Today, Amit Agarwal sparked an interesting idea of using Gmail to create zip files online. His trick involves composing a blank email message, uploading all the files and sending it to your own inbox. Now this surely is a cool trick, but its time consuming. In the past, I’ve come across two online web based file compression tools which lets upload files and download the compressed version. Let’s compare them:
ZipMyFile.com: ZipMyFile is a free online zip creator. You can upload any file and compress the file in ZIP format. ZipMyFile can only compress one file at a time and support only Zip format.
Krun.ch: Krun.ch is the creation of Kailash Nadh (the man behind Boastology and Pingoat). Krun.ch can be used to both compress and decompress files. It supports multiple compression formats like zip, rar and tar.gz.
Files can either be uploaded from your computer or fetched from a remote URL. Krun.ch can compress upto 10 files at a time and mail it to 2 email addresses. Once the files have been Krunched, the archive remains on their server for 24 hours.
ZimpMyFile vs Krun.ch: ZipMyFile supports only zip format and can compress only one file at a time (no decompressing support), whereas Krun.ch can compress/decompress upto 10 files at a time. Krun.ch can also compress files from remote URLs.
Conclusion: Krun.ch is probably a better tool to compress/decompress files, but it’s not meant to replace traditional desktop based compression tools.
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wrote, on March 10th, 2007
What is the point of the online zip software? You’re spending a great deal of time just uploading and downloading the software, not to mention bandwidth as well.
And there are countless free compression utilities available now.
wrote, on March 10th, 2007
Yup! I agree.. Online tool will never replace desktop based compressors. Read the conclusion
wrote, on March 12th, 2007
[...] Online Compression Tools: Tech-Buzz compares two online compression/decompression tools. [...]
wrote, on May 18th, 2007
http://www.krun.ch site is down.
wrote, on June 9th, 2008
whats the point…
well I personally use it to compress files bigger then college storage facilities will allow on my personal folders, and bigger then half my flash drive(so a zipped copy can not be made)
wrote, on October 27th, 2008
I was looking for online folder compression/zip tool. It seems i have no luck so far. anyone got any idea’s ?????????????????????
wrote, on November 4th, 2008
Yeah, that krun.ch site is down. It sucks cause I really needed an online decompresser. To Ajay, Thilak and Matt: Online (/de)compressers are useful when you find yourself stuck behind proxies that don’t allow downloading of ZIP files. Like at my school…
wrote, on November 4th, 2008
I found another site that supports unzipping of all kinds of formats, via upload or URL. http://www.wobzip.org/index.php
wrote, on May 6th, 2009
krun.ch is down, and seems to be not too helpful, anyway. Robert, hello. Wobzip has a limit of 100 MB, so for people like me, who are trying to decomp a file that is over 100,000 KB, it isn’t too useful. Plus, it isn’t stable.