PurpleNova - makes every PC a Web-Server
By Vivek | December 21st, 2006 at 03:47 pm ET
Infinishare Technologies has officially launched its file sharing and hosting product, PurpleNova, that lets any PC act as an Web-Server and host files. PurpleNova users can host any files and content from right from their PC, which can than be accessed through a URL over standard HTTP protocol.
Infinishare based out of Pune, India, is co-founded and partly self-funded by Anand Soman and Yogesh Chitnis, and has received strategic financing from one of India’s largest ISP Netmagic. Anand a serial entrepreneur, who has done his MS and PhD from Caltech, previously co-founded Intigma, a provider of spend data management technology, which was bought by Emptoris last year.
Purplenova claims that they have developed a superior technology as compared to Apache or IIS (or any other traditional web-server) because they cannot work from behind NAT Routers / Firewalls / Proxies. PurpleNova lets you easily share files using a desktop client and the files are made available over a standard browser of any type. As compared to traditional file sharing where you need to host content onto third-party hosting companies like x-drive or Yousendit that have privacy issues involved, all the data stays on your PC when you share files using PurpleNova.
To start sharing files, you need to download and install the PurpleNova client(2.2 mb). After that just browse and select the files you want to share, and PurpleNova gives you a unique URL for the shared file that you can share with other people. Files can be hosted in public or private mode by limiting the number of times the file is accessed. You also have an option to encrypt your files using a password. Any files you upload, PurpleNova automatically categorizes by according to the type like image or video files. By default files are not stored on PurpleNova servers, but in case you are going to boot down your machine you can set the files to be cached at the PurpleNova servers for certain number of hours before the cache gets purged.
Real advantage of hosting files using PurpleNova is that you can access the shared files using any browser including your mobile. You don’t get this feature with regular p2p clients where you required to install their client on either end. Among other uses, if you looking to stream your music playlists, you can share them using PurpleNova and later access it using the URL in winamp or Windows Media Player.
From the technology side I am not sure how things work, but it might be possible that the PurpleNova PC client establishes a persistent connection with the PurpleNova server to maintain a continuous communication. On the other end when someone needs to access the shared file, PurpleNova resolves your username to the IP address of your machine and serves the file. This is just an idea from my side, and I surely hope there is more to the backend technology at work.
Overall I like the idea of sharing files without uploading to an external server or making people understand how and why they need to install software to access shared files.
Links:
PurpleNova
