Grouper - Share your files privately...
From the PC Magazine review:Grouper was born out of the ongoing frustration of trying to share media with our friends. We had all amassed 1,000s of files on our computers (photos, video clips, music, animated shorts, shareware, etc), yet when it came to sharing, the technology sucked. Emails would get blocked because files were too big. Burning discs for our friends took hours and costs too much over time. Uploading lots of files to sites was painful and they would restrict how these files could be used by friends. We knew there had to be a better way to share with people we know, discover what our friends like and experience it all together.
Grouper is our answer. We made Grouper easy enough for the less inclined, yet robust enough for you, since all of us have friends that span the tech gamut. Start sharing your files, lending your music and connecting about it.
It's a peer-to-peer app. But not the kind you're thinking of. Grouper isn't like Kazaa or Morpheus, a way of sharing files...with millions of strangers across the Internet. It's a way of sharing private files with people you know—your friends, family, and colleagues. Rather than tapping into one, enormous, worldwide peer-to-peer network, it sets up small, private P2P networks, including only the people you tell it to include. With no more than a few clicks of the mouse, you and up to 29 buddies can instantly share most any file from machine to machine,...
To protect your private data, Grouper uses 256-bit AES and SSL encryption to hide all browsing, file-sharing, and chatting from anyone outside the group. Plus, an "Activity" window notifies you each time someone accesses your shared folder. You'll know if they stream a song. You'll know if they download a file. You'll even know if they simply browse your folder.
Though most files can be transferred with ease, you can't actually download a recognized MP3 or WMA file from a remote machine. For legal reasons, the company doesn't want you trading copyrighted material. (Remember the original Napster and its fate? So do Grouper's founders, who started the Spinner online audio service that AOL acquired.) But you can stream MP3 and WMA files from machine to machine (via a built-in audio player). And though the company frowns on such practices, you can work around the download restriction by giving a digital song a different file extension, or slipping it into a zip file.