
Minbox - a faster workflow for sending files - superchink
https://minbox.com/
======
fxtentacle
Yay! thanks :) That looks like the Dropbox replacement I was hoping for to use
at work.

Some questions:

1\. How about transparent GZIP-ing files. For example, I ofter have to send
large CSV files, but my recipients are not always skilled enough to unzip them

2\. Is there a way for end-to-end encryption, if my recipient also uses your
tool? Urls including a ?key=ABCDFGHJKL part come to mind... For example, you
could randomly generate an AES CBC key on my machine, use that to encrypt, and
produce an URL that my customer can use to decrypt it.

3\. How does the mail get sent? Apple Mail? custom server? Do I need to hand
out my SMTP login data?

4\. How do you make money? Please clarify on your page that this is not one of
those "we sell your data" schemes.

This looks promising :) Best regards, Hajo

~~~
disbelief
Thanks for the feedback! (Minbox developer here)

> 1\. How about transparent GZIP-ing files.

This is an interesting idea! We've been mostly focused on receiving zipped
files and extracting their contents, but I could see a "auto-zip" feature at
some point.

> 2\. Is there a way for end-to-end encryption

We use SSL on all uploaded data, enforce SSL-only on our download links and
gallery pages. That said, this is email we're talking about, so if you're
truly worried about encryption, this might not be what you're looking for.

> 3\. How does the mail get sent?

Depends. You can hook up your Gmail account (using OAuth2) and we can send via
your SMTP server. Or if you prefer, we can send the email from our own SMTP
servers on behalf of you.

> Do I need to hand out my SMTP login data?

No. You can use Gmail OAuth, or you can just sign up for a regular account (no
SMTP credentials required)

> 4\. How do you make money? Please clarify on your page that this is not one
> of those "we sell your data" schemes.

Our plan is to introduce a premium option with additional features, and no
time limit on the files we store. Files in free accounts are removed after 30
days. This is all laid out on our homepage: <http://minbox.com/#pro>

~~~
voltagex_
Actually, if you've got your webserver configured correctly, it's not even
"auto-zip" - your server sends gzip and the browser unpacks it transparently.

------
zokier
Kinda good idea, but maybe not. Major problem being that it's too easy to
accidentally interrupt (even temporarily) a transfer that you had already
forgotten because you thought of it as "sent"/"done" by eg shutting/sleeping
your computer down.

------
Osiris
I had an idea a while back to make an SMTP server that would automatically
strip out attachments, dump them on a web server, and re-write the email with
a link to the attachments.

I would still love to see something that does this type of thing automatically
(such as through an Outlook plugin or SMTP relay) so you can use don't have to
change your workflow to get the benefit.

~~~
EvanAnderson
This has been something that I've looked at a few times over the years. There
have been a number of FLOSS and commercial projects that have tried to do this
(and all that I'm aware of have sputtered out). A defunct product called
"Mailonator"
([http://web.archive.org/web/20080611060558/http://www.mailona...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080611060558/http://www.mailonator.com/download/index.php))
did exactly what you're talking about.

~~~
hpagey
We did this at my previous workplace. We stripped emails, encrypted them, and
sent an email with the link to the files. Only an approved app was then able
to open such files.

------
rogerbinns
I misread the title as faster sending, rather than faster workflow. For
dropbox we just use shared folders which work no matter what else is going on
(network connectivity, machines sleeping, reboots etc).

I'd be overjoyed if someone could figure out faster sending. My DSL maxes out
at 100 kbytes/sec upstream. Sending someone something like a mongodb dump
involves a long wait while I locally compress it, and an even longer wait
while it gets uploaded. I'd gladly have all 4 cores (plus another 4
hyperthreaded) plus 32GB of RAM dedicated to getting the files uploaded
quicker. In theory some of the compression tools can do this, but some aren't
multithreaded, or require a lot of research to figure out workable command
line options and even then they consider 4GB to be an outrageous amount of
memory. Often you have to wait for the compression to finish before you can
even start the sending.

~~~
fyrabanks
Perhaps you should have a look at pigz, a multi-threaded implementation of
gzip. It uses the same flags as gzip, so -# specifies speed (-1 runs the
fastest with the least compression ... -9 runs the slowest with the best
compression), and by default it spawns as many processes as you have
processors. I've never done any formal benchmarks, so I'm not qualified to
speak as to its efficiency, however.

Based on your late-90's upload rate (and assuming you're working with large
files that compress nicely), I'd say the more time you spend on compression,
the less overall time you're looking at. That 100kb/s (theoretical) limit is
really the first bottleneck you should be fixing, though.

[edit]: I completely misread that as kilobits/s. Point still stands minus the
90's bit.

~~~
rogerbinns
I usually use pbzip2 which is multi-threaded bzip2. As for efficiency, gzip -9
uses a 32kb window while bzip2 -9 uses a 900kb window. This plus other
improvements is why bzip2 beats gzip.

> I'd say the more time you spend on compression, the less overall time you're
> looking at.

That turns out not to be the case. For example xz (-9 uses a 65MB window) does
indeed result in better compression. However it isn't multi-threaded and uses
considerably more cpu time. The extra time taken is beaten by using pbzip2
which can start the upload sooner. 7z does allow multi-threading if you can
navigate it's command line options.

BTW here is a quick test. I have a json file that is 8.1GB.

    
    
        442MB  3m12s  single threaded gzip -9
        309MB  23m    single threaded bzip2 -9
        326MB  25m    single threaded xz -9

~~~
rogerbinns
As a followup, the most effective way to minimize upload time would be to
start from the front of the file with gzip or something similarly quick, and
simultaneously start the heavyweight compressions from the end of the file.
When the two meet the more compressed content gets sent for the remainder of
the file.

------
johnernaut
This definitely looks cool, but some of the wording on the marketing page
comes off as a bit cocky to me.

------
zombio
Funny video and interesting app, although it's kind of misleading. It doesn't
actually send files faster, you still have to wait the full upload time. What
it does do is allow you to forget about the upload... it will automatically
send once it's ready.

Good job overall, I might get it when it's available on windows.

~~~
aihunter
Thanks zombio. But it actually DOES send faster. 2x faster than Dropbox and
Google Drive...

~~~
pudquick
Do you have the numbers to back that up?

Your page mentions uploads to S3 - do you do regional matching with
appropriate region buckets? I've seen numbers that are sub 1Mbps when you hit
the wrong S3 region yet I can reliably hit 900Kbps - 1.2Mbps, if not faster at
times, with Dropbox.

Can you provide some average upload speeds you've seen? (Even from a non-
residential connection is fine.)

Also - you state unlimited size, but even multipart upload to S3 claims a 5 TB
max object size limit. Did you work around that somehow?

------
_lex
How'd you get the rights to 1) the music, and 2) the video clip that's used?

------
tylerhowarth
These guys are spamming twitter hard. Very strange.

[https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=minbox&src=typd](https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=minbox&src=typd)

------
chacham15
I liked: "And Usain Bolt built our servers." :) One question though: since you
upload the file later (behind the users back), how do you know when the other
person can download the file?

------
matb33
If you could stuff a download URL signed for S3's PUT in a custom header (in
order to do a bucket to bucket copy), this would make a great large file
uploader for SaaS services that store user files on S3 too. User would send
the file to something like upload@thesaasservice.com and some kind of
mechanism to validate identity.

Then get resuming working as well as Dropbox of course :)

------
ckannan90
I think the video needs to be clear what the difference in the service is.
It's not that you can't send a dropbox link till it's ready (you can, the
recipient just can't see it yet). The feature here is that Minbox sends the
email when the file is ready, on its own. Which is awesome, but not what the
video is showing. That bit is the last feature listed on the page.

------
vonskippy
Seriously, they need to work on a decent elevator pitch. The video is annoying
and too long, and their webpage goes on and on and on without clearly stating
why they are better then all the rest. Should I try them - who knows? Will it
make my work flow better/faster/easier - who knows? Ironically they dis
dropbox, but everyone knows what dropbox is and does.

------
rodolphoarruda
I wish I could just send email like that. Click an icon, a 350x250px box pops
up, add address, subject, message and hit 'send'.

~~~
aihunter
You can! Minbox does that too... AND there's a global keyboard shortcut to
compose a new message (CMD+Option+N).

------
apendleton
What if you actually want to send someone RAW files, or big videos? Can they
access them, or do they only get compressed/resized ones? Seems like a shame
to go to all this effort to make a fast service, then force users to obfuscate
their stuff by putting it in a tarball or something.

~~~
aihunter
Option is yours!

------
mathphreak
<http://ge.tt> does (from what I can see) the same thing without being Mac
specific or locking you into just emailing your files rather than, say,
tweeting them. It might be good to mention the differences.

This UI is a bit neater, though.

------
kposehn
> Does the Pope sh*t in the woods?

Is a bear catholic?

:D

------
xixixao
Terrible promotional video for what seems a nicely designed app (try playing
it without the sound).

------
bcl
Video player says "No video with supported format and MIME type found." Using
FF 20.0 on OSX.

------
tkahn6
The video is probably gonna be offputting for some people but it's hilarious.
I actually laughed out loud at it.

~~~
meritt
While I understand it technically I feel like the video is incredibly
misleading. It's demonstrating time-to-share a link which (at some point) will
contain a file. It's not demonstrating time-to-upload a file like the video
suggests by comparing directly against dropbox.

~~~
daniel-cussen
_Incredibly_ misleading? Obviously it doesn't give you 8Gbit internet, it just
saves _your_ precious time. You don't have to spend five minutes on a task.
It's not like Bruce was going to download that file as soon as he got the
message, and that's assuming it sent right away, which it could avoid by
delaying the email by those same 5 minutes.

In terms of workflow, it's a huge improvement.

~~~
M4v3R
If you drop a file into your Dropbox Public folder you can share it instantly
though.

~~~
aihunter
Not anymore! They deprecated that feature, only exists for old users.

