I am here to introduce to you yet another authority site - Big Upload. Yes, from it’s name you will know that it’s an file storage site. What you do is upload your files to their site (and you can upload up to 500MB) and they will do the rest. You may also send an email to your recipient to inform them of your storage URL for them to access it. And you get to have it stored online for as long as you constantly access it. If you don’t, it will only stay for 30 days before it is deleted. So if it is a popular file, you won’t need to worry about it.

I guess it is good for people who need to send big files (which a lot of email servers will reject) to each other. Instead of sending files through email, all you have to do is upload the file(s), key in your recipient’s email address, write a few words and you are done. Your recipient will just need to click on the link provided and he will be able to download the files. This way, you won’t clog up your email server with big attachments and you don’t need to worry about file size limitations. It also gives your recipient the ability to choose whether to download the file or not, unlike through email since he has to download the mail first.

You can also use this service as a temporary file storage system. Let’s say you need to send a file from your home PC to Office PC, instead of using floppies or thumb drives, you just need to click on a link, and you will be able to access your files from your Office. It also gives you the flexibility of accessing your files anywhere you want. From overseas in an Internet Cafe, or your client’s computer or anywhere with an internet connection! And best of all, this service is free. You can also join their premium membership, which provides you with a bigger storage space and no time limit for your stored files.

But nowadays, this service has been abused very often. A lot of people have used this service to share illegal or copyrighted files like MP3, Videos and software. Although it seems that they do respond to reports of illegal files and take action, I am pretty sure that a lot still gets through. Hope that it won’t get shut down due to this.

I have decided to change my email service provider, yes, to another free email provider. Which would you guys recommend? Yahoo? Hotmail (Yucks)? Gmail? Or some other email provider? I have an Yahoo email account, but sometimes it becomes very slow for both mail delivery and sending, so I don’t think I will go for a Yahoo account. Hotmail? Na, no way. I have an hotmail account as well but I don’t think it is a good choice, especially when you get tons of spam. I think Gmail is probably the best because it provides me with both a webmail and a POP option. Big storage space, and the email attachment limit is 15MB and it seems to have a good spam filtering system.

But the bad thing about the Gmail account is the address, it is so popular that all the good addresses is taken and I am reduced to having an email account with my full name. And yes, that’s a very long name. That’s not practical especially if I have to give others my email address through the phone. And it’s prone to spelling mistakes as well. What do you guys think? Or should I just use my own domain’s email address?

Well, I had thought that my email service provider had solved all their “teething” problems, but I was wrong. The problems are starting all over again. It started like a few days ago, I couldn’t receive or send all mails from MyRealBox. And it is getting very irritating for me. So if any of you send me mails and I did not reply, please be patient for a while. Well, you can access their web mail, but POP mail is out. It gives an error saying that the server is not responding. If you are sending mails, then it says that there are too many connections. I find it weird that their POP is having problems but their webmail is working perfectly fine. Webmail should take up more resources than POP right? And sending mails from the webmail is working too.

What is really happening? Is MyRealBox aiming to be a free web-based email service rather than a POP mail service? Webmail services actually is a more profitable business than a POP mail service since you can actually put advertisements directly on your web interface. Which you can’t do in a POP mail service. Sure, you can send advertisements through email, but this can be largely ignored while the advertisements on a website (or your web based email) cannot be easily removed.

Well, I really don’t want to use a web-based email service. It’s just too slow and inconvenient, having to login every time I need to access my mails and waiting for the page to load. Looks like I may be changing to Gmail mail soon. Or maybe I would use one of my domain’s email account. But this is highly undesirable since I may not keep all my domains and I surely don’t want to restrict the bandwidth limited to my site by my service provider. Decisions, decisions….