Internet users worldwide now have access to the same technology that's been helping bridge thousands of miles separating US soldiers from their families. A secure, simple file sharing and collaboration service, Topia Technology's SKOOT™, allows users, for the first time, to immediately, easily and privately share large files (tested on the equivalent of 10 feature length films worth of data), bypassing email or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) services. People who want to share movies, digital photos, ad storyboards, news video, legal briefs, complex documents or music-can now do so as easily as saving a file.

Setted out to address the limitations of today's Internet for providing massive file transfer capabilities and file-sharing, Tacoma-based Topia Technology developed the first in a suite of applications to help organizations protect, share and move their digital assets among users, SKOOT. People, now, armed with the ability to send multiple or large files effortlessly, currently dependent on FTP services or cumbersome web-based file transfer sites can breathe a collective sigh of relief. SKOOT works from within their native applications, supports end-to-end encryption, re-establishes connections if dropped, and sends a full status report to sender and receiver upon completion.

Users no longer have to worry about whether their version of a company document, take a sales presentation in Microsoft® PowerPoint for example, is current with SKOOT. In order to stay up-to-date. Once a file is updated, it is "SKOOTED" to each workspace member by simply "Saving as…" into a SKOOT workspace from within PowerPoint, there is no need to rely on access to a company extranet, a passive and cumbersome repository of information, or email requests. The most current document automatically is distributed to their personal workspace, resulting in the most current files and documents of all company information on each user's individual computer or PDA.

Topia Technology was there, last year when the Pentagon restricted soldiers' access to MySpace, YouTube and other social networking sites, with a safe, fast solution to keeping families in touch. The company donated SKOOT on USB drives to the spring deployment from Fort Lewis Army Base, and called the initiative Operation TroopSKOOT. Since then hundreds of troops have been creating their own Private Family Networks®, for securely communicating and sharing data, while bypassing email and banned Internet sites.