I’ve had a problem for years where clients need to send me large files for various reasons, be they photoshop files or zip archives. Regardless, we usually have to resort to email attachments for this. For obvious reasons, this is undesirable.

Turns out an elegant solution to the problem was right under my nose. By setting up a Public folder in my .Mac account that allows read-write access, I can now send my clients a username and password and they can upload files through their browser. Here’s how:

1. You obviously need a .Mac account. (TIP: Amazon sells .Mac accounts for $20-off the retail price).
2. In your System Preferences, click on .Mac. Then click on the iDisk tab.
3. Click the “Read & Write” radio button, check the “Password Protect your Public Folder” and select a secure password.
4. Steer a modern browser toward “http://idisk.mac.com/[username]-Public”, where “[username]” is your .Mac account name (note capitalization!).
5. Use “public” for the username, and the password you set in the System preferences pane (again, note capitalization!).
6. Once logged in, users will get a nice web interface where they can upload files one at a time.

Couldn’t be easier! Once again, this shows why developing on a Mac has its benefits.

Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 4:57 pm and is filed under News, Recommendations . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.