The Halls Of The Dead

See also: File sharing for some excellent “live” clients

This page lists projects which have officially or apparently been abandoned, usually for around 6 months. Some of these are still functional. We feel your pain.

If you have additional information on any of these clients, please feel free to add them. Even adding things like final messages or dates would be cool. Also feel free to add a wiki page for any of these items if you need more space to write.

Contents

quiet projects

NOTE: These are projects which may or may not be dead. Some might have been put on hold, some may have died and have not been confirmed. Still others may have just moved and we misplaced them.

  • Macster – Napster‘s Mac client. Appears to still be available elsewhere on the net.
  • MacStar – (Mac) — while it’s talked about, it doesn’t appear to be available for download Nov 2002.
  • FileRogue – (Java) – Somewhat similar to Filetopia, this sharing app also has messaging features and organizes files in a predefined folder directory. — website came up blank at last visit Nov 2002.
  • BlueBinder – Napster-like image-sharing software. Includes newsgroup and webpage image grabbing features. — website gave no response on Nov 2002 visit.
  • HoundZilla – (requires IE) – Yet another porn-sharing program. Very simple, and full of ads (doesn’t seem to be spyware, though), but it seems to work. — Website directed us to a standard “nonexistent site” search engine Nov 2002.
  • Pr0nSter – A porn (“pr0n“) sharing program that works. Small executable, HTML-based UI, built in image viewer. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • 3ECS – Yet another porn-sharing network, sends thumbnails on demand. Nice search feature that allows browsing through search results (next/previous for multiple pages). Apparently plans a subscription-based business model. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • zzzap – An image-sharing and organizing tool. Requires e-mail registration. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Tripnosis – General file-sharing with advanced searching. — Website unowned Nov 2002.
  • Swapoo – (requires IE4) – Very primitive, but fast and small. Shares any file type. Uses blocklist to filter copyrighted stuff. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • FileLeech – File sharing with free server, private messaging, file browsing, chatrooms. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002. There is Fileleech.de | (translated), but I’m not sure if it’s related. — rack
  • Jblurb – (Java) – File sharing / browsing with encryption. — Site was down Nov 2002. Could just be temporary.
  • Pito Networks – (Java) – A simple file sharing tool. Didn’t work here. STATUS UNKNOWN. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Gnotella – (Windows) – Easy-to-use and very popular client written in VB, with many powerful features (search and response filtering, decent bandwidth regulation, multiple searches, private networks, skins..). — Website was broken Nov 2002.
  • Gnut – (Unix) – Text mode client with too many features to list. Most powerful around. — invalid url Nov 2002.
  • The Frozen Furi – (Java) – Extremely powerful, but very heavy-weight client, takes up 30 MB of RAM on my machine. Comes with built-in IRC client. Website unowned, googling for it found US =) Nov 2002.
  • Cryptobox | Sourceforge page – (Java) – A general distributed anonymous messaging platform, could also be used for file sharing. As of Nov 2002, it hadn’t released any files and it’s last news update was mid 2001.
  • espra – (cross-platform) – An attempt to build an easy-to-use GUI for cataloging, inserting and finding music and other content on Freenet. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Rendezvoo – (Windows) – A service for connecting to people with similar interests who use Groove. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Aimster – (Windows) – Allows one to search the files of your AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) “Buddies”. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • ezu2me – (Windows) – A private network for image sharing, whiteboard & chat. — Website unowned Nov 2002.
  • Datascourge (Windows) – UDP-based, allows multiple-source downloading and full bandwidth control. Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Netstreak iAssimilator – Centralized sharing with Gnutella support. — From their homepage: allows you to easily share any type of file–MP3s, Pictures, Games, Documents or whatever else you can think of–with other users on the Internet. Website nonexistent April 2006.
  • Splooge – (requires IE) – Simple centralized sharing, with built-in media player. Website nonexistent April 2006.

other quiet stuff

  • FirstPeer Gnumarkets – (Java) – This is a Gnutella-based marketplace that allows you to offer and buy products of any sort. — Website down as of Mar 2003.
  • Safeweb – Safeweb allowed users to surf the web anonymously. A while back it received a grant from the CIA to get around censorship in China. Shortly thereafter, it shut down its anonymous web service.
  • Riffshare – (Windows) – Riffshare allows users on a LAN to search and share MP3 files. Nifty user interface. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • P2P Tracker – Tracks news and companies in the P2P area. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Sharesniffer – (Windows) – A tool which looks for open file shares on Windows system through broad range portscanning. Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Gnutella Lockbox – (Windows) – Scans the configuration of various Windows Gnutella clients for potential security risks like shared cookies (can give away login/password information for websites you visit), downloaded viruses, shared office documents. — Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • Proxys-4-All – The largest list of public proxy servers. It’s censored by some countries, so it must be good <code>;-)</code>. — Website was down Nov 2002.
  • Popular Power – <i>”Help researchers battle the influenza virus. The first application running on Popular Power is a non-profit project that uses the computer time you donate to research ways to optimize flu vaccines.”</i> — from their website: <i> Popular Power is no longer in business. We are continuing to run our non-profit projects and will do so for as long as we are able. True to its name, Popular Power was a wonderful experience because of the people who gave their time, energy, enthusiasm, and financial support to its vision. Thank you to everyone who contributed to our efforts, thank you to the people who downloaded our client and supported our projects, and thank you most of all to the employees who made everything possible.</i>
  • Seti League – A “manual” variant of the SETI@Home project. Here volunteers are encouraged to download and analyze data by themselves using spectrometer tools included in sound editing packages like GoldWave and CoolEdit. Anyone can download the radio telescope data from their servers and report interesting results. — website nonexistent Nov 2002.

dying

Software, mostly P2P clients, which don’t appear to be supported any longer.

  • GTK Napster – Not updated since 2000 since the author is busy with school and work. – Nov 2002
  • XMNap – Unix Motif Napster client — <i>a Motif napster client. It bears some resemblance with TkNap, although it differs in several areas, such as using a dedicated configuration window. It is also generally much faster, since it is written in C. Like TkNap, it supports chat, firewalled download and upload, hotlist and a limited set of privileged user commands. </i>
  • Newtella – (Windows/Linux) — Doesn’t look like it’s available as a download anymore, nor has the main page been updated since mid 2001. – Nov 2002.
  • Genny – (Python) – Genny is loosely based on Gnutella, but uses UDP instead of TCP and also features chat. Genny has an open model for adding new services, but no GUI yet. Website nonexistent Nov 2002.
  • ABMNet – (Windows) – A Gnutella-rewrite for the newsgroup alt.binaries.multimedia. It connects to a smaller group of nodes that is independent from the large GnutellaNet. Website unowned Nov 2002.
  • Scoundrel – (Windows) – Scoundrel is a useful Napster–client that automatically downloads complete albums (the tracklists are loaded from amazon.com). The project has been discontinued, but is already usable. Mirror.

other dying

  • freehaven-dev – Not really strictly a developers list, new projects are often mentioned here. Hasn’t seen activity in some time, on Nov 2002 check.
  • Global-Scale Distributed Storage Systems – “Discussion of design and implementation issues related to the development of scalable, decentralized storage systems of literally global scope. The emphasis should be on technical descriptions and critique of mechanisms providing efficiency, reliability, security, and similar properties.” — See also their archive and newsgroup. Doesn’t appear to have been particularly active lately — Nov 2002.

dead (confirmed)

  • Exeem Advert supported filesharing program that never got out of beta. It got some inital momentum because members of the suprnova.org forums were given invitations to join the network when it was started.
  • Yoink! – Very simple UI, file sharing only. Required IE5. — From their homepage: We regret to announce the closure of the Yoink Download Community. The community has continued to grow over the years, beyond our ability to sustain it financially. The cost of the server bandwidth has grown too costly for this project to continue any further. We would like to thank the millions of people that have downloaded Yoink and enjoyed trading free files with the community. We hope you enjoyed the experience, it has been a fun couple of years.
  • Mactella – We are pleased to announce that the Gnutella community no longer needs CXC, that it is thriving and alive with energy. We haven’t gone out of business, but we’re doing other things. There are better clients out there than Mactella. We recommend LimeWire. There are people selling our GPL’d application, and we’d prefer to stop that. A note that if someone really wants Mactella, the source is still available. Mactella source 648k, for v. 1.3.5 (Stuffit 6 archive)
  • Blocks – (Windows, Unix) – Anonymous file-exchange. Similarities to Freenet (caching), but uses adverts to make existing files known. Hosts keep indexes of advertised files and can search them locally (ultra-fast searches). – Project discontinued.
  • Media Enforcer – (Windows) – This is a project by a true copyright-believer. It is supposed to search multiple services and automatically report infringements. Aquired by BayTSP, the project status is unknown, but it is a safe assumption that the project got pulled in-house for use by this company as a service – Nov 2002.
  • Keido – (Windows) – Any-file sharing from Poland. Automatically starts transfers of files that are not available when you searched for them. No permanent user IDs. Downloads from multiple sources. Server couldn’t handle the load.
  • Clip2 – Home of the Reflector, a Gnutella proxy and index server that reduces load on the network. Cash ran out August 2001.
  • Ohaha – (Windows; IE5) – Describing itself as “the best of Freenet and Gnutella“, Ohaha indeed mixes technology of both networks. Like KaZaA, it assigns more tasks to peers with more bandwidth, and it automatically caches files like Freenet does. No longer available as of June 17, 2001.
  • 24Link – Kind of a super-small version of groove.net. Allows you to invite other users by e-mail for file sharing & collaboration. Requires e-mail registration. Shut down in March 2001.

other dead (confirmed) stuff

  • Gnutella.de – Gnutella for Germans. Shut down by Ferrero for infringing on the Nutella chocolate spread name.
  • Peerprofits – P2P business news, with a list of P2P companies. — from the website: Since I’m no longer involved in the P2P-distributed computing space (and I’ve not had time to maintain it) the PeerProfits web site has been brought to a close. Good luck to everyone in the space. I’m available for consulting. Details below. chris — Nov 2002.
  • Hook Protect – (Windows) – A program for detecting keyloggers, interceptors, spies, trojans and so on. Monitors programs loaded into memory, directories, files etc. — From the homepage: We don’t support this software anymore. Visit www.anti-keyloggers.com for new products.
  • Eraser – Open-source software for securely deleting files. — from the homepage: As I said in my announcement in November, I have moved on to other projects and version 5.3 is the last release of the program I will make. Thanks to the GNU General Public License, other developers will be able to continue the work without me. — Garrett Trant has taken over the main branch, and will continue maintaining the program. You can find more information from his web site.
  • Scramdisk – (Windows) – An easy-to-use, free disk encryption tool. — from the homepage: “DriveCrypt” will replace ScramDisk and E4M, and is fully backwards compatible with legacy Sramdisk and E4M partitions, WAV containers, normal containers and partitions. The free version of ScramDisk will continue to be available on the ScramDisk web site, but will not be updated beyond it’s current release. The free E4M, and the commercial NT version of ScramDisk will be withdrawn. You can download a demo version of “DriveCrypt”, or get more information about the product, browsing to http://www.drivecrypt.com or writing to info@drivecrypt.com
  • SWSpookShare – A number of clients were tinkered with to use the Spookshare protocol. This and it’s related projects were experimental and short-lived.
  • Scour – A file sharing service that tried to work with the entertainment industry but that was basically sued into oblivion anyway.
  • Cloudish – An open-source anonymizer. Author removed all software and information and said that people opressed by their government or whatsoever should use something more reliable and secure. He also says that he had his eyes closed for the negative consequences of his software. Homepage and mirrors confirmed down at 6 march 2004.

dead (confirmed), and buried without honour

  • SongSpy – Music sharing client with reputation (karma), scans user’s harddrive and requires them to deselect files that are not to be shared instead of allowing them to select shared files. Doesn’t allow to cancel uploads or to disable sharing (both intentionally). Contains Onflow spyware. — from their homepage: “Our thanks to all who were members for your loyalty and support.” — Nov 2002.

TakeDown.NET -> “The-Halls-Of-The-Dead”