Solo Technology

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The Zapr folks are being very friendly and responsive. And apparently I’ve found a bug of some sort (why, yes I believe I’m the Chris mentioned). I love being a beta tester who actually finds bugs. (honest!) Alas, I’m still getting minimal love with my testing — damned thing is just convinced I’m offline. The email I just sent Mick said I was getting 50/50 on tests. I’ve since gone drastically downhill on that ratio.

I think I’ll try to uninstall, the manual delete and clear registry keys before my next test. Stay tuned…

[update 10 minutes later]

Far out.

Did the rigamarole of uninstall and manual directory delete again, but this time fired up regedit and killed anything with ZAPR. Reinstalled. Still knows my name and password (let me guess, a cookie?) and still knew my shares. Deleted the share, made a new one and now it seems to be working just fine. And reliably. Yay!

I like it just as much as the first time I looked at it. In fact, I like the client app even more. It is much cleaner/simpler/easier to use.

Only thing I’m not loving is the url for files. What used to represent “machine name” is now… random. And not configurable. So, my urls look like “http://zapr.net/myUserName/mikew909_lt/stringOfStuff”. Call me petty, but where it says mikew909 used to represent my actual machine name. Which is nifty when you have multiple machines. I already groused to Mick and he mentioned they’re still wrestling with the device naming. I guess one issue is if you use machine name and then rename your machine, it all probably goes pear shaped.

Here are a couple screen shots:

This first one is the main screen of the client. You can add files or folders to share, contacts (by email address) and view what you currently have shared.

I made this one a thumbnail since it is bigger — just click it to see full size.
Here I’ve just finished selecting a new file to share. This is the point that it gets a title and description and the client even shows what the URL to that file will be (yes, I’ve fuzzled it out a bit!).

Another thumbnail:
This is the list of what I’m currently sharing. Pretty straight-forward and intuitive. What I really like here is that I can select a file and then click on the “Copy Url” button to get the url to that file stored in the clipboard. VERY nice to then just lean over and paste it into an IM session with someone who needs that file. Send Notification is handy too if you want to drop an email to any of your contacts.

As I mentioned when I looked at AllPeers, I’m not a hardcore file sharing kinda guy. This short of sharing app, though, appeals to me. Easy to use. Simple. Decent amount of geek cred without having to talk mom or dad through how to use FTP or install another app just get the file. Fills the niche nicely, imho.

2 Responses to “Zapr followup - It Works!”

1. Mick on August 21st, 2006 6:05 pm
   

   Yep, sorry about that machine name bug you found. More features in this area coming soon.

   I agree about the geek to non-geek communications. I’m already using it for simple transfers with family and friends.

   cheers.

2. chris on August 21st, 2006 6:38 pm
   

   Thanks again for all your help Mick!

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