It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it’s Sputnik!
About a year I’ve been thinking about extending RSDownloader, let’s call it “broadening the horizon”. Since Rapidshare.com downloads are essentially the same as http/ftp downloads, I came up with an idea to develop a type of extendable application (at this time called Sputnik), which will consist of 3 parts:
- A core framework which will provide lowlevel file downloading (http/ftp) and managing.
- A number of builtin plugins along with 3d party (user) - developed plugins.
- One application to access all of the functionality.
Essentially this is what it comes down to : users can spice the application in the way they want, for instance if you don’t have a Rapidshare.com premium account you can just disable the Rapidshare.com plugin. If you’d like to access downloads from another location, you can enable the “Remote access” plugin. If you want to add functionality to the program so it will automatically blink your backyard lights (lol) or plainly extract all rars to a specified folder, the Sputnik framework will be available to you so you can go ahead and get your hands dirty… Offcourse writing your own extensions requires some programming knowlegde.
The program itself will come in just one flavor. It’ll also include some basic plugins. At this time prototypes of several plugins have been implemented:
- A Rapidshare.com plugin, for Premium users which enabled download and uploading files.
- A YouTube plugin (to download youtube videos)
- A remoting plugin, so you can start downloads from the other side of the globe or just chat one on one)
- Notifications plugin ; so you can play a sound or display a balloon tip when transfers are finished/failed.
- Http(s) and Ftp support.
I know some of these ideas might sound a little abstract but I haven’t really got a full roadmap as to where I’d like to go with Sputnik. Bottomline is that it will be open and expandable, easy to use, stable and fast. Let me keep you guys warm with some screenshots:
Configuration of the Rapidshare.com plugin (which allows automatic uploading).
Downloading a few files, both Rapidshare.com and normal Http (itunes is the worst…)
Uploading files to Rapidshare.com, notice how the download link is shown as the destination.
I hope you guys like it and understand where I’m aiming at. A first release will take place somewhere in September, together with a new website (and forum) which will be specially devoted to the application. My wish is that all of the features in RSDownloader 2.1 will also be a part of the first Sputnik version so RSDownloader users will upgrade to Sputnik. Please let me know what you think and what features you would like in the comments.
Tziet er goe uit schattie!!!!
Looks good Dominiek, looking forward to checking it out. Thanks!
Sounds really good ! First of all, thank you for your passed job with RSDownloader. I’m sure Sputnik will be better (if it’s possible).
As you ask for some features suggestions, i have this one : would it be possible to add a window in which user could check his premium account (without open IE) ?
Merci d’avance
Thx for your responses!
Montmartre : Are you talking about viewing all files you have uploaded to your account, viewing logs, changing mirrors etc. ? Implementing that type of management for rapidshare.com would rely entirely on the structure of rapidshare’s website. Since I’ve noticed they tend to change their layout once in a while I don’t think it would be worth the effort. But given the pluggable nature of the Sputnik application, other users (or perhaps yourself!) might implement this function into the application.
Greets, Dominiek
Bonsoir, Dominiek ! And thx for your fast response
About my suggestion, i didnt thought about files, logs or mirrors, but about my account state (how much Gb it still for the present day, etc…). However, i understand this kind of feature would be very difficult to implement.
Anyway… let’s hope -as you mention- that a crazy programmer will work in that way
Courage (and many thx by advance) for your present Sputnik’s development .
Greets, Montmartre.
Hey dude, this is looking great (tried leaving a comment when you first posted this item, but FF screwed up).
Do you have any ideas about release dates? Need any Beta testers? I use Rapidshare regularly and have just signed up for a Megashares premium account as well…