Streamnation.com is a cloud sharing service with a difference. As the name implies, it’s optimised for streaming video and photo over the internet, and has a clever sharing policy whereby you can “loan out” individual video clips – including movies or TV episodes – to one person for a set period. While the episode in question is out on loan, no one else – including you – can watch it.

The idea is sound – why lend out DVDs when you can lend out individual episodes without having to physically drop them off? No one gets to download their own copy, their time to watch is limited and files can’t publicly be shared, only offered to specific users.

The service comes with 2GB free online storage, with the option of building up to 15GB free space in total. Get yourself and your mates signed up, upload your respective digital libraries – within the constraints of the space available (paid-for plans start from $4 per month for 100GB)

This tool basically simplifies the task of uploading video from your PC or Mac. After installation you’ll be prompted to add specific folders and services to Streamnation’s watch list – content in these folders is automatically uploaded in the background and changes are monitored. For those with free accounts, this is probably a step too far, but you can untick these before getting started.

The app also detects any external drives you plug in and offers to work with these too – click Never for this Device to avoid being prompted again for those drives that don’t contain any media.

Once done, you can then add your own choice of folders to monitor, or you can manually upload folders or individual photos and videos by dragging and dropping into the Streamnation window. Then it’s a case of sitting back and waiting for the uploads to complete.

Take the time to visit the Settings window – from here you can tweak the upload settings (by default, three files can be uploaded simultaneously) plus switch off the annoying email that tells you whenever content is available – ie, been uploaded.

It all works swimmingly, simplifying the task of getting media up to your Streamnation account and doing exactly what it says on the tin. Sadly it doesn’t go any further, so you’ll still need access to a web browser or your mobile device in order to actually view, manage and share content.