Quickeo provides a simple and easy way to share your media files (images, audio, or video) with multiple people by email or on a website/blog. It consists of a local client that you can use to upload files of any size to your account up to a maximum of 1 gig of total storage capacity. Quickeo will then provide you a link that it can email to your intended audience. Shared media is streamed/viewed in the browser and without needing to download files locally (although that is also possible). Quickeo also provides the option to record audio or video straight into the local client using a microphone or webcam.
The idea behind Quickeo is to have a single place where you can upload your music/video/image files of any and simply send a link to friends if you want to share these with them. hat’s cool about Quickeo is that it enables you to share your media files with others in such that they can view these straight from their browser without having to download a whole bunch of files onto their computers first (as would be the case, for example, with a hosting service like Rapidshare). Here are some notes on this service:
- Available Storage: Quickeo offers 1 gig of storage space on their servers. They recently removed upload file size restrictions, so in theory you should be able to upload any size up that you can fit in your account’s available storage space.
- Encoding Media: Quickeo uses flash video (FLV) format to display your videos and your audio. When uploading, Quickeo seems to use your computer resources to re-encode your media files into FLV on the fly, resulting in a much slower upload process. The re-encoding process means that your files, once uploaded, will differ in size and quality from the files on your desktop. I uploaded a 2 hour long audio book that took 150 megs of space on my hard drive only to find that it was 100 megs larger once uploaded into my Quickeo account.
- The Quickeo local Client: this has a nice look-and-feel and rather resembles an email client. Once uploaded, you can drag and drop any uploaded file(s) into any albums. You can mix-and-match different types of media . The client includes a media player that you can use to view your media if you need to. You can add tags and descriptions to your files when uploading. The Quickeo client actually includes a search box to help you find what you’re looking for (and that can search filenames, tags, and descriptions).
- Videos display size: is resized to 320×240 in the browser no matter what the size of the original uploaded video.
- Downloading: in theory, you can allow/disallow the downloading of your shared files from within the Quickeo client; however, this feature did not seem to be working in the version I tested, and downloading was disallowed by default. What would be interesting to know is whether you can download files in their original format or if you would be stuck with the flash FLV format.
- Links: The local client can provide 4 kind of links to your media “albums”: regular links, popup links, embedded links for websites, and embedded links for blogs (not sure what the difference is between the last two).
- Ads: note that the displayed web-pages that actually display/play your media files contain Google ads.
- Differences between free and paid versions: the only documented difference is the absence of ads on the paid version.
Wish list:
- Storage space limitations: in this world of increasingly larger file hosting options 1 gig will simply not work, and this should be raised to a minimum of 10 gigs in my opinion. This is because users are simply spoiled for options (see our overview of large file sharing services, and cloud storage services).
- Video display size: although I understand why videos have to be standardized and streamlined for browser playback, 320×240 seems to me to be awfully small. They should at least move up to the YouTube standard size 450×340.
- Downloading: to be made possible in the original format and not FLV.
- Encoding: it would be cool if encoding happened remotely on their servers rather than locally on the user’s machine, although I can live with the current setup if the other points are addressed.
The verdict: Quickeo has a lot to recommend it, especially (a) the idea of a centralized place where you can upload and manage media to share with friends (or use yourself as a locker), and (b) the ability to share media within the browser without downloading; this is a good idea because not having to download large files means that people will be more inclined to view or listen casually and move on. The storage size restriction, however, might well be a deal breakers, especially when other platforms already offer much larger storage capacities.
Version tested: 1.3.0.2
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP; no info on VISTA.
Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 6.36 megs). Also visit the program home page.
