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Discover Shares Files from iPhones to Computers for Free [Downloads]

Posted on April 6, 2009
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Free iPhone app Discover isn’t as polished a solution to hosting, sharing, and transfering files to and from your iPhone as previously reviewed Air Sharing, but for casual use, it’s hard to beat the $0 price.

As most new iPhone/touch owners find out, usually in a disappointing revelation, their devices are the only Apple portables that don’t offer a “disk mode” for easy, thumb-drive-like file carrying and transfer. Apps like Discover (and Air Sharing) create a temporary webDAV network share, allowing Windows, Mac, or Linux systems to connect by adding the iPhone’s IP address as a network drive or, in the case of Discover, using a browser to access the app’s web-based interface.

Check out how Discover works with your files in the screenshots below (click for larger images):

You can turn it off, or re-activate it from the upper-left green button, but this pop-up screen gives you what you need to know—the IP address, and port, you should point your browser or file browser to. Click on your "Private" or "Public" folders (or another that you've created), and you'll see your files and their relevant filetype icons. The advertising strip across the top comes down when you buy the full version. PDFs, MP3s, Word documents, spreadsheets, and simple text files can be read or previewed in Discover's file view.
Options to turn on file or folder password protection. Point your browser to Discover's address, and you'll get a JavaScript-enhanced view of your files, plus buttons to upload and download your items in batches. As with Air Sharing, big files or clusters of files can sometimes spur lag or stalling. The "basic" view, for those who roll that way.
One nice feature of Discovery is a prompt showing you when it's transferring files, and how complete the process is.

Not pictured are support for Apple MobileMe syncing/transfer and a connection to an OS X-based server.

Discovery is a free download for iPhones and iPod touch models running the 2.0 or later software; the paid ($5) version takes away advertisements.

Discover [iTunes Store (direct link) via PC World]





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SkipScreen Lets You Pass Go and Collect Your Download [Firefox]

Posted on April 2, 2009
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Firefox: Thanks to an explosion in their popularity, it’s hard to avoid the ad-filled countdown screens of file services like Rapidshare and Megaupload these days. Skip the wait with this handy extension.

SkipScreen is a no-frills Firefox extension with a singular focus. Once you install SkipScreen the splash screens on popular file sharing services, that show you advertisements and encourage you to upgrade to premium service to avoid having to wait, are a thing of the past. As you can see in the screenshot above, the save file dialogue box popped up immediately while the count down was still in progress. Check out the video below to see it in action:

SkipScreen works on the following services: zShare, Mediafire, Sendspace, Sharebee, Rapidshare, Megaupload, DepositFiles, Divshare, Linkbucks, and Link-protector, with more on the way. If you have your own tips, tricks, or work arounds for getting the most from free file sharing services, sound off in the comments below. SkipScreen is free and works wherever Firefox does.





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Automatically Clean Up Your Downloads Folder with Belvedere [File Management]

Posted on February 19, 2009
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Over at his home away from ‘hacker, the How-To Geek has put together an excellent guide to automatically cleaning your downloads folder with Belvedere, Lifehacker’s very own automated file management tool.

Of course, we gave you a cursory overview of how to use Belvedere on the download page, but the Geek’s guide suggests a few smart rules you can set up for cleaning old ZIP and EXE downloads, moving images to your Pictures folder, music to your Music folder, and so on. We’re obviously big fans of Belvedere (and so are you, it seems), so it’s nice to see a step-by-step guide to putting it to good use.

Of course, Download management isn’t all you can do with Belvedere. If you’ve got your own favorite use for the automated file manager, let’s hear about it in the comments.






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Ant Renamer is a Lightweight but Powerful Renaming Utility [Downloads]

Posted on January 26, 2009
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Windows only: Batch renaming utility Ant Renamer 2 has a simple interface that quickly automates the tedious task of renaming multiple files, saving you from aggravating your carpal tunnel.

To use, simply drag your files into the Files pane, and then select from one of the many available functions in the Actions pane. There are plenty of functions to choose, from changing extensions and string replacement to more advanced tasks like regular expressions or even using the EXIF info from your camera. You can also chain multiple renaming tasks together into a batch, and preview the results back in the Files pane (make sure to use the F5 key to refresh the window after making changes). Once perfected, batches can then be saved for re-use—a great feature for working with downloaded files.

We’ve featured other Windows renaming utilities on many other occasions, from Bulk Rename Utility to Wildrename to Ken Rename and even a built-in trick to rename files sequentially, but Ant Renamer is an especially lightweight utility that offers a portable edition as a handy addition to your flash drive toolkit.

Ant Renamer 2 is a free download for Windows only. Mac users can check out previously mentioned Name Mangler.






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Speedier Ext4 Filesystem Available in Ubuntu 9.04 [Linux]

Posted on January 13, 2009
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Ext4, the next-generation filesystem for Linux storage, is rolled into the latest (alpha) Ubuntu 9.04 daily builds. Considering it nearly laps its counterparts in benchmark tests by Phoronix, that could mean some nice speed-ups in handling larger files (and maybe boot-ups?) [via; graph by Phoronix]






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