File-sending Service Kicksend Gets Funding from Japan-based Digital Garage

Japan-based investment and incubation firm Digital Garage announced today that it has invested in file-sharing service Kicksend, a start-up based in Mountain View, California. Kicksend was incubated in Y Combinator this past summer, and launched in beta in August.

I just signed up and was pleased to see that the service has adopted the same kind of referral model that popular online storage service Dropbox had so much success with. For each friend you get to sign up for Kicksend, you earn an additional 250MB. I should note that the word ‘storage’ is not explicitly stated, and in fact Kicksend describes itself as more “of a delivery service than a storage company.”

There is a 150MB limit to the files you can send through the web interface, although it appears you can send bigger files though the desktop application. After you send a file the recipient will get a link (sort of like with Yousendit) from which they can then download the file. Overall it looks like a solid service, and it’s interesting to see Digital Garage get behind them.

My thoughts on sending big files

Like many people these days I use Dropbox to send big files, specifically using the public folder in combo with this handy Applescript. But even that is not a perfect solution for me, as I usually need to pay attention to my storage limit.

My all-time favorite file-sending service, however, is the now-defunct Podmailing, which was essentially a sort of bit-torrent-meets-email super-service. That was probably the closest that I’ve seen anyone come to truly nailing the file-sending process. As XKCD pointed out once (see below) it’s still kind of sad that we have so many awesome technical advances, but have yet to really find a fool-proof solution for this problem.

XKCD