14 DAY TRIAL // The Internet has been doing a lot of growing up over the last years. Not only has the 'size' of the Internet been constantly growing, but the connections have also been greatly improving. Unfortunately, e-mail, one of theM, if not the most, popular method of communicating over the net is still pretty limited in many ways. While Google and Yahoo! are now offering generous storage space for attachments, which has now reached the order of Gigabytes, no single attachment can be bigger than a set amount which is usually in the range of ten Megabytes. One thing you can do is create a segmented archive but that is a lot of legwork. Not only is it a lot of legwork for you, it is also a lot of work for the receiver who might not know how to deal with multiple segments and a whole host of new problems arise.
Enter Pando. Pando is an online sharing system that will help you overcome any such problems related to the size of attachments.
What does it do? Pando acts like a peer to peer server of sorts, on which you can upload the attachment, and from which the recipient can download it. In order to make use of the program you need a Pando account which is free and easy to obtain. Once you have an account all you have to do is open the Pando client and login.
Sending huge attachments To send a new attachment, all you have to do is click the send new button, and you will be taken to a screen that is very similar to an e-mail message. And in truth, that is exactly what Pando will send out. Enter the recipient's address, a subject and a message, then all you have to do is add the files you want to send. You can specify a package name and description which is useful if you need to sends out many different packages, each containing something else.
Adding files is easy either drag what you need from the finder into the file well, or use the browse function. The browse function is a little gem. I won't go into the Finder browse because that is straightforward and exactly as you would expect it to be. However, the program also has built in support for iMovie, iTunes and iPhoto, meaning you can browse and search within the libraries of each of those applications and even preview files, right from within that browse drawer. Very nice, very nice indeed.
The service is currently in the Beta stage, so you are limited to only one Gigabyte per package, but compared to the ten Megabytes you would get otherwise this is a huge amount of space. And since the program supports resuming paused downloads and uploads you can go as big as you need without any worries.
Receiving huge attachments When you send out a Pando attachment, the recipient will receive a small file, which should be under a hundred Kilobytes unless you send out a huge number of small files. If they already have Pando, all they have to do is download that tiny package and it contains all the information needed by the client to download that attachment. The message clearly stated that it is a Pando attachment and prompts the user to the site in case they don't already have it.
Once the package has been downloaded locally all they have to do is open it and they can see what is inside, in case there are multiple files, complete with preview.
The recipient can then begin downloading the attachment.
Is it the new wheel? The idea behind Pando is a very solid one. It is a fast and easy way to transfer large amounts of information without any of the limitations of e-mail. It is easy to use and has great many useful features. Other than using this the only real alternative to achieving the same result is a FTP server which is a lot more work to get up and running.
Also a big thumbs up is that the service has clients for both PCs and Macs which should make it easy to share with all your friends, not just some.
The Good Send huge files over the Internet, regardless of the attachments limits of your e-mail provider. The service is cross platform and the client is very nice.
The Bad Nothing really bad about it, although at the moment, people who are used to having attachments scanned for viruses might feel a bit unsafe. Perhaps if the people at Pando scanned the files on their servers, more users would feel safer.
The Truth A new approach to sharing information over the Internet, no more limits to attaching files. The two megabyte download for the client is worth every bite.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
