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Is AllPeers FireFox's P2P "Killer App"?

Vivek Jishtu writes "Tech Crunch predicts that the AllPeers Firefox extension will massively increase the attractiveness of that already popular browser, drawing more millions away from embattled Internet Explorer. AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files."

12 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Quantumware by pieterh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting to speculate about software that we can't download, so can't try. Yes, it could be a killer app. Yes, it could be dead on arrival. We won't know until we open the box! Wow, that was interesting...

    1. Re:Quantumware by revery · · Score: 5, Funny

      We won't know until we open the box! Wow, that was interesting...

      Hey, it's Schrodinger's App

  2. Ick, by baadger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Looks like a load of hype to me. I've never been a fan of mergin applications into "suite"'s or such. I don't even like media player's in my P2P apps, too many bad experiences with fudged partial videos or mp3/ogg's trashing the process.

    Give me simplicity without the unnecessary integration.

  3. Pardon Me.... by LordPhantom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ....but I thought the continual vulnerabilities in IE and the better interface (tabs, etc) were what pulled folks from IE. Isn't Firefox itself the "killer app"?

  4. Re:"Killer" apps by the+unbeliever · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But that's the lovely nature of Firefox. The Mozilla Foundation can concentrate on building a better *browser* while leaving the API open to developers who want a little more from Firefox via Extensions.

    I think plain, vanilla FF is a wonderful browser. The Extensions I use just make it better....for me. I don't expect my roommate or my girlfriend to run the same extensions I do, or even run any.

  5. RIAA by Comatose51 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can imagine the FUD campaign the RIAA would run against FF and Microsoft running their own to put FF into the category of P2P software, which will result it in being banned from most businesses.

    --
    EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
  6. What next? by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Funny

    And in other news, the Open Office suite has been released as a Firefox Plugin. Analysts predict that not only will this draw users away from from IE, but millions will also switch away from Office.

    An interesting quote from the article, "What we're really waiting for is someone to release a linux distribution as a Firefox plugin. This will spell certain death to both IE and Windows simultaneously. The big hurdle is to figure out how to launch Firefox before the OS has even booted."

    Dan East

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  7. Re:Paranoid by Ingolfke · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thanks for the comment template. I'll use this template anytime any new feature of any product is released. It'll save me so much time having to actually think up a specific meaningful response.

  8. You must be a unix user by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It is two different approaches to a solution.

    The extreme unix view is to get a lot of small apps that each do exactly 1 task and do it well. This has some advantages. The first is that the builder of such an app can concentrate on just 1 problem, another is that you should be able to mix and match. If I want to search through a number of files for a text string I can combine a number of tools as I want.

    The disadvantage is also clear, you gotta learn about a lot of apps to do one end task. In windows search is simple. In linux it is two apps each with different syntax rules. Windows search is limited, linux search is complicated.

    Another way of doing things is in adding similar functionality to an existing application. Making it feature rich or bloated (depending on your point of view). Web browsers are an obvious example. Should for instance bookmarks be part of the browser or a seperate app? What about a media player? Should the capability to view the source be an internal app (ala firefox) or an external app (IE and opera). Email? Well it is part of the internet isn't it? RSS? XML viewer? XML entry?

    Get the picture?

    I don't like suits either but then I am not a typical user. I prefer my email and browser and p2p and media player to be nicely seperated. Then again I can live with the fact that I have first to click on a link then choose to save the torrent file then go azureus select open torrent, select the torrent and finally be able to start leeching.

    You would be suprised how many people would scream bloody murder if they had to do this.

    Sadly it seems that at least in the browser sphere you and I are loosing. Feature creep seems to be a way of life for browser developers.

    Anyway I wish the company luck, they already seem to have gotten themselves some free advertising and without even having a product to showoff. Good job.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:You must be a unix user by ajwitte · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In general, I agree that smaller apps that play well with the system are better than "suites", especially when said suites are inflexible and self-contained.

      The stated goal of the Firefox project is to build a browser-only app that's lighter weight than Seamonkey (nee Mozilla Suite). So far, I think they've managed to include useful features without bloating Firefox too much.

      It's hardly fair to point to a plug-in for Firefox that's developed by a third party and claim that Firefox is becoming too feature-rich/bloated.

      P.S. I imagine your views also influenced your choice of text editor? :)

      --
      chown -R us ~you/base
  9. Re:Paranoid by ehaggis · · Score: 5, Funny

    This looks like a great comment, but it also looks like it could be a consistant comment waiting to happen. These are the comment templates that have plagued comment template security. Let's hope we don't trade comments for comment templates.

    --
    One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
  10. Re:Yes, it COULD be good by pebs · · Score: 5, Informative

    Granted, I've only used a handful of bittorrent clients, but my biggest complaint with most is that they use the majority of my bandwidth, and I can't even get google to load when I have them open, let alone most other sites.

    This is more than likely because you are using up all your upstream bandwidth. Limit your upstream to something under your max and you should be fine. You can also limit downstream, but that's less likely to be a problem.

    I have 40KB upstream max with my cable service, and I limit it to 25KB and have never had any slowdown problems after doing so. BT never approaches my ~500KB downstream max, so I've never had to limit that. I use Azureus as my client.

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    #!/