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."

Quantumware

[pieterh]

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...

Ick,

[baadger]

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.

Pardon Me....

[LordPhantom]

....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"?

Fog

[Zutroi_Zatatakowsky]

I believe AllPeers has already been slashdotted, did we need this once more? They *still* haven't released their software. Woop-dee-doo.

Yes, it COULD be good

[trogdor8667]

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. Why would I want to have this happen every time I open Firefox? I open my browser to surf the net, not get bogged down with extensions that drain every ounce of my connection so I can share a single picture or movie with my girlfriend.

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:"Killer" apps

[the unbeliever]

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.

Advertised as Killer app = not so (usually)

[LiquidCoooled]

Anywhere we see "get our program, its the XYZ killer app" its usually a bit of a pretender.
The killer application for firefox is BROWSING THE FRIKKIN WEB.
Stop trying to cloud the waters.

Oh, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen up, people: that functionality is what geeks (like you and me) want. It is *not* what the vast, vast, vast majority of browser users want.

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 ... well, that's it ... there are no other users.

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.

Right idea, wrong platform

[spyrochaete]

Allpeers certainly does look awesome, but what's it doing in a web browser? It belongs in an IM client like GAIM or as a standalone app. I've been waiting forever for an easy way to share files with my friends, but I'm not crazy about the idea of tying up 100MB of RAM leaving Firefox open all the time.

You must be a unix user

[SmallFurryCreature]

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.

Re:Ick,

[bcrowell]

I don't see the logical link between Firefox and p2p. There are a gazillion different types of files I could download off the internet, and a zillion different things I could do over the internet. Having a "persistent buddy" (whatever that is) built into my browser for each one seems to me like it would make my experience as a user more confusing, not easier.

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]

Re:"Killer" apps

[Pxtl]

IE bloat = sneaky underhanded spyware crammed into IE, often by the computer vendor itself. Primarily designed to pump ads to the user and monitor their actions. Installed as covertly as humanly possible.
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:Paranoid

[Billosaur]

This looks like a great feature, but it also looks like it could be a consistant security breach waiting to happen.

See, happening already. IE would be flamed for having another "Security Hole" in its browser; In Firefox, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread... we think. Haven't actually seen it.

It's simple: browsers shouldn't do everything. If you want P2P, use standalone software. If you want read news, shop online, and browse the net, use a browser.

Human2human protocol

[TuringTest]

You're right in your analysis, but wrong in your conclusions. You forgot that those corporate people have a life outside the corporation.

When they go back home, they usually will want to communicate with the group of moms, dads and kids - which don't necesarily use the same computer or even live at the same house. This is the point where an easy protocol for sharing content is most needed (mail worked well for a time, but it didn't scale to the current big multimedia files of video, mp3 and digital cameras).

The sharing of these kinds of files between the two biggest user groups *is* what will make this a killer app, if it has a well-implemented user-centered interface.

vaporware is always a killer app

[beforewisdom]

Vaporware is always a killer app. Nobody advertises an application that doesn't exist yet as merely being a decent app that will do a job.

Vaporware is always hyped as a killer app.

NEW FIREFOX FEATURE

[thenerdgod]

A news client!
An HTML editor!
An Email client!
An IRC client!
A Javascript debugger! ..oh... what? Moz... wha? Oh.

Please everyone, stop making my browser into a suite.

Love,
Me.

Re:Duh - Adblock

[rtaylor]

Actually it becomes clear that server side enforced advertising (click-through pages with manditory delays) are necessary because you cannot trust the client.

Re:You must be a unix user

[rufty_tufty]

More a matter of my own perspective here, but when I'm trying to hack something to get it to work, I like a large toolkit that I can pipe around and have full control over everything through a large collection of tools. i.e. if I'm fluent in a field I want control over every knob. (e.g. logic synthesys scripts at work where I want control over the find command that prunes the tree, and the perl scrip that hacks the file syntax)

If i just want something to work in a field I'm not fluent in or do not need control over, then I like suites that just work. Every second I can save not having to do a file save to translate between applications is another second of my life that is useful! And every hour I can spend not having to learn a new tool is a good hour.

The right tool for the right job, I don't care/understand the dependencies required for my desktop, so aptget does that for me; I do care about the dependencies for my SOC build, so I hand write scripts to do that for me. Sometimes you care about control, some times it's better to wrap it all up in a layer of abstraction at leave is as someone else's problem.

I don't see either approach as inherently superiour, provided I have access to both.
Why are people dissing this, it's like when winzip was first released, so many people asked what the point was when they could command line it. How many people these days regualarly command line zip operations? (and running tar -czf in a script doesn't count :-) I mean run the zip program from a dos box :-))