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Is AllPeers FireFox's P2P "Killer App"?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:02 AM
from the simple-is-key dept.
from the simple-is-key dept.
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."
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Is AllPeers FireFox's P2P "Killer App"?
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Quantumware (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.imatix.com/)
Re:Quantumware (Score:5, Funny)
(http://teachyourchildrenwell.org/)
You deride the power of the probable assumption?
Re:Quantumware (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.antiheroforhire.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 07 2003, @09:06AM)
Re:Quantumware (Score:4, Funny)
Something about that line makes we want to go watch the Matrix.
Re:Quantumware (Score:5, Funny)
(http://thepreacher.cac2.net/)
Hey, it's Schrodinger's App
Ick, (Score:5, Insightful)
Give me simplicity without the unnecessary integration.
You must be a unix user (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday August 17, @05:34AM)
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.
Re:You must be a unix user (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://andrewwitte.com/)
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?
Re:You must be a unix user (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. The whole point of Firefox is to have a very small general-purpose web browser, to which you can add whatever extension you wish.
When AllPeers releases its stuff, *your* Firefox won't instantly become bloated. It's an extension. If you don't want it, don't download/install it, and you won't have it. Firefox is very flexible in that way.
Just because there are more and more extensions available for Firefox doesn't mean it's becoming bloated. It means it's becoming more flexible. As long as you have the option of not installing all of them, I don't see why extensions are a problem.
Re:You must be a unix user (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.penguinpetes.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 14 2006, @03:38AM)
For the hundredth millionth time, learning is not an issue for everybody. And the people who don't want to learn cripple the choices of those of us who do.
Re:You must be a unix user (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://web.lemuria.org/)
* If I can mix'n'match on the commandline, I can write a script
* Since all my scripts use standard commands, I can mix'n'match scripts (e.g. loganalyzer.pl webstats.html)
* IF I can mix'n'match scripts, I can write a nice GUI to make it easier
The whole point of the Unix way is using components, plugins, extensions - whatever the hype of the month calls them.
CD Writing software is a great example. Choose the GUI you like. Under the hook, none of them had to reinvent the wheel, they all use the same software to do the actual burning.
Great concept. I'm sure 10 years down the road, M$ will "invent" it and hype it to hell just in time for Windos ZX or whatever.
Re:Ick, (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.lightandmatter.com/)
I also have to wonder about the logic of saying that this will really make firefox take off. The percentage of internet users who use p2p isn't that high, and of those that do, how many of them will like this particular app so much that they'll switch to firefox from IE? And how are they going to try the app if they aren't already using firefox?
BTW, it also looks clear that it's going to be closed source. After the kinds of experiences people have had with closed-source p2p clients on Windows installing spyware, why the &^%*$ should anyone get excited about installing yet another proprietary p2p app? Uh, wasn't the cool thing about firefox supposed to be that it's open-source? Who would have cared about firefox if it had been another proprietary browser?
And finally, there are different p2p protocols for different purposes. This one apparently is only bittorrent. The author talks about sharing his movies with his parents, but that isn't what bittorrent is optimized for; bt is optimized for sharing a single, big file that lots and lots of people want, like a BSD distribution or the "New Voyages" videos. [newvoyages.com]
Paranoid (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.restorationunity.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 05 2005, @08:12AM)
Re:Paranoid (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 13 2007, @02:19AM)
Re:Paranoid (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.restorationunity.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 05 2005, @08:12AM)
Pardon Me.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fog (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://erismud.org/)
Yes, it COULD be good (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.squarextreme.com/)
Granted, its a good idea, I just hope they fix that one thing that plagues other clients. With Bittorrent, typically, you're sharing larger files, with this, the intent (though I'm sure it will be used for other things as well) is to share smaller files with close friends. Hopefully, this will be taken into account in the final version.
Re:Yes, it COULD be good (Score:5, Informative)
(http:///#!/)
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.
restrictions for what purpose? (Score:4, Informative)
Why does it need restrictions at all? You can do the same thing with an unrestricted email attachment. Just put in a warning notice about sharing, but don't restrict its functionality.
Advertised as Killer app = not so (usually) (Score:3, Insightful)
The killer application for firefox is BROWSING THE FRIKKIN WEB.
Stop trying to cloud the waters.
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.udviklingschef.dk/ | Last Journal: Sunday April 18 2004, @02:52PM)
Oh, please. (Score:3, Insightful)
By far, the most frequent browser users are corporate people who have (significant) parts of their internal operations accessible by a browser. They won't be using it because the company's internal operations aren't set up that way. (And if you don't understand that dimension of browser users, you ought to look at where most Windows desktops are deployed: in a corporate environment.)
The next most frequent users are moms, pops and their kids at home visiting numerous sites for homework (read "plagiarism"), sports news and recipes. (And if you don't understand that dimension of browser users then get up out of your chairs, walk down the street and do a door-to-door survey of people in your neighbourhood.)
The next most frequent users are people like you and me: intensive users who push the boundaries -- who stopped using IE years ago (I'm mostly Opera, occasionally Firefox and still have a version of Lynx that I can launch).
The next most frequent users are
So basically: when you get to the people who use their browsers the most, you're also talking about the smallest cohort of browser users. Killer app? Sure: but only for us.
buddy Interaction (Score:1)
But it's still in the box (Score:4, Funny)
Since the AllPeers applet is still in the box, it's impossible to say whether or not it's a killer app. Since we cannot directly observe AllPeers, it must be existing in a meta-state where it is at once both a killer app, and in fact not.
But I'm slightly uncertain about this.
RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.evilcon.net/)
What next? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://dexplor.com/)
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
Right idea, wrong platform (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.demodulated.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 05 2006, @01:38PM)
FF needs (Score:2)
Why? (Score:1)
Private filesharing (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.greatdealsclub.com/)
Just give me a torrent client or emule-like app that I can limit to a group of defined contacts.
The Real Killer App(tm) (Score:1)
This ain't a news site, is a DDOS portal.
May I suggest a new financing method? Package and sell various versions of "the
The average user (Score:1)
(http://www.microsoft.com/)
90% of people browsing the web just want to view a website or two, maybe order something online. They couldn't give two shits about seeing their "online buddies", downloading illegal stuff via p2p.
Waited a while for this (Score:2)
(http://www.misscellania.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 29, @11:47PM)
Features I'll be looking for is drag and drop sharing of pictures or folders, and an interface so easy that any new user can find files I want them to see within seconds of visiting my address or buddy icon.
Firefox needs a Bit torrent extension so badly.
Is AllPeers FireFox's P2P "Killer App"? Hmmm No. (Score:1)
(http://www.chrismay.org/)
Antisocial Commentary (Score:5, Funny)
Come on people. Am I the only one who still does shit alone on the Internet?
</troll>
And yes, I too appreciate the irony of spurting antisocial rants on a community web site.
integrated P2P is not a good idea (Score:1)
We do not need Recording industry suing Mozilla for offering P2P plugins.
No (Score:2)
Seriously, if I want to run a P2P app I would, wait for it, run it under my OS. Firefox is a not an OS (yet, and wasn't the whole point to get away from the "everything but the kitchen sink" problem with Netscape?).
I want my web browser to, y'know, browse the web with. Doing FTP is also nice.
I want my OS to run applications under (not, despite what Microsoft would have you believe, browse the web with).
Couldn't we keep this seperation? Please?
Also, even if AllPeers is such an incredible P2P app that everyone in the world will want to use it, people that haven't moved from IE to Firefox yet are probably going to just treat Firefox as a P2P app, and IE as a web browser, IMHO...
FF on Mac OSX (Score:1)
OT. Has anyone had experience using Camino, good or bad?
Duh - Adblock (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.unity08.com/)
Instant message programs and file sharing programs are a dime a dozen, but Adblock is what separates Firefox from other web browsers. It'll have a far more profound effect on the web, too, as eventually it'll become clear to advertisers that the conventional massive blinking ad in the middle of the site's content just isn't as effective as the innocuous text-only ad, because users are far more likely to block an annoying ad than they are a simple text ad.
Re:Duh - Adblock (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.urbandb.com/)
vaporware is always a killer app (Score:3, Insightful)
Vaporware is always hyped as a killer app.
Browser != desktop (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.fylo.net/)
I can only imagine this was done as an extension because XUL Runner [mozilla.org] isn't finished yet.
I think using the browser as a host for other apps is cool, there will be a bubble in this as there is in so many other internet trends. Right now we're in the "Wow, let's write an extension because we can!" phase (partly because the only practical way to develop with Gecko is as such, see above). When everyone gets over the cool factor of it, the projects that actually enhance (or even relate to, for that matter) the browser experience will be distilled away from what should have been standalone apps in the first place.
As much as some people want to think the OS will become merely a life support system for the browser, it just isn't going to happen; the network is not the right place for some things, and if one program has everything [mozilla.org], it inevitably becomes bloated and slow [microsoft.com].
Sign-up for their beta test here (Score:3, Informative)
(http://fak3r.com/)
useless? (Score:2)
(http://www.sinister.com/ | Last Journal: Monday September 03 2001, @10:09PM)
NEW FIREFOX FEATURE (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.nerdgod.com/)
An HTML editor!
An Email client!
An IRC client!
A Javascript debugger!
Please everyone, stop making my browser into a suite.
Love,
Me.
Comment from AllPeers CTO (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.allpeers.com/blog)
Yes, it's a bit silly to speculate about whether AllPeers will or won't be the killer app for Firefox when you can't even see it yet. That said, Michael is making an important point, and I'm afraid that a lot of people aren't grokking it because they attach too much baggage to the term "P2P".
We're not making a Kazaa clone. We're giving people the possibility to share files with their friends and family inside Firefox. This *could* be a killer app because it gives people a real motivation to switch their non-technical contacts (especially family) to Firefox so that they can share with them. In other words, we're adding network effects to Firefox.
Does this mean that AllPeers will be the killer app for Firefox? Who knows. But the idea itself isn't patently ridiculous. If you want to make your own judgement, please register for our beta and check it out when it's available. Also, read my blog [allpeers.com] if you want more technical nitty-gritty about what we're up to.
sharing frenzy (Score:1)
Sounds like marketing to me (Score:1)
Let's see the software, install it, try it and then decide if it's a "killer app".
Killer app? (Score:2)
(http://syberghost.livejournal.com/)
Solution to /. effect (Score:1)
BT for sharing family photos? (Score:3, Interesting)
Take that away and you're left with a buddy-file-transfer scheme that's actually going to be slower than any of the competition. Unlike the major IM clients, anyone behind a firewall or NAT (meaning almost everyone) will have to not only open ports on the firewall but also forward the ports to their PC in order to get an upload speed of more than about 10K/sec. And unlike uploading the files to your personal hosted webspace (which you can usually do a whole lot faster than a BT upload), the files are only available for download when your PC is online? Are most people with desktops going to leave them on 24/7 and turn off power management just to keep the new baby pictures available when they could have just uploaded them to Kodak instead? And what about laptops? How effectively are laptop users going to effectively share much of anything?
Also, doesn't using BT generally degrade web browsing performance? If I'm going to have BT on my own PC at all, why would I want a client that shuts down when I'm not browsing, which is normally when I'm happiest to let BT eat up all my bandwidth?
This gets funding? Meet Web 2.0, eerily similar to Web 1.0.
Announcing the end of slashdotting! (Score:2)
(http://www.mythologicalbeast.org/ | Last Journal: Monday September 08 2003, @01:27PM)
The primary problem with this, of course, is that more and more of us are hiding behind NAT walls, and bittorrent functions poorly if it can't create a server connection. If it became a truly "killer app" it might start the cascade avalanche towards IPv6.
Oh the stench! (Score:1)
(http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/~omarb/)
ewww, buddylists (Score:1)
DOA for corporate users (Score:3, Interesting)
We need to be giving corporate decision-makers -more- reasons to switch to FF, not fewer.
Killer indeed (Score:2)
An Alternative to HTTP would be good (Score:1)
An alternative to http downloads WOULD be a good plug-in for firefox. So instead of downloading a large file from a web-site through HTTP or FTP, a web-site would have a link to a p2p file that initiates this plug-in which would download the file in a P2P fashion. I guess this is equivalent to having torrents and BitTorrent installed, but if firefox had a plugin then maybe more web-sites would accomodate this type of download.
This would obviously be beneficial to both users (quicker downloads) and web-site owners (reduces their bandwidth charges). I would think that the web-site would have to still host the file so that at least one source of the file is always available for not-so-popular files.
I don't think this plugin achieves that as it seems to be more to do with sharing files between users.
DUpe (Score:2)
pass me a tin foil hat.. (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Tuesday December 21 2004, @10:50AM)
Less Crashes and Faster Rendes would be "killer" (Score:1)
- run (without issue) for > 12 hours without requiring a restart
*OR*
-load more than whatever the magic number of pages that causes FireFox to crap on my relatively zippy machine
I love the 'Fox too, but the bitch has been testing my patience as of late. As for this rather unrevolutionary extension - I wouldn't install it on your machine
Logo == Janet Jackson Costume Failure? (Score:1)
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://blog.atlgeek.com/)
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.
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:3, Informative)
(http://kernelpanic.blogspot.com/)
Uhm, you do realise you don't need to install it, right? This is optional, non-mandatory stuff. You choose to use it if it appeals to you.
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Already second story? (Score:2, Offtopic)
(http://www.foodry.com/)
Reminds me of Paul Graham's piece from early last year The Submarine [paulgraham.com].
Re:done already (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.intelligentblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Monday August 27, @11:47AM)
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:1)
(http://www.webdevelopers.cz/)
Otherwise I could claim my Elixon CMS for Firefox as killer CMS
Simply I don't like the things like "the most succesfull movie of the year" entitled to the movie that is just entering the cinemas. They are all lies we call "marketing".
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.livejournal.com/~pxtl)
FF bloat = extension developed by opensource developers specifically to provide them with crap they want. Users go out of their way to fetch the exts and FF makes them jump through some hoops to complete the process.
not quite the same. When bonzi.com makes a firefox extension things may change, but for now they're different.
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Firefox needs... (Score:2)
It turns out that the user interface simplicity I was only partially talking about that you fully latched on to goes hand in hand with something else - the simplicity of the application code itself. Even if you refuse to install any Firefox extensions, the bloat still hits you in the face like a sack of bricks because it insists on using fucking XUL and the rendering engine to render the whole UI.
Without being an actual Gecko developer, I can't tell you if that is its main problem (but it's likely to be a 'big one'). What I do know is that the memory savings and performance benefits from using Konqueror are downright impressive.
- Lost+Found (Linux loser since, well, a long time ago... and loving it!)
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:2)
Re:Firefox needs... (Score:2)
(last I tried konq anyway)
Konqueror has the same problem as IE, it tries to be the file manager too but the two things are not exactly the same.
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Friday October 26, @01:12AM)
So the parade of new apps for Firefox continues. And how long before there are so many "killer" apps available, that Firefox begins to suffer IE bloat?
My experience sort of lends support to your thesis, almost, in a round about way:
When I upgraded to FF v1.5 a couple of weeks ago, I did a comprehensive survey of all the extensions I could find, both to select some for myself and so I could talk to others about the choices available.
There are about 1,000 extensions out there now. It took me 3 sessions of about 2 hours each over a 3 day period to review these. I selected 20 for my immediate use. I've got a list of about 10 others that I want to look at again; and I've listed another 30 or so that don't interest me, but might be of interest to someone I know.
In all, after about 6 hours of review I immediately implemented about 2% of the available FF extensions, and found that a total of about 6% were interesting. Now my FF is very nicely tailored to my needs (with a good tool kit for analyzing web pages and other development work) and my desires (I like the occasional game of tetris and free cell). FF still loads quickly, remains very responsive, and doesn't interfere with my other work, so the amount of "bloat" I've added isn't an issue.
But I am a little worried about the future: when the number of extensions doubles (probably before summer) it is going to take more than 12 hours to survey them and select the 1% or so that I might find personally useful, and that is too long. Without a better way to manage the process of sorting and selecting, I'm going to feel like I'm drowning in the riches that FF offers. But there are certainly worse fates!
At the moment the best approach to managing FF's extensions is similar to the counting house approach to managing money: dump the contents of the purse on the table, look at each coin individually, and decide which stack to put it on. Maybe in a few months someone will come up with a better organization of the riches-- like maybe a moderated and metamoderated set of reviews with good searching, etc. Because we're going to need a better accounting system to manage the "bloat" as FF's available wealth grows larger and larger.
I for one welcome our blahblahblah...
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:2)
(http://www.dangercollie.com/music/)
The difference is with Firefox if you feel your browser is bloaty you can uninstall apps until it's down to a comfortable weight. IE is bloated before adding plugins.
Firefox has accelerated the trend of the browser becoming sort of an internet gateway device. FF will continue to innovate rings around MSFT.
Re:"Killer" apps (Score:1)
(http://gtads.blogspot.com/)
Re:A more useful extension (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 18 2004, @07:52AM)
BTW, seems "customizable Google home page [google.com]" may be what you want. Other nice alternative - RSS-based web storage for your bookmarks.