Back in August, I wrote a post that rounded up some of the easiest methods for getting around email attachment size limits. Lots of people run into these limits when trying to send large files over email — especially from corporate, school, or ISP provided email accounts — and it can be hard to know you’ve run up against it until the person you were sending the file to reports the email didn’t go through. Keep reading for an update and expansion on that original post — many of the services I originally wrote about have changed, and some new ones have come along.

What’s Changed:

TransferBigFiles.com. When I wrote the original post 8 months ago, TransferBigFiles was my favorite method for getting around attachment size limits. All you had to do was upload a file and enter the email address of your recipient and they would receive an email with a link to the file. Well, the site still works that way, but instead of having a 1GB per file limit, it’s now 100MB. If you sign up for a free account, it’s 250MB, but that still constrains you to dramatically smaller files than you were able to send before (though 250MB should be more than large enough for most any photo or audio files you wish to send, and most video files should work as well). You will now also need to sign up for an account to use most of the features of the service, such as password protecting the file or including a message to the recipient. Paid accounts start at $5 a month, let you transfer files up to 2GB. Overall, TransferBigFiles is still a useful service, but now you may need to sign up for an account, and you’ll have to look somewhere else if you want to transfer really big files.

FileDropper.com. FileDropper hasn’t changed dramatically, but it has gotten less convenient for those wishing to use it to email files. The service still lets you upload files up to 5GB for free (and with paid accounts up to 250GB). However, when you upload the file, instead of giving you a link to that file (which was easy to copy and paste into an email), it now gives you a link to a page from which you can download the file (after entering a captcha). This adds a step to the process, and could prove confusing to the person you’re sending the file to, especially if they’re not computer-savvy.

What Hasn’t:

Gmail. Gmail still has an attachment limit of 25MB, which at the time was the largest of the email providers out there (and plenty big for most pictures, audio files, or Office documents). However, they have been surpassed by…

What’s New:

Hotmail. The new Hotmail, which launched earlier this month, now reigns supreme as the free email provider with the largest attachment limits. Using Hotmail, you can send up to 200 files, each of which can be up to 50MB (which allows you to theoretically send 10GB worth of files in a single email). Hotmail does this by uploading the file(s) to Windows Skydrive, a service which gives you 25GB of free online storage, and then including links to the files (or a gallery of thumbnails in the case of images) in the email. This method has both pros and cons. The biggest upsides are that you won’t be hampered by your recipient’s attachment size limit, and that your files won’t be taking up space in you or your recipient’s email accounts. However, because Skydrive has a capacity limit you may find that you run into it, which would mean having to clear things off of it before you could use it to send more large files. You can set your attachments to have an expiration date (90 days by default), which will be important to keep Skydrive from getting filled up if you are using Hotmail to send files frequently.

Related Posts:

• Get Around Those Pesky Attachment Size Limits
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The rumors of a Bing-News Corporation exclusivity deal seem to have died down recently (with the holidays and then CES occupying everybody’s time), but now that I’m back I still want to post an article I wrote for the Occidental Weekly last month about the deal, and its ramifications (good and bad) for everybody who uses the internet. Here’s the article lead:

Many of us rely on Google for all of our Web search needs. But what if Google no longer had all of the answers? Recent negotiations between Microsoft and News Corp. may threaten Google’s perceived control of the Internet.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

I offer tips and tricks for getting most out of Gmail in an article for the Occidental Weekly. Many businesses and schools (including Oxy) have been switching over to Gmail, and Google’s email interface can take a little getting used to. This guide should help make the transition a little easier, and provide knowledge that will be helpful to all Gmail users. Here’s the article lead:

The Gmail interface is different from most other e-mail programs, and it can take a little getting used to. But if you take the time to learn the tricks and nuances of Gmail, it can prove to be a quick and efficient program. Whether you’re using Gmail reluctantly or lovingly, these tips should help make dealing with your Oxy e-mail (or any Gmail account) easier.

Click here to read the whole story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

My Tyler the Tech Guy column in this week’s Occidental Weekly is a variation of my post about what Google’s new free GPS software will mean for the GPS market, but with a key difference — I focus on what Google’s offering will mean for consumers (aka us).

Click here to read the story >>

A complete archive of all my writing for The Occidental Weekly, including past Tyler the Tech Guy articles, can be found here.

What do newspapers, music companies, and makers of portable navigation devices like TomTom and Garmin all have in common? They have the same problem — someone is willing to give their product away for free.

In the case of the first two, it has brought about the expectation that these goods and services ought to be free (which is part of the reason that newspapers around the country are failing and the U.S. is so deficient in quality journalism, but that’s another story). In the case of navigation devices, that expectation isn’t here yet, but the GPS and portable navigation device (PND) makers will need to act quickly to make sure it doesn’t happen.

This situation for PND makers comes from Google’s announcement today that they are going to include free navigation software in the forthcoming 2.0 version of their Android OS for mobile phones, which is expected to launch across many new phones in the coming months (starting with the Motorola Droid for Verizon). That’s a lot of phones that are going to have free GPS navigation software, but this by itself isn’t the scariest part for companies like Garmin, TomTom, and Magellan. It’s the (plausible) speculation that Google will shortly bring their software to all the other phone platforms on which Google Maps is already available, such as the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and others. If people can get spoken turn by turn navigation on their phones for free — especially if they’re phones that they were already going to buy anyway — PND companies are going to have a hard time persuading people to dish out the cash to buy a dedicated navigation unit (or pay $99 for something like the TomTom software for the iPhone).

To make matters worse, the Google software looks pretty good. Great, actually. It’s still in beta, but it already incorporates a lot of features that PND companies charge premiums for, like text-to-speech (reading street names aloud), advising you which lane to be in, real-time traffic, and voice control. Plus, it includes data from Google’s satellite imagery and street view. You can see what the streets and terrain around your route actually look like (helpful for when you’re dealing with unmarked streets or unusual intersections), and it will show you each of your turns in street view so you know what the corner or off-ramp will look like before you get there. When you get to your destination, you can compare the street view image to what you’re actually seeing to make sure you are in the right place.

There is one major drawback to Google’s software. It doesn’t store all your maps on the device; instead, it downloads them as you go. This is fine as long as you have a good signal, but if you drive somewhere in the middle of nowhere without WiFi or a cellular signal, you could find yourself without directions. Google claims that the device will cache information on the device for the route you currently have programmed in, which should help if you’re driving through areas of intermittent or spotty coverage, but not if you’re in an extended coverage-less area. To be fair, most places people drive have cellular coverage, but PNDs and most dedicated GPS software have all of the maps and point of interest information on the device’s hard drive, so all you need to keep going is a GPS signal.

Google’s software is a game changer. It’s impossible to compete on price when your competition isn’t charging anything*. Suddenly, starting today, PND companies are going to have to work really hard — and possibly do something drastic — to stay in the game. Otherwise, the standalone GPS unit could go the way of the Palm Pilot, and Google will own yet another market.

*Google is planning to make money by advertising within their navigation software. Garmin or TomTom simply can’t hope to serve up ads like Google can, and this model further increases Google’s incentive to get their app on as many phones as possible.

Related Posts:

• Article: Motorola CLIQ Redefines “Connection”
• Get Around Those Pesky Attachment Size Limits
• Skype Releases iPhone Client

Spend enough time on corporate or ISP provided email, and eventually you’re going to run into a situation where the file you need to send is too big — you click ‘send’ and get an error message, and the person you’re sending it to gets nothing. These caps on email attachment size often aren’t explicitly stated, and it can be hard to know you’re going over them until you realize that the person on the other end never got your file.

I ran into this problem the other day when a person was trying to send me some large image files for a project I was working on. The problem was actually on his end, but nevertheless I went searching for solutions. Here are a few easy ones that should get the job done in almost any situation.

Gmail

Just last month, Google raised their attachment size limit to a healthy 25MB. That gives it the largest attachment limit of any of the major email providers (that I know of). 25MB should be enough to attach most files you would consider sending via email — including images, music, or a Powerpoint presentation stuffed with effects and animations.

If you don’t already have a Gmail account, creating one is free, fast, and easy, especially if you already have a Google login. A lot of people really like Gmail because of its fast web interface, good IMAP support, and large disk space, but even if you’re not willing to give up your main email provider it’s easy enough to create a Gmail account just for sending files and using as a backup.

Of course, even with an attachment limit of 25MB, you’re still constrained by the attachment limit of the person on the other end (unless you can convince them to create a Gmail account too). Plus, sometimes 25MB just isn’t enough. In these cases, one of the following services should come in quite handy.

TransferBigFiles.com

TransferBigFiles.com is really simple. You click to upload the file(s) of your choice, enter the email address of the person you want to send it to, and hit ‘send it!’. Done! The person on the other end will get an email with a link to download the file.

The service is free (they’re in that stage where they’re still trying to figure out a way to make money), and doesn’t even require signup. Their maximum file size is 1GB, which should honestly be large enough for just about everybody. Any kind of document, image, or audio is easily under 1GB, and practically all video comes in under 1GB as well. (Actually, if you’re trying to send a file bigger than 1GB, I don’t know what you’re doing trying to email it in the first place.)

The service keeps your file on their servers for 5 days or 20 downloads (whichever comes first), which is a relief for those who have privacy concerns and are nervous when their files are on other people’s servers, but a disadvantage to those hoping to use the service to host something on the web forever.

To make things more secure, you can add a password to your file so only your recipient (who you’ll have to tell the password to) will be able to open it.

TransferBigFiles was the service I used to overcome my large images problem, and the other person was able to send the files easily and without a hitch.

One important thing: remember to include a personal message with the file, so the recipient will know who’s sending them the file and what it is. Otherwise, your recipient could get confused — and he or she will probably delete the cryptic email from an unknown source that just showed up in their inbox.

File Dropper

If 1GB just isn’t big enough for you, take a look at File Dropper. This service lets you upload files up to 5GB — and that’s just to start. With a paid account, you can upload files up to 250GB in size (at that point, they might as well just make it unlimited).

With File Dropper, you upload one file at a time (you can’t send a group of files at once, like you can with the other options). Once it’s uploaded, it’ll give you the URL where the file is hosted. At that point, it’s up to you to copy and paste it into an email and send it to your recipient.

You can do also other things with that URL, such as linking to it in places outside of email. Unlike TransferBigFiles, File Dropper keeps your files their server forever (as long as they’re being downloaded), which means you can essentially use it as a web host for your files.

A free account lets you upload files up to 5GB, but features such as password protecting your files, making them private, or even deleting them requires a paid account, which start at $0.99 per month.

Related Posts:

• I’m giving the Mozilla Thunderbird email client a try…
• My Favorite Firefox Addons, Part 1
• Article: Web Browser Faceoff

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