Using Rapidshare

Rapidshare.com, originally Rapidshare.de is a very popular and successful file sharing site over the net. Rapidshare provides two types of services: A free service and a paid service.

Paid users will get unrestricted access to downloads, where as free users have to bear certain restrictions.

In India, most of the people using cable networks are behind a proxy server. They don't have individual IP addresses, and hence a lot of restrictions apply to rapidshare downloads.

Basically, here are the four steps to download from rapidshare as a free user:

1. Type in the rapidshare file link into the browser address bar.

2. Scroll down the page. You'll see two buttons, namely Premium and Free. If you've bought an account, click on premium, you'll be prompted to enter the username and password. If you don't have an account, click on the Free button.

3. If your ip is free, you should see a decreasing counter, or a CAPTCHA image as shown in the screenshot below:

4. Upon entering the CAPTCHA text, you'll be able to access the download.

Now, if you're behind a proxy server, then a lot of people in your lan will be using rapidshare, and hence you may get messages that "you have to wait for x minutes" or "Your IP is currently downloading a file".

There are two options to over come this.

Option 1:
For Non-Techie users, google for rapidleech script.. There are couple of sites which host rapidleech script using which u can use convert the rapidshare links into downloadable links.

Some sites:
http://www.all-movies.org/rapidleech/
http://it-syria.com/rapid/index.php
http://madalf.al.ru/rapidleech/
http://www.rapiddown.org/
http://www.evilartix.com/leech/
http://xuryax.hostuju.cz/
http://www.thanhniensonla.com/rapidshare/index.php
http://ronit.o-n.fr/
http://ghostsoft.hostuju.cz/index.php?act=files
http://www.ahm1.info/rapidleech/index.php
http://www.madadrangi.com/rapid/
http://holoh.athost.net/
http://yenbaitoday.com/rapidleech/
http://samhee.com.vn/rap/index.php
http://insane.the-hazer.de/graphics/dlvn/
http://oxamj.com/rapidasv/index.php
http://euro-pharmacia.com/rapid/index.php
http://banme8x.com/rapid/
http://m3rd4.com/
http://esipaaz.net/rp/index.php
http://www.nguyenhungfc.net/forum/link/
http://greenside.dajoob.com/rapidleech/index.php?act=files
http://euro-pharmacia.com/rapid/index.php?act=files
http://alkahera-alyoum.com/share/?v=
http://enatega.com/rapidleech/
http://ptvantien.com/
http://rakeshk.net/
http://ptvtpc.info/rleech/
http://enatega.com/rapidleech/index.php?act=files


These sites are obtained through googling. I'm not sure that these sites will be stable, up and running. No permission has been taken from the webmasters of these sites. If you are the webmaster of any of these sites, please leave a comment if you want your site to be removed from the list.

Option 2:
Using proxies. You can google for "using proxies to hide ip" and you'll get a lot of solutions.

Well, that's all for this post. There are a lot of tools available on the net to use with rapidshare, more about them sometime later.

Happy downloading :)

* Overcoming download limits in Discussion Boards and Forums

It's quite a common practice to limit the capabilities of newly registered users in forums, like not able to post messages, hiding parts of the posts, no access to the attachments etc.

Here's a workaround to overcome that using RSS feeds. I'm going to show how to download the attachments in posts that have restricted access (eg: you need to have at least 15 posts to access the attachment). The discussion board I'm subscribed to is a vBulletin based one, but most probably this trick will work for other forum softwares also.

This trick will work only if the RSS feeds are enabled with the forum. Now a days almost all forum scripts are activated with RSS feeds.

Step 1: Go to the forum/db. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can see a yellow/orangish icon in the address bar. (Check the address bar in the snapshot below. In this snapshot, you can also see the message that attachment can be accessed only if we have more than 10 posts)

Step 2: Click on that icon. You'll get a firefox page asking you what to use to read the RSS feeds. From the drop down list, select Google Reader.

Step 3: Login to Google reader using your google login (www.google.com/reader)

Step 4: Click on the thread with the attachment and there you go, the direct download link to the attachment (See the snapshot below. The file is the same one which has been shown as restricted in Step 1 screenshot).

Happy downloading :)

Changing locations in My Places bar

Why click through a series of locations to find the file you want, when a snappy little shortcut will take you right to it? And on the flip side, why have shortcuts to folders you never use? These questions make the My Places bar—the bar at the left of the Open and Save dialog boxes in Microsoft Office programs—an area of contention for me. Microsoft's default shortcuts for Windows XP/Office 2003 users are My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer, and My Network Places. Do you use any or all of those?

You can hide them with a simple Windows Registry edit. And for complete customization, you can also add locations you actually do use (the My Places bar can store up to 256) and rearrange the order of all your shortcuts.

Remember, anytime you tinker with the Registry, to back up everything or at least the branch you're editing (File | Export..., either way). And when you're done customizing your Places, you can export the modifications and share them with your workgroup: Users can double-click the files and instantly update their own Registries.

1. Removing the old

In the Registry (Start | Run...|, type regedit), navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Open Find\Places\StandardPlaces. Choose which default item you would like to remove, making sure to select the folder. Then on the Edit menu, point to New and click on DWORD Value to create a new value icon. Change the filename to Show and press Enter.

Right-click on the icon and choose Modify. Set the Value data at 0 to remove the default icons from My Places. Repeat this process for any other default icons you want to remove.

2. Adding new

Along with deleting those unused default locations, you can also add folders you do use. Just click on the File menu in any Office program and choose Open (or, if you're already working on a document, you can choose Save As). Browse to find the location you want to add. Now right-click anywhere in the box labeled Look in: on the left-hand side of the dialog and select the option to add the location.

Once it's added, you can easily modify a Place, changing its position, removing it, or renaming it from within the Open/Save dialog. The default locations can be modified only by editing the Registry—similar to the method for removing them; see the next step.

3. Organizing places

To organize your shortcuts further, open the Windows Registry again and add a DWORD value under a location and name it Index. If you want a folder to be on top, enter 0 for the value. Repeat this for all other locations in My Places, entering 1 for the next location, 2 for third one, and so on. (Note: Folders you added will be in HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Open Find\Places\User DefinedPlaces.)

Source: PC Magazine