Know anyone who can help with this experiment?

Posted by on January 12, 2010 Comments Off

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I’m looking for a band or for a blog that posts their own (or 100% authorized, no samples, no ambiguity) songs or albums to a website, where it predictably gets > 1,000 downloads in some predictable timeframe. It doesn’t have to be music either, any other kind of totally authorized download will do.

The experiment would entail linking to a file on a skipscreen-supported site via a redirect on our site that shows a diggbar-like message along the lines of “Hey, download Skipscreen and you’ll never have to wait for this site again!”

We’re pretty psyched about this feature, because it’s the perfect moment to learn about Skipscreen: right when you’re most annoyed by a download site. And it’s the best way to share Skipscreen with your friends: wrapped around some file that’s interesting to them.

I just want to test one or two links for a day or two (like, up to 1,000 downloads or so). This could be in exchange for good vibes and a shoutout on our blog. Or if there’s anything you think we could do for you let us know. Interested? Know anyone who might be? Email skipper+skiptest AT skipscreen.com

Skipscreen made Lifehacker’s best of 2009!

Posted by on December 24, 2009 Comments Off

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We made Lifehacker’s best of 2009: Most Popular Firefox Extensions and Themes of 2009!  

Does Skipscreen make your best of 2009 list? If it does, give us a tweet! Being able to download everything you want is totally futuristic. Whatup 2010!!!

Wow, AMO is getting fast!

Posted by on December 15, 2009 2 comments

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AMO just approved a Skipscreen release in only 2 hours. We’re impressed.

Thanks and congratulations to the Mozilla folks for slaying the addon moderation queue!

Self-hosted Skipscreen: Why it happened and why it will rule.

Posted by on December 2, 2009 3 comments

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So yeah, we’re now offering a self-hosted version of Skipscreen on skipscreen.com. Here are some of the reasons why:

  1. There were some important features Mozilla wouldn’t let us include (including captcha skipping).
  2. Mediafire is detecting Skipscreen and showing our users fake-friendly “tsk tsk” messages instead of just giving them the file they want. As daffy duck said, “thith meanth war”, so we need uber-fast update capability.
  3. AMO has made a great effort to get the download queue under control, and lately it’s been very fast. But around the Firefox 3.5 release things got ridiculous and we were waiting months for an update. We can’t afford to be depending on that again, especially if our growing popularity means that download sites are taking notice and breaking us :)

Advantages to you, the user, will include faster updates (especially for Mediafire) and some too-hot-for-Mozilla features like anti-captcha. So get the self-hosted version today!

Now with support for FilesTube!

Posted by on November 30, 2009 2 comments

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Clicking and waiting is just as annoying on search site as it is on those sites themselves. In preparing the latest version, our allstar developer was looking up some documentation on FilesTube and it irritated him.

So he wrote the latest addition to our growing family of skippers, and thanks to our new self-hosted version it’s coming to you in record time!

Megaupload anti-captcha is back!

Posted by on November 28, 2009 1 comment

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Over the summer we worked with the author of the infamous Greasemonkey script to make Megaupload anti-CAPTCHA technology a part of Skipscreen. That feature is now in the latest release of Skipscreen, which you can download here.

This feature is awesome in two ways.

  1. You never have to enter those annoying four letters ever again
  2. Megaupload downloads now require zero intervention. Just open the tab and it works. We even have automatic reloads.

The feature was too-hot-to-handle for Mozilla’s addon directory, so we backed off. But now we’re self-hosting our own version, in part to make it easier to do rapid updates for our arms race with Mediafire. So we figured it was only right to bring back the anti-captcha!

Note: you have to get the self-hosted version (download it from Skipscreen.com not from AMO) to get the anti-CAPTCHA code.

Brand new SkipScreen makes it through the moderation queue!

Posted by on November 6, 2009 1 comment

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It was a long wait, but the latest SkipScreen release just got approved in the Mozilla Addons queue! It features new stuff like:

  • Storage.to support
  • 4shared support
  • Hotfile support fixed (after website changes)
  • Rapidshare improvements (a handler for the “no slots available” error that will retry after the given wait time)
  • And more!

We are so psyched to finally get this out the door. The one drawback is that the Mediafire fix in the current beta didn’t make it in there. If you use Mediafire a lot, get the latest version of Skipscreen to avoid annoying and redundant clicks!

To better keep up with future Mediafire changes, we’ll soon be offering our own self-hosted version of Skipscreen that will have more frequent updates and a very special feature that got rejected by AMO over the summer (no joke!).

Follow us on Twitter!

Posted by on October 22, 2009 Comments Off

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In the dark depths of the Mediafire menace, we made a Twitter account for Skipscreen. Follow us!

Skipscreen safe, for now!

Posted by on October 10, 2009 1 comment

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Mozilla has said they won’t cave to Mediafire’s takedown request. This is so the right answer, and it’s what we expected from an organization as dedicated to defending the web as Mozilla (we just got a bit of a fright for a second there :) )

It’s also comforting that a second group of lawyers from an established organization (one with a lot more on the line than us) have looked into Mediafire’s cease and desist and consider it toothless.

Mediafire still could come after us directly. But I think with the press they’ve already generated, they’re realizing that the more they come after us, the more people will hear about Skipscreen, and love it. (Which also suggests a plan: the best way to defend Skipscreen is for all our supporters to spread the word in as many places as they can).

It’s a good day for Firefox extensions that push hard to put you in control of the web.

P.S. Thanks Jennifer Granick, Fred von Lohmann, Eva Galperin and everybody at EFF. You all are stars.

MediaFire tells Mozilla to ban SkipScreen from addons.mozilla.org

Posted by on October 6, 2009 4 comments

Mozilla has told us they received a takedown from Mediafire, demanding they pull SkipScreen from addons.mozilla.org.

Mozilla gave us about 24 hours (until the end of the west-coast business day today) to respond to some questions about what SkipScreen does, or they said they would remove it from the directory. We’re working on this.

More news soon. In the meantime, read the takedown.

Update: The EFF wrote our reply to Mozilla, and sent it on our behalf. I think it’s fair to say they think Mediafire’s claims are off-the-wall. Read the reply.

Meanwhile, in anticipation of a Mozilla takedown, furtive copies of SkipScreen began appearing on Mediafire ;)

Another Update: EFF’s Fred von Lohmann has posted a legal analysis explaining why Mediafire’s claims are bogus and putting this in the context of a long running battle (one it’s important the public win). Yet again, the EFF rules.

Final Update: Skipscreen safe, for now!

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