I remember finding out the story of WinAmp's creator (Justin Frankel) making a winamp plugin that basically "blocks" AOL AIM advertisements after his company had been acquired by AOL. Just hilarious.
Frankel has programmed a Winamp plugin that blocks out the advertisements in AOL's AIM instant messaging program. The ad areas are currently used to advertise AOL features; install Frankel's plugin and they're replaced by plain white boxes. Start playing a tune in Winamp and the boxes turn into a graphical display that changes with the music.
Even better, Frankel released the software on a hidden page on a server belonging to Nullsoft, and thus to AOL. The description of the software made no mention of its AIM-modifying effects, though the name of the plugin is AIMazing.
Yes! I remember this happening but wasn't able to find any reference to it.
I remember that I was already impressed he'd taken someone else's MP3 player, put a GUI in front of it, and sold it to AOL for hundreds of millions of dollars. But when I saw Nullsoft immediately release the AIM adblocker after being acquired by AOL, I knew they were truly amazing.
Frankel has programmed a Winamp plugin that blocks out the advertisements in AOL's AIM instant messaging program. The ad areas are currently used to advertise AOL features; install Frankel's plugin and they're replaced by plain white boxes. Start playing a tune in Winamp and the boxes turn into a graphical display that changes with the music.
Even better, Frankel released the software on a hidden page on a server belonging to Nullsoft, and thus to AOL. The description of the software made no mention of its AIM-modifying effects, though the name of the plugin is AIMazing.
http://techreport.com/news/1211/winamp-creator-nullifies-aim...