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As the
battle against Napster rages on and the veritable fortresses
of legal paperwork continue to be erected, elsewhere there
are victory pyres that burn high into the sky. (Yeah, so
I'm thinking of becoming a full-time novelist with that
kind of vocabulary.Anyway,
back to the matter at hand,) A little while back, a Napster-look-alike
called Scour (which I've talked about before) shut down
its servers for good. This great source of digital movies
and music is no longer available, and it seems as though
maybe it won't be too long before Napster itself is shut
down, so in such an event, I've decided to prepare myself
by checking out a few virtual Napsters.
The first one on the list is AIMster (http://www.aimster.com).
This is for those who use AOL's Instant Messenger only,
which restricts the amount of users you have to choose from.
As if that's not bad enough, it only works with the users
on your buddy list. They did, however, try to remedy that
a little bit by having a "Search Universe" option, but that
fell through when Scour went out of commission because it
was based on Scour servers. Basically what I'm getting at
with AIMster, is that it's pretty worthless. They came out
with a new independent program that wasn't based on Scour,
but it's not really any better. The layout is fairly easy
to get a feel for, but overall, it ain't no Napster.
Gnutella (http://www.gnutella.wego.com)
is next on the docket. Not a bad program, but it lacks a
certain style and definition, whatever that means. The initial
IP connection for Gnutella doesn't have a whole lot of users,
so it's kind of hard to find what you are looking for in
terms of super fly songs. Not a lot of users on it had broadband
connections either, which isn't very helpful. It's a fairly
difficult program to navigate for the novice user, and adding
IP addresses for new hosts isn't very fun. On an overall
scale of 1 through 10 - 1 being like a Swedish meatball
and 10 being like a massive vat of Swedish meatballs - I'd
give it 3 Swedish meatballs.
The next program on file is WebNAP (http://webnap.sourceforge.net/),
which is kind of a handy file to have. With a interface
that is not stylish, nor functional, you should possess
a certain degree of something I like to call "Radness" to
use this program. Even though the interface sucks, what
the program does is cool. Your search is sent out to Napser,
MyNapster (which I'll ge to in a minute) and OpenNAP (something
I've never heard of.) So basically you're getting a solid
three searches for the price of one and decent connections.
On the banana scale, this is defiantly 7 out of 10 bunches
of bananas.
The
final program that I will be reviewing for this exciting
and suspenseful edition of Dot Com is MyNapster (http://www.mynapster.com).
Obviously you can tell that they're all about being a Napster-twin.
The same type of interface as Napster is great for everyone
and it adds the ability not only to search for music, but
also video files. You get pretty good connection speeds,
but also a solid amount of transfer errors and things of
that sort. Another downfall is that there is currently a
maximum of 750 connections, so it takes a bit of patience
to log on to. It has yet to randomly kick me offline, which
is a plus. It's got a lot of features that I find useless
like IRC chat and instant messaging, but you might think
otherwise. When you get down to it, this is the best Napster-twin
that I've found and it's easy to install and use. On the
classic "hot dog" scale, MyNapster is definitely a kielbasa,
which is good ... right?
If that dark, horrible, and most certainly wretched day
when those corporate fat cats finally tear down Napster
and send the servers to the depths of hell by engulfing
them in a fiery blast, at least you know that you got yourself
some options. There is always going to be a Napster-look-alike
out there somewhere, so fear not, I'll keep you updated
on the latest ways to get your favorite songs and movies,
because as Bill Cosby might have said, "if there's a will,
there's a way."
The Cyberpunk is known on the street as Dusty Kraft "and
he is very, very handsome."
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