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Glide File Sharing Service Debuts 226

Posted by samzenpus from the share-away dept.
Dotnaught writes "Glide Effortless has gone live. New York Times columnist David Pogue describes it as "full-blown online operating system" that's a mix of genius and interface awkwardness. (Glide has been covered previously on Slashdot.) Pogue concludes "Glide's core idea is unassailably fresh and useful. If TransMedia's plans for world domination fall into place, maybe it won't need an elevator pitch. Maybe 'You gotta try this' will be the only pitch it needs.""
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Glide File Sharing Service Debuts More

Glide File Sharing Service Debuts

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  • Oh, ho... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 01, 2005 @05:47AM (#14155428)
    ...that's a mix of genius and interface awkwardness...

    Sounds like the night I lost my virginity.

  • Sad people (Score:5, Funny)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @05:50AM (#14155437)
    The Apple® Mac OSX(TM) version of Glide Effortless is scheduled to be available on Christmas Day December 25, 2005.

    Great, a reason for me to get up early of Christmas Day. Good thing I haven't got any family or friends!

    • Really, it'll probably be done the week before.

      Seems like a weird release date to pick though. Why not wait until people are at their computers?

    • Between the new AOL CD I got in the mail yesterday (I can't wait to install it. "Easier than ever before" they tell me.) and Glide (yet another file sharing program designed to simplify my life - hereafter referred to as YAFSPDTSML), all of my computing needs are finally taken care of for me. It's so great to be limited to... er... assisted with the things that I need most on my computer. I can't wait!

      Seriously, what true geek isn't smart enough to stay away from P2P now anyway, and beyond home movies or

  • Secure? (Score:5, Informative)

    by SecureTheNet ( 915798 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @05:54AM (#14155447) Homepage
    Glide looks like a well put together app, and I imagine it will become quite popular. But I for one would never use it. I prefer to keep my data locally, for privacy and security reasons.

    • Re:Secure? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:47AM (#14155590)
      These guys can't seem to figure out what they want to do, though. Their site highlights Glide Personal, Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Music Shop, Glide Videos, Glide Docs, Glide Allmedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Mailshare, Glide Liveshare, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline, Glide Shops... I take one look at this and think,"this is supposed to _simplify_ my life?"

      These guys seem to be (a) overly ambitious, trying to conquer the known universe with their site, and (b)confused, lacking a clear strategy or a well thought out business model... dude, that is just so 1999.

      • These guys seem to be (a) overly ambitious, trying to conquer the known universe with their site, and (b)confused, lacking a clear strategy or a well thought out business model... dude, that is just so 1999.

        But... I thought that was Google?!
        • Well, first of all, Google started out specializing in internet search before moving on to other areas like maps and email. Second, Google has a 120 billion dollar market capitalization, a revenue stream from its ads, and 7.63 billion dollars in cash (according to finance.yahoo.com). So conquering the known universe isn't necessarily hubris in their case; they have the resources to be all things to all people on the internet, if anyone can. Third, it's not entirely clear whether Google's strategy will pay o
    • The concept is great. I would love nothing more than to put my photos and mp3s online so I could share them easily with friends... but 3gb?!?

      It's pretty hard to realise their dream of "putting all your media online" with a limit of 3gb.
    • I don't think I'll use it for the exact opposite reasons. I don't have any particular privacy concerns--I want to have *all* my data shared, or at least those relevant subsets of it (all my pictures, videos, etc...).

      But with the most expensive plan that allows 3 GB a month, I'd never be able to get however many TB of stuff I have up there. So it almost defeats the purpose for me. I mean, sure I could share the most interesting stuff, but if I were to use this it would be less for sharing, and more for ha

  • Why would I use this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xquark ( 649804 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @05:56AM (#14155455) Homepage
    Why do they want my credit card for the free subscription?
    I don't plan on buying anything from their glide store, why assume I will?
    • "This site requires you to be 18 years of age or older"

    • Yep - I stopped there too (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CrazedWalrus ( 901897 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @08:00AM (#14155825) Journal
      I started signing up, just to check out the site. Got to the mandatory credit card, pressed Cancel, and probably won't try it again for a few weeks to see if they've changed it. If not, this'll be a service I simply don't use.

      Glide: I don't lightly give my credit card number out to random internet sites -- especially when I'm not buying anyting. I'm not paying for the next gimmick until I've seen if it's useful. If you won't let me see if it's useful without my credit card, then you've lost a potential customer, and I've moved on with my life the way it's always been.

      • Re:Yep - I stopped there too (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Visa and Discover offer one time use credit card numbers from their website, incase
        someone else steals your number. If you actually purchase something at that one time,
        it will process on your real account. If not, like in this case, it just verifys you
        have an account, and are + 18 years old.
    • Usually that's done to verify age.

      It's not a big deal... I don't think they're offering THAT much more than a hosting plan, MP3 client, and gallery-creating web page editor can do right now anyway.

  • YOU NEED MY CREDIT CARD??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Datagod ( 613152 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @05:56AM (#14155456)
    What kind of legitimate service needs my credit card information to "verify" the details of my registration? I thought to myself, yeah, this sounds cool...give them my usual false info...then BANG...Please give us your credit card information even though you have selected the free account...We promise that no bad hackers can get your personal information... Whatever...these bozos wont last long... I use everything GOOGLE all day long, and they have never EVER asked me for my credit card.

  • and then tomorow (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jlebrech ( 810586 )
    MPAA and RIAA vs Glide

  • Credit Card? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jackdaw Rookery ( 696327 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:01AM (#14155475) Homepage Journal
    No way will I ever use this while it asks for a Credit Card when you click Free Subscription.

    Why would I give you that? Why do you need access to my money when I have no intention of buying anything from you. After all that was why I selected free.

  • My prediction? Icarus-like nosedive.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Chaffar ( 670874 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:04AM (#14155481)
    Or I haven't understood the thing, or it's a completely useless service.

    So basically, it's a system that's let's me let other people see what I have, but they can't copy the file for themselves... Ingenious, from a legal standpoint, but I really doubt it'll pick up. From an older article: "The system is smart enough to identify copyrighted music that has been uploaded by users into the system."http://informationweek.com/story/showArtic le.jhtml?articleID=173402852 [informationweek.com]

    If the system is that smart, why would a "no-copying"policy be required? Hmmm ? Since the files being shared aren't copyrighted, I shouldn't be prohibited from sharing them.

    Me says this is a piece of schizophrenic software that doesn't really know where it wants to be, and it probably will be too bandwidth hungry for most people to present any kind of interest.

    But then again, maybe I haven't understood the thing :-/

  • Herald Tribune Web Design (Score:4, Informative)

    by nucal ( 561664 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:17AM (#14155520)
    Somewhat off topic, but I thought that the interface for the IHT webpage was one of the best I'd ever seen - it really minimizes the amount of scrolling you have to do and it felt much easier to read. Why haven't more news sites used this?
    • because when you start to zoom the text, the top&bottom lines are hidden by the clever column layout. I had to disable their css to read the article (thank you, bookmarklet css toggler).

      What is it about web designers that insist on having text fixed at 9pt? This laptop of mine has huge resolution on a non-huge screen, so I *need* at least 12pt for comfort, and 16pt for leisure.
      • (thank you, bookmarklet css toggler)

        Since you can actually actually resize the text, I assume you are using Firefox or Opera. (Resizing the text doesn't work in IE) Or possibly you are using Konqueror or Safari, but I can't test those right now.

        Anyway, you don't need a bookmarklet to disable CSS in Firefox or Opera.

        In Firefox, View->Page Style->No Style.

        In Opera, View->Style->User Mode.
      • That has nothing to do with the web site and everything to do with your web browser and OS. Points are a PHYSICAL measurement. 1/72 of an inch. 36 point type is 1/2 inch tall. If your text gets smaller when you raise your monitor resolution then either your font sizes are specified in pixels, not points, or your software is broken.

        Windows takes a naive approach with a global DPI setting, but if you make sure that that setting is correct then compliant software will render fonts the right size. Most Lin
        • "If you suffer from shrinking fonts, get better software."

          You are ever so right -- and I have: at home I use FreeBSD. But (here) at work, I'm stuck with Windows and its "naive approach" (and no, virtual environs is not a realistic option for a number of reasons). But I have set it up to 124 DPI.
      • I see the same problem on many web pages. I've adjusted the fonts in the browser so I can read things easily and then some web designer seems to believe that nobody would ever do that, so their layout breaks. I used to email people with screenshots, but it never seemed to do much good. If designers would just lay things out with dimensions specified in ems rather than pixels much of this would not be a problem. Then again there are the flash sites where the user has no control at all. Though the mozill
      • Interesting side effect. Since the text was divided into 4 virtual pages with divs set to hidden, you got all the text on one single page. Neat.
      • Actually, if you look in the left hand column they provide their own custom Font(+) and Font(-) widgets, which you admittedly wouldn't know to look for unless you read the site regularly. They use some fairly slick javascript to format the text, taking into account the font size and article layout you've chosen, to keep it fitting in the main article box and showing/hiding the prev next buttons as appropriate.
    • Besides the column view, clicking on the first column takes you back a page, and clicking on the last takes you forward a page. On top of that, it actually loads the entire article so going back and forth is instantaneous with no server communication, semi-AJAX (not sure about the XML) style.

      They clearly spent more time on their content presentation than most news sites, and it shows.
    • It uses some crazy javascript to do that. :).Also look at the left panel.You can change the format to a single page and increase/decrease font size without reloading the page. Javascript is required for making text appear in columns.(I think mozilla has recently added CSS support for doing exactly this).
      IHT is my favourite news site. Aesthetically pleasing and no intrusive ads.Anyone has any idea how IHT makes money off the website (or do they?).
    • The IHT design hasn't been adopted by more news sites for several reasons:

      * The scrolling is nonstandard and creates as many user experience problems as it solves.

      * Implementing it with cross-browser compatibility is a nightmare. That's less of an issue with current browsers than it was a few years ago, but there still are a lot of old browsers in the user base.

      * Most news sites have high demand for ad slots (which enables them to be free to the user) and the IHT layout doesn't accommodate that.
    • I recently used the IHT site as THE example of the perfect news portal site for my team of designers and developers.

      I concur with you....
    • Do you really want to know the sad truth?

      Page views. That was one page where the text was divided up into divs with their visibility set to hidden, and activated sequentially by the next button. Wonderful user interface, very fast and responsive.

      But, even though it was a 4 page article, it only counts as one 'page view' in a stats tracking system. Sites like NYTimes, Washington Post, etc. want to have a high number of page views to convince advertisers to spend more money, and I guess also so they could

  • Whoopie (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nickgrieve ( 87668 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:19AM (#14155522) Journal
    David Pogue describes it as "full-blown online operating system"

    Right... so why on earth should I give his opinon any creedance when its ovbious he does not even know what an OS does, to me Glide... look like Yet Another Blog Site

    • why on earth should I give [David Pogue] opinon any creedance when its ovbious he does not even know what an OS does

      Thank goodness someone said it because I thought I was going mad!

      If I'd read him say that in the NYT, I'd have dismissed it as a stupid comment... but someone here quoted him, and an 'editor' let him, leading me to spend an extra five minutes of my life trying to figure out exactly what this thing is.

      Seriously, what is the point writing summaries if it's less clear after you've read it w

  • Pie menus, web services, file sharing and DRM... this has the makings of the longest Slashdot flamewar in history. I suppose the only remaining question is, does it run faster in Gnome or KDE?

  • Supported media (Score:2, Interesting)

    by slashedmydot ( 927745 )
    They don't even support ogg-vorbis, PNG or OASIS openDocuments.

    http://www.glidedigital.com/supported_formats.aspx [glidedigital.com]
  • First, I tried to to click the Sign In link and got an IIS Runtime error (at least they turned off descriptive error messages) and then when I tried to authenticate with asdfg/asdfg I got a siezure enducing Authenticating message which never ended.

    Guess that marketing slogan "Just Try It" isn't going to sell anything. And as I have read in the other comments, I would NEVER give out my credit card information to register for a service like this. With the nth degree applications being developed on the we

  • MS prior art (Score:5, Funny)

    by lovebyte ( 81275 ) <lovebyte2000@gma ... minus physicist> on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:38AM (#14155563) Homepage
    Obligatory:
    For a long time people have been able to share their documents, music, ... with everyone on MS windows. Albeit unwillingly.

  • As with... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MaestroSartori ( 146297 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @06:39AM (#14155568) Homepage
    ...many others here, I find it very off-putting that I'm required to enter my credit card details for a free trial. That very requirement has just lost them a customer, since I refuse to provide credit card details to people who don't intend to charge me for anything.

    I remember free-trial-card-required things like this from a few years back, and I didn't take them up then. I don't really enjoy having sites store my credit card information at all, and wish they wouldn't. After all, what's to stop a billing error, or a hacker harvesting my card number, or a disgruntled employee using my card to buy kiddie porn, or anything else? One-off entry is much nicer. I just wish I knew for sure how many internet stores kept records of my card details, before finding out the hard way one day :(

    • Re:As with... (Score:3, Informative)

      by antifoidulus ( 807088 )
      If you are that worried, get a one time use number, most credit cards can generate them online. You use it once, and poof, in a few hours it is no longer valid.
      • > If you are that worried, get a one time use number, most credit cards
        > can generate them online. You use it once, and poof, in a few hours
        > it is no longer valid.

        Yah, that's neat and all, and it's a great idea for online shopping, but I'm not sure it really helps here. It's still a valid CC number that can cost you money. If they don't actually USE it right away, it remains valid for however long you specified. If they decide to charge it anytime within its valid time frame, they still can - at l
    • As others pointed out above, they do no validation whatsoever on the cc number.

  • Is it just me... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Adam Heine ( 830376 )
    ...or does this news post seem more like an ad than news? 83% of it is just blather from some journalist whose seems as far from being a Slashdotter as I am from being a Chinese jet pilot.

  • Glide (Score:3, Funny)

    by GoatMonkey2112 ( 875417 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @07:19AM (#14155683)
    And here I was thinking that 3dfx's work was all for nothing.

  • I've had this for 2 years already (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dJOEK ( 66178 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @07:20AM (#14155685)
    I don't see how this is new. It exists already a long time and it's called .Mac
  • The article says:
    The Glide of today is already a vast collection of tools. But it's nothing compared with what the company says is on the way: a full-blown Internet music store; an online store that lets you order products by dragging their icons into a shopping-cart "container"; a Unix version; a timeline calendar module; a built-in photo-editing suite; playback of music file formats beyond MP3; and even a corporate version.

    All this from a company of only 24 people?

    Behold the advantage of open source

  • Patenting pie menus? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lars Arvestad ( 5049 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @07:33AM (#14155725) Homepage Journal
    On the web page describing "the intelligent user interface", I could read this:
    Glide introduces a real alternative to old school file menu and toolbar navigation, with the patent-pending Glide Action Bubble
    From what I can discern, the "bubble" is a pie menu. And they are trying to patent it? That sounds lame, on the verge to stupid.

    • From what I can discern, the "bubble" is a pie menu [...] That sounds lame, on the verge to stupid.

      What? They've taken a long-standing problem and found a solution to it... Don't you ever find that there are just just many items you can fit on a traditional menu? And what's the point in buying a high-resolution monitor if the applications aren't going to use it up?

      Seriously, though, am I being stupid with this interface? I created 'containers' for photos and for music and cannot drag'n'drop into eith

    • Pie menus are God's gift to idiots. Bad UI ... they should get the clue: human data is best arranged in rectangles. Now, maybe some alien species fares better with circular data regions, so perhaps Glide can market this to them.

  • if it smells like shit... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by abonstu ( 682723 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @07:39AM (#14155746)
    the citrix www.gotomypc.com service offers a free trial - that also requires a credit card. i was pretty suspicious but really wanted to trial the service so gave it a shot...

    as it turns out, when the trial period expires they charge you for the next month, ie. its an *opt-out* 'free' trial.

    not only that, but you cant even email them to opt-out, you have to call them during *their* business hours... this really gave me the shits being in singapore and having to wait around till they decide to pick up the phone.

    lets hope these characters arent going down that path... roping people into ongoing payments is pretty high on my do not touch list.

  • More like yet another online media store with a few bells
    and whistles. The marketing types there perhaps should
    go look up the definition of "operating system".
    Hardly ground breaking this.

  • When the network goes down your machine stops working. The network really is the machine. I can see this being useful in some places but I can see this would be a major pain in rear for a lot of users. I hated working on terminals. There was always so much lag.

    I'll stick with my NFS mounted home directory and a local OS I think.

  • Terms of use:
    • The services that TransMedia provides to you are subject to the following Terms of Use ("TOU"). TransMedia reserves the right to update the TOU at any time without notice to you.(...)
    • You also will choose a password and a user name. You are entirely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password and account. Furthermore, you are entirely responsible for any and all activities that occur under your account. (...)
    • TransMedia will not be liable for any loss that you may incur as
  • Well, even after attempting the false credit card info, I wasn't able to get in; although not for the reason I thought it would be:

    Registration Error An error occurred while processing your registration. The following is the DEBUG error (you'll want to remove debug for production releases): EXCEPTION FROM System.Drawing: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Timestamp (UTC): 12/01/2005 13:12:56 AppDomain: /LM/W3SVC/251460291/Root-2-127779294409519363 Calling Assembly: c:\winnt\microsoft.

  • ... there's actually a use for my old Diamond Monster II card?!
  • I just want to know if the people who wrote Glide were Phish fans? :)
  • "no more grayed out items"

    With current "grayed out items" I know I have not completed all of the required steps to make use of that feature. So I check the help/google and jump through all the necessary hoops and make use of that item, easy.

    in the glide world I will not even know that function exists so never try and change what I am doing to make it available. I just assume that the glide app does not provide the feature i need.

    In an ideal world all the possible features/options I want to use will be painf
  • Clicked a link, got this:
    <!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->

    <configuration>
    <system.web>
    <customErrors mode="Off"/>
    </system.web>
    </configuration>
    Yep. That's ready for prime time.
  • Simply put this interface makes no sense. I hven't even managed to add a file yet and have been using it for 3-4 minutes. Should it be this hard? Also, the every morphing/moving/flexing design is annoying as piss.

  • Disturbing Terms and Conditions (Score:4, Informative)

    by Hrvat ( 307784 ) on Thursday December 01, 2005 @09:41AM (#14156532)
    From TransMedia (Glide creator) Terms and Conditions:

    Materials provided to TransMedia or Posted at any TransMedia Web Site

    TransMedia does not claim ownership of the materials you provide to TransMedia (including feedback and suggestions) or post, upload, input or submit to any Services or its associated services for review by the general public, or by the members of any public or private community, (each a "Submission" and collectively "Submissions"). However, by posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting ("Posting") your Submission you are granting TransMedia, its affiliated companies and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses (including, without limitation, all TransMedia Services), including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Submission; to publish your name in connection with your Submission; and the right to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Services....

    What this basically means is that you're giving them management rights to whatever you're posting on their service. So if you're a starving artist and you store your next hit song on their service, they have the right to copy, distribute, transmit etc. that song, or just sublicense it to someone else.

    This is wrong. They are basically asking for you to give up all the rights without any compensation for it just by using the service. I definitively won't be using this service.

    • Mod Up (Score:2)

      by bogie ( 31020 )
      Your giving them complete rights to your data. Who the fuck would use a service like that? That shouldn't even be legal.

  • Until it required a Credit card to continue. Sorry, I don't give out that information for 'FREE' subscription services.

    Plus, this looks a LOT like the "Share you Drive Space" services that were quickly taken over by the warez scene and then closed down because they could not get anyone to actually see the USE of these services. If I want to have all my information available, I buy a notebook. If I want to have all my bookmarks and passwords and what not, I buy a USB drive. If I want to share those pi

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