For the next 14 days I am going to do an app review a day. These will be in depth reviews of each app that focus on the real-life usage scenario of each of the apps. Today’s app-of-the-day is FilesAnywhere. More than an app, this is a service that I rely on each day more than I thought I would when I first signed up for it. So start up your Barcode Scanner and download that app!
Once you have downloaded FilesAnywhere go ahead and start it up. When it opens up you will see a screen like this:
Login if you already have a user account set up or click “SIGNUP HERE” at the bottom of the screen and complete the sign up. The good news about this app is that it does not require you to go to the browser to complete the signup. That is a big annoyance to me when I download a new application.
As you can see here I have used the web interface to upload some files from my computer. If you head on over to http://filesanywhere.com/ you will see this after you login:
As you can see, this is a pretty busy website. There are a lot of things to take in here so let’s start at the left. First is the download button, so you can download any files you have on the web interface to the local computer that you are currently working on. Next is Zip Dnld, which will allow you to create a zip file of multiple files on the web interface and download them in one file to the local computer. Upload can be used to upload files from your local computer as you can imagine. These are the basic functions that you will find yourself using on a day-to-day basis. Since this is an Android app review lets go back and focus on the Android app, makes sense huh? After you’ve added some files to the web interface you will start to see them on your phone. At the bottom of the screen you see two main tabs, remote files and Android files.
If you want to download a file from the web interface just go ahead and select which ever one you want to download, in my case I will select “cryptographicalalgorithms.pdf”.
Go ahead and click the download icon at the bottom of the screen, you will see a scree like this:
Now this is the part that took me a little while to figure out so I will give you a heads up J Once the file is downloaded you need to find it so what you do is click on the “Android Files” tab and find the “faw_downloads” folder. Now to view the files, you need to use something like Documents-to-Go to view your files. So in this case I opened Documents To Go and selected PDF to Go.
Then I selected open file
Another thing I like to use this for is sharing pictures and having them available at any time from anywhere. If you click on the “Android Files” tab you can find your DCIM folder, which is where your phone stores your pictures. Select any picture you’d like and click upload. It is now available on the web interface.
Yes I know this is a very simple function that can done simply by connecting your USB cable to your computer, but who wants to use wires?? Also, I’m very excited to announce that Dropbox will be coming to the Android platform very soon, which operates in a similar but very different manner. I’ve been using Dropbox for years now to sync a small amount of data between my three computers. Expect a full review of the Dropbox set up once the Android app is available.
I would highly suggest that you download the filesanywhere app and give it a shot. Let me know what you use it for in the comments!