Rate/Review my startup - streamfile | Hacker News Reader

Rate/Review my startup - streamfile

streamfile.com

42 pointskimovski55 comments

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There's no need for a flash navigation bar.

You may disagree, but It's my opinion that flash should only be used when absolutely necessary.

Great idea, though. Great domain and great design.

Thanks. Got your point and to some parts agree, let's see what we deside on.

some jQuery code can give you the same effect

UPDATE: here's my shot at it: http://www.nirmalpatel.com/menu.html

The font sizes and padding may not be exact, but I got it close.

Nice work Nirmal, just sent you an email..

So, if I understand this correctly, I could start uploading a 2GB file, and, while it is still uploading, my recipient could start downloading it, even before the upload has finished?

Did I get that right?

It might be good to have some kind of visualization to show the process (along with a better explanation).

On this note, I love the concept and the simple design but with all of that open real estate on the homepage you might consider one short explanatory blurb to greet visitors and pull them right in.

Agree. Actually, We will shortly add an embedded movie clip that greets visitors with a short presentation and explanation of the service.

People don't watch those things, they _barely_ read. so two quick sentences will get you much further...

I agree, however we would like not to get users confused that Stremfile.com is yet another web 2.0 app with large headlines etc. We want it to breathe backend and be very minimalistic. I mean look at Google.com?

Good copy written in large headlines (or not?) goes a long way compared to a video that no one will watch, no?

Don't take my word for it though - do A/B on your homepage with a video and with text and see which results in higher number of uploads, perhaps?

Agreed regarding a video. It's a nice addition to have on an About or Tour page but never rely on a video to be the piece of content that tells potential users who you are and what you do.

You guys have a terrific and unique service offering - one or two well-placed sentences (and perhaps a more link) will work wonders...

yeah I don't watch those... personally I opened the page and all I can think is... what exactly does this do for me?

In my opinion no explanation should be necessary on the homepage. I went straight to the navigation bar to find an explanation but was tripped up a bit because "How it Works" is the third link on the bar and not the first.

bayleo: good point, maybe we should change the order on the bottom navigation bar..

what happens when your recipient is on a faster connection and "catches up" with your upload?

You probably get blocked until your browser times out. Then the question is if your browser can resume (tools like wget can easily resume, for example).

Haven't seen this idea before, and I really dig it.

There are a lot of times where I want to transfer something over Adium, but the connection between the parties can't be established. I always was frustrated by the asynchronous workaround of uploading the file, waiting for its completion, and then distributing the url, so your site will come in handy for me. I also like the https option.

Right now the site is running a bit sluggish, hopefully you guys can remedy that shortly.

Streamfile is thought to work as a service aimed to enterprise environment where bittorent clients and ports are blocked on most client computers & networks. I agree that the streaming progress can be presented in a better way, we are working on this as we speak.

Man, I tried this a bunch of times and it never sent any email and just stared at me pretty blankly.

Until I realized the problem is that your site doesn't except "+" characters in emails and then fails silently entirely, leaving me the expectation that it might be waiting for me.

Anyway, please change the site to something that allows + signs in email addresses so I can try this out that way. Thanks in advance!

You should also fix it such that it doesn't ever fail blankly without any feedback to the user of the problem.

Will look into and solve this asap.

I actually read about this earlier this week on this site here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=249823

I've used it several times already to exchange files with friends. Just today I sent a 700mb movie to a friend of mine - love the service...

i was the poster of that question and this service and using a complicated name on limewire were the two options i could come up with for my non-IT friends (and even then limewire was 10 steps too far). well done.

Love the simplicity of the site. Awesome service. I just sent a pic of myself to myself: http://www.streamfile.com/id/ZmkDG4QW1YhbiI90YNbCNgyM754Ke/1...

It's a shame I cant view the jpg in the browser but great work nonetheless. Though I think bandwidth will get very costly quick.

I can view it in a browser just fine.

Oh yeh, looks like it works in IE but not FF. I get presented with a download box in FF

I was trying Safari so I'm guessing it's only FF that's broken.

This is a very useful service, kimovski, and I wish you the best of luck with selling it.

I still think you should implement my suggestion of: a) having a splash screen explaining that the file isn't finished yet for recipients or b) sending all files with a content-type to make the browser download instead of trying to play media files.

MMC @ WN.se :)

We got a bunch of feedback actually on the content-type issue. Definitely something to fix.

Neat idea. Quibbles:

1) No explanation of what you're doing. Minimalism is good, being completely text-free not so much.

2) Entering an invalid email address, I get something that looks like a mangled smartquote (opera on ubuntu): 'Email address Recipientâ€™s email(s) is not valid.'

Will look in to the Opera + Ubuntu bug asap. Thanks for that.

Its tight. Its useful. It works.

Well done, I'd say. Good luck to you.

Great idea. Most likely recipients of a streamfile dont know what a "stream" as opposed to a "file" so in the recipients email, the subj shouldnt be "you have a new stream..." it should be "You have a file...". This will help minimize users passing it over as spam.

Good point, thanks.

So this is very similar to eatlime.com.

I love the idea (I use eatlime on a very regular basis). Unfortunately, eatlime is faster for me. I'll give you major points for a super clean interface.

I don't believe eatlime have any "streaming" functionality such as starting the DL before the uploader is finished? They may be fast now, but can their platform scale?

Really like this idea, gave it a try and sure enough I was simultaneously downloading and uploading the same file.

It seems to do what Dropsend and YouSendIt do in a much simpler way.

Cool idea... I understood instantly what it does ... and I think most of your audience will too... the term "streaming" has become pretty ubiquitous. How do you plan to monetize?

The plan is soon to launch an API where you pay a monthly fee to integrate streamfile functionality into your own site/domain. Plus we will charge for the regular service, that are currently for free until the 31st of August.

Simple, works great, and great concept. Love it. Curious to see how it would truly work on a large file though, will try a bigger one later today ..

Why shouldn't I just seed a file as a torrent? torrents let the people who started downloading, upload segments they have already downloaded...

This seems a bit simpler, especially if you don't already have a BitTorrent client. But perhaps Streamfile could be a frontend to a simplified BitTorrent tracker.

I don't know the details of how the BitTorrent protocol works, could it start seeding a partially uploaded file, or does it require knowledge of the entire file before seeding can begin?

Yes you start seeding, without uploading a single bit. People connect to your public/private tracker, and start downloading the data from you and from other downloaders who have already downloaded very small chunks of the file.

But you're right this solution is a bit simpler for the average user.

I would have a hard time explaining bit torrent to my parents.

Very nice concept. I would use it with my coworkers that can not get ftp or web folders working.

Agreed. SFTP isn't always allowed through firewalls, FTP is worse, and WebDAV is a bitch to set up easily.

This fulfills a decent need, better than the competitors where you have to wait till you're finished uploading the file.

Some explanation would be nice...

It streams it? That's very useful.

The site is slow.

The site may appear slow to north american visitors due to the fact that all servers are located in Sweden, Nothern Europe (this is why we also can afford the bandwith at the moment).

Plans are soon to add server nodes in U.S, Middle East and Hong Kong.

I'm curious, how does the cost of bandwidth in Sweden compare to the US?

Good question. I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with that Sweden has one of the highest penetration of fiber optic networks due to government subsidization starting early 90-ties.

It's a bit slow from Australia to.

It's a really excellent idea and a very simple implementation, like others though I think it needs some more explanation. Good luck.

how will you charge for this?

In the beginning we will add customers manually and charge them via www.kreditor.se

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