* Sorry, I have not been prolific in posting during the past two to three weeks. My time has been heavily occupied especially offline with work and school. Now for the time being I am able to post regularly again.
* During the next few weeks, I will be reuploading some stuff from the archives. I want to get rid of the Sharebee links as Sharebee has been having technical issues lately causing problems for users. I do not know if I will be done with this task within the next few weeks as my attention could be warranted elsewhere. I want to point out that this will take some time.
* I hope to find a mirroring service similar to Sharebee, one that is reliable like Sharebee once was. Unfortunately, all of the other ones I've tried are either too slow to upload or they do not work properly. This is why I've currently been using two hosting services for posts.
* A hosting service I will not be using in the forseeable future is Rapidshare. At the present, if you're a free user and you've tried to get something via Rapidshare you might as well give up. I think it's been a month since I was able to download from Rapidshare. I keep getting a message that says something like "sorry no download slots available, please try again later" and there's another sentence which I'll paraphrase that says that if you really want this file, pay up by getting a premium account you cheapskate. I still do not understand why people use Rapidshare since there are much better hosting services. It may have been great once, but now it is terrible for free users (and even for premium users if what I heard is true about their change in policy for file storage). Overall, Rapidshare is mediocre. However, I must point out that Rapidshare still has its good points. Rapidshare is the most known brand among file hosting services which means that it will detract unwanted attention from the much better hosting services. It will be a good thing for the others to operate under the radar while the spotlight will be on Rapidshare as it already is in Germany.
* I've still been looking for more hosting services to increase my knowledge of options. One that I've found is Filebox. I've used it for a few current posts. So far, everything is smooth and fast upping to it. However, I have not downed anything from there. I am thinking about registering for a free account so I would like feedback on whether it is working on the other end and how well it works. There are several others that I will be evaluating in the next several days.
* I have added tags or labels to all of the posts. The labels are categories of what type of music or type of recording that are featured in the posts as well as serving as categories of the posts themselves. The labels are generally simplistic or rather broad as I did not want to get carried away with the labelling. The labels posted are hopefully adequate and helpful.
That's it for now. Take care.
You can avoid the problem with RapidShare using RapidShare Downloader. It works perfectly. Try it!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.majorshare.com/msrsd/
Thank you for everything!
mediafire.com is a fairly reliable uploading site as well. kudos dude, great blog.
ReplyDeletePlease, feel no pressure to speed up the pace again if you can't or don't want to. You're under no obligation! Yours is simply one of the best music blogs I know, and everything you post is a gift. Thanks and happy holidays!
ReplyDeleteI have, unforgivably, never left a comment on Closet despite the innumerable posts that I have downloaded and which have become an integral part of my listening routine. So, thank you.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Filebox: I noticed you were trying this when the Barbara Kolb post first went up --- after entering the 'captcha' code, a message comes up which says "this site is not recognized by the server". If you ignore that warning and press "continue", you are redirected to a page that tries to get you to buy a premium membership, and attempts to get to the "regular' download leads through more pop-ups and "warnings". Only then does it become apparent that Filebox has three levels of service: 1) Premium - paid 2) regular - create a name and password and 3) anonymous - 35 second wait BUT: a rather ominous name, no? "Anonymous"? It makes it clear that the point of trying to enroll you as a "regular" free user is to implant a second layer of cookies on the user's computer --- the thing seems awfully scammy to me, although it is now downloading, although very slowly.
I am not complaining at ALL --- I am running a blog myself now and know how frustrating it is not to get detailed reports from downloaders about their experiences with the file-sharing services. I have to agree that Mediafire still seems to be, on average, the least offensive of the services. I have had innumerable problems with "Mediadire" on the uploading end, and it seems to have periodic mood swings that cause strange and unexplainable occurrences in the blogger's files. Most of these have eventually become explicable to me, my only warning would be to download everything you upload and make sure that no bits (or pieces) were left out by Mediafire during the upload process. For a very modest fee, you can go "Mediafire Pro" and eliminate all pop-ups for both yourself AND your followers. Megaupload is fine; as a "regular" user you can only download 2 files at a time, and (they don't tell you this) you can only have this simultaneous capability once in a 24-hour period --- after that, it's one at a time, after a 48-second waiting period. Still, its nowhere near as bad as Rapidshare --- like you, I have gotten the "no free slots available why not become a premium user" more and more frequently, and, I'm ashamed to say, fell for that one and shelled out the euros.
For your site, where the files are generally small and only involve one or two downloads, Meagupload is fine and Mediafire would be even better. I haven't had any trouble with the old Sharebee links either.
Thanks again for all of the great, great posts: I only started downloading from the net early this year (I'm a classic "late adopter") and yours must have been the first 10 sites I bookmarked, and of course, it was among the first 5 sites I put on my bloglist when I began my own blog. I love what you do and I can't imagine that you keep up the pace you do by yourself --- I thought there were at least three of you in the closet?
I look forward to hearing this LP of Barbara Kolb's music (in the time it has taken me to write this note, the minutes remaining indicator, which began at 45 minutes, has dropped to 40 minutes. One last thing --- thank you so much for continuing to do unprocessed needledrops. I LIKE the sound of LPs and I SEEK out transfers that have not been declicked or denoised. Please don't worry about your posting frequency, but please DO keep doing things the way you have been for --- how many years now? Four or five? My God ....
Thanks again
Billeke,
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'll give the Rapidshare downloader a try.
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bg,
Mediafire is usually reliable and I've used it in the past. The only reason I have not used it for a while is because my files kept getting somehow screwed up on their servers where one or a few tracks became corrupted. Hopefully, that problem has been resolved and I can use it again.
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Bill from Illinois,
I appreciate the kind words. I'm glad that you're enjoying this blog. Happy holidays to you too.
maready,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback on Filebox. So far, I went to check on a few files and I never received a "this site is not recognized by the server" message. It does have three levels of service and I noticed that Filebox is attempting to encourage users to register or get a premium account. Free users are limited to 50 files a day and slow download speed, but it still seems better than Rapidshare even when free download slots were available. With Rapidshare, before it apparently quit letting free users download, I was really limited to less than 24 files per day as a free user. Sometimes it was around 5 to 10 files a day if someone with the same IP number as mine used Rapidshare as was often the case.
As already mentioned in my comment above, I had the same problems with Mediafire. It's good to know I was not the only person with those problems.
You're the first person who said that you're not having problems with Sharebee while everyone else is. I checked on a few files on Sharebee and I kept getting pop-ups. Sometimes I was stuck on the Sharebee site and it refused to redirect me to my chosen hosting site. It's becoming frustrating to navigate through the Sharebee site and I believe only one or two sites are still active anyway.
I love what you do and I can't imagine that you keep up the pace you do by yourself --- I thought there were at least three of you in the closet?
Technically the side bar says there are three contributors including myself. The other two posted mainly last year. One of them quit due to lack of time and the other has not posted in a long time also due to being busy. I am not sure if he has really quit as it is not official. So, it's just me for right now. Since I am the owner of this blog, it's my obligation to keep this blog going as best as possible. I will likely seek out another contributor or two for next year as I'll be occupied with school and work when the next semester starts next month. Also, A Closet of Curiosities has been online for around three and a half years. At near the end of May next year, this blog will be four years old.
Thanks also for the feedback on my vinyl LP rips. I learned that the denoise or noise reduction feature on software costing less than four figures does not really work. I do little declicking and that's all I really need though some other listeners will think different.
I hope that you were able to download all of the Barbara Kolb LP. Let me know if you're still having trouble.
I appreciate that a fellow music blogger such as yourself took the time to write a comment. I know how challenging it is to find time to seek, rip and post music on my own blogs and then to leave comments on other blogs. You have a great blog and now that I have some free time I am downloading some stuff (the ones I already do not have). Thanks for sharing. Cheers.
Rapidshare is still usable, although less often than before. I get the "no slots for free users" message often but not always during the daylight hours but never during the night,
ReplyDeleteHi
ReplyDeleteThank you for some wonderful music.
Feedback:
I just tried Firebox. It asked me to type the characters in (as seen in Megaupload etc) but I couldn't get it to take my typing, so didn't get the file. I click on "Download file" as well, it wouldbn't let me get it. Hmm.
No I didn't have popup blocker on, I did have cookies enabled, my firewall didn't block it. (That's before someone suggests it.)
Thanks again, I found some great music here.
Merry Christmas to all
Gordon
Gordon,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback on Filebox. It appears that Filebox is having technical issues though I could be wrong. All of the files I've uploaded to it are not accessible. I will no longer be using Filebox.
Merry Christmas to you too.
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anonymous,
I appreciate your letting me know about your experiences with Rapidshare.