Going by the small number of comments today it understandably suggests that this software has a limited market, but, as with the telephone when it was invented, I react against the nay-sayers. I always like to see seeds that might stimulate the imagination and lead to great things.

That’s why I discourage the question to a newcomer to computing “What do you want to do with your machine?” I believe the only valid answer to that is “Everything!”. :)

I hope your piece has led some doubters towards the great beyond..

FTPGetter with SFTP support will be released at April, 2009

Just restart FTPGetter :)

FTP – File Transfer Protocol – is a very, very old way to download files. You can do it from a DOS command prompt, for example. It drastically – the first protocol was developed in 1971 – predates the modern internet, the World Wide Web. Back before the standard web protocol http – hyper text transfer protocol (which originally started out as the source for clickable links, as you likely know) – ftp was probably the main way to download files. Since a lot of people still feel that you don’t need protocol dedicated to clickable links and pretty pictures just to distribute files – especially from internal file servers in a lot of circumstances – ftp sites still exist. It’s kind of like the great great grandaddy of torrents, though it doesn’t really have the unfortunate connection with pirated files that torrents occassionally have.

You can do some ftp stuff in a web browser, but ftps mainly still exist for people who don’t want to be tied to the extra memory, etc. needed by a web browser just to download files. Though you might not realize it, sometimes when you click a link to download a file, you’re browser actually switches to the ftp protocol to download it, because it’s stored on an ftp site. It’s not unusual for software sites and mp3 sites to actually store their downloads using ftp. Some people even use the protocol as a simpler way to upload web pages. Software like today’s giveaway basically contains advanced functions for people who download a lot of these files or who want to automate the process for off hours or both.

Here’s a simple, short explanation of ftp and the standard client software from a site called ftp planet:
http://www.ftpplanet.com/ftpresources/basics.htm
And here’s their review page of sites, including various ftps.
If, after looking at that, you still can’t find any sites that have a lot of files you want to download simply and quickly, then you don’t need software of this type.

Note: I know there may be a lot of technical holes in this explanation, but I think I’ve captured the functional gist of it, so I hope the more sophisticated here won’t pick it apart in too much detail. Phaedron seemed to be asking what it was for, not how it works down to the last detail.

why would I have this?