TinyPic Is Down Forever - Code 010394

*UPDATE: The problem has been solved. See the bottom of this post for Tinypic's explanation on the issue. Now the image links have started working again and you may upload new images too.

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Tinypic Image Unavailable CODE 010394: Without a warning, on September 23, 2010 Tinypic has completely stopped its services for all International users (non-US). This not only restrict the users to upload new images to Tinypic, but also to link/use the images that are already uploaded by them.
A few months back, Tinypic stopped new-user sign-ups, but something like this was completely unexpected.
But don't worry, as we do have a temporary & a permanent fix to this problem, keep reading...

This is what Tinypic-Team says:

Tinypic is no longer accepting uploads from international locations, and links are turned off. If you have content on Tinypic, you can still view the URLs and the content, but only on Tinypic. To upload, share, or link content, please go to Photobucket.com to register an account. You will need to upload your content again to your Photobucket account, but you will be able to share and link your images and videos. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and hope that you enjoy Photobucket, our premier image and video site.

But why join Photobucket?
Photobucket is also owned by the same group of people, so after this instance, millions of users around the world no longer trust their service.
Moreover, it is definitely NOT an option at least for me with a storage limit of just 500MB and bandwidth limit of 10GB/month [PB - Free vs Pro].

Temporary Fix
As of now, to quickly view your images and re-upload them to a new image-host, edit your direct-links like this:

Presently a direct link from Tinypic looks like this:

http://i40.tinypic.com/mihsgg.jpg

So, immediately after http:// add the letter "o" in lower-case:

http://oi40.tinypic.com/mihsgg.jpg

Switch to New Image-Hosts (that's the permanent fix)

The two most popular alternate options (that allow hotlinking/direct-linking of images) are ImageShack.us and Imgur.com

I am selecting ImageShack over Imgur, due to these reasons:

Although both of them allow hotlinking, but again both of them lack a good User-Interface (UI) and have at least one major drawback:

At Imageshack, for free users a bandwidth limit does apply:

Imageshack allows 2000mb per hour for each image hosted. Gif images are limited at 500mb per hour. Peak time is from 6:00am to 3:00pm PST. Off peak there are no limits.

And these are the two reasons for not joining Imgur:

Total Account Images 225

Standard accounts are limited to the 225 most recent images. After that, the newest uploads will be shown and the oldest uploads will be bumped out of the account (not deleted, just hidden from within the account). There is no limit to pro accounts.

Image Removal

With standard accounts, images over 1 MB will be compressed until they are less than 1 MB. With pro accounts, your images aren't touched in any way unless they are over 5 MB, in which case they will be compressed until they reach 5MB in size.

So depending on your usage, you may select any one of them. Or if you know a better service, kindly mention it in the comments section below...

*UPDATE: Tinypic has resolved the issue, and has also apologized to all its users:

We heard from many of our users in regards to these changes and we appreciate your feedback. Tinypic has restored linking to your images and enabled uploading. Please rest assured no content was removed from the site. We tried to notify users on Tinypic and requested they move their content to Photobucket. Unfortunately this messaging was insufficient and has taken many of our users by surprise and we apologize. Our intent was to begin combining some of the best features of Tinypic and Photobucket, thereby offering users a better experience. Any changes in the future will be better communicated. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

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