Zapr - Possibly Really Simple Sharing

Posted on June 7, 2006 4 Comments

Many many moons ago, the actual date lost in the mists of time, I signed up to beta test something called Zingee. Ok seriously, I don’t recall signing up for it, so it must’ve been quite a while ago. Zingee has since became Zapr (a dubious naming improvment imho). Zapr’s tagline is Real Simple Sharing. Thanks to a quick power supply swap earlier this evening, I found myself with a bit of free time to spend looking this thing over.

First the downside: The beta version is XP / .Net Framework 2.0 only. The other downside? Right now, all shared files are publicly accessible, so have to be a bit careful about how I play with this thing.

The app itself looks pretty easy to use and relatively straightforward. There’s also a lot of online help available too. Essentially, you choose a file to share. Once you’ve finished that, you get an URL that you can hand out to other folks — something like http://zapr.net/User/Machine/cryptic-looking-key. Anyone who goes to that URL will be presented with a download page for your file(s). Slick!

Here’s the main interface:
Zapr Main UI .

Pretty straightforward. To add a file/folder to share I reckon you can guess what to click on… There are two steps to that process. Here’s step 1:
Zapr file share, step 1

Step 2 appears to be a way to notify (email) folks with a link to what you just shared:
Zapr file share, step 1

Following the URL leads your user to a page that looks somewhat like this (but probably without the edited out bits…):
Zapr Web download

As a quick and dirty way to have folks get to files directly from your machine, this certainly seems like an interesting option. I’ve not done any poking at it yet from a security perspective, but it certainly kicks some butt from the useability angle. From the FAQ:

Security.
Zapr only allows the viewer to access and download the files that have either been expressly shared with them, or have been made public. Viewers are not given access to any other parts of the sharer’s computer.

Tags: beta, filesharing, sharing, zapr