As many of you know, Microsoft has had a free 25 GB of cloud drive storage for some time with its Skydrive service. Now 4Shared.com is trying out to offer an alternative. You can have up to 15 GB of free storage, as long as you confirm your email account and don’t upload any files larger than 2 GB each. More storage without ads and removing the file size and other limits can be had for $10 a month, less if you purchase an annual contract.
The service works similarly to Box.net, Dropbox and other cloud file storage services. The news this week is that it now comes with applications for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and Symbian devices, along with a synch service for Windows users and a separate Mac desktop app too. You can set it up to post any uploads to both your Twitter and Orkut accounts.
4Shared is also making its API available to developers and is offering up $5000 prize each month to the developer “who most creatively utilizes the 4Shared virtual drive framework in their app,” according to the company. Now we here at ReadWriteWeb just give away a MacBook Air every month – there you actually get hard cash money, along with up to a million ad banner impressions promoting your app! One early winner is an app that allows one-tap backup of your iPhone contacts to the 4Shared cloud repository.
