Internet users who have been using Megaupload regularly or sporadically for file hosting or downloads are now left with the task of finding a comparable service that they can use for these operations.

Probably one of the first file hosts to be mentioned in this regard is Filesonic, as it is providing the same upload size limit of 1 Gigabyte per file and unlimited storage. The site has an affiliate program that rewards affiliate for bringing new users to the site or for downloads. Please note that you need an account before you can start to upload files to the service.

MediaFire on the other hand is a free and simple file host. The biggest advantage of the service is that you can upload files right away without having to create an account first. The maximum file size for free accounts is 200 Megabytes which is considerably lower than the 1 Gigabyte supported by Filesonic.

Rapidshare is another popular file hosting service. It too requires you to create an account before you can start hosting files on the Rapidshare server. Rapidshare has no file size limitations when it comes to uploading files to the server. Free users have to endure wait times and slower download speeds though on the download side of things.

Oron lets you upload files with a size of up to 400 Megabytes directly on the site’s frontpage. Registered users can upload files with a size of up to 1024 Megabytes, which is also the maximum download size for free and registered users of the service. The site has an affiliate program in place that rewards uploaders and sites in various ways, for instance by paying per download or sale.

Here is a selection of additional hosts that you can use to upload files to or earn money from:

• Multishare – Up to 5120 Megabytes, 3 files max per upload. Pays 67% of all premium sales and rebills.
• Content Cooperation – Pays for a variety of services, including uploading or promoting files.
• Uploading – Files with a maximum size of 5 Gigabyte can be uploaded to the file hosting service. Multiple revenue models available including pay per download or sale.

Which file hosting service would you recommend as a Megaupload alternative? Lets hear some suggestions in the comments.

The new file host Bayfiles falls into the latter category. Founded by two founders of the popular Bittorrent indexing website The Piratebay, it is of to a good start.

When you open the website you are greeted with a clean, professional design. File size limits are directly displayed on the front page. Guests can upload and share up to 250 Megabytes, members 500 Megabytes and Premium members single files with a maximum file size of 5 Gigabytes.

The uploading is straightforward. Click the browse button to pick a file that you want to upload, and then the upload button to send it to one of the file hosting site’s servers. The uploading process is displayed on screen, the upload complete page loaded automatically once the upload is complete.

Users get three different types of links that they can copy and paste to share the download, a delete link to terminate the file on the Bayfiles server it is hosted on and an email form to send the link to contacts.

Users who register an account can upload files twice as large as unregistered users. It is not really clear if regular members who do not pay for their account get other benefits. T

Only the premium membership benefits are displayed on the Premium page. Their file size limit is raised to 5 Gigabytes and storage is unlimited on the servers. Premium members furthermore get uncapped download speeds, unlimited parallel downloads, no time or wait restrictions and resuming of downloads. Non premium members can only download one file per hours.

A premium accounts costs €5 per month, €25 for 6 months and €45 for a year.

Users who now think that they can upload all kinds of files to the file hosting site err. The Terms of Service clearly state under II. Upload rules that users may not upload files “which violate third party copyrights” among other restrictions.

It is however interesting to note that the site itself does not keep a catelogue or table of all files hosted on the site. The Terms of Service furthermore note that there is no search function to search the files on the file hosting site.

Will Bayfiles survive the first year of service? My guess is that it will be under the scrutiny of the music and movie industry, as well as other organizations that fight Internet piracy.

Some services, like Microsoft’s Hotmail allow multiple attachments with a size of up to 50 Megabytes each. They achieve this by hosting those files on their SkyDrive service.

The file size limit on file hosting sites is usually way larger than the 20-25 Megabytes per attachment that you get when you use email. While that is great if you need to send larger files, you should keep in mind that you transfer the files to a third party server. Use encryption or find a private server if you need to transfer important files.

Minus is a relatively new file hosting service that tries to fill the void that the popular file host Drop.io left behind (see Facebook buys Drop.io, shuts it down)

Minus offers file sharing for guests and registered members of the site. If you are a guest, you can simply drag and drop files on the minus web page to upload them to the file host. You can alternatively use the select link to launch a file browser to pick one or multiple files from the local system for uploading.

The file size limit has been set to 25 Megabytes for guests and 50 Megabytes for members, which should be enough in most cases. You need to split files if you want to share files larger than the file size limit.

You can add a caption to each file that you have uploaded to minus. Links are available to share, view or download individual files. A click on share displays the file url on the Min.us server farm, view is available for some file types like images, while download is available for file types that do not have an online viewer associated with them.

Guests need to know that their session expires once they upload new files which means that guests cannot access previously uploaded files anymore. Bad if you forgot to copy the file sharing urls.

Member accounts come with several benefits, from the increased file size limit of 50 Megabytes and access to the upload history to file galleries and the ability to modify the sharing url of your uploaded files. Probably the most important difference to public accounts is the ability to delete files that have been uploaded in the past.

Min.us creates galleries of uploaded files automatically. One interesting option here is the ability to download all files of a gallery as a zip file, handy if you want to download dozens of photos that have been posted to a gallery.

Tools for Windows, Linux and Mac, mobile devices and web browsers are available to make sure that users can upload files from virtually any device, even if they are not on the Min.us website.

What’s Missing?

It appears as if all files that you upload are automatically public. They are protected by the randomly generated url (which members can edit by the way), but that’s not the best of protections.

An option to set individual files to private, for instance by adding an option to password protect them, would be helpful.

Other than that, there is not much to criticize. If you are looking for an easy to use file hosting service, then you should take a closer look at Min.us.

When you open the Filestube page for the first time you see lots of links on that page. At the top, you find a small bar with account related features and options to display videos, games, lyrics or software directly in the results listing.

FilesTube’s core is the meta search engine that is placed prominently on the homepage of the service. A click on search will search all supported file hosting sites for files of that kind. You can use the filter list to limit the search to specific file extensions, or switch to the advanced search interface to add other filters like file sizes, dates or hosting sites to the search.

The file search result’s listings lists the number of results returned for the search query. A sidebar is available to filter or redefine the search. It is for instance possible to only display search results from particular file hosting sites, or sort the files by popularity, date or size instead of relevance.

Results are displayed with detailed information, ranging from the file’s name, size and upload date to the file hosting site that it is stored on.

A click on a file opens another page on FilesTube that can be used to click through to the file host that is hosting the download. The page has lots of buttons and other stuff that make it difficulty for inexperienced users to find the right download button.

One interesting feature of FilesTube is the ability to create RSS alerts for file searches. Say you always want to be informed if a new file of that type is uploaded to a file hosting site, or that you have not found what you were looking for and want to be notified if that particular file that you are looking for is uploaded to one of the file hosts. Then RSS feeds are your best option to monitor file hosting sites for uploads with that name.

One of the biggest user complaints regarding FilesTube is the messy look of the site, with ads and sponsored links placed in close proximity of contents.

You can register an account with FilesTubes which is completely free and comes with benefits like a download history or making and managing file lists. The site appears to be fully usable without an account though.

Other Features

If you look hard enough, you find other useful features on the Filestube.com website. Trends is one for instance. It displays the top 320 searches of the actual day, or a specific month. That way you can determine what’s hot and what’s not in a heartbeat, at least when it comes to file sharing trends.

You obviously find the usual assortment of always of high interest searches related to pornography and celebrities, but also current hot topics which usually are about tv shows, movies and music.

Another, seemingly new service is groups, which can be used by FilesTube account owners to create groups that they want to share with other users. Those are basically compiled and sorted lists of files that users have discovered on file sharing sites.

FilesTube Video

FilesTube.com Search Tools

The following section lists tools, for instance browser extensions or userscripts, that improve the experience on FilesTube.

• Filestube.com Cleanup [userscript] – Removes all advertisement and sponsored links from the Filestube.com website.
• FilesTube.Clean Redux [userscript] – Removes all page elements, including ads and sponsored links, that most users do not want to see on the Filestube website.
• The Cavern Links Checker [userscript] – Checks for working links on file hosting sites before you visit the file host site itself.
• FilesTube [Firefox Add-on] – Adds FilesTube as a search engine provider to the list of Firefox search engines, so that you can search directly from the Firefox interface.
• JDownloader [all operating systems] – Universal file downloader that makes the downloading of files from file hosting sites more comfortable.

Closing Words

FilesTube has a surprisingly high rating at web reputation services like Web of Trust. It ranks as excellent for trusthworthiness, reliability and privacy there, only Child Safety is rated as unsatisfactory which can be attributed to the semi-direct access to porn on the site.

The service has been recently in the news as Yahoo began to block FilesTube links in Yahoo Messenger.

File hosts obviously are interested that users stay on their websites for as long as possible to earn from advertisements, make the site more attractive to advertisers and to sell their premium accounts to users who are not patient enough to wait. Nearly every file hosting site uses times, bandwidth limitations and other means to achieve these goals.

Extension developers on the other hand have to cope with ever changing scripts on the sites. File hosts change technicalities regularly to break extensions and other tools that offer faster downloads from their servers.

It will therefor be only a matter of time until the Google Chrome extension Megaupload Instant Download Helper needs to be updated. The extension for now offers to speed up downloads at the popular file hosting site Megaupload by bypassing the wait time limit that is imposed on free users.

The functionality of the website is not changed, which means that the regular download button is displayed once the countdown has reached zero. That may be helpful if the extension fails to display the download directly.

Megaupload Instant Download Helper can be installed directly from the Google Chrome Extensions gallery.

The extension tries to start downloads on Megaupload download pages automatically. Users who want to download files see the save as dialog directly even if the time is still counting down.

Alternatives are available for other browsers. Opera users may want to take a closer look at the Opera Download Helper extension, Firefox users at the userscripts Megaupload Automatic Downloader or Megaupload Automatizador Plus!.

The majority of file hosting sites users tend to upload the file to one hoster. This can be unproblematic depending on the uploaded file and restrictions of the file hoster. Some file hosters only allow a certain amount of downloads, other have a bandwidth limit for files.

That’s where file mirrors can come in handy. A mirror is basically another server hosting the file. That requires more work on the uploaders part if done manually.

A service like MirrorCreator on the other hand offers to do the distribution for the user. It works by uploading the file once to the MirrorCreator service, which then distributes the file to up to 14 different file hosting services out of a list of 30 available ones. Several popular file hosting sites are supported including Megaupload, Hotfile, Rapidshare, File Factory or MediaFire.

MirrorCreator supports uploading files from a local computer system or from a remote location. To begin users need to select Upload from PC or Remote URL Upload to select the type of upload and either select a file from the PC or paste an URL into the form. It is furthermore possible to enter an email to receive a notification when the files have been uploaded.

Up to 14 different file hosting services can then be selected in the last step. Each service is listed with its name and file upload limit. A click on Upload sends the selected file to the service. It may take a while before the file is spread to all selected mirror services. A url is displayed in the end that links to all file hosting services the file was distributed to.

Visitors of that page can then pick one of the mirror file hosting services to download the file. You find an example upload page here.

A few days ago, Rapidshare changed the design of the site, and announced several changes to the file hosting service with it. Probably the most notable, and ridiculous change is the new slogan. Rapidshare is calling themselves now the anti-waiting company. Does that mean that free Rapidshare users do not have to wait anymore before their downloads start? Nope, not at all. Rapidshare, in their own words “wants to do something about this and has imagined something special for all its users: in the Anti-Waiting Lounge, users from now on can sweeten their waiting time and test themselves on various online games”. The waiting times remain the same, bt users now have options to play games while waiting. Does that sound like an anti-waiting company to you?

rapidshare

Rapidshare has also made changes to their pricing structure, and those may appeal to many users of the service on first glance. The file hoster introduced RapidPro back in July, a new service that allowed Rapidshare users to pay Rapids, that they could exchange for traffic and disk space. According to the news posting these values have been increased by five. Users should not get to excited yet, as the prices have increased by the same. Previously, Rapidshare users were able to convert 99 Rapids into 10 Gigabytes of storage, and 30 Gigabytes of traffic. The smallest amount of Rapids to buy was 400 Rapids for €4,99.

Now, users get 50 Gigabytes of secured storage and 150 Gigabytes of traffic for 495 Rapids. The price per Rapid appears to have remained the same (0,01€ per Rapid). This means, users get five times the space and bandwidth for five times the money. Does that sound like an improvement at all? No, did not think so, either.

Rapidshare account differences:

• Maximum file size: 500 Megabytes for users with no account and free users, 2 Gigabytes for Rapidpro users. Uploads are only saved for free and Rapidpro users.
• Downloads: Maximum file size is 500 Megabytes for no account and free users, and 2 Gigabytes for Rapidpro users. RapidPro users are the only without waiting time, the others have to wait 15 minutes between downloads. Rapidpro users can download as many files at the same time as they like, resume downloads and get the fastest download speeds.

Social features, called RapidContact, have been added to the site as well, as a final and last feature in the overhaul. This feature basically allows Rapidshare users to contact each other to communicate on the site.

What’s your take on the changes over at Rapidshare? Lots of hot air or good features that will help them turn around the decline over the last year?

All it takes is to write a new email, attach the files that need to be shared and add the contacts that should receive it.

Email does have a disadvantage though, a size limit makes it virtually impossible to send very large files. Most providers reject emails that cross the 20-25 MB line. You might want to consider splitting up the files to stay below that limit but it does mean additional work, and there are better options, especially if files need to be send regularly.

Now that we have established that email is not ideal for sending large files we can take a look at other options.

File hosting services come to mind immediately. Hundreds, if not thousands, of file hosting sites compete with each other on the Internet. They allow Internet users to upload files to their servers. The file urls can then be shared with other users. The process is slightly more complicated than sending files per email, as it requires some sort of communication so that the recipient gets the file hosting url to download the files.

There are also specialized file hosting sites, Flickr for instance for hosting photos comes to mind, or Youtube for videos. Those sites offer privacy features to only share files with specific users.

File Hosting Services to Send Large Files

Media Fire – One of the best file sharing services on the Internet. Free users can upload an unlimited number of files, with each file up to 200 Megabytes in size. Downloads are unlimited as well. File urls can easily be shared by email, Instant Messenger or embedded on websites.

mediafire

Transfer Big Files – File size limit of 100 Megabyte without account, can be downloaded 20 times, urls are send to a recipients email address. Uses HTTPS for website and all transfers.

transfer big files

Drop Send – Has a file size limit of 2 Gigabytes and 5 sends per month, transfers seem to be limited in speed compared to the paid accounts offered.

send large files

Send 6 – Another file hosting service that offers to send up to 250 Megabytes without registration. Has an individual file size limit of 250 Megabytes, maximum of 5 downloads per files.

send 6

File Droper – a very simply uploading site with a maximum file size of 5 Gigabytes. Uploaded file urls need to be shared manually though.

file dropper

Windows Live SkyDrive – requires a Windows Live account but is good for sharing up to 25 Gigabytes of data, individual file size limit is 50 Megabytes.

windows live skydrive

Other options (selection)

• Drop.io
• Rapidshare
• Box.net
• Wikisend
• Driveway

The file hosting sites above are just examples, you can easily find more hosting sites by searching for terms like “send large files”, “file hosting” or “file hosts”.

Desktop Clients for big file transfers

File hosting sites offer an uncomplicated way of sending files to other people. Most do however limit the maximum file size, download speeds or number of transfers to upsell premium accounts.

Desktop file sending clients are a great alternative.

Opera Unite – The Opera web browser comes with a feature called Opera Unite. It basically provides web server capabilities directly in the browser. Several applications are available that can be installed including a file sharing app.

Here is how it works. Visit the Opera Unite website above in Opera and install the File Sharing application in Opera. You need to create an account at Opera if this is your first time.

A folder can be picked that is then shared on the Internet whenever Opera Unite is running. The url of the folder can be send to friends via email or other means. Friends open the url in the web browser and see the directory structure and files of the selected folders. Folders are password protected for extra security. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

opera unite file sharing

Dropbox – A free Dropbox account has a 2 Gigabyte space limit, which should be fine for most file sending operations. A Dropbox client is installed on the computer system. Files that need to be send to other users can be put into a Dropbox folder to make them available online. Folders can be shared easily by sending invitations to email addresses.

Dropbox is also available for Linux, Mac and Windows. An account is required to share files.

dropbox

HTTP File Server – this program offers a similar approach as Opera Unite. It installs a file server on the system that can be used to share files with other users. Highly configurable.

http file server

Other options

• Gigatribe
• CC File Transfer
• Pando

A third option are Instant Messengers and other communication programs like Skype which often come with basic file sharing options. They are a good option to send medium sized files directly to other users, probably the best choice if both users already have an account.

We did not mention ftp servers which are an option as well. The problem with ftp servers is that they are not that easy to configure and setup. Users who want to delve deeper into this can take a look at the excellent Filezilla Server, which is available for Windows only.

Users who live close to each other have the option to burn the files to DVD or copy them on a USB drive or stick to hand them over in person to the other user.

How do you share and send large files? Let us know in the comments.

This can be quite time consuming especially if it has to be done on a regular basis.

ZUploader is a portable Open Source program for Windows that functions as a desktop uploader for images, files and text. It is in this regard similar to previously reviewed apps like File And Image Uploader with the exception that ZUploader is the first to support text hosting providers.

Image, file and text storage providers can be selected from the drop menu in the main interface. ZUploader currently supports six image uploaders including Imageshack and Tinypic, five file uploaders including Rapidshare and Drop.io and four text uploading services including Pastebin and Paste2.

ZUploader

New files can be dragged and dropped into the program interface, the upload is then initiated automatically by the application using the configured file hoster for the file type. Text files are for instance automatically uploaded to the text upload host while photos are uploaded to the configured image uploader.

Dragging and dropping is however not the only option to upload files to the Internet. Another option are the upload buttons in the ZUploader interface. Clipboard upload will automatically upload the contents of the clipboard to an appropriate provider, File upload opens a file browser to select files to upload manually. Only one file can be selected in the file browser at once though which is not comfortable if many of files need to be uploaded. The drag and drop option would be more suitable in this case.

A third upload option is available in the program’s settings. Here shell integration can be activated to add ZUploader to the Windows Explorer context menu. This sends selected files automatically to the uploader.

Multiple files will spawn multiple program windows though, something that the developers should work on.

ZUploader supports uploading to ftp servers as well. The ftp server details are configured in the settings, it can then be selected from the drop down menus. The file uploader can theoretically be configured to always upload the data to the ftp server instead of the pre-configured file hosting services.

ZUploader is a free file uploader for all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be directly downloaded from the developer website over at Google Code. (via Lee at Download Squad)

Skipscreen has now been ported to the Google chrome web browser by another developer. The extension works exactly like the Firefox add-on except that it does not support all the file hosts that the Firefox extension supports.

The Google Chrome extension currently supports Rapidshare, Megaupload, Depositfiles and Megashare with the promise to add support for additional file hosts in future releases.

The extension will automatically skip any intermediary pages on the supported file hosts. Those are usually pages where the user has to select the download type (free or paid) or wait a specific time before the download starts. It will automatically select the free option and the final download link on the file hosts.

SkipScreen will be maintained and improving all the time. Why click through ad-laden pages and wait for countdowns when your computer can do it for you? Wherever you need to click through ads or wait for countdowns, SkipScreen will be there to make your life easier. SkipScreen automatically clicks through the hoops to get to the content you want.

Rapidshare and Megaupload did not seem to work at the time of testing. It is likely that the developer will update the extension soon to correct those problems.

Skipscreen for Google chrome can be downloaded from the Chrome extension gallery.

File And Image Uploader currently supports 280 working hosting services on the Internet of which 207 are file hosts, 24 image hosts, 7 video hosts and 42 all purpose hosts. That’s a large number of sites that is made up of popular services such as Rapidshare, File Factory or Depositfiles and lesser known services such as Gigasize or Hamster Share.

The program is provided by the developer as a free version. A version for registered users and a premium version are also offered. Registered users get a key if they donate at least $3 via PayPal while the premium version is limited to business users.

The benefits of those two versions are additional file hosts that are supported as well as higher data transfers per day. The free version is for instance good for a maximum of 10 Gigabytes of data per day while the registered version supports up to 50 Gigabytes of traffic. Take a look here for all the differences between the program versions.

Files can be uploaded with just a few clicks. Icons in the program’s toolbar can be used to add files or folders. This opens the file and folder selection screen and after that a new window where the file host the selected files should be uploaded can be selected.

The program lists the files in its main interface afterwards along with transfer speeds and a progress bar. A right-click on any entry opens a context menu with options to pause or queue downloads as well as select another host where the file should be uploaded to.

1) Buttons for adding files to the queue and for adding all files from a folder
2) Buttons for starting upload and for re-uploading selected files
3) Buttons for stopping selected uploads in progress, for finishing uploads (all uploads in progress will be finished and no new uplods will be started) and for immediate stop of all uploads
4) Opening of a settings window
5) Moving of a selected file up/down in queue
6) Menu for files in queue, queue for upload = the file will be uploaded paused upload = the file will not be uploaded until user allows it
7) It is possible to add files via “drag&drop”
8) Tabs – links, history, stats, news

The log at the bottom lists the url of each file that has been uploaded with right-click options to copy the url or open the file directly in Internet Explorer.

Available file hosting accounts can be added in the application’s settings. It is here possible to add accounts for more than one hundred different file hosts so that these accounts can be used when uploading files to the Internet.

File And Image Uploader supports several services that upload files to multiple file hosts at once, among the Gazup.com, Uploadjockey.com and Koooraup.com

File And Image Uploader is an excellent software program for users who regularly upload files or images to file and image hosts. The program is portable and compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Techcrunch was able to uncover additional details from Google Docs product manager Vijay Bangar about the new Google Docs service. The maximum file size has been set to 250 Megabytes which is the same limit that is currently in place for file types that are not converted by the Google service.

Each Google Docs user receives a free quote of 1 Gigabyte of data that can be stored on the Google Docs servers. Additional Gigabytes can be purchased for the low fee of $0.25 per Gigabyte per year. Business users on the other hand have to pay more as their pricing starts at $17 per year for 5 Gigabytes of storage space. No bandwidth fees are charged apparently.

All the existing features of Google Docs including the ability to make uploads private or public are available for the general file types as well.

Will Google Docs become the new Rapidshare? Could be a dream come true for the file sharing scene: Unlimited bandwidth, no wait time and 1 Gigabyte of space.

The developer on the other hand is recently working on a new version of this program and we decided to take a look at the latest version (which is a release candidate for File & Image Uploader 5.

The most notable changes in this release are a switch from using the Internet Explorer rendering engine to an independent one. Other improvements include a speed limiter, better Socks and HTTP proxy support, Linux compatibility in Wine and the ability to bind to an adapter/IP.

Veteran file hosting uploaders should pay a visit to the program’s options after startup where they can add premium account information, filter unneeded file hosts, schedule uploads, shell integration and connections.

Files can be uploaded by dragging and dropping them into the program’s interface or by using the Add File dialog in the program itself. If the Windows Explorer context menus are active it is possible to use these right from within Windows Explorer to send files to the file hosting upload manager.

File & Image Uploader will display a list of files that have been added so far with the option to add additional files the same way. The file list will show all files that have been added to the file upload queue.

The very same window contains several controls and information about the selected file host. It is for example possible to queue the downwloads, split files that are bigger than a selected maximum or set the file access rights to public.

The file hosting uploader distinguishes between image and file hosts and it is necessary to switch to the right type of hosting service in that interface as well.

Uploaded files can be reuploaded to other file hosting services by right-clicking on them.

File & Image Uploader supports more than 200 different file and image hosting services including popular services such as Rapidshare, Hotfile, Megaupload or SendSpace. It also supports multi-file uploading services which can make it easier to distribute files to multiple file hosting websites with one upload.

File & Image Uploader is a multi-lingual and portable file hosting uploader for the Windows operating system that is also compatible with Wine under Linux. Interested users can download the latest stable version and this release candidate from the developer’s website.

Other options include copying and pasting one or multiple links into the interface. The download manager also offers to add a download option into the Internet Explorer menu.

Urls that are added to Mipony are listed in the queue. Mipony will automatically perform a check and display various important information that it discovers including a files availability, size and file name.

Some or all of the files in the queue can then be added to the download queue. Mipony will automatically display the terms of service of every file hosting website on the first download. These terms need to be accepted before downloads are started for that file hosting service.

The configuration contains options and settings to change the number of simultaneous downloads, the interface language and the ability to add premium account information for Rapidshare, Megaupload and Hotfile.

Mipony can furthermore join files and retry downloads. It also comes with a browser so that no external web browser is needed to search for files on these file hosting websites. Most users on the other hand might prefer to use an external web browser as the included browser is very basic and seems to use the Internet Explorer engine.

Check out our Rapidshare Search article if you want to take a closer look at some of the available options to search this popular file host.

Mipony is compatible with most versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Load2All can upload files to multiple file hosting websites at once. The service currently supports 19 different file hosting services among them Rapidshare, 2Shared or File Factory. Each file host can be selected on the main page individually.

There are two options that make Load2All unique when it comes to file uploading services. It can split large files into multiple files if the size of the uploaded file should exceed the limit of the supported file hosting services. That’s very interesting for users who usually upload large files to these services. Load2All will automatically pack the files as rar files and split them into multiple archives if a file size limit would be exceeded by the upload.

Even better is the fact that it will do that only for the services where the limit would be exceeded. The other option is to make use of a Rapidshare or Megaupload Collector account to earn points from the uploaded files. The Rapidshare login information need to be entered in this case in the web form.

Finally it is also possible to enter an email address which will then be used by the file uploading service to notify the user about the created links at the selected file hosting websites. Load2All offers several interesting options to users who want to upload large files to multiple files hosts.

Megaupload has two “protections” in place before a normal user can download files. The first is a captcha while the second is a countdown timer. This means that users need to enter a captcha whenever they want to download a file from the file hosting website. Even worse, they also have to wait some time before the download becomes available.

Muautolink solves both problems at once. It will immediately display a file download window when the user opens a Megaupload download page in the Firefox web browser. It bypasses the Megaupload captcha and countdown completely.

Best of all: It even works if the Megaupload website is embedded in another website like several Megaupload search services have implemented it. Muautolink is an experimental Firefox add-on for all versions of the web browse (from 2.x to 3.7x). It can be downloaded from the official Mozilla Firefox website.

Mirror Fox is a rather new service that will distribute files that are uploaded to the website to 14 different file hosting services. The services has an upload limit of 500 Megabytes per file and can be used anonymously. Upload speed to the service and distribution speed was excellent during tests. Files with a size of about ten Megabytes were distributed almost instantly to the other file hosting services and available for download almost immediately.

Mirror Fox will create one url on their server that lists the links pointing to the uploaded file on the other file hosting websites. A status is displayed that indicates if the upload to the specific file hosting service was successful or a failure. The status will also display if the upload is still in progress.

The initial links that are pointing to the file hosting servers are routed through a Linkbucks advertisement page. This should not be a huge problem for most users who have the opportunity to copy and paste the direct links to the files afterwards.

Speed and performance are usually better if a service is new and not swarmed by users. It can very well be that the performance of the file uploading and mirroring service degrades with a rise in popularity.

Mirror Fox supports remote uploads as well. The user has to provide an url that is pointing to a file that is between 1 and 100 Megabytes in size. The service will automatically distribute the file to the various file hosting websites. Mirror Fox via Genbeta

Most do not offer unlimited bandwidth and those that do usually last not very long unless they add restrictions to their file hosting service. Save As is a new promising file hosting service that offers a simple interface and simple rules.

Everyone is allowed to upload files of any size. The process takes only a few seconds to initialize. All that needs to be done is to click on the select file button to open the file browser. Only one file can be selected and it might be a good idea to zip multiple files to upload them as an archive all at once.

A results page is displayed after the upload has finished. This page displays a direct link to the download, a link using the short url service bitly and several statistics about the upload.

The links pointing to the file are good for 24 hours. The file will be automatically deleted from the Save As servers after that time. There do not seem to be any download or user restrictions in that time period however.

Easy Share is one of the few file hosts that offer ftp access. Users need to create a free account at the file host as the username and password of that account are also used as the username and password of the ftp connection. All they need to do after account creation is to point their ftp client to upload.easy-share.com and upload the files from that client. The ftp server supports resume. Users need to open the Easy Share website before 24 hours have passed to accept the ftp uploads in their account profile.

The file host supports remote uploads as well. This means that users can paste urls that point to files in the Easy Share upload script. The file host will then try to establish a connection to those servers and download the files from there. The maximum file size is set to 200 Megabytes currently.

Easy Share

Kiloupload is different from Easy Share as it does not offer free space on its own servers. It distributes uploaded files to various other free file hosts including Rapidshare, File Factory or MegaUpload. The service can be used from its web interface or by pointing a ftp client to ftp.kiloupload.com. Users need to create an account by providing an email address and password. The email address is the username for the ftp server and will also be used to inform the user once the files have been uploaded to the other file hosts.

The advantage of Kiloupload over Easy Share is that it is possible to upload files to multiple file hosts at once-

Kiloupload

Do you know of other file hosts that support free ftp access? Let us know in the comments.

Rapidshare AutoWait is a userscript that can be loaded in the Firefox Greasemonkey extension. It brings most of the benefit that is provided by download managers to the web browser. In short: It allows a user to open multiple Rapidshare links which get then downloaded sequentially without user interaction.

The script will automatically perform all required actions on the page after it has been opened in Firefox. It will also detect if a download is already in progress to loop the other Rapidshare downloads which are then started at a later time.

The script does detect network problems and handles other possible errors like expired sessions or the 15 minute limits as well. It is not a problem for the script to handle 10, 20 or even 30 tabs that all point to a file on the Rapidshare website. The only step that the script will not do is to close the tab once the download has been finished which is not that much of a problem though.

AutoWait is a very interesting option for users who download files regularly from Rapidshare. Check out our Rapidshare Search article for pointers on how to find links at the the file host. It is possible that the script will also work in other web browsers that provide userscript support such as Opera or Safari.