In the ‘file sharing business’, there are a lot of different protocols. The major players are Direct Downloads (DDL), which include free file sharing sites like MegaUpload and RapidShare; and then there is Peer-to-peer (P2P), which covers both torrents and applications like Kazaa and LimeWire.
After Karl’s latest article about Rapidshare123, I was stunned with the number of comments that claimed BitTorrent as the ‘now‘.
True as that might be, a statement like that closes more doors than it opens. Although torrents are indeed great, the presence of other worthy protocols can’t be ignored. Free file sharing networks such as FastTrack, Ares and Gnutella still cover millions of files and are – in my honest opinion – still the easier way to search for, and download some types of files.
KCeasy
KCeasy is an application that does its utter best not to let this form of file sharing die. It’s based on the giFT protocol, which allows it to connect to several file sharing networks such as Ares, Gnutella and OpenFT – developed by the guys behind the giFT engine.
Back in the old days – which is actually just a few years ago – KCeasy also worked out FastTrack compatibility through reverse engineering. This is the network used by Kazaa. Unfortunately, Sharman Networks weren’t all too happy about it, and threatened with court and the takedown of KCeasy.
This doesn’t much hurt KCeasy as a viable file sharing application, though. Even with the current decrease in popularity, Ares and Gnutella protocol still serve hundreds of thousands of people, and passively host a good petabyte (a full million gigabytes) of files and information.
Read on for some of the best KCeasy features.
The Web, Integrated
KCeasy has an integrated web browser, based on Internet Explorer. It probably won’t replace your current web browser, but it does allow you to go for a quick stroll on the net, or look things up.
From the application’s start page, you can instantly perform some of the more popular searches, such as regular Google queries, IMDB movie lookups, file information with Bitzi – inluding specific dimensions, qualities and reviews – and Lets Sing It music lookups.
Media Playbacks and Previews
With the KCeasy media player, you can listen to, or watch downloaded music and videos. You can use this to check the quality of your files, even when they haven’t finished downloading yet – or, when you haven’t even started.
You can keep controlling playback, even when you’re navigating other sections of the application. The little console at the bottom does for KCeasy what FoxyTunes does for FireFox. This one can also be accessed while you’re browsing through the results of a file search.
There are other features that characterize KCeasy, like access to the oldschool IRC, but that isn’t how we should remember this application. KCeasy is simply a wonderful and easy to use file sharing application that shows us there’s still some life in this niche of the internet – that although torrents are absolutely great, they shouldn’t be considered both beginning and end of the availabilities.
So, what do you think? Let us know your thoughts, remarks or questions in the comments below.
Tagged: downloader • downloads • kazaa • media player
