Thursday 8 December 2011

Large email attachments

I think we need the ability to send very large files to be built into the email protocol. It doesn't have to be directly as an attachment, but it does need to be seamless and familiar. Our email programs can send the file another way and sort of pretend it's an attachment, and nobody will have to think about it again.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - These days, the email definition of a "large" attachment is pretty limiting.
PPS - Hence the need for a new way of sending attachments.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Binfer is a great way to send those large attachments. Check http://www.binfer.com

John said...

There are lots of those services around, and I'm sure they work really well. The trouble is that they are not directly part of the email protocol, so it's not seamless. You upload your file to one place, then send an email instructing someone how to download it. We all know how to use email attachments already, and they work for smaller files all the time.

What I'm talking about in this post is, say, detecting when an email attachment is too large and sending it via that second channel automatically and seamlessly, so that nobody has to know their email inbox limits, know how to send files via a third-party service or explain to people how to download from them.