ownCloud
How do you share files with others in the cloud, or for that matter with yourself using cloud services? Dropbox you may say, or wuala – this morning on Diaspora* I was reminded of ownCloud a self hosting solution for this stuff. From their homepage
ownCloud gives you universal access to your files through a web interface or WebDAV. It also provides a platform to easily view & sync your contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all your devices and enables basic editing right on the web.
Installation has minimal server requirements, doesn’t need special permissions and is quick. ownCloud is extendable via a simple but powerful API for applications and plugins.
So I downloaded ownCloud from the repository and put it on my Debian Squeeze LAMP server and gave it a try.
All you need for using it is PHP and a MySQL (or Sqlite) database. You should have the MySQL credentials handy when you call the ownCloud URL for the first time, you’ll need them for the installer, which also sets up an admin account for your own cloud.
Make sure your /owncloud/data directory on the server is not open for the world as described here after you installed ownCloud and things are fine ready for you to use it. Either via WebDav from within your file manager (I’ve tested pcmanfm and Thunar) or the web interface, which is almost self explaining.
The only thing I struggled a bit with was with sharing a file from my cloud. On the Public Links page you just have to start typing the filename of the file you want to share, say images/me.jpg and ownCloud will offer you matching filenames from the files you’ve saved to it. Once you’ve selected the file, choose a date until which you want to share the file (or leave it unset) and hit the “share” button. Done! 
