Check out today’s great article on VentureBeat, DivShare Makes Online File Hosting Cool. Couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

Great news — starting Wednesday, all new subscribers will get their first month of DivShare Direct absolutely free. If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, there’s never been a better time, especially with the latest enhancements allowing you to switch your files between free and direct mode.

The free month promotion only lasts 24 hours, starting at midnight (Eastern time) on Wednesday, so don’t forget to sign on and take advantage of the web’s best and most unique hosting deal. As always, comment away. Enjoy!

» Check out DivShare Direct

Response to our new DivShare Direct upgrade has been fantastic so far, and tonight we’re rolling out a big upgrade. From here on out, you’ll be able to mix “free” and “direct” files in one account — so you get to choose which files count toward your Direct storage and transfer allotment!

This allows our power users to keep some of their files on the free side of their account, where they benefit from unlimited storage and downloads. At the same time, you’ll be able to choose some (or all) of your files to take advantage of DivShare Direct’s one-of-a-kind Flash player branding and direct linking features. Switching between the two is as easy as a click on your Dashboard, and you can set a default mode for newly uploaded files in your account preferences.

All your files can still be up to 2 GB in size and uploaded with your own FTP account. And if your files get really popular and you use all your Direct data transfer, we’ll never take them offline — instead, they will just switch over to Free mode until you upgrade or the month renews.

One more big thing: On Wednesday, we’ll be offering a free month of DivShare Direct to everyone who upgrades! It’s a great opportunity, and if you’ve been thinking about trying out Direct, this is your chance to get your first month at no charge.

In other news, we are working on some hot new Flash slideshow designs, as well as a Flash uploader that you’ll be able to embed into your site, allowing your visitors to easily send you files. Hit us up with questions and comments, and enjoy the new features!

» Learn more about DivShare Direct

As we mentioned last week, we’ve officially retired the “private file” feature in favor of the more convenient password-protected folders. If you have any files that are private, they will stay that way, and you will still have the option to make them public from the dashboard. (We’ll be removing the “make this file public” command down the road, but not for a while.) If you have any questions, hit us up at support@divshare.com.

We’ve just rolled out a new upload server, which should speed up your uploads and improve reliability. You don’t have to make any changes — just upload as normal — but you should notice some big improvements now that our uploads are distributed across more machines. Hit us up in the comments if you run into any problems along the way. Enjoy!

Now that we’ve launched our new password-protected folders feature, we are going to start phasing out the old privacy option, private files. We think folders are a lot more useful for accomplishing password-protection and small-group sharing, and we don’t want to have a redundant feature lingering around the site and making things unnecessarily confusing.

Starting next week, we will remove the “Make this file private” option from your upload forms, so all the new private stuff you upload should go into a password-protected folder instead of being marked “private” on a file-by-file basis. Remember, you’ll never be prompted for a password to view your own folders, so you can set those folder passwords to whatever you want, and as long as you never give them to anyone, you will be the only person who can see the file.

All your current private files will stay private forever. We think it’s a lot more functional to put them in a password-protected folder, but it’s your call. Drop some comments with any questions, and keep on rockin’.

We’re introducing a new privacy option tonight — you can now password-protect all the files in any folder or gallery by simply adding a password to your folder. When outside users visit your download pages, they’ll have to enter the password (which you can provide to individual users or post on your blog, for example) before they can access the files in that folder. You can add a password on the upload form when you create a new folder, or from the Dashboard’s folder pages. Hit us up with any questions or ideas in the comments, and enjoy the new feature!

We’ve gotten a few reports from our members that our new image URLs weren’t compatible with some forum software, which requires a “.jpg” or other extension at the end of the filename. We’ve just rolled out a fix that adds the proper extension to all the image URLs — you can grab the new code out of the sharing options on any download page. Enjoy!

Hey guys, thanks to everyone who was a part of DivShare’s biggest day ever for yesterday’s launch of the new version. Tonight we’re rolling out a few quick upgrades — we’ve boosted the maximum length of file descriptions from 50 to 255 characters, and we’ve put a Forum link (BBCode) on all your download pages and sharing link lists. In the next few days we will be adding an option to password-protect a file, allowing you to share the file with a small group of people to whom you give that password. If someone tries to go to your file’s download page, they won’t be able to see or download anything without the password.

Stay tuned, and thanks for using DivShare.

Our new features give you unprecedented control over your Flash videos, audio and slideshows, allowing you to add your logo and link directly back to your site. With hosting by DivShare Direct, everyone can create their own viral video site. Check out this example from our friends over at the GnarStar.tv skateboarding video site:

And here’s a podcast from magic-industry news site iTricks.com, fully branded, easily embeddable and linking back to the site.

To get yours, hit up DS Direct. Comment away!