Last month, Microsoft acquired a file-synchronization software company called FolderShare. What’s so great about it? It’s a very simple tool to transparently synchronize files amongst many computers. Even though there are many software solutions out there that solve this problem (most which cost $$$) , still most people use relatively cumbersome ways to accomplish file transfer: e-mail, IM client, FTP, uploading to file-serving websites, etc. Furthermore, it’s always surprised me how much trouble most people (even myself on occasion) have just setting up file sharing between Windows PC’s at home. Clearly, a free and easy solution is needed by the masses.

I tried FolderShare out and it definitely worked as advertised. You just need to download their Satellite program which, once installed, runs in the background. Within a couple minutes of playing around with it I had sync’d up a folder between my laptop and desktop, shared my music folder with my sister, and can now securely access my hard drive via the web. The great thing is that it’s all peer-to-peer so the process is very efficient.

FolderShare used to charge $50/year for the service. The first thing Microsoft did after acquiring the company was to make it free. Very cool.
Microsoft has definitely been on a bit of a hot streak in the geek blogosphere with the debut of Live, releasing SSE under Creative Commons license, and now this.