Glide File Sharing Service Debuts

Dotnaught writes "Glide Effortless has gone live. New York Times columnist David Pogue describes it as "full-blown online operating system" that's a mix of genius and interface awkwardness. (Glide has been covered previously on Slashdot.) Pogue concludes "Glide's core idea is unassailably fresh and useful. If TransMedia's plans for world domination fall into place, maybe it won't need an elevator pitch. Maybe 'You gotta try this' will be the only pitch it needs.""

Comments

Oh, ho...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that's a mix of genius and interface awkwardness...

Sounds like the night I lost my virginity.

Re:Oh, ho...

[JPriest]

Do you think you could document your findings into a man page or something so the rest of us have a guiding light?

Re:Oh, ho...

[Cleon I]

Right, like I want to get caught typing "man sex" into my terminal window...

Sad people

[pubjames]

The Apple® Mac OSX(TM) version of Glide Effortless is scheduled to be available on Christmas Day December 25, 2005.

Great, a reason for me to get up early of Christmas Day. Good thing I haven't got any family or friends!

Secure?

[SecureTheNet]

Glide looks like a well put together app, and I imagine it will become quite popular. But I for one would never use it. I prefer to keep my data locally, for privacy and security reasons.

Re:Secure?

[flyingsquid]

These guys can't seem to figure out what they want to do, though. Their site highlights Glide Personal, Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Music Shop, Glide Videos, Glide Docs, Glide Allmedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Mailshare, Glide Liveshare, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline, Glide Shops... I take one look at this and think,"this is supposed to _simplify_ my life?"

These guys seem to be (a) overly ambitious, trying to conquer the known universe with their site, and (b)confused, lacking a clear strategy or a well thought out business model... dude, that is just so 1999.

Why would I use this?

[xquark]

Why do they want my credit card for the free subscription?
I don't plan on buying anything from their glide store, why assume I will?

YOU NEED MY CREDIT CARD???

[Datagod]

What kind of legitimate service needs my credit card information to "verify" the details of my registration? I thought to myself, yeah, this sounds cool...give them my usual false info...then BANG...Please give us your credit card information even though you have selected the free account...We promise that no bad hackers can get your personal information... Whatever...these bozos wont last long... I use everything GOOGLE all day long, and they have never EVER asked me for my credit card.

Re:YOU NEED MY CREDIT CARD???

[ortholattice]

A made-up credit card number might get you into the free service unless they verify each one with the credit card company (which I think costs them money, although not sure, so they might not do it for the free account, but might wait until you are tricked into upgrading via the fine print on some T&C-like page you ACCEPT). On the other hand they may have a local validity check using the LUHN formula - see http://www.beachnet.com/~hstiles/cardtype.html - so you could invent a number to pass that check. I don't think this is fraud since you aren't buying anything with the made-up card, and it could never be charged to anyone anyway even if it matched a real one because the name won't match, but hey IANAL.

Re:YOU NEED MY CREDIT CARD???

[ortholattice]

Oh, now I see from another post that any made up credit card number will work. So they never even bothered to program in the LUHN check. (A well-designed site would do that, by the way, as a courtesy to the customer to provide instant feedback - without the "this may take several minutes" verification delay - when an obviously bad number is mistyped.) I guess I gave them more credit for their technical adeptness than they deserved.

My prediction? Icarus-like nosedive....

[Chaffar]

Or I haven't understood the thing, or it's a completely useless service.

So basically, it's a system that's let's me let other people see what I have, but they can't copy the file for themselves... Ingenious, from a legal standpoint, but I really doubt it'll pick up. From an older article: "The system is smart enough to identify copyrighted music that has been uploaded by users into the system."http://informationweek.com/story/showArtic le.jhtml?articleID=173402852

If the system is that smart, why would a "no-copying"policy be required? Hmmm ? Since the files being shared aren't copyrighted, I shouldn't be prohibited from sharing them.

Me says this is a piece of schizophrenic software that doesn't really know where it wants to be, and it probably will be too bandwidth hungry for most people to present any kind of interest.

But then again, maybe I haven't understood the thing :-/

MS prior art

[lovebyte]

Obligatory:
For a long time people have been able to share their documents, music, ... with everyone on MS windows. Albeit unwillingly.

I've had this for 2 years already

[dJOEK]

I don't see how this is new. It exists already a long time and it's called .Mac

cc test number

[Frogg]

mastercard 4929 123 123 123 passes luhn10 -- we use it when testing ecommerce systems.

Yep - I stopped there too

[CrazedWalrus]

I started signing up, just to check out the site. Got to the mandatory credit card, pressed Cancel, and probably won't try it again for a few weeks to see if they've changed it. If not, this'll be a service I simply don't use.

Glide: I don't lightly give my credit card number out to random internet sites -- especially when I'm not buying anyting. I'm not paying for the next gimmick until I've seen if it's useful. If you won't let me see if it's useful without my credit card, then you've lost a potential customer, and I've moved on with my life the way it's always been.

Disturbing Terms and Conditions

[Hrvat]

From TransMedia (Glide creator) Terms and Conditions:

Materials provided to TransMedia or Posted at any TransMedia Web Site

TransMedia does not claim ownership of the materials you provide to TransMedia (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input or submit to any Services or its associated services for review by the general public, or by the members of any public or private community, (each a "Submission" and collectively "Submissions"). However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting ("Posting") your Submission you are granting TransMedia, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses (including, without limitation, all TransMedia Services), including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission; to publish your name in connection with your Submission; and the right to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Services....

What this basically means is that you're giving them management rights to whatever you're posting on their service. So if you're a starving artist and you store your next hit song on their service, they have the right to copy, distribute, transmit etc. that song, or just sublicense it to someone else.

This is wrong. They are basically asking for you to give up all the rights without any compensation for it just by using the service. I definitively won't be using this service.