I had a chance to play with Adobe SHARE this morning, so I thought I'd write something up quick for anyone who hasn't tried it.

In case you're not up on your labs work, Adobe SHARE is a new beta application to share files online. I'll save you from reading the rest if you have attention span issues.... it is the equivalent of Pownce focusing on file sharing instead of twittering mashups. Its not a bad thing, just a niche application.

My first experience began with having to close all my tabs and install flash player 9. There are many side discussions to be had there about how some places you work are roadblocked immediately from using this, but lets get back on track. OK, so I'm back in. I use my Adobe login to get in and I see a screen for sharing files and contact....redirected...huh? back to the login screen with no feedback. OK, I'll log in again. Aha! A message that I must verify my email address. Thats all fine and good but, from a usability standpoint, that process needs some refinement.

Finally I am in and cruising around. The app has a very familiar feel if you've used many of the labs products like AMP. It has a very clean layout and is easily intuitive for its subject matter. You have the ability to add and remove contacts, upload files, browse your library via filtering, and change file permissions from public to specific contacts etc.

An Image file will show a thumbnail, PDF's show up in a nice flashpaper embedded display, so on and so forth. I'm not really encountering any WOW! moments yet, but its very functional and exactly what you would think it should be. There is a built-in zoom feature for all the types of content I've uploaded so far (mostly images and pdf). If you click on a specific item, it provides a url link to that item for sharing purposes. This functionality will be familiar to anyone who has used the embedded YouTube url link buttons in the past.

All in all it was a good experience. Honestly, if Pownce added a few features you would basically have the same application, but with the social stuff included. There wasn't anything that really blew me away, but that doesn't mean it isn't a solid application with a good primary focus. I could see some mashups in the future of several of these labs products into a suite that could leverage some of those buzz words you hear everyday (collaborative, real time, on the fly, mashup, etc).

I did have one small issue that was possibly on my end. When I tried to view the gif I had uploaded in firefox, it simply hung the first few tries. It worked immediately a second later in IE7 however. When I went back a few minutes later with the fox, it worked like a champ. You can try it for yourself with the sample image I uploaded.