Seems to be a bug in NetPresenz. I tried to set up the MPEG files on Tartan's site so that they are ftp'ed by users instead of http'ed, but if the user cancels the download NetPresenz stops working and can't be quit (nor force quit). Maybe if I move the files to a non-WWW directory -- haven't tried that yet. In any case, I once mentioned how NetPresenz has gone from a $10 shareware program to a $35 and now a $75 shareware program, all the time remaining at version 4.1. Maybe it's because all the freeware Mac web servers are now dead, leaving some pricey commercial alternatives like WebStar and WebTen. It's kind of weird to me -- it's the only piece of shareware that I can think of whose price has gone up without any corresponding improvements.

It's a testament to its simplicity and robustness that NetPresenz hasn't really needed to be updated, although it looks more like Stairways has decided to focus on Interarchy, since I can't find any mention of NetPresenz at the Stairways site. In fact, there are no other programs at the Stairways site other than Interarchy, and Interarchy has most of the features of all their old shareware and freeware programs anyways, so I guess those other programs would just compete with Interarchy. Even though I can upgrade to Interarchy 4.0 for $10 (because of my NetPresenz license, note that Interarchy has no web/ftp server so the upgrade path is not clear to me), I don't think I will.

Interarchy is basically an ftp client with a bunch of features globbed on. Now it can do Internet utility things like ping and dns lookups and you can run some of the more innocuous daemons like fingerd and whois. It also has a Telnet server so you can telnet in and run AppleScripts. And all these things are probably more robust than their ealier incarnations. But all I can think of is "so what?" I looked at the manual and the web site to see if there is any compelling reason to upgrade, and even at that low a price I don't see anything I really want.

For ftp, I think NetFinder has a totally better interface (it mimics the Mac OS Finder) and is just as functional for my needs. I already have a program to do pings and name lookups and port scans and such (AGNetTools). I'm not really keen on running a bunch of daemons on my Mac. The Telnet server is actually a bit interesting, but I've tried to use the earlier version and it's quite cumbersome. It needs a bunch of prebuilt commands so that you can do some basic shell-like functions like cd, ls, cat. That's something I may work on now that I know more AppleScript than when I last tried to build a library for Script Daemon (the earlier incarnation of the Telnet server).

I'm no longer impressed with Stairways software. This new direction and focus leaves me a bit cold. They're trying to transform themselves into a real company, but they're doing it by shedding all the little things that made them a shareware company to admire. Maybe it's me and my expectations, but I get the feeling that they sold out.

There's also the upcoming Mac OS X release. I don't want to upgrade software that will stop working with Mac OS X (I don't particularly want to run apps in Mac OS 9 emulation mode) or that I will have to upgrade again right off the bat. I'm not expecting to upgrade to Mac OS X immediately (especially on my work machine since I know all those low-level utilities I run will die), but knowing what's on the imminent horizon I'm hesitant to buy more software.

Anyways, NetPresenz continues to handle the load for Tartan's web site. I haven't noticed anyone downloading the MPEG files so maybe there's no worry there. It could be that people are intimidated by the 15-30 MB file sizes, so two improvements would be to segment the files and to recompress the movies with QuickTime (which has better compressors than MPEG-1) and at a higher loss of quality (the movies are not that great in the first place, tv quality).