/* CSS Document */ Streamload Blog: October 2005

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Streamload's DigitalLife Experience

We just returned from three jam-packed days of demonstrating our new service, Streamload MediaMax, at Ziff-Davis' DigitalLife show in New York City. First and foremost, thank you to all our current Streamload users who came by to see us at the show. It was incredibly fun to meet you and to give you a preview of the MediaMax beta release.

We are very proud to return from the show with the honor of being selected as "Best of Show" in the category of digital life services. PC Magazine did a really nice article on all of the "Best in Show" companies.

Here were some of our favorite products from the digital life show:

XBox 360 - We are about a month away from the launch of Xbox360. I can honestly say that I was completely blown away by the graphics and performace of the games at the Microsoft XBox 360 demo. I will be pre-ordering mine ASAP.


Robopet - Our booth neighbors and friends at WowWee were demonstrating my favorite technologies, robots for home use. The makers of RoboSapien and RoboRaptor were previewing my favorite new robot, RoboPet, and a very realistic-looking chimpanzee head that is coming out soon called Live Chimpanzee. I love dogs and I love robots. So why wouldn't this be one of my favorite technologies at the show? In fact, I have had RoboPet on pre-order since July, so I was very excited to finally see it in person, now I am just a little sad that the shipping backorder at Amazon has been so prolonged.


Creative Zen Vision - Forget Apple's video iPod. Creative's new 30 GB device is decently priced, has a nice sized screen (640x480 resolution) that's perfect for exporting the signal to any standard definition TV. It supports many video formats, such as AVI, DivX™ 4 & 53, XviD4, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4-SP, WMV9 and Motion-JPEG, which simply means more choice and less restrictions. It is also Windows Plays-For-Sure compatible. So you can buy your digital music or you can use a music subscription service like Real Rhapsody, Napster, or Yahoo! Music Unlimited to fill up your player with all the music you want from just $4.95 a month.

I will be posting photos from the show as soon as I have a chance to upload them.

posted by Max @ 12:08 PM   0 comments links to this post

Monday, October 17, 2005

Streamload and your Online Auctions

Online auction sites like eBay are all the rage these days, and if you’re anything like me you love the ability to turn all of the random junk you’ve collected over the years (Salad Shooter, anyone?) into extra cash. However, many auction sites place additional fees on hosting pictures through their site. If you have a paid Streamload membership, you can keep your auction listing fees down by hosting images from your Streamload account. Hosting allows anyone to access your file using a simple URL, such as

www.streamload.com/yourname/saladshooter4sale.jpg

You can link this URL to your auction so that visitors to your listing can view images of the item that you’re selling. If your preferred auction site imposes size restrictions on the images they host for you, you can create links in your auction to the large, full-quality sized shots in your Streamload account so that visitors can get a detailed look at your item.

In addition, you can use our Quality Conversion feature to change the size of your image file. This means that you can take your full-quality, 5 Megapixel image file and reduce it in size so that people with slower Internet connections will have an easier time of looking at your picture.

In order to host files using your Streamload account, move the file into your Hosted Files folder. Next, you'll need to link the file using a Streamload Hosting URL. In order to get the URL for your hosted file, go into your Hosted Files folder, then mark the checkbox next to the file. Click on Edit > Basic Edit from the Streamload toolbar. There, you’ll see the Hosting URL near the middle of the screen. Copy the Hosting URL (it’s easier if you right click the URL and select Copy Link Location), and paste into your auction. Remember, the correct URL will be the one that looks like the example URL above! It's important to get the right URL linked.

If you’d like to change the size of your file, mark the checkbox next to the file and click on Edit > Convert from the Streamload Toolbar. The following screen will allow you to choose from a list of formats and sizes available for your file. Here’s a tip: the Quality Conversion feature can only decrease the size of your image file, so it’s always best to upload the largest, best quality picture that you have and then proceed from there.

With a little creativity, you can use your Streamload account to help you create great-looking auctions. Now, if only I could figure out how to stop buying items as quickly as I’m selling them… :)

For more information regarding hosting your files on Streamload, please see our website’s documentation here. Of course, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our support representatives at support@streamload.com. Our crack team is available 24-7 to help you with any questions.

posted by Maxine @ 1:31 PM   0 comments links to this post

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Podcasting with Streamload

Greetings! I’m Mark from Streamload Support, and this is my first post to the Streamload Blog.

Working in Streamload Customer Support, we regularly see trends and changes in the way our customers use Streamload.

Hosting 'Podcasts' via Streamload is one such trend that has recently taken off in a big way. If you're not familiar with podcasting, it's a method of publishing audio programs for download via the Internet. Podcasting is popular with bloggers, and has also been adopted by traditional broadcasters such as NPR and BBC.

Hosting audio for ‘on demand’ access has always been possible at Streamload, but we've seen much more action in this area since podcasting became popular in late 2004. Content creators faced with web host bandwidth limitations can solve the problem by outsourcing their file hosting and delivery requirements to Streamload.

If you're interested in seeing what all the fuss is about, I've included a list of Podcast directories below. These directories link to podcasts from around the internet and feature a wide range of subjects:

Podcast Directories
Podcast Alley
Digital Podcast
Podcast.net

Below is a list of my personal podcast favorites. Please note these are all technology and internet related - if that’s not what floats your boat, the directories above have something for everyone!

Internet/Tech Podcasts
Revision3
this WEEK in TECH
endgadget Podcasts
IT Conversations

Despite the ‘Pod’ reference to Apple’s iPod, any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. My most cherished audio device is currently the iriver T10 .

Listening to podcasts is a fun way to learn about new things, and anyone can create their own podcast.

Whether you’re an experienced podcaster or a fledgling newbie, check out Streamload's file storage, hosting and delivery services for fast, reliable digital content distribution.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Streamloading!

posted by Mark @ 6:17 AM   0 comments links to this post

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

MediaMax Migration Update

The effort to migrate our current customers to Streamload MediaMax is still in full swing, and tomorrow our engineers will be upgrading one of our database servers to the new MediaMax backend architecture. The small number of members that are affected by the database maintenance will notice that their accounts will be in read-only status between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, October 5. This status means that a read-only status banner will appear at the top of the account, and you will not be able to upload, edit, move, or copy files and folders during the maintenance period. Having said that, here’s the good news: if your account is affected by the maintenance, downloads will be free for the time that your account is in read-only.

Our systems engineers will be making their best effort to minimize tomorrow’s maintenance period. For additional systems news, please check out our Service News page. If you have any questions at all, feel free to contact our support staff at support@streamload.com. We have a great customer support team that will be happy to answer any questions you might have about the service.

Thanks again for your patience!

posted by Maxine @ 2:55 PM   0 comments links to this post