MediaFire - Free Online Storage

For a long time I wished there was an easy way to send files too large to email to friends and family that lived outside of Oregon. In this digital era, using 'snail mail' to send a burned CD or USB drive was a hassle. Really, who has time to wait in line at the post office?

Happily, this past year I was introduced to MediaFire.com. When you sign up for this free "in the clouds" hosting site, you can immediately share files up to 200Mb. In addition, you can store unlimited amounts of data. Of course, there's a pay version that allows larger file sizes and multiple file downloads, but I have yet to need it.

Having my own account has really come in handy for doing this blog. In fact, discovering MediaFire was what made me decide to start it. In addition to reviewing an album, I wanted to allow people to sample the music on their own. Of course, this brings up the issue of legality. I would guess that the artists and record companies would not like me sharing their albums. But unlike big file-sharing sites, I think my blog is not making much of a dent. Besides, I am promoting the album. Ultimately I have to figure I'm a small fish in a big pond of moral uncertainty.  I hope to figure out how to create a streaming music player on this site. That may eliminate this topic altogether.

If you do want to download an album from the blog, it's really easy and I'll explain it below. (Yes, Mom, it's true!) Otherwise that's a wrap.

After clicking the link on my page, a new tab will open putting you on the Mediafire site. You don't have to sign-up or log-in or anything. Smack dab in the middle/right of the page is a yellow box that says "Click here to start download".  Before clicking that text, I recommend un-clicking the Bloomberg.com check box that sometimes comes up, or else you'll find yourself on their website next. (No harm if you go there, though.)

Once you press "Click here to start download", you'll be prompted to save a .zip file. to your desktop or download folder. I zip the whole album because MediaFire would make me pay to download multiple files from a folder. Once you have the zip file on your computer, double click it and the folder will unzip & appear with Mp3s inside.  Throw away the zip file. Drag the files to iTunes.  Done.