FileMobile is a video, photo and audio hosting tool that makes it easy to post media to your blog or website. The "freeloader" account provides 250MB of space with a maximum file size of 25MB - paid accounts will become available once the alpha is over. You can upload files using the web-based uploader or email them to a unique email address (via your phone or computer) - the subject line becomes the title of your file, and the body of the email becomes the description. Files can be tagged and set as Public or Semi-Private - the latter can only be found if you share the URL.
All the action takes place inside the "MediaStudio" - a neat little Flash application that lets you add files, delete them, tag them or search through all your media. It's intuitive, well-designed and responsive, although I've never been crazy about heavy use of Flash (Flashophobia?).
Because a large number of the files are public, you can use FileMobile as a more limited version of Flickr or YouTube - hitting the "Community" tab lets you explore photos posted by others, rate them, comment on them and add them to your blog or website. And that's where FileMobile shines: if you use Blogger,Typepad, Movable Type, LiveJournal or WordPress, you can hit a "Blog This!" button to send files straight to your blog. When you post a video file, it appears in a YouTube-style Flash player.
It's a nice tool, but I wonder if it could be positioned better. In recent months, many of the successful plays have focused on public sharing in an open environment - YouTube, Flickr, del.icio.us. Others have succeeded by being extremely lightweight - PhotoBucket and ImageShack offer instant upload within seconds of hitting the site. FileMobile doesn't match either model - it's not clear how it fits in to the big picture.
