DivShare is really starting to separate themselves from other file hosting sites because of the unique features that they are continually adding. We use the service all the time to create mirrors to applications we write about, and just last week they introduced file searching and the ability to make files private so that only the user who uploaded them can see them…which is great if you want to make a backup copy of a document to an offsite location.
Now they are introducing more goodies! When you upload MP3’s you’ll be able to stream them directly from the site. They have a working example of an MP3 that you could download/stream in case you want to try it out. I took a screenshot above and you’ll notice in the Play/Pause button there is a small portion that is colored with blue. That appears to be a progress bar for how much of the song has already been downloaded to your computer. The only thing that seems to be missing from this is a progress bar so that you know how far into the song you are and what the total length is.
Also in the screenshot I am pointing out an ad that they recently started displaying. It’s far from obtrusive so I’m sure no one will really mind, and I am actually glad that they started to show ads now. It demonstrates that they do have ideas for generating revenue and it makes me feel reassured that they won’t go down the tubes.
So what does DivShare still have left to do? In the next few days they are planning on allowing users to embed MP3’s onto their blogs or websites, which is really nice. If they did this with videos I would be really amazed simply because of their “no limit” policy in terms of file size.
There are a few features that I would like to see implemented eventually. The first being FTP access so that we can easily upload files/galleries in bulk. DivShare would be a great source to backup my family photos that would be horrible if I lost. Even if they decide against FTP access they could still make it so that users could upload a single ZIP file containing multiple songs/images/files and then have their server extract the contents for you. I know that I’ve seen this on a file sharing site before, but I can’t remember which one.
Another feature that I would really like is what MetaMan recommended, and that’s being able to update files once you have uploaded them. That way if you needed to change a file you could do so without breaking the link to it. It’s the little things like this that will continue to help DivShare grow.
Thanks to MetaMan for the tip on DivShare introducing advertisements!
I think all these features are great. Having said that, I’ll repeat my concerns; these guys are just asking for a law suit.
Question: Who does a centralized server for sharing copyrighted content remind one of?
Answer: The original Napster. Before legal action shut them down and made them change their business model.
For those of you who want to listen to shared music check out [last.fm]
Two days ago I uploaded a copyrighted mp3 to divshare to send as a link in an email to my mother. 3 minutes later I received an email informing me that it was against the T&C and had been removed.
So, these guys are on their game as far as that side of things is concerned. For now. As it gets bigger I imagine it would be harder to monitor.
How do they know if the MP3 is copyrighted? Any music from a purchased CD is copyrighted. So, if they are removing copyrights content then what do they expect people to stream/share?
Napster was a little different though because they didn’t take efforts to prevent copyrighted materials from being made available. With DivShare anyone can report a file and they will look into it to see if it should be removed. Napster didn’t have anything like that.
There are a lot of things that can be shared that aren’t copyrighted. How about podcasts or presentations? If they let users embed the MP3 player into their own site or blog then I’m sure a lot of people would start using this for podcasts and such, because there is no file size limitation. So it doesn’t matter if you have a 2 minute podcast or a 2 hour one, because it won’t be harvesting your bandwidth to share it with the world.
Sweet.
[eggdisk.com] allows you to upload zip files and then have their server extract it for you. They had a snafu last week and lost all users files, but they gave me 8 GB of space and 50 GB of bandwidth for life to make up for it, so I wasn’t too upset about it.
That does provide an example though of why no matter how good a file hosting service is, depending upon it for primary backup of something is madness.
Ahh, that’s the service I was thinking of! I also received that email where they explained the loss of data for more than 11,000 users. That was definitely a scary thing, and I’m still trying to figure out how they could have just lost all of the data. I could understand one hard drive worth, but that seemed like quite a bit.
Cool Feature. I wonder if they’ll implement something like this for videos.
Hopefully, they seem to be adding more and more features so I would expect something like that to be next. It would be awesome if they allowed for uncompressed videos (unlike YouTube) so that it is easier for sites to share screencasts.
Well, seeing as they allow for unlimited file size, why would they force users to compress their videos? That would seem like a logical next feature, as would support for WAV, Vorbis, and FLAC. Also, other files you could probably upload without violating the ToC are remixes that you have made that are significantly different from the original song, seeing as you would own half of the rights to the mix. They probably also wouldn’t remove 30 second samples or something like that, which would be useful on a music blog.
As a side note, DivShare contacted me and said that they are working on updatable files, but it is taking them some time seeing as they have so many other features they have to complete as well as limited staff. I’m on the edge of my seat, though, because I would like to update one of the files on my site without having to get a new link. I’ll be patient, though.
They’re response time is unlike many other sites that I’ve dealt with. Normally my questions go unanswered but DivShare always sends back a nice personalized email…I continue to love them more and more.
I sure hope that they release the update files feature soon because it would be really awesome. Then I could create like a Firefox Portable build that I update a few times a week containing nightly builds.