The piece of software called hotline, which can be found at
www.hotlinesw.com is actually a
rare combination of effectiveness, ease of use, and price. For example,
it's free.
Better than just being free, it actually works, and well,
on both windows and macintosh, and does its jobs with a fairly nice
interface.
And what are those jobs, you ask?
Well, its a chatroom, with private message functions, although it
doesn't quite get up to IRC standards, its definately adequate
Its
also a file-server. Files can be uploaded and downloaded from a central
server (In this case, part of my harddrive) with full resumable transfer
capability. It is even said (Although i have not proven this myself)
that the transfer protocol it uses is 20% faster than base FTP, and it
is definately at least equal to it.
Last but not least of its major functions is a fully operational
news-server, which can of course also be used as a forum, and indeed i
am doing so (Although forums require users, so its more of an archive at
the moment)
As its a small download(Around 5 and a half mb), and can connect to a
myriad of other servers as well, not just mine, i strongly suggest
anyone with a little time and harddisk space go and fetch a copy from
the above website, as there are servers to cater for every interest, and
with a little effort it will be well worth it
Another useful website for hotline would have to be the tracker tracker, a website which keeps up to date lists of all the trackers (things that list hotline servers) it can find, and will search all of them for a specific server or even a file on a server for you, making the task of finding a specific something you seek much, much easier.