
Show HN: Seven Words – An easy way to receive large files - aparks517
https://sevenwords.net
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KajMagnus
Hmm I'm thinking people can sign up for Dropbox or Google Drive instead and
transfer via them?

The website seems easy to understand, I like that. Something that's a bit
unclear to me is how will I pay? It costs money, but nevertheless _" There's
no sign-up or hassle for either of you"_ ?

Another thing that comes to my mind — what about privacy? I don't know who you
are. Likely there's something important in the file that I don't want unknown
people to have access too. — Google Drive feels safer in this regard, feels as
if I know who Google "is" and it doesn't have any interest in looking inside
my large files.

How large files b.t.w.? 1 GB? 1 TB?

If you want feedback from more people, you can try
[https://usability.testing.exchange](https://usability.testing.exchange) (I'm
developing it).

~~~
aparks517
Thanks for the feedback and for the kind words.

You certainly can ask people to sign up for Dropbox or Google Drive and a lot
of folks do. It can be a bit of a side-quest if you just need them to send you
a file so you can get to work on something. I've tried to make this easier to
explain to the person you need a file from.

If you exceed the free tier, you'll be prompted for payment. Payment is
associated with your email address, which you would enter anyway to get a
link, so no additional sign-up is required. More convenient than that, I
think, is that the person you are requesting a file from doesn't have to sign
up for anything.

The file is encrypted in transit and at rest, but I think these are only basic
measures. I agree that you shouldn't trust some guy from the Internet
(including Google, perhaps). If the information to be sent is sensitive, I
would recommend taking measures suitable to the level of sensitivity before
sending it, probably encrypting it with keys you control rather than depending
on the service provider.

Right now the size limit is 25GB, but I'm open to suggestions on that. Of
course there has to be some limit, but I wanted to make it high enough that it
didn't feel like there was one for most folks.

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out :)

~~~
KajMagnus
Ok thanks for the explanations. Yes in some cases this seems like simpler than
Google Drive etc. — I'm wondering though, if that's enough to make people want
to try this. I've never sent a file larger than what I can already do via
Dropbox etc.

Maybe people who send 10 - 20 GB files typically already have Google Drive
accounts or something like that? .... They're not "normal" people. I've been
developing software for 10+ years and never had the need to send that large
files.

I agree about encryption, I would probably encrypt something also before
uploading to Google. (In fact I do, already, any important stuff of mine.)

Book tips:
[http://www.startupwerkboek.nl/startupcenter/Momtest.pdf](http://www.startupwerkboek.nl/startupcenter/Momtest.pdf)
— it's about how to find out if a service like Seven Words is needed, without
writing any code. The i.m.o. "most important" part is free: the first few
chapters.

Best wishes anyway.

~~~
aparks517
Thanks for the additional feedback.

I agree that folks who commonly send large files probably already have found a
good solution for it. There are a variety out there.

In my own case, I sometimes send large files but at least as often ask someone
else to send /me/ a large file, typically someone who doesn't often send large
files. That turns into a phone call in which I explain to them how they can
sign up for a service to send me the file. Sometimes the file ends up coming
on a USB stick.

Seeing that Randall Munroe had even made fun of my struggle was the last straw
and I decided to build something :)

Thanks for the link. It was a delightful read.

------
aparks517
Inspired by [https://xkcd.com/949/](https://xkcd.com/949/) and
[https://www.xkcd.com/936/](https://www.xkcd.com/936/)

