<p>Ponselle's hair-raising adventure with child applying to school and sending emergency audition CD (happy story thread) reminded me of something I've recently discovered.</p>
<p>I set up a blank website a few months ago for the purpose of uploading large photos for a project I'm working on--I use Transit as an FTP uploading program. My H and I help out with a new, local music festival and when one of the founders needed a recording of one of last year's concert pieces RIGHT NOW for a grant proposal deadline (he had misplaced his disc), it occurred to me it would be quicker for me to upload the recorded piece (my husband had done the recording) to my computer than to drive it to him. So I uploaded to my website and gave it a separate folder, e.g.: www dot mywebsitename dot com slash festivalsong slash. I sent him the link and he downloaded the piece--made his deadline and got a prestigious national grant! Very exciting.</p>
<p>Since then, my son has used it to upload some of his audition songs for a UK cathedral director to listen to as a long-distance audition for a gap-year position (didn't get the job...), and I've sent the link to grandparents. On a mac, if you click on one of the songs, it comes up as a quicktime piece that plays automatically. Or you can also right-click on the piece to save to your computer.</p>
<p>It requires a website and an FTP server program, like Transit, which I find easy to use. I've even set up subfolders with separate passwords, so if I have a file folder with many photos in it (or, for you musicians, pieces of music), I give out the server name, user name and password and the recipient can drag off the whole folder rather than download one by one from the website.</p>
<p>Geezer admission: Never having been a user of nap-ster or other such web sharing programs, I do believe that this is the format for such sharing. However, this is a legitimate use! And it's not out there for the whole public to see like YouTube. I don't upload commercial CDs or the like and it's not for widespread distribution, of course.</p>
<p>This medium may be old news to you but since it's pretty new to me, I thought I'd share the idea. It could solve the problem of having to send audition recordings for emergencies such as ponselle's. Perhaps someday this method will be used for uploading audition prescreening recordings for colleges--or maybe it is already.</p>