LimeWire has released the LimeWire 2.1.2 beta, available, as always, from:

http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/download_beta

This version is almost identical to 2.1.1. The big difference is the bundling of an application called "TopMoxie" with the Windows installer only, and I am eager to hear any feedback that users may have on this addition.

TopMoxie, or "LimeShop" is really a new direction for us with regard to bundled software, and we hope that it will be successful enough that it can start to replace some of the other software that we currently include.

LimeShop basically takes advantage of web sites' affiliate programs. For those of you who are unfamiliar with affiliate programs, basically what happens is that affiliates of, say, Amazon.com get their own entry point into Amazon that looks just like the normal Amazon start page, but that is a different URL so that Amazon can track the traffic you're driving to them. In return for the traffic, Amazon pays the affiliate a portion of the profits from what people spend on their web site.

For example, LimeWire has an affiliate program with MusicMatch whereby if you go to:

http://www.musicmatch.com/download/p...&did=999991694

it looks like you are going to the normal MusicMatch site, but you're, in fact, going to a special LimeWire affiliate site so that LimeWire gets some of the profits from any purchases.

Upon installation of LimeWire, we include both links to the LimeWire Marketplace as well as a service which tags URL’s with a code that allows online retailers to know when they are supporting the LimeWire cause.

From the user's perspective, there is no difference between this and just going to a web site as you normally would. The difference is that it makes money for LimeWire to continue to improve the program and to provide a better user experience.

This is all it does. It does not collect any information about you or violate your privacy. You can also uninstall it at any time (note that the LimeShop installer does not complete installation until after a restart, however, so you will not see it in Add/Remove Programs until after you restart your machine).

If this brings in enough revenue, we very much prefer it over other bundled software (spyware), and we hope that everyone will agree. TopMoxie is often used to raise money for charities or non-profits, so it's really of a different breed from the software we are currently bundling. Thoughts?

Hello,

I recently purchased LimeWire Pro 2.0.5 for the Macintosh on 12/19/01 (I paid
via PayPal). I just downloaded your new beta version 2.1.2 for Macintosh and installed it. This seems to have overwritten the previous Pro version I had.

How can I make this version Pro? Is there a serial number that I need, or
do I have pay another $6.00 to upgrade to the pro version of this "new"
version? I have my receipt from PayPal for the previous transaction.

Please advise.

Sincerely,
Matt

Hi Gregorius. Your PRO purchase entitles you to unlimited upgrades for six months--and that includes re-installing the same version more than once if needed. So just go to the web page in your receipt email, and you can download 2.1.1 PRO. There isn't a 2.1.2 PRO, by the way, since 2.1.2 just dabbles in bundled software changes.

Why is this junk reported as a server app on my firewall log ?

You want this to replace the spyware ?
Geez this almost qualifies as spyware !

State clear and without to much going-around-the-bush that it is a ******* proxy that alters urls for any site that's willing to pay you .
Clear and simple .

Now exuse me I got to clean up my system .

If you guys would have said this nicely without too much crap I would even altered my proxy server for my LAN .
It already alters urls and HTML to filter out ads so adding a filter for your benefit would be no problem because you guys can use the money .
But you had to take the dirty way didn't you ??

They'l never learn ...

BTW : My LAN consists of 207 PC's used dailey for diverse reasons .
The place is booked , because it's the only place in town were people can surf ad-free .
Sometimes my proxy blocks more then 6000 banners a day .
With my LAN I mean my shool network where people can surf for a dime and students for free .
I run the entire network .
Turned the shool library's internet PC's into a goldmine .
I wonder how much revenue 6000 banners would generate ?
I'm sure somebody is ****ed after reading this .

you're a moron so stfu.

Clean LimeWire 2.1.2 is ready , get it here :
http://users.pandora.be/karel.boonen...s/LimeWire.exe

that is indeed is as bad as spyware.
ok, let's say you affililate with amazon, and you change all urls to include your tag.
what about if i click on url from some other site that include their tag? do you overwrite it with yours? are you taking money away from other web sites?

Limewire is really getting fabulous. My only complaint about the most recent betas is that the retry/resume features are really wanting, even worse in some respects than older versions of Limewire. The FastTrack applications really have this one right: once you try to download a file, it *never* quits until you tell it to. If all sources to a file are exhausted, then the client periodically searches on the file's hash value attempting to find new sources to restart the download. Once it does, it picks up where it left off. Quit and restart, and all your partially completed files are still there, automatically searching for new sources.

Compare this with Limewire. First, if all the sources for a file are exhausted ("not available") the partially downloaded file is *lost entirely*. Even if you restart it manually, by finding more sources for the same file/same filename/same hash, it will start the download over form the beginning. This is giving up far too easily, and it is a regression: Limewire used to handle this properly before the swarm stuff went in. (I assume the problem is that the file metadata is thrown away as soon as it's declared not available, but this is too soon since people have the ability to restart downloads manually even if it will not be done automatically.)

And even when the program does try to restart a download automatically (from sources available when "download" was first clicked), the incomplete file cache seems to be keyed by hash-filename rather than just hash. So if the new source uses a different filename than the old source, I think a new file gets created and the transfer starts over. What a waste!

These two problems seem easy to fix, and seriously impact the usability of Limewire for transferring large files (and I should really stop bitching and fix them myself, I know). The extra feature needed to bring Limewire up to the robustness of the FastTrack clients is the ability for the client to automatically search for sources in an attempt to restart aborted downloads. This would best be built on the ability to search by hash rather than filename. Does gnutella have this feature?

Point taken on the resuming issue. We have a feature implemented for our next release that takes care of this, so we'll be very interested to see what you think. It's not clear when the next version will be released at this point, but it should be within the next two or three weeks.

As far as the LimeShop issue goes, I think my e-mail was straightforward. I was not trying to mislead anyone in any way, and my apologies if I did.

I just received my LimeWire t-shirt this afternoon. Its kick ***, I'm going to wear it tomorrow...