SkyDrive is a 25 GB free space provided with each Windows Live Id where you can share your photos, documents, synchronize your PC folders and do some other cool stuffs. But these features are not very famous to the users and I'll try to explain them all that SkyDrive offers.
The basic thing about it is that you can make your folders public or hidden as per your requirements. Take a look below:
Under Documents one of the folders is My Documents, which is not shared with any one and the other is public where you can put the documents that you wish to share with the world.
Share your photos:
Unlike Picassa and Flickr, where you get a very little space, you get a whole 25 GB of space on SkyDrive. Photo sharing on SkyDrive is a lot more beautiful than all those. Take a look on My SkyDrive. You can arrange your photos in separate albums, set their default view(details, icon, thumbnails). Viewing the photos is the best experience. SkyDrive uses Silverlight for photo viewing which provides a way better experience than flash. You can have a slideshow and even can go for a full screen view. You can get the webaddress of individual photo and also its embed code by clicking on the photo, and when the photo appears, all the details can be found at the right hand side. How cool is that..!
Under share option, you can get the embed code to show these photos directly on your blog/site and can even subscribe to the RSS feeds.
A unique feature here is the option to order print of your photos. If you need prints of your pics, just click on More > Order Prints and there you go. A pop Screen appears asking you if you want to get the prints of these photos from SnapFish, an HP subsidiary. Isn’t it cool.
You can download all your photos in folder as a .zip file anytime you want.
Share/synchronize Documents:
This one is a little famous though but there are some key features one should know about. On the Home screen of your SkyDrive, you get an option called “View synced folders”. You can synchronize your PC folders with SkyDrive using Windows Live Mesh. It is one of the key revolutions and helps in case of emergency. I still remember i was carrying a ppt for presentation in a USB drive and i some how lost that. It was this Sync feature of SkyDrive that came to my rescue.
You can save your documents in the public folder if you want the general public to view them. However, if you wish only specific friends should be able to view these, you can always “Set Permissions” for specific documents.
SkyDrive offers much more than expected and i shall be expanding this post as and when i come across some new features.
Comments are most welcome.