Friday, September 14, 2007

Whats this program all about?

I'm hoping to make fizbiz (FB) into a simple and easy to use system for sharing files via a web browser. Authorized user accounts can use FB to generate file request tokens called FIZ.

Each FIZ is a short unique identifier which can be used as a file upload token. For example, an FB server should have an easy to remember domain name like http://fb.company.com/. To access FIZ ID PR5347D the url you would hand somebody you wanted to get or send a file to would be http://fb.company.com/PR5347D.

Each FIZ is highly configurable and allows for the following options
  • Upload expiry (for limiting uploads to a slim amount of time)
  • Files expiry (defaults to the upload expiry until changed)
  • Multiple files support
  • Upload file(s)
    • WebDAV Server Integration
  • File size limitations
  • Upload and retrieve notifications for all FIZ participants
    • RSS
    • SMS
    • Instant Messages
    • E-Mail
  • Server based GPG Encryption
    • Recipients can add their own key which is moderated by the owner
    • Owner can select from list of existing keys
    • Preexisting keys can be related to recipient notification database
  • Set a simple password
  • Require captcha verification
  • Require registered local user
  • Require registered recipient
    • Simple registration interface
    • Recipients can be upgraded to local users through the administration interface.
  • Newly registration recipient expiry
Administrators of an FB site have control over which options are configurable and what value ranges are acceptable.

To share a set of files with multiple people just share the FIZ URL, if the data is not sensitive a FIZ URL should be quite secure for simple file sharing, especially if it has a short expiration time.

FB is ideal in situations where it is important to be notified file is downloaded. By requiring a recipient to be registered before downloading a file referenced by a FIZ you can track who downloaded the file by registration ID.

In short, I'm not reinventing any wheels here. Initially I wanted a system like FB so that I could instruct my local mail server to reject messages over a few megs, then email the recipient with a request to issue a FIZ to the sender.

No comments: