You Send It Got Better

You Send ItOne of my favorite online services is You Send It. It allows you to send large attachments via email. I have written about this service before. I have used the service to send discovery documents, pictures, and powerpoint presentations without having to worry about exceeding the limits on someone’s mailbox.

One of the great feautres is that the service has a plug-in that integrates with Outlook. This means that if I send an attachment that is above a certain size (I can set this size), then You Send It automatically kicks in and handles the file.

Another great feature is that there are many options available. They provide a free service that has size and number limitations (on both the individual message and over a period of time). They also provide pay services that include additional features.

Now You Send It has added an additional feature. In addition to the Outlook plug-in, they have a desktop application called You Send It Express that allows you to send and receive files directly from your desktop. They also have several other plug-ins that allow you to send large files directly from a variety of applications, including Adobe Acrobat, iPhoto, and Corel Draw X3.

If you have a large file to send to someone, you might want to check out You Send It.

Using TripIt

I have written before about TripIt. TripIt is a travel organization website that allows you to forward your reservation confirmations to the website and it automatically builds a travel itinerary for you. When I wrote about TripIt before, I had not yet tried it.

I am currently traveling in the Pacific Northwest right now and have used TripIt to organize my trips. After trying it out, I admit that I love it.

Adding reservations is a piece of cake. You simply forward them to plans@tripit.com. You assign them to a trip on the website and your trip is automatically populated with the reservation information as well as information such as weather, maps, and directions.

Also, they have great customer service. I made reservations with a regional hotel chain as well as a single hotel. TripIt could not automatically interpret the reservation information. This means that I had to enter the information manually (not really an onerous task). Given that I might stay with either hotel in the future, however, I submitted a request to TripIt for them to add these reservations to their programming.

I received a personal response from someone at TripIt who asked me to resubmit the reservation email and copy her on it. After doing so, I received a second email from her telling me that TripIt has parsed the information from my emails and added them to my trip.

Additionally, I can easily access TripIt via the web browser on my telephone. Plus, I can send an email to TripIt and the service will email my trip to me. This is very convienant while traveling.

In sum, this is a great service, that is easy to use, and is staffed by friendly, helpful people. What is not to like? I will be using TripIt for any future trips.

I Sent It Via You Send It

You Send ItI had some discovery that I had to deliver to an opposing attorney. It was a construction case. This meant that almost all of the original documents actually existed as handwriting on paper. The remaining documents were letters and other similar documents. Thus providing evidence that not all cases are headed down the electronic discovery path.

As is my standard practice, I had all of the documents scanned so that I could Bates Stamp them and work with them electronically. Knowing that I needed to deliver these documents to opposing counsel, I was faced with three options.

  1. I could print the 800 pages and have them physically delivered to the attorney–thereby incurring both costs of printing and costs of delivery; or
  2. I could burn a copy of the documents to a CD and mail that to the attorney–thereby incurring costs of delivery (admittedly only $0.41); or
  3. I could electronically transfer the documents electronically–thereby incurring no costs.

I chose option 3. I used a service called YouSendIt. YouSendIt uploads a copy of your document to their server and sends an email to your designated recipient with a link where they can download the file you uploaded.

As long as the file is less than 100MB, the service is free. With the free service, the link is good for seven days. If you want to deal with larger files, you can also sign up for paid accounts. The paid accounts also give you the ability to control the maximum number of downloads for a file, give you file tracking, and give you the ability to password protect the file.

The one thing I would caution about the free service is that the file is not encrypted. Thus, you would not want to send confidential information through the free service. In my case, the documents that I was sending contained no such information.

The best part of the service was the call I received from opposing counsel, who absolutely loved the way that I delivered the documents. He inquired about how the service worked and was interested in trying it out as method of sending the same documents to his client.

As I noted above, this service should not be used with all types of communications or documents. However, if you have a big file that you need to send to someone, YouSendIt is a great, free option that allows you to transfer files virtually instantaneously.

YouSendIt is just another example of how we can leverage technology to make our lives easier (as well as to save us some overhead costs).