Library clips

Box is by far the most impressive file storage unit, store documents, video, photo’s, audio, etc, and be able to access online, even play multi-media files from within Box.
Invite others to share, even create a network of people you share with often (this is also bi-directional if they to use Box) or simply have a “Public Box”. You can already share items by inviting people into a folder or document, or adding them to your network, but what about a place to dump files ni a public space for anyone to see, this is what I like about the Public Box.

There are lots of features, some others are:
- edit office documents online
- send a file to your blog, if it’s a media file it will play
- share a folder

See more help.

Box Widget

What better than enabling a widget version of your Public box, others can:
- play files
- download files (click or right-click)
- login to their account via the menu (then add files to their Box in a right-click instant)
- RSS feed for the box
- owner can upload files
- others can upload files into the box as well (not with the free account)

But there seems to be a few things missing compared to an older widget I noticed on the sidebar of Social Media Today.

First thing you can get the code to share their widget on your own site…you can do this from a link at the bottom of the box (they make you register or login).
When you click on a file it also allows you to get a code to copy the widget, without having to register or login.
The other thing is it also shares the Box URL of that file, where you can visit the site and then download it, unlike the new Box widget you can’t download it from this widget.

Here’s an example of the old widget I got from Social Media Today:

Get your own Box.net widget and share anywhere!

See an example of the new widget at their blog post or website.

Feedback

From what I can work out you can only make one widget, which is your public box, I wish I could make any folder into a widget, or a number of different widgets or even organise files into topics so you can browse the widget by topic folders or even by tag…hmmm, this seems like an outliner like Grazr.

Can I save webpages (even if they are PDF’s or office documents that have a URL) via a bookmarklet?

I’d like to right-click on a office file on my desktop and save it to Box, or open it up and save it to Box.
It seems I can do this with Zoho, ie. via an office plug-in I can save an office desktop file into a Zoho product. Zoho is a file creator more than a file host, but nonetheless it does host the files you create within Zoho.
From the post:
““Currently they have to go to Zoho.com, login, and upload documents. We have them doing this an average of five times per day. This will let them go straight to Zoho without having to go to Zoho.com, upload, etc.””

Since others can upload into your public box widget, this kind of makes it 2 way file sharing, similar to Qnext, Tubes and others (bi-directional groups sharing of files)…there’s nothing like a good old drop box.

I’m using Podchains for my media files (podcast collection), it also hosts up to 400MB, it also has a lightweight widget. Box is the other way around, it is more about storage, access and various sharing methods, but now with widgets, 2 way file sharing and play functions, it really shines.
Others places to collect your media files could be del.icio.us for bookmarks (not a host for your files), Scrib’d for documents, Slideshare for Powerpoint (more a widget converter) and you know who for photo’s and video, or other file hosts like Omnidrive or DivShare (also has groups), there’s also more multi-network oriented sites like OurMedia, esnips…even the new MediaMaster (audio). And of course you can use office 2.0 products like Google Docs and Spreadhseets, Zoho, Peepel and many others.

Mashable likes the idea of group real-time mobile loads into the widget like Pickle and Cellblock.

Genwi is a media social network, save and share, news items, blog posts, video clips, podcasts, feeds, people, all with user profiles, messaging, add friends, voting, comments, add widgets to your profile, etc…

This service is really clean, smooth and easy to use…all media in one. It’s more about collecting/organising, sharing, and recommendation rather than publishing (besides comments and voting).

The great thing is that when you join it asks for a few keywords (or you can bypass this), it will then offer you feeds, blogs, videos, etc…based on these keywords, otherwise browse around the community content or add your own.

In a nutshell it is a social network for your subscriptions (you can also read summaries), where you can also collect items (favourites) and share stories with others (also comment and vote), you can also see other people’s pages.
The homepage has a stream of stories where you can again comment and share stories, it has 3 views (shared, new, popular). These stories are sectioned into format types:
- videos, blogs, podcasts, news, people, comments, and feeds.

The feeds section allows you to browse, search and subscribe to feeds, you can also upload feeds. When you upload feeds it asks to choose from a feed type category (video, podcast, blog, news) and add tags.
This way the section streams are correct, ie if you label the feed you upload as “video”, it’s contents will appear in the video section.

For each story you can click to see it’s source channel, from here you can:
- share and comment on items
- subscribe, comment and rate the feed
- view related feeds

Now I wish the “My Page” had these river of news format type streams, and also your feed list by format type.

It doesn’t have a personal RSS Reader, you can only read item summaries, it lacks mark read/unread, but you can save stories to Favourites (these are organised by format type, unlike your feeds).

A really great part is that you can view other people’s pages, see their:
- subscriptions
- favourites
- comments
- favourites
- message them

Besides sharing feeds and items, I’d like to see related feeds, items and people, even according to tags you use (only if it had tags).
This has the potential to be a more complete social bookmarks, social feeds, and people networks, with memedigging all in the one service…Rojo has this idea, but just hasn’t got the people network part.

Similar social network RSS Readers are Ozmozr, Spokeo, NeooWs, Newgie and Rojo…these are more robust type RSS Readers. Genwi could join these others by making your subscriptions page more like a regular RSS Reader, it reminds me of a startpage, in that respect it could take a look at the PageFlakes RSS Reader module. [via MNM]