There are a lot of file sharing/hosting/storing sites out there. A lot. So one of my first predictable questions for DivShare co-founder David Altschul was of course, "Why use DivShare?" His answer: "DivShare sets itself apart from other free file hosts in a number of distinct ways, most notably in that we offer unlimited uploads and downloads, no waiting lines for files, auto image galleries, no popups or spam, an intuitive member dashboard, and all files stay online forever. Perhaps the biggest reason why bloggers and webmasters should choose DivShare over the other free file hosts is our co-branding options. Blogs can quickly and easily add their name, URL and logo to their hosted file pages via the dashboard. An example of co-branding can be seen here (warning: the link may also start a download - you can cancel it - but it's actually a pretty good song).

I have to admit, everything David says sounds great (files stay online forever?!). But how does it actually perform? Well, the aforementioned song downloaded at an average rate of 550KBps, which isn't bad at all. I uploaded a 10MB video, and though there's no fancy Flash-Ajax upload timer, it took less than 2 minutes to complete. On an upstream-weak cable connection, that's pretty darn good. Since DivShare launched this month, only time will tell if the service remains as excellent as it is right now. Happy uploading!

P.S. You can't upload files larger than 100MB.

I was pondering the other day about how I had no way to pre-check links to see if they were malicious, then I saw LinkScanner. Alright, I wasn't thinking that, but it is a nice story. I realize it is a bit impractical to use LinkScanner to check every link you click on, in fact it is downright impossible and dumb. There are no guarantees that LinkScanner will save you from malware anyway, but it is a good tool to check links, especially ones that look suspicious. The service will check-out the link on their servers, I imagine in some sort of sand-boxed environment. LinkScanner will return the exploits that exist on the site for you, so you know before you go.

[Via Security Fix]

There's a lot of extensions for Firefox that do something similar, but I like Link Alert's style. Link Alert is a Firefox add-on that changes your cursor depending on what kind of link you're about to click on. If it's a link to a PDF file, a PDF icon is shown next to your cursor. If it's a Word file, likewise. If the link opens in a new window, a new window symbol is shown, and so on. It works for a ton of different types of links, too: new windows, secure sites, email links, JavaScript files, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF documents, Zip files, applications, text files, images, RSS feeds, and AIM links, among others. Very handy and nicely unobtrusive.