The 13 "Best of the Best" Free File Hosting Options

Need to store your files online? There are hundreds if not thousands of options, but the trick is picking out the cream of the crop. Some sites have long registration requirements, slow upload speeds, and annoying ads, or worse.

This list has been narrowed down to the best of the best file storage options, guaranteed to be stable, free, generous with file size limits, offer lots of space, and top things off with some really cool features.

1. ADrive is an online storage provider offering tons of space - 50 GB to be exact - and their generous 2 GB file size limit lets you make the most of it. You can get a free account and then upload all your files through the web browser interface, then you can keep your files private or share them with a simple click of the mouse.

Link: www.adrive.com

2. MediaMax (formerly StreamLoad) gives you a free account with 25 GB of secure storage space that works well for private storage and file sharing.

Link: www.mediamax.com

3. With Humyo you get a total of 30 GB of free space, which is awesome for secure file storage and sharing, along with other sweet options for streaming and embedding media files. To top things off you can access Humyo from any web or mobile phone browser.

Link: www.humyo.com

4. DivShare is a different take on file storage. It allows you to store files and view them online without downloading them - watch streaming video, view photo slideshows, read documents, or listen to streaming audio. Plus, it easily integrates with Facebook, Wordpress, and the Apple iPhone. The free account gets you 5 GB of storage space.

Link: divshare.com

5. Drop.io is another unique storage provider that lets you setup secure file "drops" between specified groups of people. It's totally secure and you can setup as many drops as you want, and you have the option of adding files via web browser, email, or phone! It's very simple but very useful.

Link: drop.io

6. FileFactory is "the leader in free unlimited file hosting." You can upload files for storage or to send to a friend, with a generous 300 MB limit per file and the ability to upload 25 files at once. There is even a desktop application and Facebook app to let you upload files from anywhere. Once your files are uploaded you can create photo slideshows, music widgets, and more.

Link: www.filefactory.com

7. MediaFire offers 100% free file hosting with unlimited space (except for a 100 MB file size limit.) Registration is optional so you can quickly upload files or sign-up and get an account to manage your uploads. MediaFire has been getting rave reviews from PC World, PC Magazine, and more.

Link: mediafire.com

8. Badongo, despite the funny name, means business. You get unlimited space with a whopping 1 GB file size limit, all 100% free. Extras include slideshow creators, music players, and more.

Link: www.badongo.com

9. XDrive is like having a second hard drive offering 5 GB of free space. Use it for secure remote file storage or file sharing with friends and family. New features include photo slideshows, automated scheduled backups, and desktop software.

Link: www.xdrive.com

10. DropBoks offers free online storage, just like an online "drop box." You get 1 GB free, but the real beauty is the clean and simple interface that anyone can understand.

Link: www.dropboks.com

11. Diino is "your internet desktop" where you can store up to 2 GB of files, free of charge. Then you can share them or just access them from anywhere you have an internet connection. Other features include free email, a free blog, collaboration space, and the ability to run scheduled backups.

Link: www.diino.com

12. eSnips offers a cool 5 GB of free storage plus custom playlists, widgets, and a "social DNA" feature that compares you to other users based on the files you upload. If you are looking for community features to go with your file storage, eSnips could be for you.

Link: www.esnips.com

13. Driveway is for sharing individual files and offers a generous 500 MB file-size limit, not to mention a selection of widgets. You can even share files straight from your desktop with just a right-click.

Link: www.driveway.com

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5 Cool Softwares to Watch Internet TV from your PC for Free

Gone are the days when we used to use 56k dial up connections. Today, we are able to get fast internet connections from our internet providers. Watching videos online was impossible before, but now we can easily watch videos online without any glitches. Well, now you can even watch your favorite TV channels online that too for free! Here are 5 cool softwares through which you can watch online TV for free.

JLC’s Internet TV:
JLC’s Internet TV is a FREE program for watching and browsing thousands of TV channels freely available on the internet. It has one of the biggest and most up to date database of channels ever. The best part is that users can submit, rate and flag channels. The flagging system is really useful as you know which channel is worth watching and which isn’t. Adult channels are disabled; if you want to enable them then you need to pay $20 for a year.
You can download JLC’s Internet TV from here.

SopCast:
SopCast is a simple, free way to broadcast video and audio or watch the video and listen to radio on the Internet. SoP is the abbreviation for Streaming over P2P. Sopcast is a Streaming Direct Broadcasting System based on P2P. It is very efficient and easy to use. You can build your own TV stations comparable with large commercial sites with minimal resources.
You can download SopCast from here.

TVU networks:
TVU networks is another program to watch internet TV. Using this software you can watch online television via web or using player. This program doesn’t require any TV card. The best part is that most of the channels are watchable without stopping for buffering.
You can download it from here.

Super Internet TV:
Super Internet TV has a collection of over 1000 live television channels and over 1300 online radio stations. With this software you can watch TV & webcam and listen to radio online. To watch videos you need to install the latest version of RealPlayer and Windows Media Player.
You can download it from here.

Internet TV & Radio Player:
Internet TV & Radio Player has a collection of over 950 Internet TV channels and 1600+ online radio stations. To watch videos you need to install the latest version of RealPlayer and Windows Media Player.
You can download it from here.

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Open Source CMS

Blogging

Wordpress

Wordpress is the most widely used Open Source blogging platform with a huge developer community. It also has hundreds of free plugins and themes making it an all round excellent choice for bloggers.
Go get Wordpress now! »

Textpattern

Textpattern is a flexible, elegant and easy-to-use content management system optimised for blogging. Like most CMS, it is coded in php and requires a mysql database for operations.
Go get Textpattern now! »

Nucleus

Nucleus CMS is an open-source blog management software package written in PHP, with a MySQL backend, it allows for multiple blogs and authors, easy publishing, commenting, RSS, archiving, search and more.
Go get Nucleus now! »

Habari

Habari is a "next-generation free software blogging patform" still in development but backed by some of the web's most respected coders and developers. Habari will grow to be something special.
Go get Habari now! »

Portals

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform with a powerful range of features that supprt a variety of websites from personal blogs to large community-driven websites.
Go get Drupal now! »

Joomla!

Joomla! probably has the largest userbase for a CMS System. It is used to power everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Easy to install and manage, it has a vast amount of templates and plugins.
Go get Joomla! now! »

e107

e107 is a CMS written in PHP and using the popular open source MySQL database system for content storage. It's completely free, totally customisable and in constant development.
Go get e107 now! »

Plone

Plone is an open source CMS suited for an internal website or may be used as a server on the Internet, playing such roles as a document publishing system and groupware collaboration tool.
Go get Plone now! »

Symphony

Symphony is a web publishing system for web developers in XML and XSLT. It is customisable and flexible and can be used for anything from a publishing environment to organising your website's url structure.
Go get Symphony now! »

Pligg

Pligg is a PHP/MySQL CMS with a Web 2.0 feature set allowing users to easily create digg-type websites with an integrated user voting system.
Go get Pligg now! »

Forums

Simple Machines (Used to power the OSLiving forums)

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is professional grade community building software with a custom template system that gives you control over the layout and style of your forum. Highly recommended.
Go get Simple Machines Forum now! »

PHPBB

PHPBB was launched in 2000 and has become one of the standard Open Source forums used worlwide. It has a large and highly customisable set of key features coupled with a standards compliant interface.
Go get PHPBB now! »

BBPress

BBPress comes from the creators of Wordpress, it is forum software with a focus on web standards, ease of use, ease of integration, and speed.
Go get BBPress now! »

Vanilla

Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, fully extensible discussion forum software. It is extremely lightweight at only 386k! A perfect solution for a simple forum.
Go get Vanilla now! »

MyTopix

MyTopix is a discussion forum poised to compete with some of the other players in the bulletin board market. It has all the features you need to get a community up and started quick and nothing that you don't.
Go get MyTopix now! »

Wiki

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is the information sharing software package that Wikipedia is built on. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis besides.
Go get MediaWiki now! »

DocuWiki

DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies.
Go get DocuWiki now! »

WikkaWiki

WikkaWiki is a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine written in PHP, which uses MySQL to store pages. Designed for speed, extensibility, and security.
Go get WikkaWiki now! »

E-learning

Moodle

Moodle is a course management system - an Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities.
Go get Moodle now! »

DrupalEd

Built on the popular Drupal CMS system, DrupalEd can be used as an informal and/or formal learning site where students, teachers, classes etc have comparable and/or hierarchical permissions.
Go get DrupalEd now! »

Claroline

Claroline is an Open Source eLearning and eWorking platform allowing teachers to build effective online courses and to manage learning and collaborative activities on the web.
Go get Claroline now! »

Dokeos

Dokeos is a learning management system used in more than 600 companies and public administrations to manage e-learning and blended learning programmes.
Go get Dokeos now! »

Docebo

Docebo is an e-Learning platform (LMS and LCMS) that supports 12 languages, is compliant to the SCORM 1.2 standard, and different didactic models. Including: Blended, Self-Directed, Collaborative and even Social Learning through Chat, Wiki, Forums etc.
Go get Docebo now! »

Scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to pilot an F-22 jet simulator

Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to pilot an F-22 jet simulator.

The brain-in-a-dish is the idea of Thomas DeMarse, 37, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. His work has been praised as a significant insight into the brain by leading US academics and scientific journals.

The 25,000 neurons were suspended in a specialised liquid to keep them alive and then laid across a grid of 60 electrodes in a small glass dish.

Under the microscope they looked at first like grains of sand, but soon the cells begin to connect to form what scientists are calling a “live computation device” (a brain). The electrodes measure and stimulate neural activity in the network, allowing researchers to study how the brain processes, transforms and stores information.

In the most striking experiment, the brain was linked to the jet simulator. Manipulated by the electrodes and a desktop computer, it was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds.

To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.

Although the brain currently is able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated aircraft in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to stormy, hurricane-force winds, the underlying goal is a more fundamental understanding of how neurons interact as a network, DeMarse said.

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US students toil to mitigate water woes in rural India

A 13-year-old student of Indian origin in the US and his American friends washed cars, sold pizzas and cakes, and held sports tournaments to raise money for a tube well in a water-starved village in India.

Shocked by the story of water shortage in Paras village and its environs in Akola district that Rujul related to them, a group of 15 American boys and girls decided to rise to the occasion.

The eight grade students of Princeton Day School, New Jersey, also went from home to home seeking donations - for a group of people no one but Rujul had seen in distant Maharashtra state.

On a visit to Nagpur, Rujul explained what drove him to do what he accomplished with the help of his friends.

Scenes of women carrying heavy pots of water on their heads from long distances are a common image depicting water woes in rural India. For Rujul, who was visiting Paras village, it was an astounding sight.

It was in Paras, nearly 250 km from Nagpur, where his father was born and educated up to middle school. Rujul asked himself whether there wasn't anything he could do to mitigate the hardship of women, some of whom were older than his mother. That was in 2006.

He retuned to the village this year with an answer backed by his 15 classmates - fund raised through voluntary labour to dig a tube-well on its outskirts.

'In the US, water is taken for granted. You turn on the faucet and get a continuous flow of water. Coming from there, I was really surprised to see the women's arduous trek. I could not imagine what living in such circumstances could be like', Rujul told IANS here.

'We thought digging a tube-well in the village that would cost about $900 would be the best solution and decided to raise funds for our mission,' he said.

The group of friends which Rujul and his friend Kevin Petrovic formed began fundraising at the school.

'We held car washes, sold pizza and cakes and held sports tournaments; we also peddled from house to house seeking donations', Rujul told IANS.

The funds were raised in no time and the work for the tube-well has begun. Rujul and his friends now plan to help dig more such wells in the area.

'I am planning to bring at least six members of our club this July to see the desperate situation. Though they are convinced about it, seeing is believing,' he said.

The good Samaritans have set up a Drinking Water for the Developing World Club and obtained a tax-exempt non-profit organisation certificate.

'We created a website for Drinking Water for India, Inc., our charity at www.drinkingwaterforindia.org,' he said.

Rujul's father Anil Zaparde, an Indian software developer in Princeton, and his wife Rashmi bring their children to India every year so that they see the people here and know the culture in which their parents were born and brought up.

'Last year, Rujul was equally astonished to see as many as 300 children packed in just two small rooms in the Urdu school in Paras,' Anil told IANS. 'And this year he was very delighted to see two more rooms constructed there from a small donation I made.'

'I realized the stark difference between a 13-year-old living in the US and in Paras,' Rujul remarked feelingly while talking about the village school. Equally touching for the sensitive lad was his father's generous donation for the renovation of the Shiva temple in Paras where Anil remembers going as a child.

'Some people here thought it odd that we, despite being Hindus, donated money to an Urdu school meant for Muslims students,' Anil said.

Anil and parents of the other children decided to encourage them to carry out the tube-well mission though anyone of them could have easily donated the entire money.

'We wanted to give the children the satisfaction of doing something on their own,' Anil said.

Impressed by the children's zeal, many individuals, besides a US charity Home Depot, have already approached them with offers for help, raising a hope that the initiative for creating a convenient water source for Paras, a village in Akola district, doesn't remain symbolic

(Shyam Pandharipande can be contacted at shyam.p@ians.in)

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