Today we’d like to introduce you to the newest feature in the doctape WebApp. Through this improvement users can now share files publicly by generating a link that can be viewed by anyone.

Although our users have long been able to share photos, videos, music, and documents internally with any doctape user, there used to be no way of making single files available to a wider audience. Now, with public sharing there’s no need to send the file to every single person individually. You can just send out a link and let it spread virally. It’s as easy as that:

First, choose the file you’d like to make public. Click the arrow in the “Share” button and select the “Make Public” menu item.

The “public share settings” then pops up. Now you only need to turn the switch on and voilà… – you have a short URL you can share with anyone anywhere! You can either copy it right now from the “public share settings” or later from the link icon and URL that appear in the file timeline beside each public file.

In your timeline, public files are easily identifiable through the link icon and URL on the right side of the row or through the check icon beside “Make Public” inside the “Share” button. If you ever need to make your file private again, you can always access the “Public-Share-Settings” by clicking either of these. If you do this, people trying to access the link will get only a page with an error notifying them that the file has been removed.

(Please note that you can only make files public that belong to you. You can always make a copy of files from others by clicking on the “Clone” button. )

When people open a doctape public link, they are greeted with a responsive page optimized for mobile devices, tablets, and desktop computers.

And because we convert a wide range of files to make them web-friendly, you don’t need to worry about having the right file format or having the right software to view them. The original files are always in the background and can be downloaded at any time.

For instance, if you have a great music video of your band that you want to share with the world, this is now easier than ever. HD (High-Definition) videos are available to all our users! If you want to share a PDF containing a party invitation or maybe something more serious like your porfolio or CV, just upload it to doctape and make it public. All public links can be sent easily through Instant Message, SMS, e-mail. We even optimized them for posting on Facebook.

For those with a blog or website, we will roll out our viewers as embeddable code sometime in the future. So stayed tuned to twitter and facebook in order to stay up to date.

With our new features you can organize, find, and access your private and public files in a single platform. From now on, sharing with anyone is so much easier!
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If you are not a doctaper yet, try it out today and get 5GB of free cloud storage.
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Pro Tip: We are still working on allowing you to change your profile picture directly in doctape. But because we use Gravatar* as the fallback method for profile pictures, you can already set one today with a Gravatar account. Gravatar is a service for managing profile pictures across a wide number of online services. Visit http://gravatar.com for more information.

*Gravatar is an independent service not associated with doctape.