We recently covered Serversman (by FreeBit) on Asiajin, a free iPhone/iPod file/web server application available in the Japanese App Store. About ten days after its release, FreeBit announced that it had passed the 10,000 registrations mark (MyCom article here[J]).
Serversman (opens in iTunes) is similar to other file server apps like Files (opens in iTunes), but it doesn’t require Wifi, or WebDAV, or money (although the first two are supported.) The iPhone interface is mostly in English and the website is mostly in Japanese, but this is sure to change if FreeBit follows through on its plans for a US release at the end of March.
The system is quite easy to use. To transfer a file to your iPhone, start the app on your iPhone, login to the Serversman website, and upload a file. I uploaded a 53 page PDF file very quickly over 3G, but you probably won’t want to upload media files without a Wifi connection. (It took me just under an hour to upload a 60MB .mp4 file on 3G.)
Once a file is on your iPhone, you can view it (no widescreen viewing yet), rename it, delete it, or email it to someone in your iPhone’s contact list. This is done remotely through FreeBit’s servers. Unfortunately, it currently doesn’t appear to be possible to send an email to a new contact – you must choose from your existing contacts.
Serversman has an interesting web server feature which allows you to share your location, photos, and voice recordings on a rudimentary web page located at http://serversman.net/username-node/ which can be made public or left private (see screenshot below). This data, which is updated in real-time, can be mashed up with other web services using (currently only two) XML files: gps.xml, and photos/photos.xml.
Serversman supports the following file types: iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), PDF, text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, as well as image, audio and video files (although file types are not specified, as far as I can tell.)
Sean OHagan