Large File Transfer Blog

Multi-Language Large File Transfer

The entire team at FilesDIRECT feels very fortunate to have clients from all over the world - the United States and Canada, but also Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain and others too. We’ve had inquiries from different parts of Europe and even China!

We’re very happy to see that our service is of value to so many people from across this wide world of ours - and we want to make sure it’s available to as many people as possible. We know that business is conducted everywhere, at every time of day and night, in a huge variety of industries, and many of those businesses need to send and receive large files. Whether they are print shops in Mexico or architects in Australia, it can be a tricky thing to do, especially if you want your large file transfer to be:

A) Secure
B) Fast
C) Affordable

So, we here at FilesDIERCT have decided to “step up to the plate”, so to speak, and make our service more accessible by translating both the front-facing site, as well as the back end of the service itself. We are starting with Spanish translations, and when we are ready to launch will shortly afterwards be focusing on assisting clients in other languages (probably Mandarin or Cantonese). Once we know we can manage a wider, Spanish-speaking clientele well we can focus on broadening our language offerings.

We can’t set a firm date yet for when the site translation will be in place (it’s a surprising amount of work) but please do know that we are already offering our famous phone and email support in Spanish! Watch this space for further updates on the ongoing translations. We look forward to helping people mandar archivos grandes en Espanol soon!

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Secure File Transfer for Police

Law enforcement is  difficult work, and sharing data between police forces, rehabilitation and associated groups can be hard: secure file transfer can help your team by creating a file sharing system that can only be accessed by authorized personnel. One of the biggest challenges is making sure that all of the crucial data is shared in an accessible way, without compromising confidentiality, especially surrounding victim support - an agile system that allows for the support of victims without compromising their privacy or exposing them to their attackers in the future. Once their attacker has been charged the information on the crime and other pertinent details can be transferred to the appropriate correctional facility.

Cross-State Crimes and Secure File Transfer

In the cases of cross-state crimes, secure file transfer can help everyone involved in solving the crimes across jurisdictions and districts, allowing the safe, confidential and secure transfer of files, especially for files over the maximum size allowed by email servers. Even in one state, there will be several districts / counties that need to share information. In all cases, secure file transfer is the ideal sharing solution that opens doors to data that could solve cases, or provide crucial support when it’s needed most.

Previously, files would have to be transferred by courier, then reviewed before being returned– which inevitably creates  delays. Secure file transfer supports instant, real-time transfer of information between two (or more!) law enforcement groups, of any size, with any system. The two teams can be as far apart as Hawaii and Florida (even in separate countries!), and secure file transfer is still the ideal solution to ensure that everyone is on the same page and has auditable, traceable access to all the information they need.

Policing is not Just About Catching Criminals

Policing also involves community outreach projects, and helping people protect their property. Police services also liaise with other emergency (and non-emergency) services, visit schools and patrol areas where people expect to see a police presence. From security at large events to community outreach, secure file transfer can help with any of these projects, without interfering with what the law enforcement does best.

Secure File Transfer and…Security

It’s important to understand that the primary concern of any data from the police is confidentiality – and ensuring that they aren’t the victims of data theft or compromise themselves! Secure file transfer represents the most secure way to transfer data that is easily accessible without creating extra ‘walls’: see for yourself and sign up for our 30-day free trial today!

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Go Green and Email Large Files

Whether you’re a multi-billion dollar company or an individual who wants to email large files (like videos) to your family, we all have a part to play in protecting our environment. Environmentalism is not just a moral imperative: more and more businesses are discovering the cost-saving benefits of “going green”, and using a service that lets you email large files can save you time, money and CO2.

Email Large Files and Save the Planet

Here are some statistics for you:

  • Making paper is the third-largest industrial cause of greenhouse gas production in the world
  • It takes one tree to make 85 lbs of paper
  • Making paper uses a lot of water: it takes over 100 gallons of water to make 5 lbs of paper!
  • Besides saving you the frustration of splitting your files, here’s another reason not to break your files up and send them via multiple emails: sending one email uses energy equivalent to burning 3 lbs of coal

Burn a Disc or Email Large Files?

Many individuals and companies still ship discs for a number of different reasons. Large file transfer trumps them all, not just in terms of security and cost-effectiveness, but environmentally, too:

  • CDs and DVDs are made of plastic, which means greenhouse gases: making one CD or DVD discharges 3 lbs of CO2 into the air. With over 200 billion CDs sold worldwide in 2007 alone, it adds up to a lot of CO2
  • Shipping them costs both money and GHGs: for example, shipping a few discs from San Francisco to San Diego, California will release over 325 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere

You can’t argue with the math: every time you email large files with FilesDIRECT you ease the strain on the planet AND your pocketbook - now that’s return on investment!

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Switching to WordPress

In a move that went completely unnoticed by practically every one of our users - just as we had hoped - FilesDIRECT switched the front end of our site to the WordPress content platform. If you’ve spent any time as a blogger or webmaster, you’ve heard of WordPress, and even though it’s well known, we didn’t make the switch because of it’s popularity.

We like to think of ourselves as trend-setters, after all.  ;)

We actually had 3 major reasons for the change: marketing/SEO, versatility and time management. We’ll delve into each of these reasons below:

Marketing / SEO

This was my main reason for pushing for the switch to WordPress.

The easy WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) visual editor allows me to write, edit and post content directly to the site. I no longer need to write content and then wait for one of the technical staff to have a free moment before it can be posted online: I just log in, do my work, and voila!

Additionally, WordPress itself is very well-designed in terms of SEO: you can easily edit tags, titles, etc. The ease of use (especially for someone who isn’t technically adept) means it’s easy to post content - either on this blog or on the site itself - and search engines love frequent updates and unique content! You can even pick your own URLs, which makes it much easier to keyword-optimize the site.

WordPress also has plugins - many of which are designed for use in SEO or social media - which give us additional functionality like social sharing, keyword optimization, etc.

Versatility

As I mentioned in the last section, WordPress has thousands of plugins to choose from, all of which give you additional functionality for your site with just a few mouse clicks. It’s easy to create pages or blog posts, move them to different parts of the site (for whatever reason), upload or change images (including changing their alt tags), and much more. If we ever feel like totally changing the look of the site, for instance, all we need to do is change the template. While some of it needs the deft touch of a professional web designer (I’m not allowed anywhere near the home page, for instance), most of it is simple enough for me to handle.

Time Management

This was probably the main selling point for our developers when we discussed the switch to WordPress, as it meant that I wouldn’t need to constantly pester them to make even the smallest change to the site. Not only that, but they can concentrate their efforts on the “back end” of the site - focus on bug fixes, upgrades to the service and generally improving our users’ experience, without needing to worry about affecting the public-facing half of the site. Having the “front end” of the site on WordPress means the Marketing team and the Development team can each focus on their core competencies and reduce back-and-forth by a large degree.

Nobody likes unnecessary meetings!

So THAT’S why WordPress

As you can see, we’ve found the switch to WordPress to have been a very beneficial business decision, and it has helped us save time, money and effort. We’d love to hear about your experiences with WordPress (good and not so good) in the comments below - did you switch to WordPress from a different CMS? Did you create your site on it from the get-go? What’s worked? What hasn’t? Let us know!
 
 
 
 
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FilesDIRECT At Microsoft Mix 11

Hello FilesDIRECT users / followers,

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Ross Mann and I am the Product Manager and one of the developers for FilesDIRECT. The head of our development team and I will be making a trip to the Microsoft Mix convention (#mix11) Tuesday and I thought this would be a great opportunity for getting parts of our other team writing to our followers and perhaps giving people some insight to the Web world at the same time.

As many of you might already know, the application portion of our product is mainly developed in C#.net, however, we recently converted our public facing site into a WordPress application - so far with great success (read more about it here) . Oddly enough, there will be a focus on using WordPress as a business tool in the Microsoft environment at Mix 11.

This should be an exciting visit and of course Vegas is always a great place to travel. I am looking forward to learning about all the new Web technology and how we can apply it to FilesDIRECT to provide you with a faster,  more reliable, and better service.

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Large File Transfer vs. Japanese Earthquakes

Natural disasters (like earthquakes) are called disasters for a reason: they are tragic events causing great loss, both to people and property. They cause a great deal of chaos - no matter how well-prepared we think we are - and disrupt the lives of everyone involved. As the world grows more interconnected, people can be greatly affected by an event on the other side of the globe.

As lives are disrupted, so too is business: flights have been cancelled, telephone service is down, roads have been destroyed, and more.

Preparation Pays

It’s true: preparation goes a long way. Despite the magnitude of the quake and the following tsunami, Japanese early warning systems ensured responders had at least some lead time. Combined with well-designed, redundant systems, Japan has not come to a complete grinding halt. For instance, even though telephone and mobile service has been disrupted, Internet service, by and large, has not.

This is of vital note to knowledge-based industries, or for any companies who need to transfer data from one location to another, or to (or from) clients. Technologies and services like FilesDIRECT allow for large file transfer to and from any computer with a Net connection. This presents a variety of benefits over moving data on discs or in paper files:

Security: couriers can be intercepted. Files can be read. A good online file transfer service, however, will encrypt your data before sending it, ensuring that it can only be read by its intended recipient.

Reliability: as illustrated by the recent Japanese earthquake, the extreme winter weather experienced by Europe in 2010, or the massive volcanic eruption in Iceland of the same year, nature’s extremes have a big impact on global transit, impacting not only the airline industry and those who rely on it, but even land and sea transportation as well. What do you do if your courier is trapped in an airport because all flights have been grounded? Or if the van carrying your financial documents was in a city struck by an earthquake?

Price: One of the biggest benefits is cost savings - no shipping costs means you can get your files back and forth quickly and cheaply from anywhere in the world. Let’s see DHL do that.

Why leave your business to chance? Sign up for our 30-day free trial today try FilesDIRECT for yourself.

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Saving Money on Large File Transfer

If you often use FilesDIRECT for large file transfer, you know that sometimes it can be hard to keep from using more than your plan’s alloted amount of data transfer. When this happens, overuse fees can result. Even though clients are warned by email when they are nearing their usage limit, sometimes the file transfer limit can still sneak up on you - especially if multiple people use the same account.

(Photo credit: Alex Schweigert)

Step-by-step: save some cash on large file transfer

However, with a bit of diligence, you too can easily prevent overuse charges by using our easy account management options to change your plan as needed. Here’s what you do:

1. Log in to your FilesDIRECT account

2. In the upper right-hand side of the screen, look at your total amount of transfer used (highlighted below in yellow):

3. If you’re getting near your limit, click the “Settings” link in the upper right-hand corner (highlighted above in red)

4. This will open a drop-down menu. From this menu, click on the link that says “Pricing Plan” (highlighted below in red).

5. This will open a new window that will show you what plan you are currently using, and give you the option of choosing another:

Pick the plan that you think will give you enough transfer usage (or storage) for your needs for the rest of the month. Remember, if your usage goes down next month, you can always switch to a lower account too! File transfer has never been so easy.

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File Transfer Review

Our Manager of Business Development sent out an email today directing us to File Transfer Reviews - a site I admit I hadn’t heard of - because of a very interesting development:

We’ve been reviewed!

As their name implies, File Transfer Reviews looks at large file transfer sites and rates them on a number of factors:

  1. Length of free trial
  2. Lowest cost to use the service
  3. Maximum size of files that can be sent
  4. Transfer limit on accounts
  5. Storage space available for clients

We feel very fortunate to have been reviewed by File Transfer Reviews, as it is one of the few times we have been so far (much to my consternation). Not only that, but we’ve hit the top ten - coming in at number 5, to be exact. Woo!

However, I am sad to admit that there are a few errors in their review of our service:

  1. The file transfer limit is technically unlimited for all accounts: every account has a specific amount of transfer that is included, and more can be purchased on a per-MB basis. One can also easily switch to a more robust plan that allows for more transfers, then switch back when usage goes down.
  2. Max file size is actually 2GB per file - this is a limit imposed by web browsers, and though we’re working on an app that will allow file transfers of any size, it’s not ready for deployment yet.  :(
  3. We do offer 30GB of cloud storage on our Starter plans - but our other accounts get more…up to 150GB.

It’s a pretty sparse review, one must admit, but these guys have got a lot of sites to go through. So! Thank you, File Transfer Reviews! We do appreciate inclusion on your site and in your list. Keep up the good work!

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What About Receiving Large Files?

There are a lot of large file transfer sites out there - most of them do a good enough job of sending files that are usually too big for email. Several let you send files up to 2GB in size.

Some will let you store files as well, though most offer very limited storage. A few will let you receive files from other people.

Even fewer let you do so for free.

(Photo credit)

Many companies and consultants need not only to send large files (like drafts, plans, video, etc.) to clients, but to get them back so they can make needed changes or edits. Since many online services only perform file sending, this usually means convincing your client to get an account with one of these services so they can send things back to you. Hopefully they’re willing!

The truth of the matter is, the simpler you make something, the more likely people are to do it. A classic example is FTP: though widely adopted, most people hate it because it’s hard to use (not to mention it’s other well-known flaws). Why not simplify things? If you could just have a link on your website that points to a page with simple, easy-to-follow instructions for sending you files, why wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t your clients (or bosses) prefer that too?

It’s called a “dropbox”, and some of our competitors do have them - but they’ll charge you extra…especially if you want it customized!

(Photo credit)

But here at FilesDIRECT, that’s just not how we roll. You want a setup where other people can send you large files free? Done. You want a dropbox? Done. You want to be able to customize your dropbox to match your company’s branding? Done.

You want it for free?

Done.

That’s right: a free dropbox that you can customize. Whatever size account you have, it’s yours - even on a free trial. Try it free now and discover our other great (free) features!

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Online File Transfer Saves you From Travel Chaos

It’s been all over the news for nearly a week: severe winter weather (including record cold and snow fall) has essentially paralyzed Europe, leading to a dramatic shutdown of many airports, rail lines and highways. Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, was particularly hard hit, with a large percentage of flights (inbound and outbound) being cancelled over the weekend.

Other airports across the continent, already impacted by the weather, were hard hit by the cancelled flights into and out of Heathrow, and a cascading chain of cancellations has spread around the world…like dominoes, but much more aggravating.

Intercontinental railways have also been hard hit, as have roads all over Europe - in one example, Italy’s main north-south highway (“Autostrada”) was jammed with hundreds of vehicles, and was still closed in one direction as of Saturday, with cars backed up nearly 25 miles.

Millions, if not billions, of dollars have been lost as transportation has ground to a halt for the second time in a year (remember the Icelandic volcanic eruption in April?). Along with stranded (and frustrated) travelers, air, train and truck freight has all been stopped or delayed.

While FilesDIRECT can’t do anything for the stranded travelers (though we wish we could), how much money could business & industry have saved over the course of this fiasco if they used online file transfer? Plenty.

While nearly any document, plan or type of information can now be sent online, many government organizations and big businesses (like financial institutions) insist on sending important information by air courier. As mentioned in a previous post on this blog, billions of dollars worth of financial transactions are recorded onto discs (or tapes!) and sent via couriers all over the world for download and processing.

Business and government shouldn’t grind to a halt because of bad weather in one part of the world - what they need is a solution that allows for the secure transmission of data (including valuable financial information) that works no matter how hot, cold or wet it is outside. Modern business demands a reliable, secure, easy-to-use file transfer system that works anywhere and everywhere.

What they need is FilesDIRECT.

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