Over the weekend I worked on a project I call TempDump; hence the domain http://www.tempdump.com/. This is no novel idea, just a simple one. There exist many solutions today to enable people to share files fairly easily, email provides (like gmail) a way to send email with attachments, services like folders.live.com are starting up, and older services like xdrive.com have been around for a while. All of them are great, but all of them have limitations when it comes to easily using them.
Scenarios exist where you or someone you know needs to share a file, but they might not have Gmail, so they can’t send large emails. You could ask them to use a collection of services, but sometimes that is a fairly involving process. There are also things like FTP, which are even more involving than any of the web-enabled services.
My design for TempDump is to enable easy file sharing in the least involving form. As you enter the site the very first thing you will see is the “Browse” button which allows you to select the local files you want to share. You press “Upload” the files get uploaded, and after doing CAPTCHA verification you will get a unique URL that for 24 hours (may be subject to change) will allow you to download the files. If you uploaded numerous files, you will get a zip file.
There are a couple cool things I want to call out:
- Eye Candy: A very “Web 2.0ish” look and feel to it.
- Free: hopefully will be advertisement supported.
- Great UX: Instant feedback on your progress both in steps, as well as the upload progress.
- Fast: The page never does a full refresh, everything is componentized and refreshes as needed.
- Easy: No need to login, no need to register, no need to click through several pages to get to what you need. When you are done, it makes it very easy to share either by copying the URL allowing you to send an email to whomever.
- Secure: will validate that a person is using this so that others don’t try to impede on the service. Will in V2 also provide a mechanism to generate a one-time-password for the URL.
