
Get 10 GB of space on the new Minus.com - mindotus
http://minus.com
======
terrellm
This domain sounded familiar and I see where it recently sold for $115,000 to
an "non-profit startup".

The seller shared his story in the comments at
[http://www.thedomains.com/2011/06/30/domain-investor-
brian-w...](http://www.thedomains.com/2011/06/30/domain-investor-brian-wick-
sells-minus-com-for-115000/) (scroll down to July 25). It's interesting to see
that while the buyers claimed to be a "math educational non-profit startup",
the seller was skeptical of the story.

~~~
mindotus
It was a huge amount for us and we went through a broker for the process :)
Still love our old <http://min.us>

~~~
terrellm
Congrats on the purchase. A good .com domain definitely enhances credibility
outside of the startup world over a domain hack.

~~~
wyclif
I wonder if anybody in the startup world is thinking of solving the domain
problem. Eventually founders are going to get sick of dot com domain hacks but
without ICANN cooperation I just don't see how this can change. There are only
a limited number of quality domains that are variations of English words.

~~~
mindotus
Agreed. We'll see how things go over the next few years :)

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martingordon
I don't know if it was all of the people thinking HP selling TouchPads at a
loss was a good idea or something else, but I've recently gone from
indifferent to adamantly opposed to the whole "give it away for free and worry
about money later" attitude that pervades our industry.

The only compelling aspect of the offering is the promise of free 10 GB of
storage. I don't see a dollar sign _anywhere_ on the site, so I don't
understand how they intend to keep that promise for very long. I refuse to
sign up for a product, much less take the time to integrate it into my
workflow, without knowing that it will be around for longer than a few months.

~~~
jodrellblank
I'd have thought HP's idea was brilliant had I managed to get in on the deal.

But "we spent 100k on a domain name for a non monetised service which competes
with dropbox file hosting on one hand, picasa and imgur on image hosting,
letscrate and sendoid on file sharing, and has nothing to match Dropbox on the
high end, and is 'just' framing S3 storage" screams "hello? Bueller? What are
you _doing_?"

I can get 25Gb free from Windows Live Skydrive with Microsoft behind it, soon
to be 5Gb free from app-integrated iCloud with Apple behind it, 5Gb free from
JungleDisk, 2Gb free with industry leading sync from Dropbox, and
miscellaneous 10Gb free from 4shared.com, 50Gb free from Adrive.com
temporarily, 1Gb from freedrive, 1Gb from flipdrive, 1Gb from fileden, (and
stuck in the past there's 20Mb from filegenie).

~~~
mindotus
Thanks for the detailed comment, truly appreciate it and a lot to take in all
at once ;)

There is a lot of noise in the space and a lot of competition, and as someone
new entering the space, we definitely have a long way to go. We've only setup
a team and started working on Minus full time about a month ago here in NYC.
The vision behind Minus is and will be focusing on creating a simple and
universal sharing experience.

Minus will evolve over time and we are open to all suggestions and feedback on
how to improve and hopefully you'll think differently in few months :) Not
sure if you saw, but we have many apps also available via
<http://minus.com/pages/tools> that we're working on simultaneously and
improving along with the web front.

Thanks!

~~~
mbesto
_The vision behind Minus is and will be focusing on creating a simple and
universal sharing experience._

Listen, I'm glad you are enthusiastic about your product and I wish you guys
luck. But, seriously what is not simple about Dropbox? Are you hoping to grab
market share simply by offering people free space? Who is dying to switch over
to your service over Dropbox (or any other large competitor)? OR are you just
trying to go along the journey to see if there is anything in the market that
will differentiate yourself?

~~~
mindotus
Thanks Michael. It is definitely going to be a long journey and we will learn
and improve over. This is only the beginning :)

~~~
danudey
I can't tell if your refusal to answer the question is just avoiding giving
away your plan, or if it's an indication that you don't have one at all.

If you don't have one, my suggestion is to start with native folder support. I
use Dropbox because I don't have to use my browser to use it. That would be a
good place to start.

~~~
mindotus
thanks for the suggestion, we'll definitely study more and prioritize the next
steps and directions to take Minus :)

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krelian
Are you going to prevent or encourage this to become a new
rapidshare/megaupload etc...

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danso
Re: the FAQ

\---- __How can I use Minus? __

* You can use Minus to:

* Create an online portfolio of your work with your Minus profile

* Share photos and videos from your recent trip

* Publish your work whether it's an ebook, music, photos and more

* Brainstorm and share your next killer project

* Collaborate and share design mockups, code snippets and beta apps

* Backup your important files, documents and access or share it later

* Share lecture notes with your class

* Share all aspects of your life

These are just ideas we came up with. Start sharing today with Minus!

\----

FWIW, if I were someone new to the cloud-sharing thing, that last 'idea' would
freak me out.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks, we have tweaked that a bit. Will be re-doing the entire about,
faq/help page soon =) Haven't had a chance yet.

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jordw
I used to work with Carl, and he is a super talented guy who has built an
impressive team in a very short amount of time.

Congrats on the launch!

~~~
carlhu
Thanks for the encouragement, Jordan! I noticed Amazon.com is getting faster
and faster. I suspect a good part is due to your work ;=).

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astral303
Pardon the skepticism, but why would I upload anything of value to yet another
file sharing service? I looked at the web page and aside from "Drag here to
upload", I am not seeing a significantly attractive differentiation (or much
of a differentiation at all).

Plus, the name "minus" sounds negative. Who would want to store data on a
"minus"?

~~~
mindotus
Hi

Thanks for the feedback and I can understand your concerns. We created Minus
to create a universal sharing platform that focuses on simplicity and
minimalism and the name Minus itself reflected that, and our original name was
<http://Min.us> which is still active.

We are working hard to improve and create a unified experience across all
platforms and here's some of the other tools: <http://minus.com/pages/tools>
\-- so it is not only a web experience.

Additionally the data you upload and store as a registered user will be kept
and stored in Amazon S3.

Thanks!

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danso
I like the simplicity of it. So what's the catch?

~~~
mindotus
Thanks :) There is no catch and it's free to use. We have monetization
strategies that we will implement in the future.

Cheers!

~~~
rudiger
Monetization strategies such as...?

~~~
mindotus
We have not solidified the direction to go yet but we have few ideas in mind,
both traditional/proven business models in the space and some creative ones
that may be bit risky.

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sampsonjs
I haven't looked at Minus yet, but is the "but, but ... Dropbox!" argument
going to be brought up every time some form of online storage is advertised?
I, perosnally, decided Dropbox was not the right solution for me at this time.
I don't need the starving man's repository; I need my crap backed up. Without
having to move everything under one folder(some commercial software doesn't
cotton to you just choosing where you want to store your data). I don't play
musical chairs with multiple computers. On the off chance I was using my
laptop away from home and needed to access something, web access is sufficient
for me.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks for the comment, hope u give Minus a shot! :)

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eykanal
I see no mention of "security" or "encryption" on your site. I assume that all
files are uploaded as-is? Is there an option to have files encrypted on
upload?

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illuminated
Add a tree structured tagging system with tags/sub-tags (to replicate folders,
without folders, but with extra ability to have files capable to belong to
different folders at once) and it's gonna be a very, very good service.
Otherwise, it is simple, yes. Spartan design, but I like it.

~~~
mindotus
Thank you very much and very helpful, we definitely have lot a long way to go
and have many improvements to make :)

~~~
illuminated
On another note, what are the current plans with "karma"?

~~~
mindotus
We are still brainstorming. Would love to hear some ideas !

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karteek
There is something wrong with the logo. There is a white vertical rectangle
behind the 'S' of minus.

~~~
mindotus
We just deployed earlier and had some sprite issues. This will be fixed
shortly ! :)

~~~
lovskogen
No sprite on the sign-up button :-/

~~~
mindotus
Yes, the signed out homepage needs some polishing :)

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whileonebegin
"Share Large Files up to 2 GB each"

Why the limitation? Filedropper has been offering 5 GB uploads for a while
now.

~~~
mindotus
This is temporary, we may increase it in the near future. However being on S3
the largest we can go is 5 GB actually :)

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chromium
Awesome! Just letting you know, the "Take Screenshot" feature seems to be
broken on OS X Lion, it would probably be easier to use the default 10.7
screenshot capture mechanism, and upload the files once they reach the
Desktop.

~~~
mindotus
Great, be sure to stay subscribed to <http://blog.minus.com> We'll push a fix
for it soon.

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holychiz
tried to upload a big photo folder, 4.5GB, with 688 photos in a couple ways
and neither works.

1\. Love the simple drag and drop to upload idea. it didn't work, though, when
i simply drop that big folders. it just hang, ie seems to be working away but
gave no errors. after 4 hrs, i stopped it.

2\. created a folder then dropped 688 photos in. Error msg: max limits # items
is 100. why is this limit? I can think of many cases where people need to
store more than 100 items in 1 folder.

suggestions: 1\. please spelled out your limitations somewhere. 2\. remove
that 100 items/folder limit.

I like your website flow and UI. keep at it, guys.

~~~
mindotus
1) Thanks, we do have a 100 files limit per folder, this will change soon.

2) Agreed, we will work on communicating more clearly!

~~~
lazyjeff
I thought this would be useful for backing up my documents. I zipped them up
until a 9gb file and tried to upload them and the website reported a 200mb
limit. Is there a way to get around this? I know dropbox has a 300mb limit but
you can upload files of unlimited size using the desktop client.

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kraemate
Anyone know how 'free' storage providers make any money? This is basically 10G
+ backup + geographical replication. IT costs (hard disks),
electricity,cooling, bandwidth all add up.

~~~
mindotus
We are deployed on Amazon EC2 + S3 so the backup infrastructure cost is saved.
In terms of profit, it definitely works out depending on how you go about
doing it :)

We will add options to earn more free storage soon, but I would love to see
some stats behind other similar services if they are available!

~~~
danso
I swear I saw an interview with imgur's Alan Schaaf about how it made money,
or broke even. So far I've only found this 10/2010 interview in which he only
says "it's been really hard to make a profit"

[http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/02/10/alan-schaaf-interview-
im...](http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/02/10/alan-schaaf-interview-image-host-
imgur-started/)

In the 10/2010 interview, Schaff said imgur served 471 million images
totalling about 65 terabytes. It had just started pro accounts at that point.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks for the link and yes imgur is definitely a great success story. I'm
sure it is doing well these days :)

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timjahn
I'm curious, what were your motivations for diving into this market? Are you
looking to do it better than Dropbox and everybody else out there?

~~~
mindotus
Great question ~ There are many direct and indirect competitors out there but
our vision is to create a unifying experience that is a simple and universal
sharing platform.

~~~
timjahn
"...our vision is to create a unifying experience that is a simple and
universal sharing platform."

One might say Dropbox has a similar (or the same vision). My question, more
directly, is how are you any different than those "direct and indirect"
competitors?

I don't feel that your vision is different based on your statement.

~~~
mindotus
Thanks. We're still in the early stages of Minus but our focus will always be
on creating a simple and universal experience for our users. Part of that is
also to make sharing more interactive and that's something we'll be exploring
next :)

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mindotus
Full changelog to the latest version here: <http://blog.minus.com> ^^

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scrrr
Nice pivot. Used to be a pic-sharing app. I guess my pics are gone now?

~~~
carlhu
Your pictures stay. We've added support for files, that's all.

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qq66
Why did you choose a name with a "negative" connotation?

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bnr
it could also mean "less", which translates pretty well to a minimalistic UX
and feature set.

~~~
mindotus
=)

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jemeshsu
What is your @twitter to follow your updates?

~~~
mindotus
@mindotus ^^

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argoneus
HTTPS/SSL support coming soon?

~~~
mindotus
Yes ;)

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jccodez
Is there an api? Thanks.

~~~
mindotus
Yes, <http://minus.com/pages/api>

However we have API v2 coming out soon, over next few days.

~~~
jccodez
Thanks. Just a simple rest based api suits me fine.

