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More Online Sharing Services

WebEx WebOffice Workgroup

Webex's collaboration tool, which it acquired along with Intranets.com last year, provides a variety of ways to share files. You can allow authorized users to access, download, and modify the folders you create. Unlike Groove, however, WebOffice doesn't let people work together on the online files. The basic plan limits storage to 250MB combined for up to five users. You can allow non-WebOffice users to view and download files.

The WebOffice calendar features a group scheduling capability similar to the scheduler in Microsoft Outlook. You can attach documents and agendas, manage projects, and sync calendars and other data with your Palm (but not Windows Mobile or BlackBerry) PDA.

Unlike Groove, in WebOffice all of your group's activity is done through a browser. WebOffice costs $60 a month for up to five users and $100 a month for ten users. WebEx Meetings costs an extra $50 per user per month. The fully-functional, 30-day trial includes WebEx Meetings.

RapidShare

This simple, no-frills, free site lets you upload as many files as you want, each as large as 100MB, and send the link to any number of recipients. The files can be downloaded an unlimited number of times, and they remain on the server as long as they're downloaded at least once every 30 days. To avoid the annoying 23-second wait before you can download a file, sign up for a premium account, which costs 10 euros--about $12--per month.

YouSendIt

This free service lets you upload files to its Web servers for temporary storage. You can include a personal note along with the upload; YouSendIt then sends an e-mail to the person with whom you're sharing that explains how to pick up the file. You're notified when the file is sent and when it's picked up. The recipient's name is automatically added to your YouSendIt Contacts, too. While you can send your file to several people at once, the "Send To" field won't hold more than 128 characters; the service says it imposed this limit to prevent spammers from using it.

The free version limits the file size to 100MB. The files you upload are stored for seven days or for a total of 25 downloads per file. That is probably more downloads than most people will need (it's plenty for me). But $5 per month raises the size limit to 1GB, the per-file storage period to 14 days, and the downloads to 100.

Steve Bass