Important Announcements

News

Thank you for choosing BearShare!

Please take some time to read all of the documentation. Your investment of time will make a tremendous difference in the ability to use the program effectively. It will also help the entire Gnutella community. Because of the distributed nature of Gnutella, and similar peer to peer networks, it takes a little bit of extra effort to maintain your connection and to be aware of the subtleties involved. This will pay off by giving you uncensored and unrestricted access to an almost limitless variety of files of all types.

Every time you install a new version of BearShare, you should read this section to become informed of news, tips, or useful information which will help you get the most out of BearShare and the Gnutella network.

Version 2.0.0

This special version of BearShare gives users the ability to host their own websites to provide custom content. Using the Web Site features, all your files can be grouped, formatted, and displayed in HTML format. You have complete control over the content that appears and its presentation.

The Gnutella Web Search service provides a jumping point into a random BearShare Web Server, generating the necessary traffic to sustain interest in maintaining a peer to peer web site.

Users can now enjoy sharing not only files, but information, through their own custom pages served with BearShare. The bundled Webalizer product creates full statistics so that users can track their visitors, popular pages, and referrals.

In addition, upload bandwidth limits, IP blocking, and the send to tray features address the three most frequently requested items reported in the BearShare.Net forums.

Version 1.3.0

We added the ability to create detailed HTML reports similar to those generated for busy websites. These reports provide comprehensive statistics about shared files including what is popular, what times are popular, how many bytes were transferred over a time interval, what software is being used to download, and what geographic regions the requests are coming from.

This feature is specifically designed to reward users who share files. If you don't share any files, the HTML reports will be of little use to you. We will not add logging for downloads, only uploads.

Version 1.2.6

This release of BearShare provides integrated support for the BearShare.Net Gnutella Community service. This service allows users to interact with users, promoting knowledge and sharing in Gnutella's file sharing network. We invite you to join BearShare.Net by registering as a member and participating in our forums. BearShare.Net will be the main source of technical support for BearShare, as well as a place to go to meet some other great people like you.

Regular Updates

We would like to thank our users for downloading the latest versions of the software as it becomes available. BearShare Labs reports show that over 70% of users upgrade within the first three days of each release. Less than 1% of the installed base is still using 1.2.0, with the numbers dropping daily.

Since BearShare's release on December 4, 2000, there have been a total of 7 service updates, bringing the average release rate to about once every three days. We would like to remind users that unlike traditional desktop applications, changing network conditions and research require more frequent updates of peer to peer type software, and thank you for your continued participation.