Do you have an IM program? Do you go to websites or use plugins to manage a blog? Do you email files to friends or have an account on Friendster or LinkedIn? Do you play head-to-head games over the internet with friends or strangers? Do you chat? Do you listen to streaming music like WOXY? Do you like to use your broadband connection for cool video content like guys dancing? Do you like to share pictures online? Do you have a library of digital music?
You’ve probably been using lots of different applications and websites to do these things. Maybe you’re using Snapfish or Flickr to share pictures, Miranda or GAIM for IM (or AIM) and YouTube for video. Have you tried delicious for managing links (and the community)? Maybe you like to pass yor time playing Puzzle Pirates against other people. You probably listen to music using iTunes, WinAmp or somesuch. If you’ve got a blog you’re probably using Blogger or WordPress to manage it. If you’re sophisticated you might be streaming music using Shoutcast or Icecast.
Recently a few applications have emerged for Windows (there may be Mac analogues but I’m not aware of them – please post in comments if you’re aware of any) that have been bundling a lot of this functionality. I’ve been trying them out with friends and the’re very exciting. Here’s a synopsis of three feature-rich (and free) apps:
- Grouper bundles picture and file sharing, streaming audio between users, messaging, and the concept of “groups” into a polished interface. Groups are basically communities that you can set up with their own permissions where you can share your pictures, music, documents and whatever else with the other members of your group. Of course, all the other members have to have Grouper to participate.
We liked the Grouper interface a lot. But, we didn’t like the absence of a universal instant messaging client so that we could use existing AIM/MSN/ICQ/Yahoo accounts to IM one another. In addition, Grouper, undoubtedly terrified of the RIAA and MPAA lawyer-army, restricts music sharing to streaming only in certain formats. So, I can connect to my groupmates’ machine and listen to their music, but I can’t actually download it from them. While I understand the effort to preserve the rights of the artist, it’s an ultimately false one because a determined user can simply convert said files into another format or archive it in order to share it over Grouper.
- Qnext bundles universal IM, streaming audio, online game-play, videoconferencing, remote PC access, picture and file sharing, group chat and ICQ and VoIP internet calling. It’s a pretty phenomenal feature set and it has taken hold among our group.
The user interface is pretty good and where Grouper has groups, Qnext has shared “zones” where you set up who gets access to what. The photo sharing is great – with zoom/pan, slideshow and save functions but image tagging like Flickr would make it better. The streaming audio “jukebox” zone allows the user to define what quality level stream to provide, either 64kbps or native quality, or both, thus enabling a cap on bandwidth usage for this function. Of course, this could be better with more support for the smaller audio formats. The universal IM client works but is a bit kludgy and slow and isn’t as configurable to your own personal habits as other clients like Gaim (with plugins) or Trillian.
Google image sharing?
Regardless of what app you’re using, the major barrier to taking full advantage of this software is adoption. While you’ll find your net-savvy friends with always-on broadband may jump right in, you’ll more likely find them wincing at having to download and install something, paranoid about privacy, or just “not getting” the concept. In addition, opening the proper ports to use these apps is a major hurdle – I’ve got several friends that have vociferously expressed interest and have waged war with the XP firewall and their own routers to no avail. While some utilize UPnP, support for UPnP is mixed and in my real-world experience it has been no help.