SendAlong experienced a few service outages today, starting around 5 AM Eastern Standard Time. If you used SendAlong between then and now, I recommend double checking that all of your files were sent correctly. Double checking is easy – just have a look at the files you’ve sent here and ensure that any messages you sent today appear in the list – if they’re there, there’s nothing else you need to do. If they’re not there, you’ll need to send the files again.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused!

If you’re logging into SendAlong a lot, you probably wish there was an easy way to skip the log in screen altogether.  Good news - there is.

Here’s how to do it:

1. The next time you log in, make sure to select “Remember me on this computer” on the log in form.
2. Later, just type sendalong.com/send into your browser and you’ll be taken straight to the send-a-file page.

Don’t forget you can also bookmark the send-a-file page in your browser.  The complete URL is:

• https://www.sendalong.com/account/send.html

Did you know that you can use SendAlong to send files and messages in any language?

Special thanks to Kimmo H. for requesting this feature.

Update: Here’s a scan of the article from Daily Thanthi (thanks, Sukumar)

SendAlong was reviewed this week in Daily Thanthi (or Dina Thandi), a leading newspaper in the city of Chennai, India. First, a big thank you to Daily Thanthi for reviewing SendAlong - although I haven’t seen a copy of the review myself, I can only assume it was positive based on the amount of traffic to the site it generated.

Let me also say “Welcome!” to all of the visitors from Chenai and the rest of India (and around the world as well!). If there’s anything I can do to make using SendAlong a better experience for you, please just let me know.

Chennai factoids:

• Formerly known as Madras
• Population of roughly 7.5 million (New York City has roughly 8.5 million, Los Angeles has roughly 4 million)
• Capital of Tamil Nadu

Want three free months of SendAlong Pro?

Update: Thanks to Sukumar for a copy of the article! I hope you enjoy your three free months on the Pro plan! Here’s a scan of the article

I’d love to have a scanned copy of the article from Daily Thanthi - so if you have a copy and can scan it, please send it to me at jon@sendalong.com. The first person to do so will receive a Pro account free for 3 months! Of course, you have to send the file by using SendAlong:).

In 2007, 95% of all e-mail was spam. This means that it is in the best interest of large email hosts such as Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo to aggressively filter spam - otherwise their users would be flooded (even more than now!) with spam.

One of the more aggressive (and inaccurate) spam fighters is Hotmail.com - part of Microsoft’s MSN network. It’s been brought to my attention that SendAlong recipients with Hotmail addresses (ending in “@hotmail.com”) are having trouble receiving email notifications from SendAlong. Why is this? Hotmail is aggressive - very aggressive - in their email filtering. So aggressive that the email may not even make it to your Junk folder - Hotmail deletes it and you never even see it.

Rest easy though - I’ve already been in contact with Microsoft on this issue, and as a result SendAlong will be joining Microsoft’s “Junk Mail Reporting Partner Program”. This means the @hotmail.com delivery issue should be solved very soon and delivery rates for other email services should increase as well.

I appreciate your patience on this issue, and I’ll post here again when the problem is fixed.

If you’ve experienced delivery problems (to Hotmail or any other email provider), please Contact Us and mention the email address you were trying to send to.

SendAlong’s release apparently hit the blogosphere today, as was obvious by the amount of traffic coming into the site throughout the day. I want to take a moment to point out some of the posts on SendAlong and also thank each poster for taking the time to review the site.

I’m sure there are sites that I’m leaving out (if so, let me know), but here’s a relatively comprehensive list:

KillerStartups - SendAlong gets the nod from KillerStartups - but they ask what SendAlong will do to differentiate itself from its competition - stay tuned for the answer.

According to KillerStartups:

SendAlong simply works. It’s powerful and extremely effective. Instead of having to constantly carry around a fire drive or cds, users can employ SendAlong to take care of all their file sharing needs. It gets the job done without any hitches.

maestroalberto (in Italian) - This seems to be the post that got the ball rolling. Grazie!

Genbeta (in Spanish) - Another good review by a very popular site. Gracias!

Genbeta says:

…It’s another option to consider, especially for its extreme ease of use.

FeedMyApp

Go2Web20

Many thanks go out to all of the sites mentioned above, and any that I missed. I appreciate the time you spent signing up and using SendAlong.

Let’s hope for more good reviews like this in the near future!

And to all of the visitor from so many countries…

Gracias! Grazie! Merci! Vielen Dank! Thanks!

It’s been a long time in the works, but it finally happened - SendAlong has been officially released as of today!

Here’s what you can do with SendAlong right now:

• Sign up for a free or trial plan - choose the free plan if your requirements are small, or do a 15 day free trial of any of the other plans if you need a bit more horsepower
• Send large files to anyone with an email address - up to 100MB file size for free plans, and up to 500MB to 2GB (that’s big) for the paid plans
• Password protect your files - just type in a password so that only people that have the password can get the files
• Upload securely - SendAlong uses SSL to encrypt files as they’re uploaded and downloaded so that no eavesdroppers can steal your data
• How many people downloaded that? - page through the file history to see how many times each file was downloaded
• Did I mention the 15 day free trial (no strings attached, period)??

So head on over and sign up for a free account to give it a try!

Looking Back…

I thought it would be fun to see what SendAlong looked like in its early days. What follows are a few pictures of what SendAlong used to look like.

Here’s a shot from the very first running version:

Here’s a much more recent shot. Notice all of the fancy shadows and gradients that have since been removed to speed up the site:

That’s all for now - I’ve got a lot of work ahead - there’s quite a large list of features that people have been asking for - including things like file sharing (not just sending!). Subscribe to the blog if you want to keep hearing more.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again - go try it out!

The server upgrade is complete!

This means two things for you:

• The site loads MUCH faster now - the experience is much smoother.
• A steady stream of new features will be on their way soon.

Stay tuned for more!

p.s. Please feel free to log in and send a file or two to make sure you don’t see any problems with your account.

p.p.s. The official 1.0 release should happen tomorrow - consider this a “soft” release.

SendAlong will be getting a much needed server upgrade this Saturday (Feb. 23rd) morning.

As a result of the upgrade, the site will be down most of the morning.

But don’t worry, when it comes back, it’ll be better than ever! What’s that mean, exactly? It means that the official 1.0 release of SendAlong is just around the corner!

Check this blog next week for the official announcement.

If so, think about joining the SendAlong beta program to help test and suggest new features as SendAlong approaches its official 1.0 release.

What’s in it for you?  Keep reading to find out…

Here’s how it works:

• Contact me and let me know you’re interested in helping
• Use SendAlong as much as possible (with a free account that has virtually unlimited bandwidth)
• When all is said and done, receive 6 months of a FREE Premium account

Of course the above just scratches the surface.  Contact me and I can fill you in on the rest of the details.