Access your computer files from anywhere.

Scenerio: You have documents, photos, music and other important files on the home computer. How can you “remotely access” these files from your office computer or, when you are travelling, from your mobile phone?
Solution: The simplest solution would be that you copy all your data from the home computer on to a portable hard drive and carry it around but this is obviously a bit cumbersome approach as it requires you to manually sync the home computer and your portable disk.

Access Files on your Computer over the Internet

There are couple of ways by which you can retrieve files stored on your home computer from anywhere else using a regular Internet connection.

Option 1: Using Online Backup
You can use an online backup service like SugarSync, Carbonite, SkyDrive or even Dropbox – they provide desktop utilities that will automatically upload files on your home computer to the Internet and you can then access these files through the web browser of any other Internet connected computer.
The upside is that your files will always be available to you even if the home computer is not running. SugarSync and Carbonite have a mobile optimized website so you can access files from any mobile phone as well.

Option 2: Using Desktop Sharing Software
There are free desktop sharing software like TeamViewer and UltraVNC that also let you remotely access your computer files from anywhere else. LogMeIn Pro and CrossLoop Home are some other good options for transferring files from a remote computer but these are paid services.
If all your computers are running Windows, you can use the built-in remote desktop connection feature of Windows (available in XP and later) to access your home computer from another Window computer over the Internet.
With Desktop Sharing software, you’ll always have access to all your files but one big limitation is that it requires that the remote computer stays on. Also, none of these options will help you access files on a mobile phone except LogMeIn which has an iPhone app.

Option 3: Access Files Directly through the Browser
Online backup services, discussed above, will copy files to their own servers before you can access them for anywhere else. Screen sharing services are often slow and they won’t work on most mobile devices. Let’s now explore another set of services that allow you download files directly from the home computer.
Copernic, like Google Desktop, is a popular desktop search software that you may use to find emails, documents and other files on your Windows computer. They have a paid component called myCopernic on the Go that lets you remotely search for content stored on the home or office computer. You can preview the search results and then download them to your mobile phone or remote PC.
With Opera Unite, you can easily turn your computer into a web server and instantly access files and folders on that computer from any other web browser (including that of mobile phones). Opera Unite is a standard web server and therefore you’ll be downloading files directly from the computer – they’re not uploaded anywhere else.
Another option is GBridge that lets you setup a virtual private network using your existing Google Account. Companies use VPNs to let employees access corporate data over a public network (Internet) and with GBridge, even home users can build their own VPNs to access remote files more securely.
Windows Live Sync at sync.live.com is another great choice for remotely accessing files over the Internet. Just install the Live Sync client on your computer and you can then access the entire hard drive of that computer simply through the Windows Live Sync website.
Live Sync is available for both Mac and Windows. The new version of Live Sync is even better and it has integrated online storage (Live Mesh) so you’ll be able to access your important file even if the remote computer is off.
Finally, you may also want to check out HomePipe – this is an extremely easy and free service that lets you access your home files and media from any other computer or mobile phone. Install the HomePipe Agent and all files on that computer will instantly become available through the web. They also have apps for iPhone and Android phones.

Sharing Large files Over Internet.

A: Share Large Files over Email

The Gmail service cannot handle email attachments that are larger than 25 MB but the recently-revamped Hotmail service is a much better alternative as it lets you send email messages as large as 10 GB.
The maximum size of an individual file that you can attach to an Hotmail message is only 50 MB but you can use a file-splitting utility like HJ-Split to break a big file into smaller chunks and then attach them all to a single message. The recipient can then join these chunks to restore the original file and he can do without requiring external programs.

B: Share Large Files without Email

The downside with email attachments is obvious - most ISPs and web-based email programs (including Gmail) will reject incoming messages that have big attachments and therefore, if you are sending a bulky file via email, the recipients also have to be on Hotmail as well in order to receive that file.
One of the best options for sharing large files without email is Dropbox. Once you install the the Dropbox utility on your (Windows, Mac or Linux) desktop, you can upload files of virtually any size to the Internet - it’s only limited by the size of your Dropbox storage which is 2GB in the case of free accounts. Alternatively, if you don’t want to install Dropbox, you can upload files straight to the Dropbox website from your browser but the limit in this case is 300 MB per file.
You can even consider using Google Docs to share those big files over the Internet. Google Docs lets you upload files up to 250 MB in size and they can be in any format. You have 1 GB of free storage space for storing all the non-Office files on Google Docs but you can also buy more space for a reasonable fee.
Unlike FTP servers, services like Google Docs and Dropbox don’t support resumable downloads. That means if the connection breaks while the recipient is still trying to download your “huge” file, he or she will have to resume the download from scratch. That can be a deal-breaker for lot of people.
SkyDrive, part of the Windows Live family, can solve this problem in a way.
The service offers 25 GB of free online storage, with individual files limited to 50 MB. To upload a large file, split it into chunks of 50 MB each and then upload them all to a single folder on SkyDrive. The recipient can download the entire folder as a ZIP or, if he’s on a flaky connection, he can download files one by one and then join them all at his end.

C. Share Files without Registration

Finally, if you are looking for something quick and simple that doesn’t even require registration, talk to YouSendIt or WeTransfer (if the file size is really big). Just upload the files via the browser, enter the email address of the recipient and hit send. WeTransfer lets you send files up to 2 GB in size while the maximum allowed limit is 100 MB in the case of YouSendIt (free version).

Chart: Comparison of file sharing services