My friend who recently switched to Ubuntu was looking for a rapidshare, megaupload file downloader where he can queue downloads and leave it to download. Actually I found an application that not only supports rapidshare and megaupload but lots of other file-sharing sites such as 4shared, badongo, depositfiles, easy-share, filefactory, gigasize, hotfile, mediafire, sendspace, uploading and zshare. The application is called Tucan Manager and is available from the universe repository in Lucid Lynx (I’m sure it is available in Karmic and older versions too). Moreover, it supports uploads to these sites too.

To install it, just launch synaptic (System> Administration> Synaptic Package Manager). Goto settings>repositories and make sure “Community maintained opensource software (universe)” is checked. Reload the software list by clicking on reload and wait till it is done. Search for tucan and mark it for installation. Install it by selecting apply and wait till it is installed.

Once it is installed, close synaptic and launch it from Applications>Internet>Tucan Manager (or Alt+F2>tucan) and click on Find on the preferences window. Get the updates and mark the services you wish to use. Close it and restart it again.

Now, just Add the links. You may add multiple links at once. I checked it with megaupload and it automatically processed CAPTCHA so I didn’t need to do anything else. By default, it downloads to your home directory (Places>Home).

You may wish to change preferences and make it close to tray (Advanced Configuration) and make other changes as you please.

I don’t download much from these sites, but someone who needs might find this useful. I haven’t used much of this application as I just tested it and I wont use it much. Whoever does, please do share your experience.

xVideoServiceThief is a Desktop based video downloader for Linux, Windows and Mac. It is capable of downloading videos from Youtube, Google, Yahoo and various other sites. You can even queue the videos and it downloads with resume support (if the server supports it). It can resume Youtube videos.

It can be downloaded from:
http://xviservicethief.sourceforge.net/index.php?action=downloads#Linux

To install it in Ubuntu, all you need to do is extract it and run install.sh (double click and “Run in Terminal” or open terminal and execute ./install.sh). It will be installed to your home directory (eg /home/khattam/xVideoServiceThief). To run it, just double click the xvst executible. If it fails to run, make sure you have installed libqt4.

Hope this helps.

eMazza.com has a live music jukebox at http://www.emajja.com/emajjanew/index.php?page=music
You can play songs in the playlist, but what if you want to download it? You can do so by following this short procedure.

You will need Firefox with Live HTTP Headers addon installed. If you have it already you are ready to go. If you havent, download and install Firefox from Mozilla and Live HTTP Headers from Official Download Page.

Now, launch Firefox and open up http://www.emajja.com/emajjanew/index.php?page=music and Launch Live HTTP Headers from Tools > Live HTTP Headers. Now, make sure the player and the playlist is loaded already and then clear Live HTTP Headers. Now, select the song you want to Listen to. Scroll and locate link like http://cdn1-76.projectplaylist.com/e1/v1_0_0/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in Live HTTP Headers. Right Click and copy the link, Now use a download manager to download the link. After it is downloaded, rename it to songname.mp3 and open with your favourite player.

Disclaimer: Keep it Legal. Do not use this information here for anything illegal. If you do, you will need to take the sole responsibility.

I downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope ISO and discovered that the file was not downloaded properly. It was corrupt. It failed the md5 check and failed to install inside Sun VirtualBox.

I did not want to download the file again. I have a very poor internet connection. I had downloaded the file from http link with the help of wget.

The ISO was the size as specified in the site. I think this process works only if this holds true. Also, it needs to be available in the torrents. These hold true for the file I was trying to download.

I launched ktorrent and added the torrent to the file that I had downloaded. Then, when it started downloading, I quit ktorrent. Then I replaced the file it had created in the data directory with my corruput ISO. Launched ktorrent again and chose to check data. It then checked the file and quickly found that I needed to download only 16MB. I did and voila the file was fixed.

However, I used ktorrent, all torrent clients I have used (on Windows or Linux) have this feature of checking data. It might be called something other than “Check Data” in other torrent clients though.