List Price: Client: $24.95, Server: $34.95 (variable discounts available)
Contact Info: http://www.hotlinesw.com/
Genre: Internet Communications Tool
System Requirements: MacOS 7.5 or higher, Open Transport 1.1.1 or higher
 
Introduction
Simply put, the Hotline suite is a tool used to communicate, chat, share files, and accomplish other things over the internet. The Hotline suite consists of internet communication tools that combine many of the useful features found in some of the internet's most popular software. These include chat capabilities such as IRC or AOL chat rooms, transferring of files as in FTP applications, news (vaguely) similar to newsgroups, and some others not found anywhere else.
Hotline Client
The Hotline Client has many interesting features. These include chat (private and public), news, and file transfer, server tracker and much more.
Public Chat is what many people would equate to the America Online chat rooms. Anyone given access to chat (some servers disable this privilege to guests) can talk to anyone else who is connected to the server. The chat window is uncluttered; a press of the return key sends your text to the server for everyone to see. Pressing option-return enables you to perform actions. For example: Normal — iacas: I'll look up the answer
option-return ----> Action — *** iacas is looking up the answer.
Private Chat is a recent addition (added to v1.2). It allows users to participate in separate private chat windows, which is a great way to collaborate with a buddy one-to-one while being able to see what's going on and interact with everyone else in the main chat window. It is a great feature, and it certainly tops the method by which AOL went about private chats.
News is not quite the same as you'd find on newsgroups; Hotline pales in comparison, but it serves its purpose quite well. A user can post to the news about a recently uploaded file, administrators can post news such as how to obtain an account, and just about any announcement works well in the news.
File Transfer is one area in which Hotline excels. Transferring files is fast
and easy. At right is a picture
of a Hotline directory, which  
is very similar to a typical
Macintosh window. From
here, files can be
downloaded, deleted,
moved, renamed and much
more. File transfers are fast
AND resumable. If you
crash while downloading
the 7MB "Think Different"
ad, you can pick up where
you left off.
Another great feature is
file queuing. Queuing
enables a user to automa-
tically start a download as
soon as the file before it
finishes downloading. This is very helpful
when you are on a modem and want several files.
Tracker gives users the ability to find other servers to which you can connect. It's very handy to have this feature because you might not know where to find Hotline servers. As with all of the other features, this is tightly integrated and very easy to use.
One of the nicest features of the Hotline Client is the ability to save bookmarks for your favorite servers. This feature allows users to save IP addresses, login names, and passwords for their favorite sites. Thus, a user simply needs to choose "connect" from the menu or the toolbar and then choose his or her destination from the server list. The username and password are stored and then sent to the server for easy logins. There are even some bookmarks included with the Hotline Client for the more popular Hotline servers.
Another nifty feature is the fact that the entire client interface can be modified through the use of custom soundsets, toolbars, and icons. We're currently using a Quake and a Warcraft soundset, a Rhapsody and a Floppy Toolbar, and a pair of custom icons. It certainly is Mac-like in the fact that every user can customize it to look and behave just the way they like!
Hotline Server
The server is what users connect to. Setting up your own server is very straightforward and takes little time. It keeps extremely precise logs of user file changes, uploads and downloads, news, and much more. It is possible to register your server with a tracker so that others may find your server quickly and easily.
User files and privileges are easy to set up. Guest access can be controlled, or you may wish to create user files that allow greater access permissions to certain people. For example, we often set up an Apple Wizards server for staff meetings. We give ourselves (the editors) access to all functions, including deleting files, kicking users off, modifying user files, and various other things. Our staff members log in as guests and are only able to chat, post and read news, download files and upload files to the uploads folder. Hotline's accompanying Read Me explains server functions in detail, and is quite helpful when you first set up your own server. After that, the intuitive interface leads you along.
Conclusion
Many, many, many features were ignored or glossed over in this review. Why? Well, we honestly figured you wouldn't want an entire issue of Apple Wizards to be devoted to Hotline.
Seriously, though, Hotline is quite awesome. All of the software runs in less than 2MB! It is virtually bug-free and it severely raises the bar by which all internet applications will be measured. If you doubt us, visit http://www.hotlinesw.com/ and check it out for yourself!
