MacItEasy - Mac news & tips

7 Ways to Send HUGE Files: 25X Bigger than Gmail

2007-05-24T02:02:00.000-07:00

Gmail users can now send up to 20MB of attachments to each other. But we want more! Here are 7 awesome services that let you send files of more than 500MB.

One of the best known file delivery services, YouSendIt allows you to send up to a 100MB file without creating an account. Upon uploading a file to YouSendIt, an email is sent to the recipient, where they are given a link to download the file. The download is available for 7 days and includes advertising on the page. YouSendIt also offers a variety of premium accounts starting at $4.99/mo that allow you to send files up to 2GB, use more bandwidth, and remove the ads from your download pages.

With a 500MB limit, MegaUpload offers the most storage space we found for non-paying users to send files. The service functions in the same way as YouSendIt, with no account necessary to send a file. For users that sign up and subscribe to a monthly or annual plan, MegaUpload offers “unlimited” file size and downloads, faster download speeds, and less advertising (the advertising on the free download pages is pretty aggressive).

Perhaps the simplest of the file transfer services, zUpload offers you up to 500MB to share a single file. A unique URL is generated for each file and is available for 30 days. Unlike the other services, there are no user accounts or premium features at the moment. It appears zUpload is entirely advertiser supported.

DropSend allows you to send files up to 1GB with a premium account (starting at $5/mo). Meanwhile, their free account provides you with 250MB of storage and up to 5 sends per month. Unlike some of the other services, you do need to create an account in order to send a file. The company also offers a desktop client for both Windows and Mac.

Based in the UK, MailBigFile functions almost exactly the same as YouSendIt. Without registering, you can send up to a 100MB file, while a Pro Account ($20/yr) allows you up to 2GB. MailBigFile also claims unlimited bandwidth, but since they cap it at 25 downloads per month, there are indeed limits. The company also gets our vote for the best no frills Web 2.0 domain name

LeapFILE targets business and enterprise users with a focus on customized branding and security. The company’s main product – Enterprise Exchange – allows organizations to setup their own completely private labeled file exchange services. Additionally, LeapFILE offers a personal version called Basic Exchange that lets you send up to 1GB files starting at $14.95/mo.

MediaMax is focused on storage, but also offers the option to share your files with others. With a free account, you can store up to 25GB of files, but there’s a catch: you can only send files up to 10MB in size with a total transfer limit of 1GB/mo. For $4.95/month, you can send 1GB files, and for $9.95/month you can send files of any size.

EMI's Music will be sold without Digital Rights Manangement restrictions through iTunes - first step to get ride of DRM?

2007-04-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

- These new songs will be higher quality (256kbps) and sell for $1.29/song individually
- DRM-Restricted songs at the lower quality settings (128kbps) will still be sold for $.99
- Albums will be in the new higher quality/DRM-less format but remain at the same price.

A full transcript of the Q&A session from the announcement is now available.

Microsoft-Watch notes that the deal greatly impacts Microsoft in that they bet big on Digital Rights Manangement.
With the release of Windows Media 9, Microsoft made a huge bet on DRM. No question, Windows Media 9 delivered highly flexible rights management that could be used for lots of interesting marketing purposes, such as a label releasing a new album with, say, three free plays. But Microsoft's bet hasn't paid off in the market, even with so many music stores using Windows Media DRM.
PC Mag cites the response from the Norwegian Consumer Council, who had previously declared Apple's DRM restrictions to be illegal and tried to pass legistation to force open standards:
"No matter how the digital music market develops, today will always stand out [as] a very important date, the day when two of the really big market players finally took responsibility that follows from the position and made an interoperable solution available to consumers," said Torgeir Waterhouse, senior advisor to the Norwegian Consumer Council, in an email. "I applaud their move, and encourage all the other contenders in the digital music business to make the same important move."

Google Notifier's Hidden Features

2007-04-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

If you are using Gmail and choose not to receive your email in mail.app using POP, chances are you are using the free Google Notifier (formerly Gmail Notifier). This is a menu bar item that alerts you when new mail arrives and in its latest version, adds Google Calendar functionality.

One of the greatest benefits of this piece of software is its simplicity - just put in your Google ID and password and everything works. At times this makes the notifier look somewhat limited, however this couldn't be further from the truth.   The first hidden feature is to customise the number of messages shown in the notifier menu. By default, the menu shows the last four unread messages received (or the last three received and an additional "View More" submenu). To change this, pull down the notifier menu and hold Command and Option while clicking on preferences. This brings up a hidden settings editor where you can easily edit the notifier preferences file.

In the "Key" field, enter "MaxMessagesOnMainMenu" and in the "Value" field enter the number of messages you want on the main menu. Click Set, and then quit and reload Google Notifier. Now when you click on the notifier menu bar item, you will see the number of messages that you set. To return to the default setting, repeat the prcoess, putting 4 in the value field instead of the number you entered last time.

The second trick can be done in much the same way. If you only want the notifier to fetch mail with a certain label, you can create a filter. As before, click on the notifier menu and Command-Option-Click on preferences. This time, in the key field enter "Label" and in the value field enter the name of the label you want to receive. To receive all mail, leave this field blank. And again as before, quit and reload the notifier for changes to take effect.   When you set these preferences, you are actually editing Google Notifier's preference file (Library/Preferences/com.google.GmailNotifier). If you want, you can load up this file with Property List Editor or TextEdit and changes things yourself (be careful!) or you can achieve the same effect using the Terminal (Applications/Utilities). For example the previous trick could be done by typing the following into the Terminal:  defaults write com.google.GmailNotifier Label -string "YOURLABELHERE"   Finally you can extend Google notifier using plugins. I found the following on the Official Google Blog:   The Gmail Notifier supports plugins written in AppleScript, or full-blown Cocoa Bundles in Objective-C. Details about the Objective-C plugin API can be found inside the Gmail Notifier application bundle in the required header file, GGPluginProtocol.h (control+click Gmail Notifier.app -> Show Package Contents -> Contents -> Headers).   AppleScript plugins are written by simply implementing a handler like:   on NewMessagesReceived(messages, fullCount)  -- Your code goes here...  end NewMessagesReceived   To install, simply copy the script (plugin) to Library/Application Support/Gmail Notifier (create the directory if it doesn't exist), and restart the Gmail Notifier. An example of a great plugin for the Gmail Notifier for MacOS X is the Gmail+Growl plugin, which sends Growl notifications when new mail arrives.

Nisus Writer Express 2.5

2005-09-11T13:43:00.000-07:00

Nisus Writer

2.5 just come out and it is even better. Nisus Writer 2.0 was a program you could work with. It was still very slow and buggy. Nisus Writer 2.5 got faster so you can actually work with it and the feature set finally seems well thought out and much less buggy.

Nisus writer use to be my favorite word processor (Under System 9). It had a lot of appealing features, was quick and very stable. When Nisus Writer Express finally come out I was very disappointed. Since then Nisus Write made a lot of progress and integrated a whole bunch of my favorite features form the classic version. Nisus writer Express 2.1 finally is much faster. Nisus Writer Express' real strength is that whatever you need is always just a click away. And, at just $59.95 for the download. Lets hope it get faster and get soem of ist old graphic abilities back.

Here now my favorite programs and the link to the autours website

2005-07-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

Name: Launchbar
Link:

http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/

Description: Lauch what ever your want. Launchbar is easy to use and speeds up your mac life. A must have program. it is free in it's beta version.

Name: MacJournal
Link:

http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/

Description: Keep your personal not. it's free and one of the best programs of its categorie

Name: NetNewsWire
Link:

http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/

Description: A RSS Feed news aggregator

Name: iFlash
Link:

http://www.loopware.com/iflash/

Description: Learn with learning cards. share them and download the once form others. $10 is not much for this very cool program.

Is Apple on its way to ruin its reputation with the iPod?

2005-07-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

Many of know about and suffered from the battery issues the iPod had. Now the iPod seems to have an other problem and that is that their hard drives are going bad after a while. Just in my family we already had 3 iPods whose hard rive went bad. On after 4 month, an other one after 1.5 years and and other oen after around 2 years. IPods are expensive and they shouldn't go bad just like this or at least come with a decent warranty. Also our IT Gadgets pollute our environment tremendously. So think twice if you want to invest you money in new iPod.

DiskWarrior - A very useful disk repair tool.

2005-07-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

If you were using Norton Utilities consider

DiskWarrior

by far the best disk repair tool for several years now. In Mac forums we read warnings on how Norton Utilities messed up people hard drives. DiskWarrior in contrast often is the only program which makes you hard drive fit again and at least lets you make a last back up. Price: $79.95

GarageSale

2005-07-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

GarageSale is abolute ingenious it

helps users of Mac OS X create and track your eBay auctions much faster. GarageSale's Mac-like user interface to create auctions, integrates with iPhoto and offers WYSIWYG text editing. In addition, its built-in Web browser allows users to view your current auctions without leaving the application. GarageSale users can also export and share auction templates. The current version of GarageSale supports multi users and many eBay country Sites. GarageSale is available for US$24.99, but users can upload up to three eBay auctions before you have to pay for GarageSale. Licenses can be obtained from inside GarageSale using its built-in registration module or at the company's online webshop secure connection provided by Kagi, Inc.
For more information go to

http://www.iwascoding.com/GarageSale/