Speaking about my own experience with FileFactory as a guy who just opened it up and upload a file, I should say that upload speed is really good (I uploaded a file having 434 MB in 10 minutes or so), but I can’t say I am crazy about all the ads present here and there. At least, I should also say that I don’t like the captcha you have to face when downloading a file, either. Oh, well, I guess you can’t always have it all…

All in all, FileFactory is surely one RapidShare alternative to try for free when you have to upload some large file. Hey, you can even get a Premium account if you need those features! Just be sure to get back here and share with us a few thoughts about the bang for the buck offered by this online service, all right? Good luck!

2shared also offers two really useful features – Search and Watch. While the first one’s purpose should be obvious, let me tell you about the purpose of the second one – it allows you to see what is being downloaded at a certain time, and some of the most recently downloaded files. If you consider this to be a privacy issue, just pack your files in password-protected archives, and then upload them to 2shared. That’s all, folks!

Other than the above, I should add that best way to decide if this online service is worthy of your attention or not is to upload some files without creating an account to see how fast does that work, and then browse some of the existing galleries. Speaking for myself, I think that PicturePush is pretty fast, and the amount and placement of ads aren’t really annoying. So, what do you think – am I right, or not?

P.S. Did I mention you can also upload videos? Consider I just did it!

With FileSend, the things look like this: without bothering to register an account, you’ll be able to upload files as large as 500MB (this is the upper limit, but you can get a free account and increase it to 1GB), upload speed is insane (as you can see in my screenshot, I went well above 400KB/s), download speed is really low (about 20KB/s or so, that’s all I managed to get), and – best of all – there’s no captcha and no waiting time when you’re downloading a file. Is this awesome, or what? Please give this online service a try and drop a comment below with your opinion, you won’t be wasting your time!

… so this is how I landed on Bug Me Not. Using this online resource is really easy, since all you have to do is enter the URL of the site you need to check from the member’s point of view, and then click that Get Logins button to get your user/password combos.

Unfortunately, some sites have been barred from the system, and this list includes GMail, Rapidshare, Yahoo and many others, but there are also various popular online destinations like IMDB, MegaUpload, YouTube or The Chicago Tribune having user/password combos available for those who need them.

Obviously, we’re talking about a free resource here, and since this seems to be a very useful site to keep close, Bug Me Not just got its entry in my bookmarks. This is exactly what I advise you to do, and don’t forget to tell your friends about it – using this site will surely help everyone spare the time wasted creating useless accounts and have more to spend with friends and family.

In the end, the greatest thing in making your computer-related tasks more efficient is not that you’ll be able to do more in the same amount of time, but that you’ll have to spend less time in front of the computer, doing the same things as you were doing so far. Just don’t forget that the people around you are always more important than what you may be doing with the computer, all right?

Since telling you simply about the features won’t be really interesting, let’s quickly go through my first encounter with Fling, and this starts right after setting up the program, facing the Fling Folder Wizard that jumps right up when you run the file transfer tool for the first time…

In this screen, you get to see all the tasks that can be accomplished by Fling, but since I can’t decide what I want to do at this time, I choose to skip to Advanced Setup, and then press Next…

…but there’s nothing special here, apart from the FTP settings and scan/update options for those who will use Fling to backup stuff. Backup? Sure, and if backup to a FTP server is not enough, you can even use this program to backup files between hard drives or automate regular copy operations to USB drives!

Considering the fact that everything here seems to be pushed forward by a wizard-style interface, I think that even my mother could use this program, although she may need some help from her only son to setup the FTP connection properly…

I know, I know – I didn’t get into the details about how this program actually works, but after playing with some backup/transfer tasks for myself, all I can say is this: stop reading about file transfer software and start using it! The closest free file transfer software for Windows is only a click away, so get to it! (Once again, I have to apologize to those using Macs and Linux-based PCs… don’t worry, your time is gonna come!)

While Streamfile may not be available in as many languages as other file sharing/hosting services, it gets the job done wonderfully, and since I think that RapidShare should bow down before it, let me tell you why – no useless waiting time for free users, that’s why! While RapidShare requires free users to wait a certain amount of time before actually downloading the file, Streamfile is like a walk in the park!

To send a file, all you have to do is open the page in a browser, write the email address of the one who should receive the file, chose the file, and then press that large Stream Now button. The link will be available only for 24 hours, which makes Streamfile completely unattractive for those into uploading warez stuff.

The free service offers a maximum file size of 150MB, while the Pro account, priced at $4.95 per month, offers unlimited file size (strange, because this is what I see in the Register screen, while the main page says maximum size is 2GB…), 256-bit encryption, delivery tracking, and a link life of 2 weeks. Another thing worth mentioning here is the free account, allowing 300MB maximum file size, a link life of 48 hours, and 5 downloads of the file (2 for those files uploaded by unregistered users).

Considering all the above, what do you think – do we have a RapidShare killer for normal people, or not? (no, I am not talking about those normal people who think the Internet is for porn…)

Before moving on, let me say once again that I am really sorry for not getting back to the Torrents and P2P series last week, but you’ll see that it was worth to wait for this episode. Just take a look above, for example… eMule’s official page, right?

Nope, not really, NO!!! That site in the screenshot is a well done scam, since the domain used is eMule.com, and the current version of the eMule software available there is the same as the official one, 0.49c. To take a look at the original stuff, you should see the previous article in the series.

As a little interlude, let me say this – I think one of the safest approaches to this is to take a look at the Wikipedia.org page for the file sharing software you want to start using, and you’ll surely get the link to the official page, as well as info regarding bundled adware/spyware (for example, take a look at the Wikipedia Kazaa page, and you’ll get the idea).

Moving on, we have Shareaza.com and PantheraProject.com, both being exactly the same, with the second one (shamefully) listed as first result by Google when looking for Shareaza… The whole story of the domain takeover can be found on Wikipedia, but here I will stop at saying that Shareaza V6 is NOT the original thing. Since we didn’t talk about it last time, let me tell you that the original Shareaza page is now hosted by SourceForge.

Regarding DC++, I have no idea about scammy pieces of software developed using it as foundation, but I know about completely outdated spinoffs that are still widely used, oDC++ and LDC++ being only two of them. Anyway, there are plenty of fake files and viruses to avoid on the Direct Connect network… so that should be enough!

To end this properly, let me tell you about the things about what a “good” file sharing site/software will NEVER do – “Lifetime membership for downloading free content” or paid downloads, for pretty low rates (if iTunes sells tracks for $0.9, how in the world one can imagine that paying $0.5 for an entire album released yesterday by a big artist can be anything else but a big scam???), that’s the first thing to keep in mind!

At last, here’s a good list of file sharing scam sites I run into earlier. If you find anything useful to add, please don’t be shy and drop a comment below, all right? Thanks in advance!

Oh, one more thing – the screenshot above is not there by mistake – torrents aren’t always about downloads… and considering the heat most of us go through these days, seeing that is much better than just some software interface screenshot. These being said, let’s begin, shall we?

1. DC++ – most popular client for the Direct Connect network; you need to share some files with the others, the amount depending on the hub you’re connected to; high risk of downloading viruses/Trojans; download speed for connections outside local LANs can be extremely slow, and a lot of users are using bandwidth limiters, but if you’re connected via some large high speed metropolitan network, this could be a great choice.

2. AphexDC++ – this my new favorite, at least when it comes to DC++ hubs downloads; you can easily switch from DC++ to it; the security threats remain, and the same is true with what I wrote above about download speeds; comes with some extra features when compared to the original DC++, of course. There are plenty of similar DC++ spinoffs, such as StrongDC++ or RevConnect, and if some friend told you that oDC is the best… just drop it, that one is a DEAD project!

3. eMule – bringing the eDonkey network and the Kad network together, eMule is a very good file sharing software for those who don’t want to share anything, just download, although sharing some material is something nice to be done; viruses/fake files are pretty frequent; download speed is rather low, and depends a lot on the number of sources available and various limitations your ISP may have, but there are about 3-4 million users connected at any time, so… There are a lot of eMule spinoffs available, and a lot of those have spyware included, so beware! (we’ll talk about such programs in the next episode)

4. BitTorrent clients – I will mention only a triad here, leaving details about them and the important remaining ones for a future article, because there’s a really incredible number of them available for all platforms. uTorrent, BitSpirit, and BitComet are my picks, and you probably know what’s in it for you already – download speeds highly depending on the limitations your ISP has (or not) in place and the number of sources for a file you’re downloading, pretty low risk of downloading fake releases/viruses, and a very large user base.

Sure, the above is only a small part of the file sharing software iceberg, but we have plenty of time ahead, so we shouldn’t hurry. After all, you’re going to use them all for 100% legal downloads, riiight?

1. LegalTorrents is the first site that jumps up when you’re looking for “legal torrents” in Google, but the content could be a big disappointment to most people used to… ehem, less legal torrent trackers. For example, there are only 8 game torrents, 18 podcasts, 3 graphic novels, but plenty of netlabel music downloads, apart from other categories, like pictures or audio books.

2. PublicDomainTorrents is a site with a design that would have been nice over a decade ago (and then some years more), and if you can handle the ads that take most of the screen space… you may find some interesting freely available movies.

3. Legit Torrents makes me realize why I usually get things right after missing at least twice – while a lot of torrents are various Linux distros, there are also a lot of freeware games and programs available for download, and seeing that this site has “12235 registered users with 15,704.47 TB of traffic” makes me hope there’s a future for legal torrents sites, after all.

4. The etree.org Community Bittorrent Tracker is the last on today’s list, but it’s a real treasure for those crazy about music. Why? Here, you can find a really impressive amount of music from trade friendly artists (The Grateful Dead and Primus included!), and a serious part of it all is encoded using losless formats, like FLAC. Awesome, absolutely awesome!