An easy, inexpensive way to share your files online

When it comes to sharing our files with others online, the Internet really doesn't make it any easier for us. Until recently there's really been no easy, inexpensive way to share our files with others online.

So when you do find yourself wanting to share one or a whole bunch of your files with one or more people, now's the time to check out a Web site called drop.io.

The concept of drop.io is a very simple one. When you go to the drop.io site, you are presented with a page that asks you to do two things to instantly create a "drop."

A drop is a shared area online into which you can deposit the files you want to share and give anyone immediate access to it.

The first thing you do is give your drop a name consisting of at least seven characters. Don't worry if you can't think of one because drop.io creates one for you.

Choose your files

Then you are asked to add the files you want placed into your drop. Drop.io makes that simple by letting you browse your computer's hard drive to find all the files. Just click on the big "Add Files" button and a file-selection dialog box appears so that you can navigate to the file you want to select. After the selection, you can choose to add more files via the same process.

When you have finished selecting all the files you want to add to your drop, you click on the big, red "drop it" button and that's pretty much it. The drop.io Web site will proceed to upload every file you selected to your drop and you're done. Just give the name of your drop to those with whom you want to share the files. It can be accessed via any web browser using the URL drop.io/your-drop-name.

That's the basic concept. Of course, there are additional options you can select, including adding passwords to limit who can have access to your drop.

You can define permissions so that visitors can make comments, add and even delete the items there.

You set expiration

You can even set the drop's expiration time so that it will self-destruct in a day or up to a year from the drop's creation, or from the first time the drop is viewed.

In a nutshell, drop.io lets you share what you want, how you want and with whom you want. It's enough to make even Freud stand up and cheer.

After you get the basics of sharing under your belt, drop.io continues to expand on the easy sharing idea by letting others access your stuff via a variety of methods including e-mail, fax, embedded widgets, RSS feeds and more.

One of the really nice points is drop.io's iPaper feature that lets you literally see how the documents will actually appear without having to download them.

IPaper supports a wide variety of formats such as jpeg image files, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and even mp3 files that you can hear.

Sharing can be a hard thing to do, so why make it any tougher than it has to be? Drop.io starts off by making it easy, and the sweetest thing of all is that it's free as long as your drop doesn't exceed 100 megabytes.

Then again you can always take advantage of their paid plans. Of course it's up to you just how much you really need to share with others. But whatever you decide, just remember to play nice.