Kim Dotcom’s Mega launches today

Kim Dotcom is making his comeback today with the launch of ‘Mega’, a new multifaceted file hosting service/cloud drive.

The service which is said to take on big names like Dropbox, Google Docs, and Microsoft Skydrive will offer users 50GB of free storage space with additional storage space offered for a premium at 3 different levels. Pro I offers users 500GB with 1TB of transfer space for €9.99 per month, Pro II – 2TB with 4TB of transfer for €19.99 per month, and Pro III offering 4TB of space with 8TB of file transfer bandwidth for €29.99 per month.

the basic file sharing service includes drag and drop file transfers, along with the ability to add contacts, and send content via an inbox, and Dotcom even went on to urge users to use Google Chrome for the best sharing experience since other browsers are not fully compatible at the moment. However, they are working to add compatibility for other alternatives such as Firefox and Internet Explorer (among others).

This is only the start of many new features being provided by the file host. He mentioned in a blog post that due to the immense portion of time spent on developing the main website, most of the services which were expected to go live today, have been put off and will be released over time as part of a post-launch schedule. Some of the rumoured features include file hosting and domain services, an on-site productivity suite, video-conferencing services, among many others. The plans definitely sound ambitious but will be implemented over a given time period.

It terms of copyrighted content (the main reason MegaUpload got shut down in the first place), they are supposedly taking a serious stance against stolen content and won’t be afraid to put the blame on users should they get caught.

Sadly we can’t test drive any of the features because they still have ‘access protection’ enabled. Hopefully they’ll be up and running when the sun rises for us in the western hemisphere. You can check out the developer’s list below to get an idea of the what Mega will offer in the future.

Developer documentation enhancements:

• Properly reformat and comment the JavaScript reference implementation so that it becomes more readable
• Add missing command-specific documentation to the API referenceFile transfer queue enhancements:
  • Vertical resizing
  • Drag & Drop to modify transfer sequence
  • Multiselect
  • Clicking on a pending transfer navigates to/marks the source file or the target folder
  • Stop/continue buttons

File manager enhancements:

• Re-implement from scratch without underlying third-party UI framework for better performance
• Adaptively eliminate the leftmost file path buttons at the top to maintain visibility of the upload and search buttons (we have a hack in place for this, but it only works in Chrome)
• “Properties” option in the file context menu

Collaboration feature enhancements:

• MEGA user-to-user messaging with file attachments, plus external RFC 4880/OpenPGP and S/MIME gateway for secure off-site e-mail communication
• MEGA user-to-user instant messaging
• Exported link enhancements
• Allow for the creation of folder links (with associated crypto key) which then display the folder content live
• Secure unauthenticated delivery web widget
• Allow unauthenticated users to securely deliver files to MEGA users’ inboxes, e.g. to submit very large files to print shops

Filesystem enhancements:

• Activate storing all block MACs on the server (encrypted) after an upload to allow for integrity-checked partial reading. Right now, the file has to be downloaded fully to be checked.
• Enable forking encrypted time-stamped delta file support to allow for random writing to existing files with full rollback capability

SDK enhancements

• Complete the API documentation
• Provide client libraries in various languages

Client applications

• A Windows filesystem mount is currently in beta and will be available shortly
• Linux/MacOS X filesystem mounts
• Mobile access
• Sync tools for all major platforms

Integrated on-site applications

• Calendar
• Word processing
• Spreadsheet

MEGA as a local “appliance”

• Load a third-party audited version of the MEGA JavaScript files from a machine that you control
• Be immune against new bugs of any kind