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Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

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Re: Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

#41

Post by crb »

fudged71 wrote: post #33

Question: so with this, I can send an attachment and change the file before the recipient opens it? Will they see if it has been modified? Will I see when they have accessed it?

This is an automated way to do what was previously "copy and paste a Google Docs link into an e-mail".

Yes, you can change the file. If it's in native Google format (e.g. a Google Doc, not an uploaded/stored Word .doc file) you have a revision history. You can see when people join/leave the document while it's open (without timestamps), but you can't bring that up later.

Re: Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

#43

Post by lloeki »

notatoad wrote: post #8
munin wrote: post #7

> Have you ever tried to attach a file to an email only to find out it's too large to send? Yeah! Some jerk who runs my MTA set the size of acceptable attachments really low! I wonder who did that... $ host -t mx mydomain.com mydomain.com mail is handled by 0 aspmx.l.google.com. Oh... I see.

Attachment size limits aren't there just to fuck with you. Sending large files around between web clients is okay, but if you send a large file to an outlook user they're going to have to sit there waiting for it to download before the rest of their email comes in. And then it's going to make their PST file exceed the maximum PST file size, which in a poorly managed system (i.e. most personal computers) is going to c…

> Attachment size limits aren't there just to fuck with you.

Although bandwidth and storage have greatly been raised, the scaling problem remains: send a single email with the usual limit of 10MB to 20 recipients, and it will balloon to 200MB total at some point, possibly multiple times even. Scale this up, and you've quickly got a problem. What's more, either you put on limits or become a target for volume-filling DoS, and whatever limit you put on will be used and abused (ever seen those professional PPTs filled with ridiculously sized, uncompressed BMPs?).

So when sending big files email basically becomes a form of push signalling mechanism, where voluminous resources can be pulled on demand. Maybe a standardization of this process is in order instead of everyone coming up with its body-embedded HTML presentation mimicking regular file attachments? Something like a multipart message with mime type application/email-attachment-uri, which would make it nice to text-only modes.

BTW this really looks like what's currently implemented in Sparrow with CloudApp or Dropbox.

Re: Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

#45

Post by brown9-2 »

guelo wrote: post #15

Totally off topic but blogspot is just awful. Why does everything have to be a complicated buggy JavaScript app? There's nothing wrong with serving up good ol HTML pages, especially for simple text and images content like a blog.

Try using it on an iPhone, where the site interprets any sort of horizontal swipes (such as ones you might make while zooming in and panning on some text) as an intention to go to the next/previous article in the blog.

Re: Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

#46

Post by Achshar »

radarsat1 wrote: post #37
zacharycohn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a "cloud," that's just a server. There's an important difference, and people need to stop using them interchangeably.

What is the difference?

I believe cloud by definition means third party, but something like the host wont know what it is storing, just who accesses it. So in OP's case if his computer is shutdown, the server wont be able to serve the file, but if it is on "cloud" there is a lot less chance of downtime and greater latency as "cloud" can have multiple data centers around the globe to server same file.

Re: Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

#49

Post by whyleyc »

revelation wrote: post #48

So can we use that to send binaries to people? Because gmail will absolutely not allow you do that. They will go as far as inspecting archives to look for binaries and ban you from sending them.

You can get around this by renaming the file to have some arbitrary image extension. Not ideal, but works.

Re: Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

#50

Post by irahul »

zacharycohn wrote: post #25
WayneDB wrote: post #21

I never liked the idea of hosting my own files on someone else's server (Dropbox) or sending them through a middle-man. That's why i just run my own "cloud" on my own premises. If I want to give someone access to a file, I just throw it on my Synology DiskStation and the receiver can get at it via FTP or HTTP client.

That's not a "cloud," that's just a server. There's an important difference, and people need to stop using them interchangeably.

> That's not a "cloud," that's just a server.

Much like Web 2.0, cloud doesn't have a technical definition.

> There's an important difference, and people need to stop using them interchangeably.

People need to stop using "cloud" altogether.

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