Some of the more exciting features in this release are:

The Flash Uploader is Flashier and Shinier

One of your biggest grouses was that you couldn’t select and upload multiple files simultaneously. Well, that grouse has been nixed. You can now upload multiple files simultaneously.

That’s because the Flash uploader is back, like ‘The Terminator’ ala Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Flash uploader changed the way we uploaded files at fileQube.

Not only is it back, but we have added many more features to the flash uploader. In the new flash uploader, you get an intuitive drop down menu to change the destination folder when you upload your files.

A Feature Rich History Module

Keep track of your file versions with our shiny new history module. This is the first release of our collaboration module. And it is only for PRO user accounts, though. If you want to use that, upgrade to a PRO account right now, right here.

• Retain old file versions. If you upload a file with the same file name, the newer, more recent version will be retained. But you don’t lose the older version. It moves to File History.
• Undo changes. If you edit your file, then the older / original file also moves to File History. This helps you undo and keep track of all changes.
• View, download and delete all history items.

A New Right-Click Context Menu

File management just got easier with our new right click context menu. Manage folders, files, or group of items by right clicking it. An action menu pops up and allows you to easily manage files.

Note – this feature is available only for users of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome.

Cut, Copy, and Paste Files Easily

If you copy files and move them around a lot, rejoice. You will now find copying and moving files more user-friendly. For example, if you paste a duplicate file, then fileQube catches that and ask you what to do next. You can:

• Overwrite - Allows you to keep the most recent version of the file. The old file is automatically moved to File History.
• Skip – or cancel this process.

Better hotlinks caching

We’ve improved hotlinks caching. It should be very useful for those of you who host images.

The goodies bag doesn’t end here…

Shortly, we will release one more features package. In it, you can expect, amongst other things –

• URLQube - Generates a smaller, more manageable, and a more user-friendly URL. This allows you to easily share files and URLs.It’s a feature that is available at sites like tinyurl.com. Your fileQube Short URL or URLQube will have the format fileqube.com/XYZ123
• Single click folder download – Wish to download an entire folder with a single click? With our brand new feature you’ll be able to compress a selected folder and download all files at once.

Still feels like Xmas, doesn’t it?

Update (6:00am): The 2.1 deployment went well. All fQ services are fully functional. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please contact us @ support (at) fileqube.com.

To find out what’s new with 2.1 click here.

1. Locate the file you want to email on File Qube. Place your mouse on top of it or do a ‘mouse hover’ and click the action icon. The action icon is the small arrow that appears on the top left of your file when you do a ‘mouse hover’. A drop down menu will appear when you click the arrow or the action icon.

The same drop down menu will also appear if you right-click the file.

2. Select ‘Share’ and then select ‘Email a link’. When you click ‘Email Link’ another popup window appears.

Emails

In this field, type in the email IDs of all the people who need to be given access to your shared file. These people will be able to share your file on File Qube.

Add a message for recipients

This is an optional feature. If you tick this check box, you will be able to send a message to all the people whose email IDs you have entered in the ‘Emails’ field.

Type the subject of your email in the ‘Subject’ field and a message in the ‘Message’ field. All recipients of your email will be able to view the subject and message that you type in here.

Options

Below the ‘Subject’ and ‘Message’ fields, you are given three ‘Options’.

1. ‘Send direct download link’. You have the option of sending the Hotlink. If you wish to send the Hotlink to users who will share your file, then tick this check box.
2. ‘Protect folder with password’. You have the option of protecting the folder with a password. This folder is located in fileQube and it contains the shared file. If you wish to add another password to the folder, then tick this check box. In the password field below, enter your password.
3. ‘Send password in mail’. If you wish, you are given the option of sending the password with this email. For added security, ideally, you should send the password in another email. However, if you wish, you can send the password with this email itself. Tick the check box if you wish to do so.

Sending

You can see a drop down menu on the bottom right of this window. If you click this drop down menu, you are given three options.

Send with File Qube

You can send your email using the email feature provided with your File Qube account, or you can use your Gmail account to send this email. Finally, you can use Outlook to send this email to all recipients.

Send with Gmail

If you click this option, then click ‘OK’. A popup window appears.

Click ‘OK’ if you wish to send this email using your Gmail account. If you click ‘OK’, then another window appears with the login page of Gmail.

Send with Outlook

If you click this option, and then click OK, a popup window appears.

Click ‘OK’ if you wish to send this email using your Outlook client. If you click ‘OK’, then your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express displays an email with a hyper link to your shared file.

If you use the Share feature, you can upload a file from your computer into any folder of your choice on File Qube. You can either create a new folder or use an existing one.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to share a file:

1. Locate the file you want to share on fileQube. Place your mouse on top of it or do a ‘mouse hover’ and click the action icon. The action icon is the small arrow that appears on the top left of your file when you do a ‘mouse hover’. A drop down menu will appear when you click the arrow or the action icon.

The same drop down menu will also appear if you right-click the file.

2. Select ‘Share’ and then select ‘Get web links’. A popup window will open and you will be presented with the options listed below

Public link

Public link shows a URL or a link to a File Qube page. Users can download your shared file from this page.

Hotlink

Hotlink, as the name suggests, is a direct download link which leads to your shared file. When users click this link or Hotlink, your shared file starts downloading immediately.

Needless to add, a Hotlink is obviously faster than a Public Link. When users click a Hotlink, they do not need to visit another fileQube download page. However, when they click the Public Link, they will need to visit another fileQube download page, wait for it to load, and then begin downloading your shared file.

In order to use the Hotlink, you need decent bandwidth. Bandwidth is required so that transfers can be facilitated smoothly. The good news is that all free accounts come equipped with 256Mb of bandwidth. What’s more, you can test this feature without buying or paying for the Pro subscription!

Options

You are given the option to protect your shared file with a password of your choice. If you password protect your shared file, then you can prevent unknown users from accessing it. If your shared file has a password, then it can be opened only with that password. An incorrect password will not allow that file to be opened.

Once you have password protected your file, then you may share your password with authorized users only. This will help protect your data and it will help improve the security of sharing files online.

1. If you wish to protect your shared file with a password, then tick the check box.
2. When you tick the check box, a password field appears. Enter your password here.
3. To save your changes, click ‘OK’. When you click ‘OK’, your changes are saved and the popup window disappears.

3. To prevent others to access your file simply click ‘Unshare’ button. This action will make your file private so it becomes inaccessible for other users.

Yep you read right, fileQube is now on Facebook!

So become a fan! We thought you guys might be happy to know that you get your own fan club. A number of you fileQubers put in the request, we listened and the fileQube fan club was born. We hope that fellow fileQubers will find the fileQube fan club a more relaxing and a more informal room to chill about fileQube.

We hoping you guys will use it to share your thoughts, ideas, and opinions about fileQube and ultimately invite some of your friends to also participate (After all, the more people feeding us ideas, the better we will be able to make fileQube for you).

Incidentally, it’s also a good place to spend some time if you want to get your hands on one of our soon to arrive FQ Tee’s (photos to be posted shortly) ;)

Not a fan of Facebook? That’s OK, too!  You’ll be happy to know that you can also now Tweet us on Twitter :D

As some of you are aware, fileQube experienced a lengthy downtime between January 2nd, 2009 and January 4th, 2009.

Late in the evening of the 2nd, the core switch in our primary European data center stopped responding. Our engineer team worked with Data Center support staff around the clock to restore services as fast as possible.  By Saturday morning partial services were restored to users with files outside of the affected area and by Sunday evening full services were restored.

The holidays acted like a double edge sword – while it ensured low traffic to the site, it was also the root cause of the delay in us being able to rectify the problem.  Thankfully, our server logs show that not too many users were inconvenienced by this unplanned outage.

You guys will be glad to know that we used this downtime to make some improvements to our filecloud! We tightened the nuts and bolts of our engine and used this downtime to successfully implement a new contingency plan to ensure that outages like this will not happen again and that any future downtime will be kept to a strict minimum.

All you Pro account holders affected by the outage have been given a one month extension to your current subscription and as a bonus will be given an additional extension on your July invoice.

We realize that no amount of apologies can make up for the inconveniences that this caused to you and your business.  We didn’t intend for the site to be down as long as it was and we are very sorry.

We want to personally assure you that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again.

We are proud to have you as our customer and look forward to your continued support.

Sincerely,

The fileQube Team

This deployment is scheduled to happen on:  Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 11AM

We are deploying recently added hardware as well as releasing minor fixes and updates.  We will do our best to keep any downtime to a minimum.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Update (1pm): The deployment went well. All FQ services have been restored and fully functional. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please contact us @ support (at) fileqube.com

We are adding additional hardware to better handle our current growth as well as preparing for planned future features associated with FQ 2.0.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Update: The maintenance was finished on time and File Qube.  No downtime occurred during this implementation.  Thank you for your patience.