Oponia just spanked my bottom

I almost worked at a traditional agency.  I know, I know.  Hard to believe.  But I met an amazing woman and next thing I knew I was in an hour long conversation with the head of digital for McLaren McCann.  They were both intense, intelligent and wonderful.

I was offered a number of positions, but was used to the digital world and couldn't handle the pay cuts.

So cut to present where I find out that this amazing woman is now the CEO of a new software collaboration tool.  It's called "oponia.com".  And while it's still in alpha, it's a damn pretty little idea and a powerful piece of software.

There are two models commonly used for file sharing, if we simplify things:  Peer to Peer and Web based.  Peer to Peer is instantaneous for chatting and annoyingly slow for file sharing, not to mention great for stealing things.  So web based is all the rage for sharing files.  Upload. Download. Email them.  Etc.

Regardless of how you send a file to someone,  you have to wait for your file to upload to the server or for your file to get through to someone peer-to-peer.  But let's face it, peer-to-peer file sharing is beyond frustrating and unreliable.

It took me a while to realize just what oponia.com was.  But now I think I get it.  They're launching a port 8080 web delivery service on my little computer and allowing me to have the real-time nature of peer-to-peer with the reliability and accessibility of a web interface.  All without exposing the address of my little laptop.  Brilliant.

Come with me through this little slideshow demo and I will stop babbling about the technology and show you how it works.

SlideShare link for RSS readers

BRILLIANCE:

• Drag and drop something into a share folder and it's INSTANTLY shareable.
• That's right.  NO WAITING.  Blew me away.  I dragged hundreds of megs into a folder and then went online and played them.  Instantly.
• Easy to operate password controls on folders you share.
• Wonderful photo and music players BUILT in to the web experience.  GREAT for sharing things and not having to worry if users can view them or not.
• LOVE the fact that I can use local folders.  I don't have to run through an application.  I can use my finder to move files into my share spaces.
• Simple and quick install.  No AIR or any other crap required.
• Mac, PC and Linux support

NICE TO HAVES:

Let's remember that this is ALPHA software.  To say I was blown away is an understatement.  But in the hopes to provide feedback to the development team, here goes

• Skitch (what I used to grab all the snapshots) blew me away when I installed it because it instantly popped up an "introductory video" on first launch.  Brilliant.  Oponia loads up the help page as a good interim step but what about a video intro that starts to play?
• The shared folders have a lot of other crap in them.  Is there any way to hide all the HTML and CSS so that I only see the shared files folders?
• LOVE the music player.  Hoping you will expand the playable formats beyond mp3
• I didn't read the directions (never do) so couldn't understand why my mp3's wouldn't play.  Is there any way you can check for loose mp3's in the main share directory or warn users to put these into a subfolder?
• Be awesome to have forward and back and slideshow in the photo albums

My one question.  What happens if you disconnect your computer from the internet?  Is there any cache'ing of content planned or is your content then unavailable?  I'll hopefully get Leigh or someone to come in here and comment to answer this for us all.

Overall.  Frigging amazing.   I can't wait to see what the Beta and 1.0 versions bring!

You can request an alpha download here.