Transloading?
You've probably heard about the transloader, but you may have
some questions, so...
What?
The Transloader allows you to upload files from anywhere on the
Internet to your homepage directory (if you have a page at GeoCities, Tripod, Angelfire, or Fortune City) using
only your WebTV.
Why?
Until the Transloader was created and put online by
Anthony Chu, if you owned a WebTV and you were building a
homepage and needed graphics or sound files on your site, you
either had to link to somebody else's files (with or without
permission), or ask a friend or pay someone else to use a
computer to upload for you. Linking to sites without permission
is a problem, and here's why.
The original Transloader now costs for files over 30k in size; if you don't want to subscribe to their T2 pay service (which has some excellent new features), click here and check out the Freeloaders.
How?
Get a graphic on your screen (by itself–it should be surrounded
by black, and the URL of the "page" should end in .gif or .jpg),
then go directly to the Transloader,
either by hitting GoTo and entering
http://transload.starblvd.net/ and then Return, or by
hitting an F-key you've assigned to the Transloader.
When you get there, click the teardrop between the first
and second blank,
and the URL of the graphic will automatically be entered in the
second blank. If you want to change the name of the graphic when
it's transloaded, enter the new filename in the next
blank.
Enter the name of the FTP server at your homesite
(information on
the servers is available in the instructions at the Transloader)
in the next blank, followed by your homepage username and
password. Transloading to Angelfire is more difficult to
figure out the first time; to find out how, read this
.
Then click the gray Transload button at the lower left; it should
click, and then click by itself one more time. In a few seconds
you'll be taken to a status log for your session. After
about
another 10 seconds, Reload and scroll down to see if the
session
is complete; when it is, you'll see a gray button asking to be
clicked. When the button appears, your file has been copied to
your homepage (although it may take a little longer for it to
actually show up in your homepage file directory; it's being
processed by the provider's FTP system, it'll get there).
Click that button! If you don't click it once the session
is complete, your status log on the system will remain "open" and
you'll be denying someone else a chance to use the Transloader
(for around 5 to 10 minutes, when the system at the site will
cancel your completed session by itself). The site gets a ton of
users, waiting for their turn, so be nice.
Other Kinds of Files
Getting other files to transload requires a little more
explanation.
Sound Files
I haven't personally transloaded any soundfiles, but I've been
told that MIDIs and WAVs work fine (Real Audio files are a bit of
trouble, because for them to work with WebTV, they need to play
from a special Real Audio server; they don't work right from an
http:// server, like a homepage server).
The complicated part is that when you go to the Transloader after
playing an audio file, you can't get it to enter the URL
automatically. What you need to do is this: right after you
click the sound link where you found it, and the file begins to
play, hit GoTo, click Show Last, and right down the full URL
displayed in the GoTo popup. Then go to the Transloader and type
that URL into the second box, then follow the same steps for
graphics, above.
HTML Files (Webpages)
This is a sticky area. You can copy webpages with the
transloader, but copying a webpage and taking credit for it is,
well, kinda evil and small behavior. Again, be nice, and honest
about this.
One technical problem with copying a page and trying to use it is
the links usually don't work on the copy. That's because the
original copy uses relative URLs, shorter versions of the
full URL path. If you want to make the links work in the copy,
you're going go have to go into the HTML and "fill out" the
URLs.
This is Incredibly Important!
Under no circumstances whatsoever transload a file with
the same name as a file you already have in your homepage
directory! If you do, the original file you had will be gone
forever, there is no way back, it's permanently overwritten by
the new one.
Un-Transloadable Things
You can't transload file directories ("Index of /mpeg" for
example), because they're not files, they're lists of files. And
you can't transload CGI pages either (if, when you look at a
page's URL, you see /cgi-bin/ or
whatever.cgi?filename, forget
it). You also can't successfully transload a full page of images
or sounds and have the images and sounds work, because the files
aren't part of the page itself, they're separate files–transload
them individually. Anything else–give it a shot and see if it
works, but other
than what I've listed in the above sections, there are no
guarantees.
Very important note! You cannot transload Real
Audio files–the RAM file is merely a pointer to a pnm:// file, on
a special server elsewhere (view a RAM file with an HTML
validator like Dr.
Watson
and you'll see what I mean). Using a transloaded RAM still
steals bandwidth from the original site!
Transloader Problems
Sometimes the Transloader is just plain down, unavailable,
offline. Just wait, it's always come back up so far.
When the Transloader is busy, you may be told to take a 5-minute
break to give other people a chance to use it; don't get mad, if
that wasn't done you'd never get to use it at all.
There is, however, one particularly annoying situation that comes
up sometimes–if the FTP server you're trying to upload to is too
busy for you to complete the operation, you won't get the
button to click to clear your session until the five minute
"timer" runs out! You won't be able to transload any more
until that time is up, at which point you can click the button
(if you reaccess your session log, the button will have
appeared), although your session will have been automatically
ended anyway at that point.
Separating Attachments from E-mail
If you have attached images in e-mail (such as scanned personal
photos sent to you by a scanning service) that you want to
transload, you can do this with an additional step:
- Get a free e-mail account at Eudoramail.
- Forward the mail you have with attached images to the new
Eudoramail account.
- Enter the Eudoramail account choosing
non-frames, and open the forwarded mail.
- Inside the message with the image attachment, you'll see a
row of gray buttons, two of which are labeled D...–click
the one on the right.
- Scroll down the next page, and click the image's text link to
bring up the image.
- With the image onscreen, go to the Transloader and use it as
described above (if the image is over 30k, go here to find Freeloaders to
transload the file.
Note: Not all images can be transloaded using this method, in
particular some images found in newsgroups (images in newsgroups
are sometimes coded differently–even though you can view them,
the transloader sometimes can't deal with them properly).
Other Pages on the Transloader
Steven Foster has written a Transloader page and a page about
bandwidth theft, and Tony Cassista
has put together a page
about why the Transloader is an idea whose time had come.
Both are regular contributors to the webtv.users newsgroup. Also,
check out George Casey's Using
Anthony's Star Boulevard® Site, Beth's Transloading Information,
and Ron's Transloader 411.
For a greater understanding of what this is all about, read WDVL's Purloining and Pilfering to see the webmaster's point of
view, and also take the time to read Netiquette at Widow's Web and WWW Problem. For a less
technical explanation of how taking bandwidth without permission is theft, check
out Lara's Bandwidth
and You.
In Conclusion...
