Sharing Files and Pictures with a Group
Also see: Photo Software from Amazon
Gmail Reference Aid:
Sharing Activities Info, Files, Documents and Pictures with Your Club Members, Church Group or Personal Circle
Many of us are part of a group that needs to share information among members or friend circles.
How to distribute information or files doesn't have to be complicated - but often it seems complicated when we're confronted by too many options at once.
These are a few of the most widely used ways of sharing information with multiple contacts:
Email attachments and group lists
Simple websites
Cloud-sharing
Let's look first at email:
Using email is the method most of us use for distributing information to informal contact lists. You can use the To: or Cc: or Bcc: options in your email program or webmail portal to select recipients. I use To: to send a copy of an informative email to myself, and Bcc: to list all other recipients so that their identities do not appear on each other's messages. However, if you have a group where everybody knows each other and needs to interact, the Cc: option is useful
Sending email attachments is one of the most common things we do with our emailing. Generally we're all most familiar with sending pictures. If you're sending documents though, the main problem to avoid is sending them in a hard-to-open format. Many of us use different word processing programs, so it's rare for every recipient to be able to view the same document type.
The best solution I've found is to save my document as a PDF file and send that as an attachment. Simply use Word or one of the free Writer programs built into Apache Open Office or LibreOffice. All of these offer a PDF option. Also, you can use Print to create a PDF file.
I recommend using PDF's because almost everybody can view them on their machines, either using Adobe Acrobat Reader or opening them up in their web browser.
As far as group lists - most of us sending information by attachment to multiple people will type in their names individually or rely on autofill to find them in our Contacts. If you have a long list though, most email programs have a place where you can create a list of contacts to send-to as a group. I use the Gmail contact list system for this purpose myself.
Simple websites:
If you've got a small group that needs to post information for members to visit online at their convenience, setting up a simple website is a good investment of time.
This can be done in as little as just a couple hours. There are several good free options for this purpose, and if a website grows in use it's not hard to transition to a low-cost annual payment for having a fixed address on the Web.
Alternately, you can use an existing social networking website like Facebook to set up a free page or a free private group where you and your circle can post info and cross-talk.
This past year I've helped a few local groups and businesses set up new webpages, and I run a few websites myself. My mantra is to keep it simple - at least simple "for me" lol.
My recommendation if you want to explore having a webpage is to start with single-page documents that you would use in print, and get help setting those up to be viewable on the Web. That's where I focus in helping individuals or small groups get started sharing info online.
Cloud-sharing
Basically, if you have a Gmail address or a Microsoft ID then you also have "cloud space" available from Google or Microsoft.
This means you can place pictures or documents on their computers using your normal browser software, and then selectively share access to those files with whoever you choose to identify or contact by email with a link to the files.
I've focused more on the Email option here than the other two areas because it's far more frequently used by households and personal groups. All three of these are good options to consider as a group becomes larger and more organized.
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