Kim Dotcom this week provided
"early-access users" a sneak peek at
his new file-sharing service, Mega, which will open to the public
today.
According to TechCrunch's Ingrid
Lunden, who got a first look at Mega, the site resembles a
simplified version of Dropbox, with a
folder to hold files, plus an inbox and
contacts tab.
Those looking for more
than 50GB of free storage will be
able to select from three paid tiers — €9.99 ($13.29), €19.99 ($26.59),
and €29.99 ($39.90) per month for
the respective 500GB storage/1
terabyte bandwidth, 2GB/4TB, and
4GB/8TB. Kim Dotcom tipped his new project in early November, and has been
tweeting all week to get the word
out and entice new users. "24 hours until Mega!," Dotcom tweeted yesterday. "One more day! Are you ready?" he wrote (to which one
follower responded with lyrics from a
Les Misérables song).
Dotcom has revealed that Mega will
include 50GB of free storage for all users. Mobile storage app MediaFire launched the Android version of its app this week, and also offered
50GB of free storage, but other
cloud services offer much less,
including Dropbox (2GB), Google
Drive (5GB), and Microsoft's
SkyDrive (7GB). "Mega will have very generous limits
for free users," Dotcom tweeted
Thursday.
The Mega website points to a host
of new features that outshine the
old, including easy privacy, an online
Mega Manager, a live global cloud
file system, and multi-centric data
warehousing.
"Before, you had to install the Mega
Manager on every computer you
used Megaupload from," the site
said. "Now, high-speed parallel
batch uploading and downloading
with resume capability are integral parts of the Mega website." Dotcom is hoping to reward former
Megaupload users by attempting to
retrieve access to their saved files,
as well as allow them to retain
premium status on the new site. Both
situations are being worked on, he said.
The entrepreneur spent much of
2012 avoiding the U.S. Justice
Department after it shut down Megaupload and tried to have him extradited from New Zealand to
America to face charges of massive
copyright infringement. Dotcom
denies any wrongdoing.
This week, an Ontario judge refused
a U.S. request for access to the data
on Megaupload servers hosted in
Canada, as reported by Ars Technica. Canadian Justice Gladys Pardu said
the servers are the equivalent to
information on 100 laptop
computers.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414488,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05079TX1K0000993

No desktop app makes it boring...