Friedbeef’s Tech

The issue of sending large files across has always been a hard one to tackle.  We’ve previously talked about uploading to services like Yousendit as viable solutions, but here’s another approach you can take which may be much quicker. 

PatchOnClick allows you to send and receive updates to large files without having to send or receive the whole file each time.

What it does is it helps you to compare two files, and automatically create a patch which only stores the differences between the two files.  For example, if you have a 5mb document and you added in 3 sentences to it, you no longer have to send over the entire 5mb to anyone who wants an updated copy… you just need to send over the patch which will be a few kb in size!

Aside from email limitations, sending and receiving smaller patch files is less burdensome on servers, firewalls, and security programs which scan data as it is sent and received.

While useful, there are a few minor limitations to this service. 

• You need the other side to have a copy of the original document before you can send over the patch (obviously)
• The other side must have PatchOnClick installed to apply the patch to the document

Work around these two simple points though, and you have yourself an incredibly useful freeware as it can work on any file type!

How do send over large files?  Tell us in the comments!