File Sharing Facilitation: Mediafire

For individuals working on a collaborative project from remote locations, solving the problem of file-sharing is not an easy one. For large organizations with high-level security needs,owth of online applications challenging the paradigm of local networks and desktop applications has us rethinking the necessity of investing in expensive hosting solutions that tax limited resources.

For smaller organization with less rigorous security demands and limited resources to invest in expensive hosting solutions, free online hosting services (e.g. Rapidshare, MediaFire, Sendspace, etc...) provide adequate filesharing services with varying degrees of accessibility.

For our purposes, we focused on MediaFire, as it arguably provides the most intuitive user interface. Unlike some other services, MediaFire allows users to share files with or without setting up a free user account. Setting up an account allows the user to create a persistent archive of files for the user from any computer. Anonymous posting without an account still supports file management, but only on the local computer and only as long as the user does not clear his/her web cache.

Like other services, MediaFire supports file sizes up to 100mb -- an adequate amount for most file sharing. Additionally, unlike other services that only support a limited list of file types (e.g. .zip, .mp3, .rar) MediaFire supports any file type as long as it is under 100mb. Uploaded files may be marked public or private with password protection.

The user interface is probably the strongest element of MediaFire. From the front page users are invited to browse their local drive to upload files (up to 10 files at a time). Once the file(s) is/are selected, a user clicks the easily identifiable "Upload File(s) to MediaFire."
















click image to see detail

At this point, MediaFire shines. The interface provides immediate user feedback that identifies both the upload progress and then the verification process.











click image to see detail

Following a successful upload, the user is able to copy the persistent link directly to the local computer's clipboard, email the link to a friend, or save to a del.icio.us networked bookmarking account.












click image to see detail

I have used a number of filesharing services, and I have yet to identify any major drawbacks from an HCI perspective to the services MediaFire offers. Some individuals have reported problems with the files timing out at the verification stages, but these issues are likely more a result of internet connectivity issues and not the server-side technology.

Initial Chat

Following an initial conversation via the D2L (Desire2Learn Course Management System), we decided to focus our energies primarily on assessing a number of groupware applications offered in the Google suite of web-based applications. To begin, we each registered for Gmail accounts (for those who did not have them already) with the assumption that Google Chat would afford us the capability of having real-time/synchronous conversations with one another. We set our first meeting time for Monday September 10, 2007 at 7:00pmMST. This event was scheduled using Gmail's Calendar application and shared with each of the members of the group. The calendar provided us with the opportunity to schedule meetings with each other and establish milestones over the course of the project's life cycle. A proper evaluation of Google Calendar will be forthcoming.

As the meeting commenced, so did our confusion. While Gmail's convenient "Quick Contacts" on-screen menu displayed that each us were, indeed, online and available to chat, we were unable to initiate a chat conversation that included all of the group members. Jason could chat with David. Theresa could chat with Barb. Each of the group members set about to determine whether or not Google Chat afforded users the ability to chat with multiple members, and David located a note on Gmail's help page confirming that Google chat is currently limited to one-on-one communication. From the help page:

Can I set up a conference call or chat room?
No. But we're always working hard on improving Gmail, and look forward to announcing new features and improvements as they become available. You may also want to download the Google Talk client so you can get the latest features we add to our free voice calling and IM service.

As a side note, Jason was able to locate details of this process using the chat archives that Gmail retains and stores within a user's account archive as if it were another email conversation.

After approximately 5 minutes, we determined that if we were going to chat at all, we would need to use the chat feature offered by D2L. Jason notified each of the group members (via each of the individual chat sessions that were open) to log-in to D2L where we would continue our conversation.

D2L's Chat feature is accessible quite easily from the secondary menu in the D2L header. D2L's Chat allows users who are logged in to either join a general chat or create a private chat where users can control which class members are allowed to participate. Since we were the only students using chat at the time, we opted for the general chat and commenced with our conversation.

While we discussed the details of the project, we experienced a number of D2L's limitations. First, D2L chat does not provide any user feedback for the posts. For example, there was no way for either of us to know if another group member was typing a comment, reading another comment, and the like. As a result, there were a number of occasions where group members talked over one another or repeated something another member had just entered. Google chat, while limited in it's number of users allowed at a given time, provides feedback for chat members in the way of messages like "Jason is typing" or "Barb has entered text." This feature is invaluable for synchronous virtual communication, as it allows members to pause while another makes a comment or continue speaking when another person's activity has finished.

Additionally, D2L Chat's default does not distinguish visually between posts from group members. See below. Jason's name appears in bold because this screenshot was taken from his perspective.


While it is possible to manually change the way your own name appears in the chat (for others to see), having the default set so that each person's name appear in a different font color or with a unique icon to each user would aid in user's ability to more quickly identify a user and associated those comments with that member — rather than forcing users to read an entire name.

On a note related to the Gmail archiving of chats and the limitations of chatting in D2L, it does not archive chats for participants. One group member was required to cut-and-paste the text from our chat into an external document (using TextEdit) and save that document on a local computer.

Webliography

We have found the following resources to be invaluable to our understanding of groupware and the assessments of groupware projects. We hope you find them equally useful.

• Bouthillier, France and Shearer, Kathleen. Assessing Collaborative Tools from an Information-Processing Perspective: Identification of Value-Added Processes.
• Grudin, Jonathan. Groupwareand social dynamics: Eight challenges for developers.
• Pinelle, David and Guwin, Carl. Groupware Walkthrough: Adding Context to Groupware Usability Evaluation.
  
• Steves, Michelle Potts and Morse, Emile. A Comparison of Usage Evaluation and Inspection Methods for Assessing Groupware Usability.
• Wheeler, Bradley C. et al. Groupware Comes to the Internet: Charting a New World.
  
  

NOTE: Links to PDFs of any of these resources are provided under Fair Use considerations for educational purposes only.

Progress Report

Greetings Group,
Just wanted to check in with anyone's progress. Anything to report?
Theresa (aka TRL)

All Set Up!

Alright, our blog is up and running! I'll email you all the details.
Barb