AltME Quick Facts - What is AltME?
What is AltME?
AltME is a secure, private, lightweight instant messaging system that you control.
Who Needs It?
AltME is for people who work together on a common project or goal.
AltME offers secure encrypted messaging and sharing of information between groups of 2 or more people. AltME is a system for private chat. It is perfect for companies, non-profit organizations, government institutions, schools, clubs, family, friends, or any group of people who need to work or communicate in a coordinated fashion.
AltME is Powerful yet very Lightweight
Our goal is simple: make AltME the easiest private chat system to install and operate.
The entire AltME system including both server and client, as well as all of its applications downloads in just a few seconds. Having fast, reliable, cheap broadband helps it run even faster, and at lower costs. With just a few clicks, you can have it up and running... on your local network or world-wide across the Internet. Updates to the system are automatic and very fast.
Beyond Instant Messaging
AltME is designed for more than just chat and messaging.
AltME provides an integrated environment for a range of communication activities including file sharing, alerts, calendars, contacts, user management, journalling, task tracking, shared document creation, and much more. AltME's extendable application architecture and distributed dataset technology gives it unlimited power to expand in the future.
With AltME, You're the Boss
Only people you invite can join.
As the master of your world, if a user becomes abusive or annoying, you can kick them out of your world. You have control. It's your world.
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AltME |
Services like AOL |
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| You run it. You make the rules. | AOL runs it. They make the rules. |
| Only people you select can be in your world. | Anyone and everyone can be in AOL, good or bad. |
| Only you can delete users. | Only AOL can delete users. |
| On AltME, you can have any screen name you want. | On AOL, all the good screen names are taken. |
| No one, not even us, can spy on you. * | AOL can spy on you and see everything you are doing. |
| Every group is a private "room" where you can talk. Only users who are part of the group know about it. It's private. | A group is just a buddy list of users, nothing more. |
| If someone sends you a message, and you're not there, the next time you logon, you'll get it. | If someone sends you a message, and you're not there, you don't get it. |
| AltME runs entirely on your computer. You have full control. | AOL runs on their computers. AOL has full control. |
| AltME lets you add special IM applications, like shared checklists, calendars, databases, and much more to come. | AOL does not offer special IM applications that you can control. |
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AOL is a trademark of AOL Time Warner. *On the Internet, government agencies and Internet service providers can monitor certain aspects of all communications. |
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What is a SafeWorld?
A safeworld is secure place where you can communicate with friends or associates.
It's your own a private network. You decide on a name for your safeworld, start it running, then invite other users to join you. The rest is automatic. In fact, worlds are so easy to create, you can create disposable safeworlds that serve a temporary need then delete them when you are done. Safeworlds are inherently secure. All network transfers are encrypted, so only those in your group have access to the information. No one, not even us, knows what you are sending.
How Does It Work?
On top of a smooth blend of peer-to-peer and client-server technologies, AltME adds full strength authentication (to keep out unwanted users) and variable levels of encryption (to keep your communication private). Normally, your AltME world runs on one of your computers rather than a central system (at AOL or our office). You have full control over the system, who uses it, what gets shared, and how long it stays running.
What Does it Cost?
AltME is free. It doesn't even have ads or popups. That's because AltME uses your computer, not ours. You can give AltME to your friends or send them links to our web site. That's all free.
Our main rule is this: your world name is free as long as you use your world on a regular basis. If you don't use your world for 10 days, your world name will be released for others to use. If you want to make your world name yours and yours alone, you can pay $10 per year as a registration fee.