Today when you click on a file link in Google Search that is pointing to MediaFire, you are redirected to the error page http://www.mediafire.com/error.php?errno=381.

It reads:

The indexed link is unavailable.

The link that was indexed is currently set to a non-indexing state and cannot be accessed.

If you copy the link url and paste it directly in your browser’s address bar, you are taken to the download page from where you can download the file normally. It is also interesting to note that downloads are still working if you are using Bing Search instead of Google.

It is not clear at this point if Google Search is the only referrer that has been blocked by Mediafire, or if there are other sites that have been blocked as well by the file hosting service.

Another thing that is unclear is whether this has been an intentional move by the site, or if it is a technical issue that will be resolved at a later point in time. It does not make lots of sense from a legal point of view, unless law enforcement agencies are using Google exclusively for their research.

Users who find files that they cannot download should copy and paste the url into their browser’s address bar to download it. It is alternatively possible to install an extension like Refcontrol to modify the referrer for sites that are blocked by Mediafire.

Lets discuss the move in the comments.

Update: Download links are working again. It seems to have been a technical issue after all.

Uploading files to just another hoster is however no guarantee that the files stay available for a longer time. It should be clear by now that you need to have backups available either locally or in another location to reduce the likelihood that you will lose the data completely.

Mirror Services

One option that you have is to use so called mirror services such as Mirror Creator to distribute the files to multiple online hosting services. If one or two go down, you still have them available on others that you have selected.

The process of uploading files to those hosters is almost identical, with the difference that you cannot make use of existing accounts and their benefits.

• Select files that you want to upload from your computer. A file limit is always displayed, in the case of MirrorCreator it is 500 Megabytes for free users.
• Select the file hosting services you want to distribute your files to. Free users can select up to ten services.
• Start to upload the files once, the mirror creation service will take care of the rest.

Here is a short list of file mirror creation services:

• Gazup! – Supports six services in total, maximum file size 400 Megabyte if only four are selected.
• Upload On All – Supports 12 services in total of which ten can be selected for distribution. Maximum file size is 300 Megabytes per upload.
• Digzip – Lets you pick eight mirrors from a list of 18. Maximum upload size is 200 Megabytes.
• Multi Upload – Upload to a total of nine different file hosting services
• Upload Mirrors – Select up to 14 mirror servers where you want your files to be hosted. No information about file size limitations posted on site.

You can search for file hosting mirrors and similar phrases to find more services that distribute files for you.

Nothing changes for free users who stay below the upload maximum. Users who need to upload larger files have a few options as well. They could split the files using software like 7-zip or Haozip for this. Other services may be offered, for instance the option to delete uploads again, that are not available when mirror uploading services are used.

If you want to use a specific service, for instance because of the account benefits it provides, you should consider backing up your data at a second cloud hosting service to avoid total data loss if that particular services is no longer available. A suggestion here would be to use a backup and synchronization provider like Dropbox, or if more storage space is required Skydrive from Microsoft. This means however that you will have to upload the files at least twice for this. You could alternatively back them on a local device if you do not want to waste the bandwidth.

Have another suggestion? Lets discuss it in the comments.

Bitcasa is a new file hosting service that is similar to Dropbox in many regards. Bitcasa just like Dropbox is application driven, which means that users need to install the Bitcasa client on their system to use the service. The client is currently available for Apple Macintosh OSX systems and Microsoft Windows (as an alpha), with a Linux version currently in development.

The client synchronizes data across all devices that have the Bitcasa software installed. Data gets encrypted before it is uploaded to the cloud to make sure that it is protected from unauthorized access. The developers state that they cannot access user data for any reason.

A core difference to Dropbox is that Bitcasa offers its users unlimited storage. It is not really clear how this will pan out in the long run, or if paid accounts will be introduced at a later time to make the service profitable. For now, users can upload, download and share as many files as they want.

Sharing is completely free as well, and the service highlights that friends and family can start accessing files “instantly without waiting for the entire files to download”. It seems though that recipients need to install the Bitcasa client and create and account as well for this.

Bitcasa has no web interface for users at this point. It is not clear if the developers will integrate one at a later time.

Bitcasa Beta Invites

Users can sign up for the beta queue on the Bitcasa homepage. If you do not want to wait, you can use the following link to sign up for an account directly. The link has been posted by Motou Xiao on Google+.

Just enter your email address and open the confirmation link once you receive the Bitcasa confirmation message. You can then download the software and create an account from within.

Closing Words

We cannot post screenshots of the application or signup process at this time as you have to agree to a NDA during signup. All information have been taken from public sources. We will post an update in the future.

No files were accessible anymore on the servers after the takedown, which had serious consequences for users who used the file hosting site for just that: to host their own files.

Users looking for a Megaupload alternative can check out our quick overview of file hosting services.

The Megaupload fallout has not ended yet though, as some file sharing sites have begun to change their business model, likely to avoid the fate of the service.

When you visit Filesonic’s website today you will notice an announcement on the frontpage that states:

All sharing functionality on Filesonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally

Users who try to download files see the following message instead on the Filesonic website:

All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally.

If this file belongs to you, please login to download it directly from your file manager.

But FileSonic is not the only file sharing site that made changes to their business model after the Megaupload bust. Uploaded, another popular file sharing service, started to block visitors from the United States. Visitors from the United States see a blue landing page that tells them that the service is no longer available in their country.

Both file sharing companies are registered outside the United States. FileSonic operates from the Netherlands while Uploaded from Hong Kong.

Neither FileSonic nor Uploaded have released statements about the changes yet. There is no certainty that Megaupload’s takedown had anything to do with the decision but the proximity of events would suggest it did.

What’s going to happen next? It is likely that FileSonic will lose a good chunk of their traffic in the coming weeks. Users will move on and use other file sharing services to share files. It needs to be point out that this does not necessarily mean illegal activities. File sharing sites are ideal to share small to medium sized files with friends and family as well.

Users who have personal files on file sharing sites should consider making a backup of those files just in case. Services like Dropbox allow you to store files in the cloud, along with synchronization options and sharing.

Update: It appears that Fileserve has started to make changes as well. The file hosts affiliate program page is no longer accessible on the site, and according to Neowin, users are reporting that their accounts have been terminated. The message they receive when they log in states the following:

Unsuccessful login
Your account has been disabled due to violations of our Terms and Conditions

Update 2: File sharing service Uploadbox has announced that they will be shutting down servers. All files that they host will be deleted on January 30th.

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.

I already mentioned earlier today that I like to use the JDownloader software to download files from file hosting services. It is more convenient, especially since it saves the download queue so that downloads can be resumed at any time. Captchas on the other hand still need to be filled out. That’s a problem if you need to leave the computer for a longer period of time, or if you do not want the captchas to disturb you from other computer activities.

Ghacks reader KoalaBear suggested to use the plugin Captcha Trader for automatic captcha solving. The service is offered as a plugin for JDownloader, MiPony and a handful of other popular downloaders. It basically allows the user to either buy credits or solve captchas in advance so that captchas in JDownloader are resolved automatically by the plugin.

Here is how Captcha Trader works.

• Visit the Captcha Trader website and create an account.
• Switch to the Plugins directory on the site and download the plugin for your software and operating system. I’m going to demonstrate how to add the plugin to JDownloader. Readme files are included that explain how the plugins are installed.
• Extract the folder and copy it to the \JDownloader\jd\captcha\methods\ folder.
• Edit captchatrader.properties with a text editor and add your username and password to the file.
• Restart JDownloader.

The plugin will not show up in JDownloader. It won’t work right away since you do not have any credits in the beginning. That is, unless you have bought credits on the site. 10000 credits on the site, good for at least 1000 solved captchas cost $6 Dollars.

Instead of paying, users can earn credits by solving captchas on the Captcha Trader website. A click on Earn Credits displays a captcha every 50 or so seconds. Solving the captcha correctly will award credits to the account.

Users earn seven credits for text recognition captchas, and three for image recognition captchas. It costs ten credits to solve text captchas, and five credits to solve image recognition captchas.

It is furthermore possible to cash out at anytime. 10000 credits equate $1.

Once you got enough credits, captchas are automatically resolved in the software you use to download files from file hosts. The captcha should not pop up anymore which is great if you need to work full screen.

Today while starting up JDownloader I noticed a strange behavior. The program prompted to pick a language first, and then showed up with an empty download queue. That was unfortunate since I had some downloads left in the queue from the other day.

I first thought that I had just installed a second instance of JDownloader, but discovered a moment later that the new installation seemed to have overwritten the database file containing the file download queue.

I knew that JDownloader was creating backups of the database in regular intervals. I checked the backup folder of the JDownloader program folder to find out that the program had saved more than a dozen database backups in the past months.

This was interesting in itself as it can be seen as a privacy issue by some users as it is possible to restore the download queue with the help of the backups.

The last database backup file is database.zip. To restore it you need to do the following. Quit the JDownloader program. Make sure it is completely terminated and not sitting minimized in the system tray.

Open the database.zip file and extract the contents (database.properties and database.script) to the main JDownloader/config/ directory. Replace the two database files listed there.

This restores the download queue. You may still be missing a few downloads though depending on the time and day the last backup was created by the file downloader. In my case, the last backup had been created four days ago which meant that I lost a few file downloads that I added after that date.

Many Dropbox users have expressed concern over the policy change on the Dropbox website and on other Internet sites. Neowin, never shy to put a finder into a wound, even claimed that Dropbox could legally sell all files of their users to third parties.

The policy was updated again yesterday, it now reads:

We sometimes need your permission to do what you ask us to do with your stuff (for example, hosting, making public, or sharing your files). By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service.This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission.

The bold part as been added by Dropbox to clarify the policy.

Another aspect that has not been mentioned by sites like Neowin is the fact that the wording is more or less an industry standard. When you look at Google’s terms of service you read under 11.1 for instance:

You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

Facebook’s Terms of Service state:

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

I’m no lawyer and cannot really say if those rights are necessary or if they could be cut down and simplified further. Users who are openly against the terms of service can either encrypt their files before they are uploaded and synced, or leave the service.

What’s your take on the new terms of service?

The Nul Folder

The nul folder is designed to make it easy to get rid of output. In the days of the command line interface, where everything was text on a screen, you might not want to see some (or any) information from a command. In this case, you could redirect that output to the nul folder. If you moved a file to a nul folder, then it would be deleted. With GUIs and the Trash Can / Recycle Bin, this is not as useful as it once was; it is mostly there for legacy support. That does not mean we cannot find new uses for it.

Note: In Windows, you cannot create a folder with “nul” as the name, but you can create a nul folder on Dropbox’s website.

A Linux Only Folder

The nul folder can exist on a Linux system. There is a similar feature in Linux, but it only exists in one place: /dev/null (and is a file rather than a folder). Since nul is a valid folder in this case, and it can exist on the web access, then you can use it to store files. It is impossible for the folder to show up in Windows, but Dropbox will not penalize Linux. Any files stored there will only available via Linux or the web access. It still will affect your quota, but it can save you hard drive space on Windows.

You could have nul as a top level folder and a hierarchy under it. Everything inside it would be organized but only exist in Linux. That includes subfolders and files within them.

Some Non-Linux Uses

Even if you do not use Linux, you could still use this trick for other purposes. On example is akin to a secret folder. The only way to access it would be from the website. From there, files could be copied and moved in and out of the secret folder as needed. The files would never show up on the computer. Another would be as an cloud recycle bin. Moving a file from a normal folder to a nul folder (from the web access) would delete it from the hard drive but not from Dropbox.

A Note of Caution

It is doubtful that this is an intended feature. It is more likely that this is an interoperability quirk. Dropbox has to work with multiple operating systems that work in different ways. Dropbox may alter the methods it employs or a bug may come into play unnoticed. The more information you store in a nul folder, the bigger the risk you take.

Another thing to consider is that this method may work with “con”, “aux”, “prn”, and other device files too. Those are more legacy devices that cannot be folders on a Windows computer. If you want files to be available in Windows and Linux, do not call the folder any reserved name.

(Okay, there really is a way to create these folders, but we do not recommend it.)

What About Macs?

I did not have a Macintosh computer to test this trick on. Since Macs are so similar to Linux, my guess is that you could make a Linux/Mac only folder. In other words, Windows is always the odd man out. Hopefully some of our Mac users will give this a try and let us know.

Today Microsoft made the announcement that SkyDrive had been updated to full HTMl5 glory. What does it mean for SkyDrive users? The service is a lot faster and easier to navigate, provided that a HTML5 capable web browser is used to access the service.

Performance and speed has been optimized considerably. Core tasks like opening folders or navigating photo albums have been improved, with Microsoft citing reductions of 6 to 9 seconds for those tasks. SkyDrive is now making use of hardware accelerated graphics, provided that the web browser and video card support the feature. Microsoft furthermore removed “anything that slowed the experience down or got in the way of a fast, clean site”.

The layout of SkyDrive has been optimized. It resembles the Windows Explorer layout of Windows 7 now, with menus on the side and top, and the folders and files in the center of the screen. Users should now be able to reach their destinations faster, be it files, folders or albums.

The photo viewer has been improved as well. It now utilizes HTML5 and displays in a clean and rich manner. Infinite scrolling has been added to eliminate page switching to see more photos.

Microsoft has added HTML5 video playback support of H.264 files to SkyDrive. The videos can have a size of up to 100 Megabytes.

Internet Explorer and Windows 7 users can utilize jumplists to pin Skydrive to the Windows 7 Taskbar for access to often used features and sections.

Here is a short video of the new SkyDrive demonstrating the new features and capabilities of the file hosting service.

You can check out SkyDrive at the official website. Everyone is free to join and will get the 25 Gigabytes of online space.

Windows users can use the Windows Live SkyDrive Explorer software to access SkyDrive directly from their desktop. (via HTML5 SkyDrive Now Available)

Here is my offer for software developers and users alike. If you have a software that you would like to be hosted on the Internet, you can do so here on Ghacks. Just send me the program and I will host it on my server. You can link to the download directly from your website if you like, or to a post here on Ghacks that reviews the application. A link back would in both cases be appreciated.

You can also contact me if you are not a developer but have software on your hard drive that is hard to find and without developer homepage. I upload the program to the repository here so that everyone can download it more easily.

All programs are tripple-checked with online and offline antivirus applications to make sure that they are clean and do not contain malicious code. I have created a temporary download page here on Ghacks. Plan is to beautify it a little bit, as it looks pretty awful at the moment.

You can access that page by following the software downloads link.

Please note that Ghacks is not offering hosting for web pages, only for software downloads at this point in time. This might change as well if enough software developers show interest in this opportunity. For now, if you have coded a program but do not know where to upload it to, let me know about it.

I’d also like to point out that we cannot host certain type of files, including cracking or hacking related applications.

Use the contact form at the top of the page, or leave a comment in this thread to discuss this further.

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.

Torrents are created right on the frontpage of the service. Just paste a web url pointing to a file in the form on the start page to create the torrent. The file is then processed by BurnBit. The processing time varies, and depends on parameters like the size of the file, the connection to the hosting provider and the load on the BurnBit server.

Once processed, the torrent of the file is offered for download on a newly created page on the website. You can download the torrent right away from the page, or share the page or torrent with friends.

Webmasters can embed download buttons on their websites which display the current number of seeders and leechers. These buttons can be customized with CSS. Torrents can be downloaded with a click on the button and loaded into any software that supports the Bittorrent protocol.

Additional HTTP mirrors can be added to increase the number of web seeds. This improves the availability, connectivity and download speed for all users significantly. Additional file mirrors are added the very same way as the initial file locations. BurnBit compares file hashes to make sure that files are identical.

All users can register to become a member of the site. Registration is free and comes with additional privileges, like monitoring and customizing torrents, or receiving notifications.

Creating a Torrent, Restrictions

Users have two options to create torrents. They can either use the homepage of the service to create the torrents, or embed the download script on their site to automatically create torrents. Regardless of the method, they always have to link to a file on the Internet to create the torrent. There are no size limitations for the files that can be turned into torrents. The largest file seen on site had a size of more than 16 Gigabytes.

Seen on site? Yes, BurnBit maintains a torrent directory on site where users can download torrents uploaded by other members of the site.

A few restrictions have been added. It is not allowed to create torrents of copyrighted or adult files. Users may also notice that some sites are blocked by the developers because of past abuse of the service.

File downloads in theory, should not take longer than direct http downloads. They may even be faster if enough seeders are available to push the download rate for downloading users. Webmasters can save lots of bandwidth provided that multiple users download files hosted on their sites. They won’t benefit from the service if only one user downloads a file using torrents.

BurnBit is used as the tracker for the torrent file. This could be problematic considering that downloads will stop working if the service goes offline or out of business. An option to add multiple trackers to each torrent needs to be implemented to put webmasters at ease.

BurnBit is an ingenious service, especially for webmasters who offer downloads on their websites, and users who want to distribute files as torrents instead of web downloads.

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.

The issue caused quite the controversy among users, as it could only be exploited if an attacker was able to get access to the computer. And with access, come all kinds of power including the ability to snag files directly from the local computer.

Still, Dropbox addressed the issue quickly on their website and promised to deliver an update that would resolve the issue.

That update is now available in form of an experimental Dropbox 1.2 build for all supported desktop operating systems.

Users can download Dropbox 1.2 from the official Dropbox website. It needs to be noted though that experimental builds may not be as stable as release builds. Cautious users may consider waiting for the final release of Dropbox 1.2 before updating to the new version. This may take a few weeks though.

Dropbox 1.2 introduces a new encrpyted database format to “prevent unauthorized access to local Dropbox client database” in addition to the security enhancements. This is related to the security issue, as the user who discovered the vulnerability in first place did uncover it by analyzing the local Dropbox client database.

Some third party applications that rely on databases will stop working after updating Dropbox to version 1.2.

It took Dropbox less than two weeks to develop the means to protect the configuration files and databases on the local system. Good work.

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!.

A better solution in many cases is to use Dropbox to send the documents to the computer that is connected to the printer.

All you need is a Dropbox connection on the device and the computer that is connected to the printer. It basically works by running a script on the computer with printer that will monitor one Dropbox folder whenever the script is running.

Documents that are copied into the folder will be automatically added to the print queue and printed so that it is possible to print while you are on the road or working with another computer.

Executing the eprint.vbs script creates the folder Printqueue in the Dropbox folder.

• Step 1: Make sure that you have Dropbox on the computer that is connected to the printer.
• Step 2: To send print jobs from your mobile device to the printer, you have two options.

  You can download a Dropbox app on your mobile phone — they have apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Nokia, webOS (Palm), and Android based phones.
  Alternatively, you can send files from your mobile phone to Dropbox using email. Just connect your Dropbox account with Habilis and they’ll give you a unique email address – any files or attachments sent to this address will automatically appear in your Dropbox folder.

• Step 3: Download this zip file* and double-click the eprint.vbs file (see the source code). The script will create a sub-folder inside your main Dropbox folder called PrintQueue where all the mobile print jobs will queue up and another sub-folder called logs where all the completed jobs will be archived.

  [*] VBS scripts are Windows-only but there are workarounds for Mac OS X and Linux as well.

• Step 4: You are now all set to print files from our mobile phone. Just send a test file from your mobile phone to that secret email address, or upload it through the Dropbox mobile app, and your printer will turn it into a hard copy almost instantly.

  The utility can also handle multiple files in one go and it should print almost all file formats for which you have an associated application on the computer. If you would like to shut down the eprint utility, launch Windows task manager and end the “wscript.exe” process from the list.

(via)

How do you handle print jobs on devices that have no direct printer connection?

The file hosting management tool RSFind! Mod for the Firefox web browser offers a handy solution for users who regularly download files from file hosters.

The main feature of the add-on is link identification. It supports dozens of different file hosters and displays all links pointing to those hosters in a browser overlay. A click on the icon in the statusbar of the browser scans the page and spawns the link list afterwards.

Here it is then possible to select none, one or multiple links and either copy the link information to the clipboard or open them in separate tabs in the browser. The clipboard option is handy for users who work with tools such as JDownloader to download files from file hosting websites.

Extensive options are available to customize the functionality and process. The add-on fixes obfuscated links automatically and extracts links in links (for instance if an anonymizer is used in front of the actual link). Users can remove those searching options or add new options like searching for links in plain text as well.

It is furthermore possible to remove file hosting services so that their links will be ignored by the scan. Handy if you do not want to use a specific file hosting service or only want to use some (for instance if you have premium accounts at some).

RSFind! Mod is a handy add-on for users who regularly download files from file hosting websites.

These services are interesting even though they are paid service. They both basically act as a proxy to download from various file hosting services like Rapidshare, Megaupload, Hotfiles or Filefactory.

Internet users who download regularly from multiple file hosting sites may like the idea to use one site for all the downloads, instead of the file hosting sites themselves.

Leechpack is offering a short introductory video of their service. Users can paste links that point to supported file hosting sites in the Leechpack interface to let the service download those files from the file hosts. Once the files have been downloaded they become available to the user who is now able to download them from the site.

LeechPack: The superior choice in filesharing! from LeechPack on Vimeo.

Both services work similar in this regard, just copy and paste links into the form and download the files once they have been downloaded by the downloading service.

Now, both services are free to sign up with offer no trial transfer limit at this point, at least not when signing up directly on the websites. The cheapest accounts cost €3,99 at DownloadNow and 6,99€ at Leechget. Both come with traffic limitations, 5 Gigabytes plus 1 Gigabyte per day at DownloadNow and 60 Gigabytes and 30 Gigabytes disk space at Leechpack.

To put this into perspective, Rapidshare users get 150 Gigabytes of traffic for 5,99€ per month. But the main benefit of using a service like DownloadNow or Leechpack is not necessarily linked to being able to download a lot. It is the convenience of being able to download from all supported file hosting companies without having to fill out captchas or waiting for downloads to start.

Lets take a closer look at the supported services:

Leechpack supports Netloads, File Factory, Freakshare, x7, EasyShare, FileServeNew!, Rapidshare, Megaupload, Depositfiles, Megashares, Storage.to, Uploadbox, Uploaded.to, FileSonicNew! and torrent downloads.

DownloadNow in contrast supports hotfile, megaupload, uploaded.to, netload, easy-share, uploading, filefactory, depositfiles, megashares, filesonic and fileserver.

Some file hosting services are supported by both proxy downloaders. Leechpack unique is the ability to download torrents (which are seeded until a 1:1 ratio is reached).

So, who would use a service like this? Users who want to download files from multiple file hosting sites obviously come to mind. But it is also possible to use at least the Leechpack service as a seedbox for torrents. Then again, this comes at a price and I personally am not sure if users would opt in for one of those services, especially if they tend to download files majorly from one specific file hosting site.

Would I personally use one of the services? No, I do not think so. Mainly because I’m not download files from file hosting sites, or only rarely at most. Users who download from a lot of supported file hosting sites could consider it, especially if they are already paying the file hosting service directly.

What’s your take on this kind of services? Let me know in the comments.

So what do you get in this new release of the popular file hosting, management, syncing and sharing solution? Some of the highlights include lots of bug fixes, reduced resource usage and performance enhancements. If that’s not enough for you yet to give it a try look below for detailed release information taken directly from the announcement.

Our highest quality yet – When you’re shipping software to millions of people, a problem that affects even 1 out of 10,000 is a big deal. And the most important feature of any file syncing software is that it just works. This release represents thousands of hours fixing problems people should never have to think about: invalid file names on Windows, weird Unicode normalizations, Word and Excel file locking, abnormal symlinks hierarchies, case sensitive file systems on Mac, TrueCrypt support, …the list goes on. Whether you’re using Dropbox for work, school, or play, we’re confident that today’s Dropbox offers the best file sync experience out there.

Huge performance enhancements – Dropbox 1.0 is strong enough to sync your entire digital life yet still lightweight and fast. We completely re-architected the client-side sync engine to optimize the response time, scale, and resource consumption. Keeping track of millions of files can require lots of memory if not done properly. This version reduces memory usage by up to 50%. It’s speedier and more efficient when handling big changes to your Dropbox while ensuring that smaller changes remain quick.

Better user experience – We’ve completely redesigned our initial setup wizard on all three platforms to make it easier to get started using Dropbox. The preference menus are more organized, intuitive, and snazzy. We’ve also rewritten our Mac OS X version to only use Cocoa so Dropbox looks and feels much more native on the Mac. This also brings down the Mac download size by 20%

Selective Sync – If you have a netbook or a computer with a tiny hard drive, syncing your entire Dropbox isn’t always a great idea. You also might not want certain files on your home computer to pop up on your work computer. Selective Sync solves these problems! You now can choose which folders get downloaded to which computers. This saves you time so you don’t have to sync stuff you don’t need. To learn more, head to our help center.

Extended Attribute Sync – Syncing resource forks have historically been a pain for Mac users. In case you don’t know, resource forks are a secret area of a file that certain applications (like Quicken, Quark, and OmniGraffle) use to store important data. Most sync programs today completely ignore these forks, which results in a corrupted file on the other end. But worry not! Resource forks and other extended attributes now work great with Dropbox. Hooray!

Some of the more interesting additions are TrueCrypt support, a 50% memory reduction in Dropbox 1.0 and selective syncing for situations where you do not want to sync everything.

Dropbox is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple Macintosh and mobile devices.. New users and existing user sneed to download Dropbox 1.0 from the official website. (via)