Get your own free web based desktop - Jooce

As internet speeds get faster and faster, more and more desktop applications are being ported into web platforms. This post is about a free service that gives the user a web based desktop, which can be accessed from anywhere in the world.

Okay, so what is Jooce? As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm not good at stringing words together, so here's a sample from their about page.

"Jooce is your very own, private online desktop - with public file sharing capabilities. A highly-secure, online space to keep, view, listen to - and instantly share with friends - all your files, photos, music and video."

There, that is what Jooce is all about. I tested it out, and was surprised by the speed of the OS, considering the whole site is made using Adobe Flash (You'll need version 9). So now I have an account, what can I do? According to the Jooce FAQ,

"you can start uploading files, music, photos, videos from a local disk drive or the web, store and organize them as if you have your own computer, play them using the jooce media player, transfer any of your jooce files or folders to any of your friends in your contact's list instantly with drag-n-drop ease, chat with any friend even if they have MSN, Yahoo, AIM, or ICQ instant messenger accounts, create a public joocetop from where your friends can see and retrieve any files or folders you post there, visit other people's public joocetops, transfer files and folders from your friends public joocetops onto your own jooce account or share them with other friends on your contacts list, customize your private desktop as well as your public joocetop."

As with any usual OS, you can create, rename or delete folders and files. There is a control panel with limited settings you can tweak, such as the desktop background, your jooce account info and your instant messaging settings. The Public Joocetop mentioned above is simply a desktop which is presented to the outside world (It's like your profile page in Facebook). Your friends (Those whom you have included in your contacts list) can not only view your Joocetop, but can also copy files to and from it. There are a few videos available that explains the main functionalities of Jooce in the Videos folder of your jooce desktop. One major feature still lacking is email support. And one more thing to note, currently there's no limit to the amount of data you can upload!

Jooce Desktop

I was pretty impressed with the number of features available for this beta version of jooce (But there is still much room for improvement and better features). If you are a serious file sharer, I very much recommend getting a Jooce account.

Check it out at http://www.jooce.com