13BIT IT news Blog

Recently, the need for space has become immense. Files have become increasingly larger, there are more things to download and so on. Personally, I run out of space on multiple drives all the time. Maybe you are trying to get a file sent to someone, but it’s too large for an attachment on your email. Possibly you want to backup some files to download later or multiple times. That is why there are file hosts.

I have found numerous different file hosting companies, many of them that supply users with an extremely small amount of space or limited features. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Filedropper - Filedropper is amazing.   All you need to do to upload a file is click “Upload” and select a file.

Many free file hosting sites give users the option to upload file of up to 100-150MB, yet Filedropper allows users to upload an amazing 5GB!

When you finish uploading a file, Filedropper gives you the link and the source code to add to a website, if you like.

2. Fileqube - Fileqube is another free file hosting site. It has an awesome site design that definitely shows it’s intentions. It is also extremely fast. When you upload a file, a link is provided to download the file, a link to remove the file, and HTML code to add to a website, etc. Unfortunately, Fileqube only allows for uploads of up to only 150MB, yet most certainly one of the best.

3. MyFreeFileHosting- MyFreeFileHosting has an interface similar to MediaFire’s. It includes the option to send an notification email to someone to tell them of the upload, tags to categorize the file, etc. Of course, after one uploads the file, links are given to allow for download and distribution. The maximum file size allowed is 100MB.

4. Fileden - Fileden is one of the most useful file hosting services. Users are allowed to upload files, without an account, of files up to 100MB, yet you are allowed to register an account for free as well and receive unlimited diskspace, unlimited bandwith, the option to create projects, the ability to replace files, file statistics, project statistics, etc.

5. Easyshare - Easyshare adds even more features to file hosting. Registering and uploading files occur quickly, with accounts allowing for downloading files multiple times. Unlike other free file hosts though, Easyshare pays users for their uploads. If your upload gets downloaded 10,000 times, you’ll apparently receive $20. If you have a personalized toolbar on your website, you can receive money from their uploads through that toolbar and if you refer another person to Easyshare you’ll receive 10% of their earnings.

Another neat thing about this site is the upload options. You can upload on the site from your computer, upload using an FTP server, upload using their free software, or use a remote upload from another server. The maximum file size for a free account is 100MB.

6. FileFactory - Filefactory is similar to all of the previous file hosts, except it supports the option to send a notification email to a person of an uploaded file. Unfortunately, Filefactory contains a large amount of ads if you do not receive the premium service. Yet, unlike the other file hosts, the maximum file size is 300MB which is a large amount per file in comparison. Similar to Easyshare, users are paid for each download they receive from a certain file.

7. Badongo - Badongo is an exceptionally neat file host, and I would most certainly rate it as one of the best. As a unregistered user, you are allowed to upload up to 4.8GB a day and as a free, registered user, 12GB a day. To make it similar to Filedropper, Badongo allows users to upload files of a maximum size of 1GB. When you register with Badongo you even receive an account that stores all of your files of course, but also allows users to create picture albums out of the pictures they store. This brings even more wonderful features to this awesome site.

More features include the option to create an MP3 player on your website by pasting code from your account, the ability to create slideshows from pictures with multiple effects, a file widget tool to place on websites, a desktop application for uploading files quickly, etc.

Now that you have seen some of the top web hosts, tell us what you use to upload and store your files online.

When it comes to icons, web designers and graphic artists have an excellent opportunity to showcase their craft, prove their experience and explore their creativity. A sweet, nice icon set is a perfect showcase of designer’s work and a powerful instrument to build up your reputation online. In fact, designers make use of it, creating absolutely amazing icon sets and offering them for free download. More...

Some of them work with information you supply, letting you manipulate, track and share data, such as your schedule or your to-do list. Others, so-called mashups, draw data from different sites and reassemble it to make something new. They're all part of how the Web is evolving beyond just a bunch of point sources for information. Here are 11 examples that show what the new Web can do, from helping you organize your life to adding some personalized fun to it.

Personal assistants

GrandCentral

Ever wish you could exercise the same control over incoming phone calls as you do over e-mail? GrandCentral — now a Google operation — gives you a new phone number and forwards incoming calls to any other number or numbers you specify. More...

Live coverage of the Google App Engine launch event is here.

Google isn’t just talking about hosting applications in the cloud any more. Tonight at 9pm PT they’re launching Google App Engine (Update: The site is live), an ambitious new project that offers a full-stack, hosted, automatically scalable web application platform. It consists of Python application servers, BigTable database access (anticipated here and here) and GFS data store services.

At first blush this is a full on competitor to the suite of web services offered by Amazon, including S3 (storage), EC2 (virtual servers) and SimpleDB (database).

Unlike Amazon Web Services’ loosely coupled architecture, which consists of several essentially independent services that can optionally be tied together by developers, Google’s architecture is more unified but less flexible. For example, it is possible with Amazon to use their storage service S3 independently of any other services, while with Google using their BigTable service will require writing and deploying a Python script to their app servers, one that creates a web-accessible interface to BigTable.

What this all means: Google App Engine is designed for developers who want to run their entire application stack, soup to nuts, on Google resources. Amazon, by contrast, offers more of an a la carte offering with which developers can pick and choose what resources they want to use.

Google Product Manager Tom Stocky described the new service to me in an interview today. Developers simply upload their Python code to Google, launch the application, and can monitor usage and other metrics via a multi-platform desktop application.

More details from Google: More...

How do I contact the owner of a website? How popular is my site on Digg or Delicious? What other websites are hosted on my web server ? Is my competitor using WordPress or Drupal? xyz.com is loading fast, what is the name of their web hosting company ? Is my blog accessible from China or Japan ?

If you got questions like these in your mind, here are some of the most useful online tools to help you know each and every detail of any website on the planet.

Just-Ping.com - Just Ping help you know whether your website or blog is accessible from different cities of the world. Unlike other online ping services that run from one location, Just-Ping.com runs the ping command on your website from 26 different locations spread across the globe so you have a better idea about your site availability in different regions.

They even have a checkpoint in Shanghai so you can easily find out if some particular website is blocked in China or not. More...

Productivity

AbiWord (download)
Tired of expensive, slow, bloated word processors? Download this surprisingly powerful freebie, which includes sophisticated features such as mail merge and advanced layouts. The program handles a wide variety of document formats, including those of Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format, OpenOffice.org, and other programs.More...

Windows Vista 32-bit version of the 16 multi-lingual user interface kits (MUI) official download links.

Chinese (PRC) language kits :
Download

Chinese (Hong Kong SAR) language kits :
Download

English language kits :
Download

Italian language kits :
Download

Spanish language kits :
Download

Swedish language kits :
Download

Japanese language kits :
Download

Portuguese (Brazil) language kits :
Download

Norwegian language kits :
Download

Dutch language kits :
Download

Finnish language kits :
Download

French-language kits :
Download

Russian language kits :
Download

German language kits :
Download

Danish language kits :
Download

Korean language kits :
Download

SOMEONE upset with the growing size of the popular "Nero" cd and dvd-burning application decided to take matters into his or her own hands, and released unofficial "Nero Lite" and "Nero Micro" versions.

I remember the time when Nero -which seemed to come bundled with almost every decent CD-writer at some point- was a small and efficient application. It basically "got the job done", with a solid engine and decent interface. In the last few years, however, the size of the beast grew considerably, with the latest build 7.7.5.1 -released last month- being a 190MB download that does not include help files and which in addition lists "1 GB hard disk space" for a full install among its requirements. What used to be a small CD and DVD burning application now is a huge suite composed of the original "Burning Rom" plus: "Nero Express", "Nero CoverDesigner", "Nero WaveEditor", "Nero Toolkit", "Nero Vision", "Nero Recode", "Nero PhotoSnap", "Nero BackItUp", "Nero ImageDrive" and a few others I'm probably leaving out.

The "Nero Micro" installer

More...

(PCWORLD.com) Web apps that transcend the Web. PCs that redefine what a PC can do. And oh yeah, a certain cell phone you may have heard of. We pick 25 breakthroughs that you can get your hands on right now.
Make no mistake, the Web is taking over. Applications are moving to browsers en masse, and technology to take Web apps offline promises to smooth the road ahead. And let's not forget breakthrough devices advancing the Web-anywhere world: Apple has redefined the phone, and One Laptop per Child's sub-$200 laptop is delivering Internet-style collaboration to kids in developing nations. But innovation isn't all on the Web; the PC is evolving as well. Apple has reenvisioned backup, HP has created the first useful touch-screen PC, hybrid hard drives boost speed and battery life, and ultraportables have become even more useful. Chosen from the hundreds of products we reviewed in 2007, here are 25 that will change the way you work, communicate, and play this year--and beyond.

More...

According to a Computerworld survey of IT managers, data storage projects are the No. 2 project priority for corporations in 2008, up from No. 4 in 2007. IT teams are looking into clustered architectures and centralized storage-area networks as one way to control capacity growth, shifting away from big-iron storage and custom applications. The reason for the data avalanche? Archive data. In the private sector alone electronic archives will take up 27,000 petabytes (27 billion gigabytes) by 2010. E-mail growth accounts for much of that figure.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=307657&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_feat

Coding Horror has an interesting writeup on JavaScript performance in the big four browsers. He used WebKit's newly announced SunSpider to produce the results. If a probable anomaly in the IE7 results is overlooked, Firefox 2 is the slowest of the bunch. Atwood has also benchmarked the latest Firefox Beta, and its performance seems to be improved significantly.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001023.html

To show off Microsoft's development technologies, a company developer ran a demo of World of WarCraft in the Visual Studio environment.
A top official from Microsoft's developer division showcased an array of new development technologies on Tuesday, including a demo of the game World of Warcraft running within the company's Visual Studio integrated development environment.
Scott Guthrie, general manager of the developer division, gave a wide-ranging keynote at Microsoft's DevConnections conference at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas.
But he seemed to especially capture the audience's attention with the WarCraft demo, which coincided with Microsoft's announcement that it would let partners use Visual Studio and its accompanying software development kit to target platforms besides its own.
WarCraft, a popular online role-playing game, uses a programming language called LUA. The Microsoft presentation showed a developer using the familiar Visual Studio environment to code in LUA and create some extensions for the game.
"Not only does Visual Studio give you line-of-business productivity, but you can also triple-kill your opponents," Guthrie joked after an onscreen character coldly dealt death to a trio of hapless game characters.
The WarCraft add-on will be hosted as an open-source project on CodePlex, Guthrie said.
Mostly, however, Guthrie's keynote centered on Microsoft's multiyear, multiple product road map for application development.
A major focal point of that is Visual Studio 2008, which will be available this month. The company is attempting to jump-start adoption of the product by offering developers the ability to target multiple versions of the .NET Framework, the programming model underlying Microsoft's technologies.
The company is shipping version 3.5 of the framework this month, but many users may still be working on projects based on versions 3.0 or 2.0. Visual Studio 2008 can be used to target all three releases. "We think it's probably one of the most important features we've added," Guthrie said.
Guthrie and other spokesmen gave attendees a run through of additional new features in the 2008 release, including its tools for targeting Office applications. These used to be a separate purchase but are now built into the core IDE (integrated development environment).
He also discussed Silverlight, Microsoft's browser plug-in for rich Internet applications. The company released the 1.0 version of the plug-in in September, but that installment, which utilizes a JavaScript programming model, is meant primarily for working with media content. The 1.1 version, now in alpha, holds far more potential for developers because it delivers a subset of the .NET framework, meaning coders can develop applications for multiple browsers using any .NET language and with familiar tools.
Brian Goldfarb, group product manager, UX platform and tools strategy, acknowledged in an interview that to date, Microsoft's efforts around Silverlight have largely centered on consumer-oriented projects.
But he expects that to change as the technology matures in coming months and said evidence will surface at Microsoft's MIX conference in March. "The MIX show will be focused on the next generation of applications that Silverlight will provide," he said. "What you're looking at MIX next year is really a combination of [consumer-oriented uses] and more line-of-business applications."

Good news. Autopatcher.com opened a forum here for discussion about the future of the Autopatcher "all in one patch installer".

What's autopatcher.com?

Brian Harry's posted the final feature list for TFS 2008 (f.k.a "Orcas"):  http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/08/08/final-tfs-2008-feature-list.aspx

A few of my favorites:

• SharePoint 2007 support
• SQL 2008 support
• Simpler installation
• Native CI support
• NET object model for the build server
• Incremental builds & gets
• Get latest on checkout

Brief Description

• Red Hat Linux 9.0
• SuSE Linux 9.3
• SuSE Linux 10.0
• SuSE Linux 10.1
• SuSE Linux 10.2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bf12642f-77dc-4d45-ae4e-e1b05e0a2674&DisplayLang=en

Suffering from its exorbitant price point and a dearth of titles, Sony's PlayStation 3 isn't exactly the most popular gaming platform on the block. But while the console flounders in the commercial space, the PS3 may be finding a new calling in the realm of science and research. Right now, a cluster of eight interlinked PS3s is busy solving a celestial mystery involving gravitational waves and what happens when a super-massive black hole, about a million times the mass of our own sun, swallows up a star. As the architect of this research, Dr. Gaurav Khanna is employing his so-called "gravity grid" of PS3s to help measure these theoretical gravity waves -- ripples in space-time that travel at the speed of light -- that Einstein's Theory of Relativity predicted would emerge when such an event takes place. It turns out that the PS3 is ideal for doing precisely the kind of heavy computational lifting Khanna requires for his project, and the fact that it's a relatively open platform makes programming scientific applications feasible.
"The interest in the PS3 really was for two main reasons," explains Khanna, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth who specializes in computational astrophysics. "One of those is that Sony did this remarkable thing of making the PS3 an open platform, so you can in fact run Linux on it and it doesn't control what you do."
He also says that the console's Cell processor, co-developed by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, can deliver massive amounts of power, comparable even to that of a supercomputer -- if you know how to optimize code and have a few extra consoles lying around that you can string together.
"The PS3/Linux combination offers a very attractive cost-performance solution whether the PS3s are distributed (like Sony and Stanford's http://folding.stanford.edu/) or clustered together (like Khanna's), says Sony's senior development manager of research and development, Noam Rimon.
According to Rimon, the Cell processor was designed as a parallel processing device, so he's not all that surprised the research community has embraced it. "It has a general purpose processor, as well as eight additional processing cores, each of which has two processing pipelines and can process multiple numbers, all at the same time," Rimon says.
This is precisely what Khanna needed. Prior to obtaining his PS3s, Khanna relied on grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to use various supercomputing sites spread across the United States "Typically I'd use a couple hundred processors -- going up to 500 -- to do these same types of things."
However, each of those supercomputer runs cost Khanna as much as $5,000 in grant money. Eight 60 GB PS3s would cost just $3,200, by contrast, but Khanna figured he would have a hard time convincing the NSF to give him a grant to buy game consoles, even if the overall price tag was lower. So after tweaking his code this past summer so that it could take advantage of the Cell's unique architecture, Khanna set about petitioning Sony for some help in the form of free PS3s.
"Once I was able to get to the point that I had this kind of performance from a single PS3, I think that's when Sony started paying attention," Khanna says of his optimized code.
Khanna says that his gravity grid has been up and running for a little over a month now and that, crudely speaking, his eight consoles are equal to about 200 of the supercomputing nodes he used to rely on.
"Basically, it's almost like a replacement," he says. "I don't have to use that supercomputer anymore, which is a good thing."
"For the same amount of money -- well, I didn't pay for it, but even if you look into the amount of funding that would go into buying something like eight PS3s -- for the same amount of money I can do these runs indefinitely."
The point of the simulations Khanna and his team at UMass are running on the cluster is to see if gravitational waves, which have been postulated for almost 100 years but have never been observed, are strong enough that we could actually observe them one day. Indeed, with NASA and other agencies building some very big gravitational wave observatories with the sensitivity to be able to detect these waves, Khanna's sees his work as complementary to such endeavors.

Microsoft has just announced the final release of the IIS FastCGI module for IIS 5.1 (XP), 6 (2003), and 7 (2008). This FastCGI module was built with collaboration from Zend, the creators of PHP, and is intended to solve the CGI on Windows problem.

Since early 2006, Microsoft and Zend have been working together on a technical collaboration with the PHP community to significantly enhance the reliability and performance of PHP on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. As part of this collaboration, the IIS product group has been working on a new component for IIS6 and IIS7 called FastCGI Extension which will enable IIS to much more effectively host PHP applications.

Today Microsoft is eager to announce availability of the Go Live release of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1/6.0 (FastCGI Extension) as a free download. The Go Live release is the last step in the Microsoft beta process and represents the highest level of quality and reliability. For the first time, customers have a license that permits them to deploy the FastCGI Extension on their production Internet Information Services 6.0 (IIS 6) Web servers.

http://www.iis.net/php

The SQL Server Driver for PHP is designed to enable reliable, scalable integration with SQL Server for PHP applications deployed on the Windows platform. The Driver for PHP is a PHP 5 extension that allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. It provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all Editions of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 (including Express Edition), and makes use of PHP features, including PHP streams to read and write large objects.

Windows XP SP3 build 3205 is the first official & authorized release of the next Windows XP service pack; and has been made available to testers as a part of the Windows Server 2008/Windows Vista SP1 beta program. NeoSmart Technologies has the run-down on the included 1,073 patches/hotfixes including security updates. Contrary to popular belief, Windows XP SP3 does ship with new features/components, most of which have been backported from Windows Vista. Some included features: 'New Windows Product Activation model: no need to enter product
key during setup. Network Access Protection modules and policies have been brought to XP after being one of the more-well-received features in Windows Vista. New Microsoft Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module - the Windows XP SP3 kernel now includes an entire module that provides easy access to multiple cryptographic algorithms and is available for use in kernel-mode drivers and services. New "Black Hole Router" detection - Windows XP SP3 can detect and protect against rogue routers that are discarding data.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/windows-xp-sp3-beta-build-3205-released-analysis-included/

Intel has joined the social voting space with CoolSW, a Digg clone for “Cool Software.”

The site is said to focus solely on business ideas, and is designed to tap into the opinions of the wider developer and entrepreneur community.

According to a report at Venture Beat, the site cost around $40,000 to develop and has been tested internally, with Intel soliciting views from its employees about the hottest software companies.

Like any good Digg clone, it appears that it hasn’t taken too long for it to be gamed, with the top result at the time of writing being for the Open Source CMS Joomla. Even if it isn’t gamed for advantage by some, it’s a little strange that Intel wants to use the site to find “the next Google” whilst offering it to the public; after all if the model does identify the next Google, wouldn’t everybody see the result and have an opportunity to jump in before Intel does?

http://coolsw.intel.com/