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.

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?

Users who frequently or rarely download from Rapidshare on the other hand might prefer a solution that is directly integrated into the web browser.

Auto Free Rapidshare offers such a solution for the Google Chrome web browser. The extension basically removes all necessary steps after the Rapidshare file url has been loaded in the browser.

The extension will automatically click the Free User button, wait for the Rapidshare time limit to count down and start the download in the end.

This saves the user a few clicks and more importantly the hassle of checking whether the download link is already displayed on the Rapidshare page.

Auto Free Rapidshare can be downloaded from the official Google Chrome Extension gallery.

Firefox users can take a look at Automatically Download Files From Rapidshare In Firefox for a solution working in their browser.

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.

FreeRapid Downloader is a downloader for several dozens free file hosting websites. It uses a plugin based system to enable support for the different file hosting websites. These plugins are automatically checked and updated from within the program’s interface.

One interesting aspect of the file hosting downloader is that it is available for Windows, Linux and Mac if Java is installed on the computer systems. There are multiple ways of getting links into the downloader. The downloader automatically monitors the clipboard to become active whenever a link that is pointing to a file hosting website is copied into the clipboard. That’s a very comfortable way of handling downloads unless multiple links need to be added to the software program.

The second option is available in the program itself. It is possible to copy one or multiple links into the interface which are then processed by the software. The free file hosting downloader will then automatically start downloading files that are in its queue. It can check for availability and will display an error message if files are not available anymore.

The options are quite extensive ranging from automatic update options to proxy servers to alerts and error handling. The main benefit of using this program is its simplicity. It works really well and the only downside that users might find is the missing support for premium accounts that are offered by some of the file hosting websites. FreeRapid Downloader can be downloaded from the developer’s website. Check out the Rapidshare Search article for some options to search the popular file hosting website.

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.

RapidWareX was recently updated with the ability to stream audio and video directly from the Rapidshare servers. This new feature is currently only working with video files that have been encoded with the Divx codec and audio files that have the mp3 file extension. The video can consist of a single avi file, a collection of uncompressed and unencrypted rar archives or a collection of HJSplit files.

The Rapidshare Downloader requires a working Rapidshare account to download or stream files from the file hoster. That’s a bit unfortunate and a distinct disadvantage in comparison to other Rapidshare download managers such as the Rapidshare download manager JDownloader.

Links can be added to RapidWareX in various ways including copying pasting them directly in the application, pasting html from the clipboard or loading links from files that are stored on the local computer system. Quite a few options are available that make the downloading process more comfortable. The program can retry downloads, display the remaining download traffic, offers a remote interface and secure links over https.

The program offers a build in Rapidshare search module which will redirect the requests to a website that is displaying the search results. RapidWareX is a free download for the Windows operating system and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 to run.

Skip Screen is a extension for the Firefox web browser that skips those pages on various websites. The add-on is currently supporting the following nine file hosting websites: Rapidshare, zShare, MediaFire, Megaupload, Sharebee, Depositfiles, Sendspace, Divshare and Linkbucks.

The add-on for the web browser will automatically skip those pages. A message will be displayed above the Firefox status bar to give the user an indication that pages were skipped. Some file hosters do still require user action to start the download of the files while some will instantly display the save file browser to download the file to the local computer. This is for instance at Depositfiles the case. The developer of the Firefox extension is encouraging users to suggest websites that make use of unnecessary pages.

The add-on is currently experimental which means users need to log into the Mozilla website to download and install the add-on.

The tool accepts links to Rapidshare files which can be either pasted one by one or posted as a batch into the interface of the Rapidshare downloader. The tool will automatically display the added files in the list of downloads that are to be processed. There is only one further step that the user has to make before the downloads can be started: A one time configuration of the local download directory.

It surely cannot get easier than this. A click on the Start button will initiate the download of the first file in the list. The Rapidshare downloader will display the file name, status, download speed, downloaded size and total size of the current download in the interface. Completed files are added to the Files Finished list to provide an overview of the downloaded files to the user of the software program.

The wait time between downloads can take up to 15 minutes and the usual limitations apply. The software does not provide the means to reset the IP of the computer to be able to download additional files or to make use of premium accounts to use faster download speeds and experience less wait times and limitations.

The software (via Eches) can be downloaded from the developers website.

The file upload service works by selecting the mirror sites that the file should be uploaded to in the first step. After that the file has to be uploaded to the Gazup servers. It is alternatively possible to pick the remote upload option instead which makes it possible to paste urls that point to files in a form which get then downloaded by Gazup. Once the files have been uploaded either way they get distributed by Gazup to the selected file hosts.

This is shown visually on a new page listing the current upload status of each individual file host. The download links are shown when an upload has finished successfully. This link can be copied and pasted as usual.

Gazup does offer special sharing links for forums, websites and friends. It is a simple code that can be embedded in the context. It does link to the main Gazup page where the user has the option to select one of the available file hosts mirrors. This is excellent for users who regularly upload files for forums and websites and want to make sure that the files are still available after some time.

via Download Squad.

Rapidstack (via Download Squad) is a realtime Rapidshare Search Engine. What does that mean? Unlike many other Rapidshare search engines it will scan the links before they are displayed in the search results. Only links that are found to be working will be listed while all others will be excluded from the list.

The interface is making use of Ajax to display new results as soon as they have been scanned by the search engine. Rapidstack will display the amount of total links as well as the good and bad ones. Each search result displays the title, url and the amount of links that have been found.

The search results provide access to two functions. The first is to click on the title of a search result to visit the website that is linking to Rapidshare. The second is to extract all Rapidshare links on that specific page of the website. This will open a list of Rapidshare links which can be comfortably pasted into a Rapidshare download software.

It is interesting to note that Rapidstack seems to concentrate on websites that post links to Rapidshare unlike many other Rapidshare search engines that post direct links.

The Rapidshare downloader has been designed with simplicity and speed in mind. All you need to do besides pasting a few Rapidshare links into the download.txt document is to execute the main application rapiddownload.exe. That’s it: Rapid Download will do everything automatically from that point on. This includes checking if the files are still available on the Rapidshare website, scanning for the real download link, running down the wait countdown and finally downloading the files to the local computer.

The software program comes with zero configuration options at this point. This means no Rapidshare Premium account usage, no timers, setting a download path or anything else that might distract from the number one goal: Downloading files from Rapidshare.

Simply paste in your links, execute the tool and let it run until it is finished. Yes, it could do better with some configuration options which would make it more comfortably but if need to download files fast you might want to give it a try. Make sure to check out our Rapidshare Search article that helps you find files to download.

It is not yet another proxy if that is what you thought. The add-on merely lookups the IP of the Rapidshare download page and uses that to initiate the download. If the network administrator has only banned Rapidshare.com in the network then it will work.

If he did ban the IP range as well it won’t. Once installed the add-on adds a toolbar with an option to paste a Rapidshare link into it. Pasting the link into it and pressing the button next to the toolbar will change the url so that the IP is used for accessing the download page.

A Javascript window will be launched once the IP has been converted which will immediately display the download dialog. It seems to also be an excellent shortcut to download Rapidshare files even if the file hoster is not banned in the network.

The Firefox add-on is experimental which means that you have to log into the Mozilla website before you can download it. You find a list of Rapidshare Search engines by following the link.

The language can only be changed in the options once the application has been installed which means that users will have to find their way through the Russian installation dialogs. That’s not a huge problem though for users who have installed hundreds of applications in the past.

The two images below demonstrate how to change the language from Russian to English.

Some elements of the interface will remain in Russian though but that is nothing to worry about. A list of Rapidshare links can be added to the Rapidshare downloader by clicking on the + icon in the top navigation menu. Other options include the ability to simply use [CTRL V] to paste them into the program’s interface.

The downloader will automatically download the selected files from Rapidshare. It is possible to add proxies in the application but it can practically be left running in the background because it does not require user interaction after starting the downloads.

The article Rapidshare Search might help you find some interesting websites that contain links to files that are hosted on Rapidshare.

The Cavern Links Checker has been developed as a links checker for the Cavern’s forum but has been expanded since then to check links anywhere on the Internet pointing to various file hosts like Rapidhsare, Megashare or Megaupload.

A total of 13 different file hosters are currently supported by the script. Since the link checker works on every Internet site it comes in handy for users who use search engines to find files on sites like Rapidshare but also for users who frequent forums or websites with their own databases.

Firefox users will have to download and install the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox before installing the user script. Google Chrome users can take a look at the Google Chrome Greasemonkey article while Opera users can do the same at Greasemonkey in Opera. Internet Explorer users might want to take a look at Trixie to add Greasemonkey support.

Rapidshare Tool is a Rapidshare Links Checker for Firefox that can do the same thing and more. It adds a subtle button to the Firefox status bar which shines in light green whenever Rapidshare links have been discovered on a website. The link checker can then be activated by pressing the keyboard combination [ALT F9] or by right-clicking the Rapidshare status bar icon and selecting Link Checker from the available options.

The Rapidshare links checker works pretty fast. It never took longer than a few seconds to check all links on a website. Valid links will be shown with a green dot while expired links can be identified by a red dot. Encrypted http links are also identified and checked by the tool. Encrypted meaning basic encryption like changing http to hxxp or hyyp.

All links – or only the valid ones – can be copied to the clipboard or saved in a file which is excellent for users who use a Rapidshare download manager of sorts to download files from Rapidshare.

Rapidshare Tool for Firefox works surprisingly well even though it is an experimental add-on meaning that only users with an account at Mozilla can download and install the add-on at the moment.

The Firefox add-on provides an interesting option for hardcore Rapidshare users who regularly download files from the file hoster.

The new search engine Crawl Rapidshare (via Technospot) tries to raise the bar by providing real time search results that are automatically checked by a script to inform the user if a link is not working anymore. It still makes use of search engines to populate the search results but it does add the real time results and the file checking as added services that makes the Rapidshare service more usable than most other websites that offer a similar one.

The option to check the links has to be enabled by checking the Check Links Validity box beneath the search form. It will slow down the search because every link will be checked first and then listed on the page. The file size of working links will also be displayed next to the name of the file which is another useful information.

The software client basically uses one source folder on the hard drive where all the files and folders are stored in locally. Uploading files is just a matter of moving files and folders into the Dropbox zone on the computer or by creating and editing files already in that special folder.

When the Dropbox client is running the files and folders will get automatically synced with the online client which keeps the most recent copies of the files and folders including file revisions. The web client of DropBox can be used to download or view files without having to run the software client. The client can also be used to upload new files to the service.

Dropbox currently has a 2 Gigabyte limit for every user which is definitely enough for many purposes. One of the interesting features of Dropbox is being able to share a folder with another person. It pretty much works the same as sharing a folder between different computers.

Users have many different options to find files that are hosted on Rapidshare. Some of these methods include the use of specific Google search parameters that will only search Rapidhshare for the files and file types that the user specified in the search.

Other options include so called Rapidshare Search Engines which maintain their own database of files that are hosted at the file hoster. They usually keep the databases up to date and link directly to Rapidshare for easy file access.

There is another type of site that is offering Rapidshare searches, not nearly as effective as the sites that maintain their own database. So called Google custom search engines do nothing else than to combine the advanced search parameters of Google with a custom search engine that is bringing in revenue for the creator of the search engine. They can normally be identified by looking at the search button. If that button states Google Search you know that it is a custom Google search and not a website with its own database.

If you want to find Rapidshare files you can use the following Rapidshare search engines that all use their own database.

Rapidshare Files

• Rapidshare Search Engine [link]
• One Click Files[link]
• Mega Download [link]
• File Crop [link]
• Rapid TVPHP [link]
• Files Tube [link]
• Rapidzilla [link]
• RS Rapidshares [link]
• RS Find [link]
• Rapidshare Data [link]

It is easy to find hundreds of Rapidshare files search engines on the Internet but most of them provide no benefit over a normal Google search. Those ten websites in the list are unique.