Audiogalaxy to ByteTaxi
p2pnet.net News:- Audiogalaxy is back
Well – not quite. But founder Michael Merhej is, and with a new p2p file sharing venture, although this time, music isn’t the focus.
His ByteTaxi FolderShare has three main functions. It allows users to:
- Synchronize across multiple computers
- Collaborate and share files
- Access their files from anywhere
Audiogalaxy emerged on the heels of Napster-as-was to become one of the most widely used p2p services.
As Kenet describes it on Kuro5hin here:
"Audiogalaxy started out as the Borg Search, an FTP search engine written by Michael Merhej. While working in the physics lab at UT, Michael met David McArthur, and they decided to go into business together as Audiogalaxy. Initially AG was just the FTP search, but soon they decided to start offering free web space to musicians who wanted to promote their music. Artists or labels could use the web-based interface to post their mp3s onto the site so that anyone could download them. Along with articles and reviews by a small music staff, AG began to grow.
"About 3 months before I was hired, Napster hit the internet. Michael and David realized the power of p2p apps and decided that a system like that would be a great way to distribute the mp3s already hosted on Audiogalaxy. And with that realization, the Audiogalaxy Satellite was born."
Yep. So naturally, Big Music killed it.
That was then. But now Merhej is back with FolderShare which lets people open directories to others online and move files, large or small, among or between computers.
He says it’s already using it for features such as accessing a home music collection while at work, says ZDNet here, which adds:
"The project could in theory be used to trade copyrighted files, but Merhej said the lack of a search function made it much less useful for that feature than services like Kazaa or eDonkey."
January 15th, 2004 at 8:56 pm
Next someone will patent fire…
July 27th, 2004 at 6:24 pm
” lack of a search function made it much less useful for that feature than services like Kazaa or eDonkey” —- i wonder how long that will last ; – p
July 27th, 2004 at 7:27 pm
I’ve been using foldershare for a year or so now to get my mp3’s as well as other files from my computer in the basement to the computer upstairs without having to set up an actual network. With the latest version, it sets a cap of 2500 files in one folder to be shared… unless you buy a “professional” version. while this is easy to get around, it’s annoying to have to accomodate this, because, a lot of people have more than 2500 mp3’s in one folder.
I wouldn’t say folderhare will take off as a giant p2p app, like soulseek or bittorrent, but i’ve also used it to share mp3’s amongst friends, and that is very effective. my two cents.
-M