We are all proud to say that we live in the Information Age. It would be more accurate to say that we live in the Information Sharing Age — the period in which not only the World Wide Web itself, but also new ways of browsing it, most notably mobile phones, have created the possibility of sharing information on a scale never even dreamed of before. Plus we also have apps for sharing information, five are described below; all are for the iPhone and available free of charge, unless otherwise indicated. They have been chosen from among the most secure of their kind b/c unsecured apps lead to data breaches, which can cost organizations millions of dollars.
1) Bump
Bump, whose logo is a white letter B on a sky blue square, is a social networking app that now works on desktop computers as well as on smartphones and is useful for sharing photos and videos as well as files. It got its name because you can share files on your device “with a single bump” — that is, you “bump” together your phone and that of the person with whom you want to share, and presto! your information is transferred. Bump has been rated number one by App Crawlr on a list of thirteen ways of exchanging info and on a list of seventy-six ways of sharing contacts. Of all the customers who have reviewed the app, 86 percent have given positive reviews, while 5 reported minor annoyances such as inability to transfer apps themselves.
Air Sharing Pro allows you to use your mobile phone as a hard drive — and in the way that is easier and more powerful than ever before. If you need to be able to look at and move files while “on the go,” then this is the app for you. It is available in eleven other languages — French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese — and is made primarily for business purposes. All you have to do is mount your phone as a wireless drive on your computer, or simply connect through a browser, and you can drag and drop files back and forth between the two. Except on Windows XP, no special software is required. Air Sharing Pro has won several awards, including Editor’s Choice from PC Magazine and App of the Week from Apple, Inc., and MacWorld called it “A dream come true for mobile workers.” The price is $9.99. There are also Air Sharing and Air Sharing HD, the latter costing $8.99.
3) BT Sharing and BT Sharing Pro
The best photo-sharing feature is to be found on BT Sharing, which enables you to receive files from another person exactly the way they are, with no compression or changes whatsoever. It has an easy Bluetooth file share and can be used with no Internet or telephone connection. BT Sharing Pro is the more advanced version of the same, with many additional features, such as faster speed and multiple image viewing.
4) File Sharing
File Sharing is available in a ton of languages — French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean — and has been designed to eliminate the need to carry around a USB port for transferring files to and from your computer. You can even download files from your web browser and view them on your iPhone or iPod Touch, which becomes, in effect, a kind of portable file viewer. Files in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint can all be viewed with File Sharing, as can PDFs, graphics, web archives, text files and movies. The price is $1.99.
With this app, again, you can use your mobile phone as a wireless hard drive which you can access via any Mac computer with password protection. Its interface is easy to use and you can view more than one text file — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF — or graphic file at a time. Adjusting the font and image sizes is also no problem. There is no limit to the number of folders you can create. The price is $2.99.
