

Show HN: boxify.me - I made a file-sharing app while AWS was down - guynamedloren
http://boxify.me

======
guynamedloren
Hey HN, yesterday was fun. I was in the middle of making changes and pushing
updates to one of my web apps running on Heroku when Amazon fell apart. I
quickly grew bored not being able to push updates to Heroku, so I decided to
brush up on my skills a bit and try my hand at a file-sharing app.

The idea came to me around 7am. I quickly snagged the domain name and got to
work. After a few hours of designing, coding, building, I ended up with
boxify.me. Not bad, considering I barely knew how to code a few months ago :D
The app was finished yesterday, and it went live this morning now that issues
with Amazon are clearing up.

Here's how it works: you click "start sharing" and a box is made with a
randomly generated url. You can upload files to it (as many as you want, 25mb
limit per file) and they appear in the box. You can send the link to others
and they can upload/download files as well. You can also change the name of
the box (and consequently, the URL).

I haven't seen any file-sharing websites that follow this concept. Most allow
you to upload huge files and send a link to somebody - very short term, which
is fine for most situations. But there are so many situations where it would
be nice to just have a bunch of files than can be shared between people and
accessed from any computer (one-off group projects come to mind). I guess the
most similar thing I can think of is Dropbox, but boxify.me doesn't require
signup, permissions, etc. So I guess you could say it falls somewhere between
a standard file uploading site and Dropbox.

Oh, I also submitted it to Chrome Web Store. My first submission yet, and it
wasn't even an conceptualized 24 hours ago!

What do you think?

~~~
mkrecny
Incredibly impressed given you started coding only a few months ago. Well
done!

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msumpter
You might also think about putting a statement about copyright infringement.
Doing a file sharing site hosted in the US you'll need to handle DMCA take
down requests from content providers. I think the method theTVDB.com has for
DMCA requests is perfect. If you click on an image there is a link for
'Request DMCA takedown':
[http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78957](http://thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=78957)

------
thedjinn
I like this. It's very accessible.

Could you consider adding a delete button? Also, you are currently able to
rename the example box. Perhaps you should disable that.

~~~
guynamedloren
Thanks! I am aware that you can rename the example box, and that's okay. The
button on the home screen should still be able to find it :)

I thought about deleting, but it could get messy if somebody decides to delete
all the files as there are no permissions/accounts etc. Maybe in the future,
if I decide to build on this?

~~~
thedjinn
Also, you should patch up the XSS vulnerabilities in the box name. ;)

~~~
SaltwaterC
Even more, one could rename the default 'example' page like this:
[http://boxify.me/box/input-script-alert-string-
fromcharcode-...](http://boxify.me/box/input-script-alert-string-
fromcharcode-88-83-83-script) :)

Edit: removed the XSS, but here's the vector (if HN allows:
input"><script>alert(String.fromCharCode(88,83,83))</script>)

~~~
guynamedloren
Thanks for pointing those out, fellas. Should be all fixed now. :)

------
ile
Hmm, would <http://min.us> be similar? Or dropmocks what it was based on.

~~~
guynamedloren
Wow, that's a slick app! Very nice interface, easy to use. I like it.

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amalag
Hey this is a great app, congrats, a great idea and great execution!

~~~
guynamedloren
Thanks!

------
rgbrgb
So how did you build it? Where's it hosted?

~~~
guynamedloren
Built in Ruby on Rails 2.3.8, designed in Illustrator.

Other resources utilized: \- Heroku for deployment (Amazon EC2 hosting) \-
Amazon S3 for upload storage/hosting \- Paperclip + Uploadify for uploading

