Simplified Upgrade Packages!

As we completed the transition to a all-paid web service, we decided to simplify our billing packages as well. Instead of charging separate fees for storage and bandwidth upgrades, we now have four simple account upgrade packages: Basic, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. The Basic account is still only $10.95 for the whole year, and includes 5GB of storage and 30GB/month of public bandwidth. However, a Silver account is only $6.95 per month and includes 10GB of storage and 90GB/month of public bandwidth. That's 3GB/day of public file bandwidth for less than $7/month. Happy holidays.

Need even more storage or bandwidth? A Gold account ($9.95/month) gets you 15GB of storage and 150GB/month of public bandwidth. A Platinum account ($24.95/month) gets you 25GB of storage and unlimited public file bandwidth. And Silver, Gold, and Platinum accounts all come with direct linking of public files, no advertising, and telephone support.

So go ahead. Give yourself the gift of more online storage and public file bandwidth this holiday season. After all, you've been good, right?

MyDataBus.com Site Switchover

Here at myDataBus, we have been able to offer many of our services for free up to this point. However, we are being forced to revise our business model and discontinue our free services. Effective immediately, we have made the decision to remove file uploading to free accounts. Free account holders will still be able to access their accounts until Tuesday, October 9, at 12:00 p.m. EST. At that time, unpaid accounts will be deactivated. (If you are a paid user, your account will not be affected. We are also working hard on our file uploading issues and will have it working again as soon as possible).

If you are not a paid user, we want you to continue to enjoy the file storing and hosting services of myDataBus, which is why we are offering you 10GB of storage and 60GB per month (2GB/day) of public bandwidth for the low fee of $10.95 per year! This offer is only valid through Tuesday, October 9. After October 9, the price of $10.95 per year will provide you with just 5GB of storage and 30GB per month of public bandwidth. Customizable packages are also available for those who need more storage or bandwidth space -- just click the Upgrade button in your account to view available storage/bandwidth deals.

If you currently have a free account, don’t wait -- log in at http://www.mydatabus.com and click Upgrade to take advantage of this great offer and keep your account active. Remember, you have until Tuesday, October 9, either to upgrade your account or remove your files.

We hope you choose to continue using myDataBus for your file storing and sharing needs!

The myDataBus Facebook Application!

The team here at myDataBus.com is thrilled to give you the all-new myDataBus Shared Files Facebook application. Robert the Summer Intern developed this application on the Facebook Platform to give you some great new ways to share.  Now your friends can listen to your music, watch your videos, and download your files--right from your Facebook profile!  You can also easily send links to your files via Facebook messages. We're pretty excited about it.

All of your public files are automatically posted to your Facebook profile when you add the application, and visitors can page through to see everything you have posted.  Click on the My Friends' Files tab lets you easily view and download files from those savvy Facebook friends who also use the Shared Files application... or hit a button to upload directly to your public files from Facebook!

Click here to get started... and then come back to the application page to let us know what you think.  What features does it still need?  What do you love about it?

Online Trust in a Web 2.0 World

As more and more of the most popular websites depend on user-generated content, trust becomes an increasingly important commodity.  The success of a site like eBay depends on a system of community trust where buyers and sellers carry a reputation based on the feedback they have received from others in the community.  Such a system exists for other large sites as well, but the problem of how to extend such a system of trust to smaller sites is a difficult one. 

The anonymous nature of the Internet makes it hard to know exactly who IS trustworthy. Is this eBay user really selling this rare jazz record, or is it a hoax? Does this auto-care blogger actually know anything about cars?  A famous New Yorker cartoon in 1993 carried the caption "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog." -- as the internet becomes ever more user-centered we will need to find better ways to deal with this problem.

Venyo, one of the websites we have integrated with, is attempting to tackle this problem. Their concept is that users carry a reliability index--a "Vindex"-- made up of ratings given by users on any website.  The magic of the Vindex is that they are offering a Trust platform which ties to the user, rather than to a specific website or community. 

A Vindex rating box instantly tell you how a user's reliability has been judged by the larger online community, giving you peace of mind when interacting with that person's online contributions. And by clicking someone's Vindex box, you have the opportunity to rate that person yourself, warning or encouraging other users about that person's reliability.

 To sign up for a Venyo.org account, click here. Once you've signed up, log into your myDataBus account and click the Profile tab. Scroll down to the Venyo login box and submit your Venyo user name and password. Your Venyo Vindex will be posted next to your name in myDataBus group lists and on the download pages of e-mailed myDataBus files. Your myDataBus contacts can then see your reliability rating and have the opportunity to rate you themselves.

myDataBus File Format Conversion? Easy!

Guess what? We've added another resource to your myDataBus-file-editing arsenal: we are now integrated with Zamzar.com. Zamzar is an online file conversion tool that lets you easily change your document, image, video, and music files into other file formats with a few clicks of your mouse. Change your .wav files into a mp3s. Make your .txt file a PDF file. Convert PDF files into editable Word documents. Convert your MS Paint stick-figure drawing of Aunt Bertha into a JPEG file and post it in your myDataBus family reunion photo album. Anything's possible. For a full list of file conversion types, click here.

With Zamzar integrated into myDataBus, you can convert your myDataBus files without needing to download them first. Just select "Convert with Zamzar" from a file's Options menu, then select your desired file format, enter your e-mail address, and hit Convert.

Once you receive Zamzar's notification e-mail, go to the download page and copy the link to your file by right-clicking (or Ctrl-clicking for Macs) the Download File button. Then go to your myDataBus account, click Upload Files > Webload, paste the file link into the URL box, and hit Upload. Your converted file will be sucked right back into myDataBus from Zamzar. No downloading required!

Why not give it a try? With myDataBus and Zamzar, we've given our users a whole new way to do more with their files online!

Introducing the MiniBus!

The team here at myDataBus.com is proud to introduce the MiniBus: a quick, easy, and convenient file hosting service that lets you instantly upload a file and begin sharing it immediately in an e-mail, website, or blog. You don't even need a myDataBus account; just upload your file right from the myDataBus home page and start sharing!

So go ahead, take the MiniBus for a test drive. Just click the MiniBus Browse button at the top of the myDataBus home page or at mini.mydatabus.com to select a file for upload. Click Upload and you're instantly ready to begin sharing your file! No speed limits on THIS bus . . .

Note: There are limits to the MiniBus's functions: only one file can be shared at a time, uploads are restricted to 20MB, and shared files expire after 14 days of inactivity. But remember that myDataBus account holders enjoy 5GB of free storage, extensive file sharing options with no link expiration, online file and image editing tools, and so much more! If you're not a member, sign up today and your uploaded MiniBus files will automatically be transferred into your new account!

No More Public Image Watermark!

As many of you know, a watermark—"hosted by myDataBus.com"—has always appeared on public images, well, hosted by myDataBus.com.

That is, until now. Public images no longer have any watermark at all— they appear exactly as you uploaded them (only re-sized . . . if you use one of the automatic re-sizing options!).

"But wait!" you cry. "My existing public photos still have the watermark!"

'Tis true: all newly-shared pictures will be watermark-free, but existing public photos will still display the watermark. But that's easy to fix. Simply remove the watermarked pictures from your Public Files, then re-add them. Voilà! No more watermark. And as long as you haven't changed the filenames, all your old image links will still work too.

Just another great update from the hard-working folks here at myDataBus.com . . .

Any Questions?

Here at myDataBus.com, we are working hard to make the site better than ever. And one way we're making it better is by helping users learn more about the site and all its features—which is why we've introduced an all-new, fully-updated myDataBus Online Support Center. It contains help topics for new myDataBus users, general troubleshooting tips, and information on new additions to the site. Learn how to set up a new account and upload your first file. How to activate automatic integration with Facebook.com upon login to myDataBus. How to use SnipShot and Zoho to edit files right from your account. Who knows—you may even discover a new feature that you weren't aware of!

And as always, if you can't find the answer to your question, contact our support team with our support form for some of the quickest support in the business! (Remember, Pro Account holders also receive phone support. If you don't have a Pro Account, upgrade now!)

Get the help you need—use the Support Center today!

Out with the old . . .

OK folks, we're all friends here. Let's be perfectly honest with each other. The ol' myDataBus file uploader wasn't exactly the greatest uploader ever.

But times have changed. The guys here at myDataBus have been hard at work on a brand-spanking-new uploader . . . go ahead, click the Upload Files button. What you have before you in all its glory is not only a faster, more reliable uploader, but an uploader that lets you SELECT MULTIPLE FILES AT ONCE. That's right, click Browse and try it out for yourself. You can select an entire folder's worth of files for upload in a matter of seconds.

Not only that, but now there are two nifty little download progress bars—the top one is for individual file download progress, and the bottom one is for the overall download progress. You can also choose to make your files public—or overwrite files with the same name—directly from the uploader! And as before, you have the option of performing a web upload by clicking the Webload button at the top of the uploader and entering a URL address.

We expect this new upload tool to evolve quickly; if you have any suggestions for it please let us know! As always, we here at myDataBus are working hard to bring you the very best in file storing and sharing. And we will continue to enhance the features of myDataBus to make it easier for you to do more with your files.

Public File Changes, MUCH FASTER!

Making files public is much faster now!  Last week many of you had trouble making files public or were seeing huge delays in the process, sometimes taking several hours to actually complete.  We were fighting on and off all week with our queueing system, it seemed to encounter a perfect storm of issues from all directions.

So what has happened?

First a bit of background; from the beginning we have treated public files as separate from your "My Files" storage- the primary benefit of this is that you could make changes to, edit, rename or even delete a file from your private space without affecting your public links.  The disadvantage is that we have been maintaining 2 copies of the file, and even in the best of circumstances making a file public involves waiting for the system to copy your file.

On Friday we changed the way public files are tracked and stored so now we simply flag files as public rather than copying them.  On the plus side since we are storing the file only once your quota usage is reduced and the process of making files public is now instant.  It does mean that you will have to be careful about deleting files from your private space from now on, if you zap a file that is public you will break your links!

Thanks for bearing with us last week, and enjoy our new more responsive system!

100,000 people are Doing More with their files!

myDataBus.com celebrated a huge milestone today-- we just hit 100,000 registered users!

Thanks to all of you; our users-- to those who have told their friends about myDataBus, or have posted about us on your blogs, on forums, on mySpace... Today is obviously really exciting to our team, and hopefully to all of you as well. Our rapid growth means that we can continue to add new features and improve old ones, and that you can continue to rely on myDataBus.com to be there when you need it. Keep sending up your files, sharing them, posting them and telling others how they can do more with their files too!

Raise a glass of whatever you have nearby, and toast with us to many, many great things to come.

myDataBus.com -- Do More With Your Files

Public File Download Changes

Last week you may have noticed that we made some changes to the way public files are downloaded. After watching for a while to see how it has impacted both our users and the people who come to download your files we have decided to go ahead and make some permanent changes to Public Files.

Background
The way our Public Files have worked in the past is what we will call Direct Linking; when a user clicks on a link the file begins to download right away in their browser. The change we are making is that many files which used to be direct linked will now point to a page on our servers. That page will initiate a download in the background, and show the user a link to manually start a download if for some reason their browser blocks the automatic one.

Who is impacted by this change?
First of all, Pro accounts (any account where you have paid for upgraded service) will see no changes to the way their public files work, just as before all Public links will be direct links. We are also going to continue serving all JPG, GIF and PNG files directly, so that you can continue to use myDataBus to host images on other websites as many of you do now. (ebay, CraigsList, blogs, etc)

What do I need to do now?
For most of you nothing; Pro users can ignore this and enjoy yet another perk of paid membership. The group that will be directly affected by this change are Basic Account users who host audio and video files that are embedded in other websites. You can still link to your files and users will be able to access them; but embedding those files (mp3, Flash Video, Quicktime, etc) into your pages will no longer work unless you choose to upgrade to a Pro account. Remember, you can get a Pro account for as little as $9.95 per year, and you will also get larger file uploads, no advertising, and 10GB of storage space! Log into your account and click on the 'Upgrade' link at the top of the screen today!

Why are you doing this?
Fair question; we do think that for some people downloading public files this does provide a more fluid download experience- but let's be honest, the main reason has to do with capturing eyeballs. By sending users first to a page on our site we are able to promote our service to more potential new users, generate increased advertising revenue, and take advantage of other opportunities to monetize traffic. Providing a service like myDataBus takes a lot of resources, and the more revenue we are able to generate the better service we can offer to you, our users!

Thanks again for using myDataBus, and keep the feedback coming, we love hearing from you!

myDataBus.com Mobile is Live!

myDataBus.com Mobile is officially live; grab your cell phone and check it out! Load up http://m.mydatabus.com on your cell phone's browser, and get access to your files truly anywhere!

Some of the things you can do with myDataBus Mobile:

• Browse all of your files and folders, or use the Search feature to find something in either your files or any groups you belong to.
  
• Show file size and type, and a thumbnail of supported images.
• Download (how useful this is depends a lot on your phone!), Delete, or Email files right from your phone!
• Invite someone to one of your Groups, or to get their own myDataBus account.
  
• View your photo albums right on your phone.

Back in Action!

We are back! Again I'd like to extend an apology from our entire team to our users who couldn't access their files during our outage. We take very seriously the trust you have given us by hosting files in our system, and go to great lengths to honor that. From what Level 3 has told us this sounds like the perfect storm of network problems; but after today's extended outage we are already working on plans to make additional redundant bandwidth available in our main data center.

Network Outage...

As you have probably noticed myDataBus is currently offline; unfortunately our main network provider is experiencing a major outage affecting our entire state caused apparently by a fiber cut. At this time we do not have a repair time from them, but we hope to be back soon.

We're very sorry for the inconvenience; I'm sure that our users are as frustrated as we are at being unable to access your files!

If we do have any more information this evening I will be posting here until we are back.

Edit your photos with SnipShot and myDataBus!

Wrapping up a busy week of updates, today we released photo editing using the really great tools from SnipShot.com. This is one you have to see to really get the hang of, SnipShot is a really great tool! Go find a .jpg file in your myDataBus account and click the options button; you will see a new "Edit with SnipShot" link.

Features in brief: (From SnipShot.com)

• One-click enhance improves most images
• Basic editing tools like crop, rotate, resize
• Basic image adjustments like contrast, brightness, saturation, sharpness and hue
• Unlimited undo and redo (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y, or ⌘Z and ⌘Y on your Mac)
• Nondestructive editing—we always work from the original

And did I mention easy to use? Just like our Zoho tools, one click sends your file to the editor, and saving will push the updated file back to your myDataBus account.

New Social Bookmarking Tools

Social bookmarking and news sites are an interesting way to share your interests and find sites you might never have come across on your own. They are often a great way to find entertaining videos, pictures and websites when you are looking to kill some time; so in the spirit of helping you to share your content we have added a long list of services to myDataBus.com. Go create links from your Public Files page and you will see our expanded list of "one-click" sharing options.

Do you use one of these services? Try it out now, click on a link below to share this blog entry!

Digg.net
Del.icio.us
Stumble Upon
Furl
blinklist
Ma.gnolia
Simpy
Spurl
Reddit
Netvouz
Newsvine
Tailrank

All of these links are now available for your Albums also; click on an album and you will see a row of icons near the top of the page.

Did we miss your favorite? Send an email and let us know!

Updates Today - Groups, PayPal, Facebook

If you use our group features very often you may have already noticed that we pushed out an overhaul of the groups system earlier today. Most of the changes are architectural, designed to help us scale better and give us more flexibility in adding features, but there are some pretty radical UI changes as well. Let us know what you think!

Quick summary of the group changes:

• Zoho editing is now available for any file you have added to a group
• All of the group features have been combined into a single page; look on the right side of your files to view group members, information, invite people to join, or edit the group settings.
• The group member list now displays the actual name of each member, rather than their email address!
• On the member listing you can roll over a name to see profile information about that user.

In the payments department we have added an option to sign up for a paid account using your PayPal account in addition to our Credit Card option; this should be especially helpful for our international users. PayPal has over 100 million account members in 103 countries and regions around the world, and can accept transactions in 16 currencies

In this release we have updated to the newest version of the Facebook API; and improved our picture features. If you have Facebook, try this: use the link in the toolbar to log into your Facebook account, then click on either "Photos of You" or "Facebook Albums" to view your pictures. To download full size images into your myDataBus.com account, click the "Load Image" button... your Facebook photos are now in My Files! You can even import an entire album at once from the Facebook Albums page; complete with your comments!

Scheduled Maintenance Friday 3/23

We will be moving some servers around this Friday (March 23) evening, so myDataBus.com will be temporarily offline beginning around 5pm EST. Watch this address (http://mydatabus.blogspot.com) for updates, and thanks again for using myDataBus!

Added Support for editing spreadsheets; viewing PowerPoint files

For those of you enjoying our new support for document editing through the excellent Zoho Writer, we have added support for Zoho Sheet and Zoho Show today!

Zoho Sheet is an online alternative to commercial desktop spreadsheet applications, with great charting features and more! Click Edit with Zoho next to any Excel (.xls) file to view and edit in Sheet, then click save to update the file in your myDataBus account.

Zoho Show is a matching tool to create, edit, publish, and show presentations. At this time the Zoho API only supports viewing presentations (we will add support in myDataBus for editing as soon as it is released!), but if you have PowerPoint presentations loaded into your account this is a really great way to preview or even present them to others. Click on "Show with Zoho" to open your presentation in a very useful flash player. Ready to present? There is a full screen icon on the player that gives you a very handy presentation mode!

We have added Zoho links to search results now as well; try searching for "doc" for a demonstration.

Edit your documents online with Zoho!

Our mantra lately has been coming up with creative new ways for you to do stuff with your files; mainly by focusing on sharing them with others. To that end we have created the new Blogger and TypePad widgets, the Digg and Del.ico.us links on public files, The Plaxo address book tool and the latest round of Facebook API updates.

Our latest addition turns to managing your own files; we are really excited to announce that we have incorporated ties to Zoho Writer (and will soon be adding Zoho Sheets!). Zoho provides a suite of 11 products designed to give users a full range of office software online. Click options next to any supported file, and you have a new option: Edit with Zoho. (Also available from search results) When you have finished editing your document click the Save button in the top left corner of the Zoho window and your updated file will be saved back to your account at myDataBus.

Zoho Writer is a great lightweight editor with a clean and responsive interface, but there are some useful power features hidden away. Click on the Save As... menu for instance and you can export your document in other formats (including Adobe Acrobat). One feature I haven't seen promoted nearly enough is the really slick way that Zoho Writer deals with HTML files. Try it- open an HTML file from your myDataBus account; you get a full WYSISYG web interface that can manage tables, image properties, CSS information and more!

The new Edit with Zoho feature will work with Microsoft Word (DOC), OpenOffice text (ODT & SXW), HTML, and RTF documents; we plan to release Zoho Sheets support soon which will add Microsoft Excel (XLS) files to the mix.

Public File Limits Update

Older users who still have increased public file bandwidth limits will be dropped to 5GB/day today. If you have signed up in the last month or so and have a 1GB/day limit (or if you don't use public files!) you can ignore this message-- for the rest of you please make a note that we will be finishing the transition next weekend, the rest of the way down to 1GB.

If you have been using the extra bandwidth you may start to receive emails from our system warning you that you are about to exceed your limit; or you can check your current usage by clicking on the "Settings" tab.

Need more? Upgrade!
We have made it easy to design your own service plan at myDataBus.com; log into your account and click the upgrade link to find out just how inexpensive it can be to add storage or transfer to meet your needs.

For more information about limits and why they are being reduced see the blog entry announcing the change:
http://mydatabus.blogspot.com/2007/02/new-limits-on-public-files.html

Once again we thank you all for using myDataBus.com to store and share your files; and we are looking forward to some great new features to come!

Blogger, Digg, and TypePad, Oh My!

Telling the world about your public files is even easier now, with one-click tools to add your public file links to popular social websites! Take a look: go to your public files, and click on a filename to create links to that file. Your new options are listed on the right side of the screen.

Digg This File!
Share this file on facebook
Save This File to Del.icio.us
Add to Blogger
Add to TypePad

We will be adding an option to create a Blogger and TypePad widget with multiple file links soon, you will be able to access it by selecting several files from the My Public Files page.

Increased file size for uploads on paid accounts!

One request we hear a lot from users is for the ability to upload files larger than 500MB. We worked hard on the business model for file size and came up with what we think is a good approach to meet your needs: as of today all paid users have the ability to upload files up to 1.5GB in size.

This includes any paid account; whether you have the $9.95/year plan (a GREAT deal-- bump up to 10GB of storage, NO ADS, and twice the storage for less than $1/month!) or any of our a-la-carte bandwidth and storage upgrades.

The other half of this announcement is that we will be lowering the limit for free users to 250MB per file beginning next week.

We also wanted to let you know that for those users who have been enjoying the old 20GB/day public file limit we have started lowering your numbers as promised. We wanted to do this gradually to help ease the transition, so this weekend you will drop to 10GB/day; and you can expect to be down to 1GB sometime in the next couple of weeks. If you start running over your limit we encourage you to check out the upgrade page to see how easy it is to choose the features you want in a file hosing service!

Rendering problems in IE 6

Mea Culpa time-- if you tried to log into the site using Internet Explorer 6 over the weekend you were confronted by a blank screen with our black bar across the top. Our developers found and fixed the problem this morning; we understand for those of you that were affected that this was a frustrating problem, we apologize for the inconvenience!!

Making little things count!

With much of the heavy lifting of our Amazon S3 transition behind us we've been able to spend some time making the site more fun to use. Today we released a great package of 'little' enhancements that we hope will make myDataBus much more fun to use!

• Access your address books when mailing a File and Telling a Friend about myDataBus.com We've added a widget to access email addresses stored in Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Plaxo, AOL and more!


• Improved access to features from the My Files and Group Files pages- click the new "options" button on the right side to work with your files.


• Better visibility for your file information- hold your mouse over a filename on the My Files or Group Files pages, additional file information will pop up. Try it with an image!


• Vastly improved album creation! We are painfully aware that our album implementation left a lot to be desired... and frankly it's still not where we want it to be, but today we've fixed 2 of the most annoying parts-- creating new albums and being able to preview images. Try it-- click on "My Photo Albums" then "Create New Photo Album." We know there is more to do; we'd love to hear your suggestions!


• Improved upgrade options- although our 5GB of storage and about 30GB per month of transfer for public files is pretty generous, we've created a unique a-la-carte system for upgrading exactly the features you need, as often as you like. Check it out!

New limits on Public Files

As part of the changes we have introduced this week we are announcing that free accounts at myDataBus.com will now be limited to 1GB of transfer per day for Public Files. As always there are no limits or quotas affecting transfer of your own files, or files from groups you belong to.

Those of you who have been around for a while know that we introduced public files with a very high limit so that we could evaluate how the public files would be used by our customers (20GB). We hear the groans out there from a few of our power-users, but reasonable limits are of course necessary for the long-term success of our site. We do want to thank you all and soften the blow for those that will be impacted by the new limits-- all of our existing customers will continue to enjoy a limit of 20GB per day for a limited time.

The sliver lining in these changes (you will hear much more about this later!) is that we are nearly finished converting our users to Amazon.com's S3 storage service. This means that your files are actually stored and delivered from Amazon data centers. Why should you care? Because it's fast. Very fast... if your account has been converted and you have a high speed connection you have probably already noticed that files download much faster. It also means that file downloads don't affect the myDataBus.com website, keeping it much more responsive even when a user posts a very popular file!

By way of comparison, our free accounts offer about 30GB per month of transfer for public files (sometimes called 'hosted files' by other services). Most of our competitors offer far less (or none at all!) for their free plans.

We hope you continue to enjoy using myDataBus.com, and we continue to welcome your feedback about our service!

UPGRADES TODAY

We appologize in advance for any downtime you might see today; we are in the midst of rolling out the biggest upgrade yet of myDataBus.com -- the new site will feature not only huge strides in design and ease-of-use, but new database architecture that should give you a major boost in site performance!!

Hang with us for the day, you won't be sorry!

If our site is slow for you today...

We have been having issues with our bandwidth since last evening, causing some users to see much slower than normal downloads, and others to see their uploads time out. Please bear with us, we hope to have the issue resolved by the end of the day!