Izimi turns your PC into a server
Sharing files from your PC is nothing new. BitTorrent is all about sharing media files with the world, as Napster was before it. And file sharing products like Pando, eSnips, Titanize, Box.Net, YouBackItUp, and many others make it possible to share other files, or even entire directories and hard drives.
So when the team from Izimi pitched me on their new PC-based file publishing system as "the future of Internet publishing," I didn't really share their wonder.
I did try to find the spark of this product over the weekend. What I found was a tool that lets you turn your PC into a read-only file server accessible from any Internet-connected computer. To be very clear: This is cool. You can share any file: photos, videos, Word documents. If you have a lot of files to share, this could save you from the hassle of uploading everything to a sharing service. You could, instead, just point people to your files on your computer. Everything you share gets its own static Web address.
My Izimi page. Are these files online or not? Izimi doesn't tell you.
(Credit: CNET Networks)I like the concept, but there are problems. For example: No access control. Once you publish a file, anyone can read it as long as your PC is turned on and running the Izimi client. Want to share wedding videos with your family and friends? Great. But if you use Izimi to do so, you also give the whole world the capability to download the movies from your PC and soak up your outbound bandwidth. Actually, there is access control: Terminate the Izimi process on your computer. Then access to your content dries up immediately.
Izimi.com is also a social network for its users, which makes finding content easy. (Too easy; see previous paragraph.) The Izimi Web site keeps a directory of all the files shared using the service. Unfortunately, the service doesn't tell you who is online, so when you click on a file you might get it or you might not; there's no way to tell beforehand.
I have other issues with Izimi's implementation. It takes too many steps to post a file, for instance. If you're posting multiple files, it's tedious. And the Izimi software is a file server only. It won't serve Web sites you design on your computer (except the most basic), and it won't make a media file streamable if it's not inherently. In other words, some files will start playing immediately (MP3s started up right away for me), but some need to be downloaded first (like AVIs). In the case of video files, which can be huge, that puts a real damper on things.
The founders acknowledged my privacy concerns and are planning to build in access controls. I'm waiting. In the meantime, if I want to share files, I'll send out private links through Titanize, or publish my media on a hosting service (like Videoegg) where I don't have to worry about my own system's limited outbound bandwidth ruining the browsing experience for my viewers.
Izimi is launching today.
See also: Tubes.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
The other thing is, why is this product different from installing a web server-service on your desktop PC? Remember Windows 2000 Professional, where you can install "IIS for desktops"? If you are going to open up your hard drive to the world, why use this product when there are other ways to do so without any additional expense.
It's true, we will be bringing out, soon, a sophisticated set of privacy tools which will allow you to make your content only visible to those you choose. You rightly say that a way to achieve 'privacy' right now is to simply close the app. But there is another way, now, that achieves the same end but doesn't make all your content inaccessible. There is a lovely little feature that allows you to 'un-publish' a file. You can re-publish it and un-publish it again as many times as you wish - with the use of a single tickbox. But the thing that is really slick about it is that, to do this, you don't have to be at your PC where the app is running. izimi gives you web access to your files too whereby almost everything you can do with the files in the app (edit title, description, tags, un-publish/re-publish), you can also do via the web (that is, everything except the initial publishing itself).
You mention izimi's impact on your outbound bandwidth. Well, most people use only a fraction of their upstream speed leaving plenty of capacity for izimi to work effectively, AND, izimi has negligible effect on your download speeds, leaving you free to surf the internet as you normally would.
It's just been confirmed to me that the ability to see who's Online Now is top of the wish list and will be incorporated into the next version of the app.
Alright - kid gloves off now, because I must take issue with you when you say that it takes "too many steps to post a file". Your comment prompted me to time myself publishing files. It worked out to be about 5 seconds, and as there are 5 steps - that's a whole second per step! I take your point about multiple postings. If we allowed this, it would make life a little too easy for 'MP3 spammers' because, we mean it when we say we will not allow users to break copyright law with the files they publish.
The capability of your PC to host more than just files, and a whole load of other cool features, are in the pipeline for izimi so watch this space!
Regards, John Wood, www.izimi.com
It's true, we will be bringing out, soon, a sophisticated set of privacy tools which will allow you to make your content only visible to those you choose. You rightly say that a way to achieve 'privacy' right now is to simply close the app. But there is another way, now, that achieves the same end but doesn't make all your content inaccessible. There is a lovely little feature that allows you to 'un-publish' a file. You can re-publish it and un-publish it again as many times as you wish - with the use of a single tickbox. But the thing that is really slick about it is that, to do this, you don't have to be at your PC where the app is running. izimi gives you web access to your files too whereby almost everything you can do with the files in the app (edit title, description, tags, un-publish/re-publish), you can also do via the web (that is, everything except the initial publishing itself).
You mention izimi's impact on your outbound bandwidth. Well, most people use only a fraction of their upstream speed leaving plenty of capacity for izimi to work effectively, AND, izimi has negligible effect on your download speeds, leaving you free to surf the internet as you normally would.
It's just been confirmed to me that the ability to see who's Online Now is top of the wish list and will be incorporated into the next version of the app.
Alright - kid gloves off now, because I must take issue with you when you say that it takes "too many steps to post a file". Your comment prompted me to time myself publishing files. It worked out to be about 5 seconds, and as there are 5 steps - that's a whole second per step! I take your point about multiple postings. If we allowed this, it would make life a little too easy for 'MP3 spammers' because, we mean it when we say we will not allow users to break copyright law with the files they publish.
The capability of your PC to host more than just files, and a whole load of other cool features, are in the pipeline for izimi so watch this space!
Regards, John Wood, www.izimi.com
I am an izimi user and you are right it is cool, in fact I think its a brilliant product. True it has some kinks to be ironed out which I am sure will get sorted out in the near future, but overall its a superb concept.
There are a couple of issues that you raised in your article that I do find a little narrowminded especially for someone who is obviously in touch with the IT industry. So I thought I would give you my views as a member of the izimi using general public.
Firstly your comments about video files, using your example of a wedding video. Lets put this into perspective, if a person thought that the whole world would want to view their wedding video at the same time then they would have sold the rights to a film company so I dont think you have any bandwidth issues there.
If you want your files accessed 24/7 just leave your computer on and the izimi client running, if not, either exit the client or turn off your computer - this is not an issue its personal choice, which is limited with social networking sites, they make a lot of the decisions for you. With izimi you have control. Had enough of 1 of your files? just click unpublish and thats it, its gone from izimi, so simple.
As for file publishing it takes about 5 seconds to publish a file ( and I only type using 3 fingers!!!). If you want several files to have the same tags just copy and paste the tags..easy. The publishing of multiple files with 1 click would leave the door open for mass spamming, which, as I am sure you would agree, gives more cause for concern than just typing a few extra words and taking a few seconds longer to publish that extra file.
Under your screen shot of izimi you say "are these files online or not?" As previously stated I am no computer boffin but even I worked out that when I clicked to view a file and it says "no link?" I clicked that and it told me the person hosting the file was offline. After doing that once I learned that the greyed out link means the person is offline - not rocket science.
All in all this member of the public thinks its GREAT and will continue to use it and recommend it. If you had a star rating on here for products, izimi would get the maximum number.
My choice is Quickeo
- Izimi Rereleased as ShareNow
- by bradcrowell October 7, 2007 12:51 AM PDT
- Rafe-
- Reply to this comment
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(9 Comments)This is Brad from ShareNow. Don't know if David and John Wood got word to you already, but Izimi rereleased as ShareNow and has changed a whole lot of features...
check it out!
-b