Sharing files the easy way

 Share a file to the cloud in seconds 

That’s the idea behind this great tool.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine (great product designer) asked me to make a quick step-by-step video on how to update one of his client’s websites.  I made it with annotations and click tracking and it looked cool and was a Quicktime .mov file.  It was around 35MB compressed so email couldn’t handle that kind of transfer.

What to do?

I’m a big fan of Dropbox and absolutely love it.  It’s awesome.  Great way to sync files across multiple computers and folders.  I just wanted to send my client this one video and he didn’t have a dropbox account to sync to the file (easy if he does) and I put it in my public folder and sent him a link but it didn’t really work out.

Then I remembered yousendit and I have a login somewhere but couldn’t remember the login and even if I did, my client would have to create a yousendit account to download the file.

An easier way

There must be a quicker easier way that doesn’t require downloading any software, registering for any service, is quick to upload, gives me a link I can paste into my email to send to my client, that he can then click and quickly download.  And it also needs to be safe, keeps the file secure and is just so simple and with no hassles.

There’s always an easier and better way

….

Introducing ladybug

Ladybug does exactly that.  She loves delivering your files wherever you want them to go (to a client in an email, in your twitter stream to followers, on your facebook page for fans to download your latest .pdf accomplishment). Whatever and wherever you want.

It really is that easy sharing files with your clients and colleagues

She’s:

☁ Safe, quick and doesn’t mess around or require a login 

☁ Easier and faster than Dropbox, yousendit and the rest of ‘em

☁ Keeps things plain and simple to help the rest of us share files.

To keep things simple you can share these kinds of typical files which work for most small businesses out there:

✓ images (jpg, png, gif)

✓ videos (mov, mp4)

✓ documents (pdf, doc, rtf, xls, ppt, txt)

So that includes Microsoft Word docs, Excel docs, Powerpoint docs, photos, videos, PDFs (invoices, reports etc).

She also limits the file size to 100MB for now.  This should be enough for most situations. If the files sizes or types need to be increased, then get in touch and she can consider it ; )

It really is as simple as 1-2-3.  Just “upload file” (select file from your computer like adding an attachment to a mail) and click “ok”.  Copy & paste the resultant URL and send it to the recipient via email or social media links (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).  They then click on the link and are taken to a page where they have the option to download.

Files expire in 1 week and also include a shortened URL for easy sharing.

This might be extended beyond 1 week if more people request it but it should be enough time to share what you have.

This is really about scratching my own itch.

I want my clients to use it with me but I also want you and anyone else to be able to quickly share files with their clients, colleagues or anyone else in a quick and easy way.  Deliver your invoice, project files, project outline, anything.  There must be other people with the same problem as me.  This must be a common itch. Please help share this tool with people you know if you think they also need to scratch this itch.

Ladybug is completely free to use and will hopefully make your small business life better.

Why use ladybug even for small attachments in email?

I agree with Shortmail that attachments basically get in the way in email and often mean messages bounce with email or are even undelivered due to SPAM filter blocking due to the file title or just being too big for the mail client to handle it.

Using ladybug in conjunction with your email will really increase deliverability and make sending and receiving email much faster for everyone.

Sending attachments via email really needs improving in general and this could be one way of doing that.

Go ahead and today start sharing and receiving files from clients in seconds.