From: Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endtech.com)
Date: Wed Aug 09 2000 - 10:23:12 PDT
Aimster, napster file shareing clone that limits
files to your buddies was released today. Aimster
allows AIM sign ons, buddy list restrictions, and
flexible skins which currently are limited to
colors and screens including gunmetal blue, gameboy
green (game boy screens aren't really this color
so the AIMster guys are on crack), and (Netscape)
Teal. I am surprised they didn't do Sun periwinkle.
The name is actually a little misleading as
it's not truly a p2p technology. From what I understand
about AIM (maybe Mr. Williams can correct me), buddy
lists are uploaded to the centralized server as
well as stored locally.
The Aimster experience is such:
Download 2.1 Meg over 56k dialup, 4 minutes while
doing email.
Uses InstallShield default graphics, but the splash
screen shows some Indian looking woman smiling like
a goon at being able to share her files. Setup icon
looks exactly like the Intel CPU patch check icon, but
that might just be screwy icons on my win2k install.
License agreement says no porn, mp3 files, Nintendo and
Playstation ROMs (although there currently is a new p2p
project for trading exactly this...more in another post).
The end of the install which puts it in Program Files/Aimster
asks if you want to buddyize your installation to share files
with your buddies. It's not apparent what this actually means
or how much it opens up your hard drive or directories.
Aimster has detected that your current Instant Messenger is
configured without settings that work with Aimster. Would you like
Aimster to change the settings of your Instant Messenger, so that it
can fully communicate with Aimster? [Is it just me or is that
a sentence fragment?]
Yes does some disk activity:
C:\WINNT\aim95\gbolcer/buddy.lst contains an invalid path [OK?]
Connection Error....
Aimster was unable to connect to the central server.
There may be a problem with your Internet connection [or their
software], or the AIMster server may be temporarily unavailable. Please
restart the proram and try again. [Automatic shutdown
happens here with no other choices even though I wanted to
see what the software was all about.]
Try again repeasts same behavior.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Aug 09 2000 - 10:27:25 PDT