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I still use it. It's fast and doesn't contain much of the junk there is out there today, and I don't need a full blown application to sync my music.

The original developer, Justin Frankel went on start a new company "Cockos" ( http://cockos.com/ ) after leaving AOL to develop a professional multi-track digital audio workstation named Reaper ( http://reaper.fm/ ).

Here's his personal site on his updates:
http://1014.org/

Reaper's window's only (although it runs on Wine), but lately he's been working on porting it to Linux, in a world where digital workstations are for the most part, Mac and Windows only. Audio drivers for professional-grade analog-digital audio interfaces are still lacking, but having a pro-grade application is a start. Plus he seems to be linking Valgrind a lot, which is helping him detect memory leaks easier.

http://www.1014.org/code/blorpscript/

One of Justin Frankel's (from Winamp) works. Not as structured as Flikr, but is also more flexible.

Third Generation (I think that's what they're calling it) P2P programs like ANtz and Mute rely on a sort of plausible deniability and waste a lot of bandwidth. They're strictly peer-to-peer and distributed. When you get a request for a file, you don't know whether the originator is the person connecting to you, or someone behind them. There is no request to make a direct connection. So while you could point the finger at them, you may be wrong.

The problem with this - and I've pointed it out to the developer of Mute - is that someone with enough resources (like the RIAA, or that British Porn group) could log on thousands of times, and make enough reasonable guesses about who's sharing what with who to pinpoint some of the major sharers, who would be smart to figure out how to change their IP address and what parts of their collection they make available on any given day frequently to avoid detection.

Also, as I said, this wastes a lot of bandwidth, because you're not making a direct connection to the person you're sharing with, you could be acting as a conduit as well, so people who pay for bandwidth will raise the familiar bittorrent protests - I'm paying too much for what I'm downloading. Of course, P2P not being bittorrent and being used for trading 99.99% illegal stuff (bittorrent at least is used to distribute things like linux flavors), all those people should shut up and be grateful they're not paying $20 (or their local currency equivelant) for the CD/DVD etc. they're downloading.

Also, once this third generation stuff catches on, it's just a matter of time before they start sueing the guys who make the software for aiding and abetting file sharing, or whatever that thing congress wants to pass into law says is illegal. You know, the thing that overturns the Betamax/Mr. Roges law. Then again, the guy who makes Mute told me that he's in it for the fame, so being sued could just make his day. Though sueing the developer seems like a free speach issue to me.

The ultimate irony is that most of these client are based on Waste, which was made by Justin Frankel (homepage, Rolling Stone article, Wikipedia entry), who was an employee of AOL Time Warner at the time he released it.

Justin actually updates his weblog regularly. It's well worth checking out just to see what he's been up to lately.

Winamp Unlimited also does a good job of tracking down any online activities with the Nullsoft staff, or any Winamp/NS-related projects that might be brewing.

No, that went up about a day after the Waste program was initially posted to Nullsoft. If Via based something off of it, I'm pretty sure they knew about Waste's history.

Removing the program probably has a lot more to do with Via's failure to properly credit Waste's developers despite lifting files directly from them (see here and here).

Wow, I could swear I've written something like this before...
Wonder what will happen with that...

Thanks to the efforts of Justin Frankel, and Yannick Heneault the Karaoke bar I work at on the weekends was able to convert it's aging karaoke CDG collection to MP3+G's.

It's neat because we get to have AVS behind the lyrics. You used to have to buy an expensive JSUB unit if you wanted to "bluescreen" anything behind a CDG song.

We've been using the system for the last year or so. Customer response has been excellent. No more skipping or garbled words. No more confusion looking for songs. It just all runs perfectly.

Justin Frankel's Website Here he talks about his wanting to resign from the company due to recent cencorship against his products.. It's not about contracts, etc.. it's just about the fact that he isn't allowed to express himself freely doing what he loves. Here is some more comments about his leaving...

http://www.1014.org/finger.phtml