WinAmp™
A freemium media player developed by Justin Frankel
1
with over 100 million users. Over the course of the
late 1990s,
WinAmp became known both for its ability to easily interface with pirated MP3s and for its inclusion of numerous
"easter eggs", many inexplicably including references to a "llama"
3
. Frankel's interface was later
repurposed by individual users, hackers, and fringe tech start-ups, often from Eastern Europe [see:
Kazm WindAmp]
<img alt="winamp original skin" class="wikiImg" src="/static/images/wiki/winamp.gif"/>
1 The developer of gnutella, an illegal decentralized peer-to-peer file-sharing application that preceded Napster and Limewire. Frankel's single-employee company Nullsoft was sold to AOL in 1999 for approximately $60 million, and was shuttered shortly after following Frankel's dark web release of various illegal apps 2 and plugins.
2 Including a patch designed to block advertising on AOL's lucrative and notoriously intrusive Instant Messenger.
3
1. Start Winamp 2.xx
⠀2. Type nullsoft slowly, pressing ESC after every L.
⠀3. Do it using the default skin.
⠀4. You'll see the message: "It really whips the llama's ass"