June 10, 2007 8:34 PM CST
Automated Existence Part II
Welcome to part 2 of my Automated Existence multi part series. Today I will be talking about a service available on the internet called "Tubes." Tubes is a program that will allow you to set up an FTP server between multiple computers without the need for a degree from MIT. As you know most email services cut off your attachment sizes at a few MB (megabytes). I may be wrong but I believe that Yahoo Mail will cut you off at about 30 to 50MB attachments. I am not sure. Tubes does have limits, however they are at 2GB (gigabytes) and they have a 5GB service if you want to pay about $5 a month.
Tubes is ultra easy to set up. You simply sign up for the service which includes name, user name, password, and email. Then you download the program. Default settings are acceptable. If you have a dedicated file server like me then you may want to set it up to auto-run at startup. If you only have one computer then I would suggest that you set it up not to do that.
Once the program is loaded and you are logged in you can make a tube by clicking the "New Tube" button. Setting up a tube takes around a 2nd grade education (it is really easy in other words) and only takes a minute. Once the tube is set up you can "invite" people to join the tube by giving the program the destination email address. The person that you invite will then be instructed via automatic email to do what you just did.
The requirements are actually pretty simple. You must have a computer with decent access to the internet and a valid email address. The person that you are inviting must meet the same requirements.
Stay tuned for more Automated Existence entries in my blog in the near future. Below is my personal rating for this service.
Cost:
(the coveted 5 out of 5)
Free and good quality does not get much better.
Result:
(the coveted 5 out of 5)
Tubes delivers precisely what it promises. Any file transferred to any computer via the internet. The only problem is speed but you cannot blame that on the service. The speed of tubes is a direct correlation of the speed of your ISP (internet service provider). If it is slow talk to your ISP.
Maintenance:
(the coveted 5 out of 5)
Absolutely no maintenance what so ever. None, zero, zip, nada. Install it and forget it. It does not get much better than that.
Overall:
(the coveted 5 out of 5)
I really did try to find something wrong with this but there simply is nothing that I can possibly find. I give it a 5 out of 5 for greatness. I take away half a point because you will have 4 copies of the same files in different locations. Let me explain:
You will have the file that you are wanting to share located in your My Documents folder (or wherever you keep it.) Then you will have another copy of the same file located in the program files of the actual Tubes program. You will also have a copy of the same file located on the server that you are using as a medium to transfer the file (this is somewhere at the headquarters of Tubes.) Then there will also be a copy of the file on your destination computer. So as you can see there are 4 copies of the same file.
However I have to give back that half a point because hard drive prices are so damn low now-a-days. I just checked on ZipZoomFly.com and they are selling Western Digital hard drives at (let me do the math) $0.50 per 1GB. That is really cheap. The entire installed program only takes up 18MB plus the 2 - 5 GB you have to dedicate to transferring files. If you use the free service that comes to 2018MB of used space. If you use the pay service that comes to 5018MB of used space. If you translate that amount of disk space to money that you spend per GB (let me do the math) then that will cost $1.009 for the free service and $2.509 for the pay service. And that is not a typo that is actual fractions of a penny on that for you. So all of you that are complaining about the redundant space you can officially quit your bitchin'.
So in conclusion this program is pretty rock solid. I will also mention that this is still in Beta testing so it can only get better. Stay tuned for part III coming up soon.
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