Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Link Up - your mediamax hosted links will die

I asked a question about hosted links on the last entry here as follows:

---
Okay, so having tried the mover I have some questions.

It asks me to set a date for when I want my files moved. Why?

My guess is all the old links to my MediaMax hosted files will die. Is that correct John Hood?

Do we have to trawl the internet changing the http://www.mediamax.com/ URL to the http://www.thelinkup.com/ URL?

If not, then why does the date matter?
---

The response from John Hood was:

---
it's just a date to schedule your transfer. that's it. your links will be fine. the exception would be imbedded links which we eventually won't support since we're discontinuing download limits.
---

I wasn't sure what 'imbedded links' meant, but was pleased to hear the http://www.mediamax.com/ URLs would continue to work.

Except it seems they won't.

This is from a later posting from John Hood:

---
Hosted Files. We will support existing MediaMax hosted links through Dec 31, 2008. For example, a file that is hosted at: [no link appears in John's comment, but I guess this means the mediamax.com URL]

If people need more time (beyond Dec 2008) to update links to the new "thelinkup.com" URL, we will consider extending this deadline near the end of the year. But please start using the new www.thelinkup.com URL as soon as possible.
---

So my fear is justified. Hosted mediamax links WILL DIE at the end of the year. So if, like me, you subscribed to mediamax to link to hosted mp3s then beware.

Is that right John?

33 comments:

nukuza said...

Can MM please ensure that our inboxes are migrated to TLU as well? Due to an old MM problem of files being lost upon moving them, I normally keep all my files in my inbox. I fear that all these files will go missing, especially as I'm experiencing severe problems in trying to save my attachments to my File Manager in MM.

Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

Any else get this email:
Hello,

Thanks for your email. We apologize for the issues you have been experiencing with the mover tool. We are taking the mover tool down today and instead will be moving all valid files from paid users’ accounts. So there is no longer a need to use the mover tool or to choose files to move.

As a result, we expect the migration from MediaMax to The Linkup to take at least another two weeks. We are extending the MediaMax V5 life to Friday, April 9th.

Thanks for your continued patience as we work through this major upgrade.

Regards,
Colin
The Linkup Support
http://www.thelinkup.com

Anonymous said...

LinkUp is just another Mediamax.

John Black said...

I have tried to get MediaMax to acknowledge that 95-99% of my files were lost permanently during the big data loss disaster last year. I have never received a response. But my files continue to be unavailable. Also, I was twice charged double, according to their own web page data. But when I protested in an email, I once again never received a response. But in spite of this treatment, they still charge me every month - that they are able to do.

Anonymous said...

imbedded links means links that are imbedded into the html of another site. in our case its usually pics that are displayed on eBay or MySpace. this will not be supported after the end of the year but will be replaced by a widget.

danie- yes, we will move your inbox files.

anon- it should be MAY 9th not April 9th. Sorry about that.

jon black- leave your username here and ill take care of it for you.

Anonymous said...

A small and completely random selection of my original files have shown up in my linkup account....

Anonymous said...

Question to JohnHood.
If I understood correctly, then on May 9th at 12am PST the MediaMax will go down (unless there is another delay), right?
So does it mean that ALL of our files will be already transferred to our new TLU accounts at exactly same time? Then, if at May 9th, 1am PST I were to go my TLU account, I will find ALL of my FileManager, Saved Attachments and Inbox Files already there?
The reason I'm asking is that I have a big account (several TBs at least), MOVER never worked for me. And so far my TLU account is totally empty... If the migration is supposed to be gradual, then I would have received batches of files day after day till on May 9, I would've had all of my files in TLU... But its been a week and my TLU account is totally empty.

So the question to JohnHood would be, Will you shut off our MediaMax accounts BEFORE transferring ALL (or at least most) of our files TLU? If yes, will you give us rebates for the time between the shut off of our MediaMax accounts and appearance of ALL of our files to TLU, especially if takes more than 1-2 days?

Anonymous said...

People cut your loses and move on.Their will be another delay and another and another

Anonymous said...

Can we start polling people for an alternative to this mess?

I've tried Diino but it does allow linked sharing. Does any other service do what Streamload used to do very reliably?

Anonymous said...

anon- the migration is not gradual. It all depends on which one of our servers your account lives on. Leave your username and I'll check into it for you.

Yes, MediaMax will shut down this coming Friday as scheduled. Most files will have been transferred by then, but it will take as much as 30 more days for all files to transfer over.

We will handle any requests for house credit on a case by case basis.

Anonymous said...

JohnHood, my account name is SmallLady and I have pretty big MM account with unlimited storage, and as of right now I have exactly ZERO files transferred to TLU. When can I expect that at least 10% of my MM files to show up in TLU, this friday or later?

And if it will take additional 30 days to transfer all files, then whats the point of "not enforcing social storage" till June 1st, if I (and many others) won't even have any files at that time?! And if my worst suspicions come true just when all my files would be transferred the storage limit will kick in in exactly same time, and I'll be forced to delete most of my files the same day! We were supposed to have at least some trial time to see your "new social storage" in action, to see how much "better" it would be, but from what I see this trial time when social storage is not enforced would happen at exactly same time when you still be be migrating our files thus making this trial "not enforcing storage limits" time MOOT!
You MUST give us time of at least a month AFTER you migrate ALL of our files to TLU to see how your storage works without enforcing those storage limit but again, right now it looks like you will start enforcing it at exactly same time when you finish migrating all files which is NOT FAIR at all and would be considered cheating your costumers especially those like me who already paid for unlimited storage for the next several months!

And by the way, from what I heard even though right now your supposed storage limit rules are not supposed to be enforced, many people who had some files tranferred to TLU could not upload any more files because storage limits kicked in!

Anonymous said...

What exactly is " social storage", what does it mean?

Anonymous said...

John Hood -
Please close my account effective immediately. Do not move any files and make no further billings to my credit card. I do not wish to access this account any longer

username: danclarke

Anonymous said...

MediaMax will shut down this coming Friday as scheduled. Most files will have been transferred by then, but it will take as much as 30 more days for all files to transfer over.

Right... My account is still woefully empty. Somehow, given past f-ups, I doubt that I'll have ANY files by the magical Friday cut off.

Then it's potentially another 30 days before I can sort out my account ready for 'Social Storage' to kick in ... only WHOOPS! no time left for that! And I guess that just leaves me SOL.

You aren't reassuring many people here, and as it stands I'm still planning to ditch my account come renewal time.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Hood,

Like most people, the May 9th deadline is approaching and so is my renewal time (on the 15th and I've been paying a year at a time) and I don't have any, not one, file transferred yet. If it's going to possibly take another 30 days to do it, then are we still going to have access to our old MM accounts so we can at least still download the files we have? I also agree that you aren't giving us time to work with the social storage aspect if it's going to take that time to get everyone transferred either. Is it possible to get my deadline renewal extended to either the end of May or June to allow time to see if TLU will work for me anymore? If I have to start deleting files, there's no point in me continuing with your company. That's not what I signed up for years ago when I started with Streamload.

Anonymous said...

When you cancel make sure you put in the e-mail not to bill your account.Instead ask for a refund because you have been paying for a service that has not worked in 2 years.Call your bank if they continue to bill you or credit card company

Anonymous said...

From: Victor Meldrew
Attn: John Hood.

Under both Streamload and MediaMax, non-paying account holders could send files >10MB from their Freeloader accounts to subscription accounts and the recipients could download the large files without any problems.

It seems I can upload, say, a 50MB file to my free TLU account but when I try sending links to paying TLU customers, they're prevented from downloading any files above a cetain size. Is this a feature/policy change with the move to The LinkUp, or just an ovesight, bug?

Unknown said...

I'm on the original list of people here to have my entire account moved.
So far, nada is in my Linkup account.
:(((

Anonymous said...

I feel so sorry for you people. Thank God I ditched MM about 3 months ago, before this latest agony was mentioned. My solution was to pay $10 for my own .com address at Freehostia plus $30 for 500mb of space. Then I got a little 'sharing' script that lets people upload and download from that site without any involvement from me. Its a little complicated to set-up, and requires an FTP program to upload the script, but now that its set-up I can sleep easy. It wouldn't suit everyone but it saved my sanity. And cost-wise its better value than MM 'cause it works.

http://www.freehostia.com/
Freehostia is excellent. The communication is good and everything works well. The only 'con' I've found is in their 'free hosting' plan. Max file size is a useless 500k. (Hence I quickly upgraded to the $1.95 a month plan)

I looked at every other hosting plan I could find, but nothing had the easy uploading/downloading feature that MM had. I liked the way MM allowed anyone to upload or download without joining as long as they knew my account name and could find the MM homepage. I don't know if the new Linkup site offers that feature (I couldnt be find it when I last looked). But anyway, I'm glad to be out of it for good and doing my own thing.

Regards
Beau

Martin said...

Attn: Victor Meldrew
re: File Links sent to a Paid account from Freeloader account cannot be downloaded.

This is probably 'as designed' because the links that have been sent to you 'belong' to the freeloader account. If this were not so, a Freeloader account could get around the filesize download limits.

There is a simple solution; copy the files from your My Links tab into a folder on your own My Files tab and the files will then download just fine governed by the rules that apply to your own account.

Anonymous said...

So the last time I looked a few hours ago, I still had no files in my TLU account. I tried to look a couple of moments ago and I cannot even get into my account due to some kind of server error. The service is due to change over tomorrow and it may well be up to 30 more days before we get (what's left of) our files tranferred over.

I think I speak for many of us when I say that this is really not acceptable and we would rather have another delay than be forced over to a service that is obviously not ready.

In a response to another post on this board, John Hood acknowledged that this was the last chance for his company in the eyes of many of their users, but given what's happening now, I really don't think they are feeling it.

Anonymous said...

Oh, great... I've been too busy for internets for the past 2 weeks and now I discover my free account on MM will be shut down like tomorrow... :/ And it seems I even missed the date to try and upgrade my account if I wanted to save some things... ><

Does anyone know if free accounts won't have some extended time to be upgraded?

Aaarrrgh, sh*t... ~_~ One can't even take care of real life anymore... XD

Anonymous said...

This company is dead.RIP LINK UP

Anonymous said...

How long is it till the changeover now? Mere hours?

I STILL HAVE NO FILES IN MY TLU ACCOUNT. ZIP. NADA. ZILCH.

Seriously, you guys SUCK.

Anonymous said...

My tlu account is still totally empty!!! WTF?!!! I've emailed the support staff and even JohnH and yet I haven't gotten any response. Great way to do business guys.

Anonymous said...

The way things are going, I think I'm going to be cancelling my account BEFORE renewal time. That is how strongly I feel about the state of things right now.

Last chance? Totally blown.

Anonymous said...

So, Mediamax is down for maintenance (presumably forever) and Link UP is down for maintenance too. The perfect start to a 'new era!'. Perhaps that's it. They've given up. It will all just go away....!

Anonymous said...

Are you people now convinced? This company is over.Only a fool will ever trust them or even think of paying them again.Its over Iverson. Im so happy I cancelled.John Hood you have failed.The money Ive paid I could have purchased a 1 terabyte hard drive instead of trusting you clowns.I am going to demand a refund of $238.89 for 2 years @9.95 a month. WANT MY MONEY NOW.

Anonymous said...

NEW LINK UP LOGO


http://thelinkup.com/newmaint.png

Anonymous said...

Its been 24 hours since supposed deadline, so far in my TLU account I've got exactly ZERO files!
And MM is down presumably forever.
Really, JohnHood, do you actually think that ANY of us will remain if after 1 month of complete unactivity - MM totally down, no files in TLU to work with?

Really?
And oh yeah, if you lost my archive, I'll want my Money back for the LAST 2 years, ever since Streamload became MediaMax and every normal aspect of streamload went directly to HELL!

Sofia said...

I had lots and lots of important files, i am a fee subscriber, at least i should have been informed...and emailed about this. is my account deleted and all files gone?

so much bandwidth, time and effort over years to upload all wasted? and the loss...i should have never trusted this site.
My account name was MyWebHome.
Is it gone?

Anonymous said...

I logged on the Missing(the)Link(up)and noticed only several on my files in one particular folder were moved. The night before the MediaMax shutdown, I downloaded the folder containing 62 files now there are only 2. John Hood and Steve Iverson have destroyed a lot of dreams and memories. It is time to stop acting like an abused Wife or Husband and leave in the dead of night with your credit cards

OG Keedah said...

So today I find out my 600 files are gone..... tell me I'm wrong someone and there is a place they float just in case.
My email was not available for a while and i had no clue what was happening.
Thought mt files were safe.
Sad day for me... but that's life