technology enables a machine on the Net to connect directly with another machine for sharing/downloading resources.

In fact, many P2P products have been featured in the past. For instance, the Net telephony program, Skype tp://www.skype.com/skype_p2pexplained.html) that allows a netizen to make voice/text chat with anyone logged-in to the Skype network. Here is a P2P based file-sharing program, Folder Share, that serves most of the file sharing requirements mentioned above.

FolderShare

FolderShare is a secure peer-to-peer software that can be used to share files on your PC with anyone on the Net. To implement this system, download (http://foldershare.com), the free version of FolderShare and install it on to your PC.

Now, register with the service, create a library (a library is a collection of files), assign a folder to it and move the files you would like to share with a specified set of people over to the folder.

Suppose you the above set-up on your office machine and want to access the files stored in the library from your home PC. For this, install the FolderShare on your home PC also and log-in to your account.

The system will immediately read the details of the file libraries created by you so far and automatically download the complete contents on to your home machine.

If you add/alter files in the library from your home PC, FolderShare will automatically update the library at the office machine. That is, the program can be configured in such a way that it keeps files in both machines always in-sync.

If you want to share the files in your library with other colleagues/friends on the Net, you can make each of them a member of your library by 'inviting' them.

The beauty of the tool is that for each member, it allows you to assign different access rights. You can give a member read-only access or assign him the status of a contributor or editor. You may also note that the library can be accessed through the 'FloderShare' client software or through the company's site (http://foldershare.com/).

Personalised mail service

The Google's mail service, Gmail, with its 1 GB mailbox, has triggered a new trend in the free e-mail service segment. To compete with Gmail, many popular mail service providers have augmented the size of their mailboxes.

Recently, this author had the opportunity to try out a new web-based e-mail service called SeeqMail which provides the users a mail storage size of 150 MB.

Another highlight of this service is the option that allows a user to choose a specific domain name from a set of more than hundred domain names. During the sign-up process, you can choose a domain name that suits your taste from the range of domain names listed by the service (http://www.seeqmail.com/names.html). For instance, if you are a software expert, you can take an e-mail id with the domain name geekzone.com (like your_name@geekzone.com).

Annotation service

While on a site, you may come across content worth sharing along with your comments. On-line annotation services help you do this. The web-based annotation service, Gibeo Network, is one such product.

To add your comments on certain pages of a web site, browse it by appending the string "gibeo.net" on to the site's domain name. That is, if the site's name is `http://hinduonnet.com', browse it using the URL: http://hinduonnet.com.gibeo.net.

Now, whenever you come across an interesting piece that you would like to comment on, select the relevant portion of the text and immediately a menu will pop-up that provides various options for inserting your comments or forwarding it to anyone.

For more details:. For more details:http://gibeo.net/.

Pseudo Dictionary

In your daily life, you may be using informal words not available in a common dictionary.

As such words are created by many others, the best way to create a dictionary of such words is to enable them to add a new word to the dictionary anytime they come across one.

The web-based service `PseudoDictionary' is an attempt to create an on-line dictionary with slangs, colloquialisms and the like.

Anyone on the Web who knows a word of this kind can submit it to the site. For more details: http:/www.pseudodictionary. com/

J. Murali Email the author at: murali27@satyam.net.in

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