Once upon a time there was a company called Streamload that let users upload huge media files to a web site fo sharing with their friends. Eventually Streamload changed its name to MediaMax and offered pretty much the same service. This year the company changed its name again, this time to The Linkup and launched a new business model: a social network based around online file storage and sharing.
Apparently the whole social network thing didn't really pan out, as The Linkup has announced plans to kill the service on August 8th. The company has posted a message on its homepage stating that it will no longer accept new uploads or new accounts. It will also no longer charge current customers. If you've got any media stored at The Linkup, you'll probably want to make sure you've got a backup before August 8th, because at that point the company will delete your files.
According to the note, The Linkup had problems transfering user files from MediaMax. That's kind of an understatement. What actually happened was that the company deleted nearly half of its user files. Many were recoverable, but some were not.
Did you use The Linkup, MediaMax or Streamload? What was your experience like? Will you miss this service or just move on to other online storage sites?
Can't decide whether to upload a file to Rapidshare, MegaUpload, Badongo, or another service? Each site basically offers the same service. You can upload files and share the link with friends or strangers over emal, IM, web sites, or user forums. But some of the services might be blocked by various ISPs, or the people you're trying to share the files with might have registered accounts with one site, but not the others.
Uploadjockey solves these admittedly small problems by making it easy to upload your files to multiple sites. Just grab any file under 100MB from your desktop, and Uploadjockey will send it to six different file sharing sites and provide you with download links.
Beware, the Uploadjockey interface is choc full of obtrusive ads and pop-ups. But if you're willing to brave the advertising, we can't think of a simpler way to upload you large files to multiple sites.
MyBloop is yet another service that lets users upload and share files with the world. You can upload pretty much any file type, and MyBloop will detect media files and allow you to view them online using an audio, video or image viewer. You can also share links or embed files on any web page.
What makes MyBloop stand out from the competition is a nifty file management system. You can easily upload a bunch of files at once using the web interface. Or you can download a desktop client for Windows or Mac that will let you drag and drop files from your desktop. Once your files are online there's a nice Ajaxy interface for dragging and dropping files between folders.
You can upload as many files as you like, but there's a file size limit of 1GB. Users can also search for files uploaded by others, or browse the most viewed or most recently uploaded files. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of copyrighted material on the site, but there's a nice link at the bottom of the page for anyone who wants to file a DCMA takedown request.
Looking for an e-book, image, video, audio file or software? Fliiby is your one-stop shop for all sorts of files. The site is sort of like YouTube, in that anyone can upload and share files. And visitors can browse or search for files, many of which they can view online or even embed in their own site using Fliiby's Flash player.
Like any good file sharing site, a ton of the content available on Fliiby has probably been uploaded by users who don't have the rights to distribute said files. But there are also plenty of legit files including free and open source software applications, user generated videos, and images.
Fliiby's search engine could use a bit of work. For example, there's no way to sort results by file type. But you can also browse files by category, so you can sort of treat Fliiby like a used book store where nobody's bothered to alphabetize the titles. If you just scroll through without looking for anything particular, odds are you'll find something you're interested in.
Want to share web page links with your friends on Twitter? No problem, just post a link or better yet, shorten it with TinyURL or a similar service so you can share a link without wasting precious characters. But what if you want to share a file that's sitting on your desktop?
That's where Twittershare comes in. Twittershare is basically a no-frills Twitter client that lets you do three things:
Upload a smallish file to a server
Share a link to that file with your Twitter contacts
Send tweets to your contacts
So any time you want to send a document, photo, or song to your Twitter followers, you can just fire up Twittershare and upload your file. There's a size limit of 10MB per file.
Twittershare does not display incoming messages, so it's not a replacement for full-fledged Twitter clients like Twitterific or Twhirl. But if you're looking for a quick way to share files, Twittershare can do that. You can either make your Tweets public or send direct messages.
There's a desktop client available for OS X, and a web client for everyone else. Eventually the team behind Twittershare plans to release a Windows-compatible client based on Adobe AIR.
Look, we know the reports of RapidShare's demise a few weeks ago were greatly exaggerated. And we're not trying to cry wolf here, but now the German file sharing service has suffered a major blow in a German court. And that could result in RapidShare either being shut down or having to find some way to implement a copyright filter. Either way, the RapidShare we've all come to know and love/hate may never be the same. At least for German users.
The German royalties collection agency GEMA, which is basically like Germany's version of the RIAA, took RapidShare to court a while back. And last week a court ruled that RapidShare couldn't hide behind the "we don't know what our users are uploading" defense.
Of course, RapidShare can still appeal the ruling, so this isn't over yet. But it's no secret that there are plenty of pirated movies, music, and software applications hosted on RapidShare at the moment. So we don't expect GEMA to step aside anytime soon.
RapidShare, the popular file hosting site used by developers and pirates alike has apparently been shut down at least temporarily by a court order. Heise Online is reporting that GEMA, a German royalties collection agency has filed a complaint against RapidShare, claiming that the service hosts copyrighted materials, which it's fairly safe to say is true.
GEMA wants RapidShare to provide details on how many files hosted on the site are copyrighted works of GEMA members. RapidShare has historically said that it does not inspect the files uploaded by users. We've seen companies like YouTube demonstrate in recent years that it is possible to build copyright detection software to inspect for illegally uploaded files. But we've also seen that no system so far is foolproof, so it should be interesting to see if RapidShare fights the complaint, promises to implement some sort of filters, or fades off into oblivion.
Another open question is what will happen to all the RapidShare members who have shelled out money for paid accounts? While RapidShare has provided some basic services for free, users have to pay subscription fees for access to faster downloads and and simultaneous downloads.
Update: As several people have pointed out in the comments, RapidShare appears to be back online. The reports of a site shutdown were apparently false and everything is back to normal.
YouSendIt, MailBigFile, and Driveway are great if you need to share a file that's too large to fit in an email attachment. But what if you want to share a bunch of files with a group of people? Sure, you could just keep sending out emails with that link, but wouldn't it be nice if you could set up a temporary web page where people could download files or view pictures, watch videos, or listen to audio online?
Drop.io does just that. You don't need to register or even enter an email address to create a Drop.io page. Just enter a name for your page (7 character or longer), and start uploading files. Generally, Drop.io seems to prefer videos, images, audio, and documents. We tried uploading an executable file and it promptly disappeared.
The site includes a Flash player that will let you access media online or you can click a download link to save files. The user who creates a Drop.io page can choose whether other users can edit the page or just view it. You can also select how long files will be available for, from 1 day to 1 year.
Another one bites the dust folks, well not yet. Morpheus, the p2p file sharing network owned by StreamCast, lost its case in court. The network, like many others is now in danger of being shut down because of copyright infringement charges. LimeWire was similarly sued by the RIAA in August, as well as Grokster, Napster, Kazaa, and many others. Some of these networks have been shut-down, had to shut-down, or have regrouped and come back reborn like Napster. Morpheus still holds out hope for some sort of appeal to work in their favor, but at this point the prospects don't look too good, at least from my small corner of the great and powerful blogosphere. Where Morpheus ends up remains to be seen, and despite their court loss, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel at least for consumers, with a few studios and companies starting to see that DRM-less music may be the way to boost sales.
