The Media Supermarket

Everything is becoming “web-based” and not only that, the network effects and community are magnifying the importance of having shared files, rankings, and habits. Forget about your privacy for just about a century!
The importance of having your files on the web, is that it just adds to your mobility, and flexibility in terms of logistics. Many people work on two computers, one at home and the other at work. Having favorite files in one accessible place really makes things easier, especially while traveling.
This is my review of the service provided by Mediamax, a website owned by Streamload.Mediamax has a great offer for favorites junkies. The cool thing is that the paid versions have the same features, only the storage and sharing rate are different. This depends on your needs.

The above is the main dashboard when you login. The File Manager is the general tab containing all the files you have uploaded. They can also be accessed through their type; music, video, photo, and also mail. Uploaded files can be kept private or published for sharing with other. Each file in this case is given its unique URL.

Features:

Storage: The free version comes with 25GB of storage. The three other versions come with 100 GB ($4.95/month), 250 GB ($9.95/month), and 1000 GB ($29.95/month) of storage.

Uploading: Any person can upload files to your account if they are not registered. This is a great feature for receiving and sharing group projects and keeping everyone in the loop.  

Backup: By downloading their free Mediamax XL software, you can also backup your files on your compuer and synchronize your work with others as well.
There is a more detailed pricing and plan comparison on the pricing page.

This product was featured numerous times in the press, and a lot of buzz has been going out by several of the biggest magazines like PC World and Time. References also available on the site.

What could be imporved: The process of uploading files, especially big ones, especially if you are moving your full library of files is really mundane. Moving between tabs could really be improved by an AJAX interfce without having to refresh the page on clicking each of the tabs. That would really improve the user-experience, and would reduce some of the time spent on uploading. I hope they can do it soon.

I’m starting to depend on Mediamax for keeping my stuff on the web, and I’m enjoying having access to my useful stuff any time, and anywhere. You can register for free to check it out.

Establishing your website, and securing an excellent web presence, is not only becoming a must, it’s becoming really easy, and dirt cheap. The speed at which prices are going down, while features are increasing makes me really wonder how these companies make any money. Although it is becoming a highly sophisticated industry, I believe we should all have the basic knowledge and actually create our site(s) as an extension of our work/personality.
While researching for the best webhosting companies available, I have found one that offers great services and options at very low prices, and flexibility. Bluehost is one of the top rated hosting service providers, and they have great features that can really help one grow their business online, and probably take that hobby one or two steps further. Here are the main features:

Unlimited domains in one account: Many hosting companies will provide you with a certain number of domain names per account. Some of them even limit you to only one. There is no meaning having so much storage space if you have only three sites. Moreover, many companies charge you a setup fee for activating your sites. With Bluehost, you have as many sites as you want.
The value in this feature is that it gives you the freedom to be experimentatl in your approach to building your sites, if it only costs you $10 to start a new site, why not try out that idea you had in your mind? You can also manage these sites through one login.
This can be taken one step further, and you can start selling your services to manage other sites.

Live chat: I’ve tried their live chat system, and it’s good to be able to ask a question on the go, and have your immediate answer.

Huge data transfer: 3,000 GB of data transfer, or bandwidth, is really a huge amount. Judging by the fact that you can use third parties to host your images and videos, like Youtube and Flickr, you will practically not reach that limit, unless you have a very high-traffic portal.

A lot of storage space: 300 GB of storage is quite impressive. Very few websites use that much of disk space on their servers.

Awards: If you want to check out their quality, you can see their awards page. By the way, they claim to have around 285,000 domains hosted. I guess these customers are happy with the service.

$50 Yahoo! and $25 Google advertising credits: These are given for new accounts. If you use this advertising to get some traffic to your site, you can easily get back your investment if you have products to sell, or affiliate programs on your site.

Pricing: $6.95 per month for 24 month accounts and $7.95 per month for 12 month accounts. You don’t pay anything other than the domain name price which is $10 annually. As I mentioned many companies charge around $25 - 30 just for setup.

Free privacy: Again this is a feature offered for free. This is the option of keeping your information private, and not having to deal with spammers.
Try them.