Some old British software from the early 2000s
Jul 23, 2023 20:15:52 GMT
wadmodderpudu and extremewreck2000 like this
Post by computeraddict1 on Jul 23, 2023 20:15:52 GMT
Ok so this is a thing that's been on my mind since last year and I really wanna talk about it. I tried making a thread on Reddit but it got no replies so I hope this place will be better.
What is Microsoft Agent?
In case you didn't know it, Microsoft Agent was a technology developed in the late 90s that was used by various programs, most notably Microsoft Office. This technology used animated characters that appeared in your desktop. It's not the most obscure thing in the world but it has been mostly forgotten after it was discontinued in 2009, so I wanted to give a little introduction for those who are unaware of its existence.
Agent TaskForce (and WebPrecint)
Agent TaskForce was a British company founded in the year 2000 by Neil Roodyn and Banos Solomou, who previously worked on another company called WebPrecint. They worked on various programs that came with their own respective agent characters, the gimmick was that each one of them was focused on different tasks, hence the name Agent TaskForce.
Here's a list of all their programs:
- Weather Agent featuring Helios, a Sun with a face.
- News Agent featuring Satti the satellite, though it previously used a pigeon character known as Cary R. Pigeon, I don't know why it was changed.
- Sports Agent featuring Victor the sentient trophy.
- Shopping Agent featuring Trolley the shopping cart.
- Trader Agent featuring Maximillion Dollars, a guy. The program however was discontinued in june of 2001 as you can see here.
- Games Agent featuring Otaku the Game Boy-looking thing.
- Movie Agent featuring Flix the film reel.
- Book Agent featuring Red the bookworm. This one was a newcomer to the team, with a beta being released on 8 May 2001. I don't think it made it out of the beta though.
- WebScrapbook featuring Impstance the Internet imp. This was actually made by WebPrecint in 1999 before ATF was founded.
Unfortunately the company went bankrupt in 2003 due to lack of funds, and while a lot of their website has been archived, most download links haven't, I'll explain why that's the case.
Download links
The ATF website had a very clunky and strange method of downloading their products, instead of directly giving you the download link you had to put in your email adress, after that you would receive a password that would help with the program you downloaded. Though oddly enough, despite these programs being freeware, you could also purchase them on WebPrecint's website.
You may think that with such a shit system they wouldn't be very well known, but that isn't exactly the case. While not super famous, ATF were part of the Microsoft Agent Web Ring, which was a large ring of MS Agent Websites. Plus their characters were featured in the Agentry, which at the time was one of the biggest MS Agent repositories on the web, but they didn't have download links for them. Hell, Movie Agent was available for download in the Ring's character gallery, which is pretty weird considering that the rest of their characters were not. Okay, now that you know a bit about them, you might be wondering if anything has survived this companie's demise. The answer is yes.
The found agents
As of the writing of this post, 5 characters and 2 programs have been archived, the following being:
- Otaku/Games Agent (the character, not the program)
- Flix/Movie Agent (the character, not the program)
- Helios/Weather Agent (both the character and the program)
- Cary R. Pigeon/former News Agent (only the pigeon has been found, both the program and the Satti character are still lost)
- Impstance/WebScrapbook (both the character and the program)
The rest of the characters and software are still lost.
Contacting Banos
Since the website is defunct, all the old ATF email adresses are obviously useless nowadays, so contacting them via that method is completely out of the question. While nothing seems to be known about Neil Roodyn, I was able to find Banos Solomou's LinkedIn page, so I decided to ask him if he still has any of the old characters or programs from his Agent TaskForce days, and while it took some time he responded saying that he didn't have any of the work.
What's the point?
Since Banos was my only hope to find the stuff I was looking for, this led my search to a dead end. There's really not a lot I can do, unless someone just happens to have one of these programs in their PC or someone just happens to have the WebScrapbook CD or someone just happens to be Neil Roodyn. I really don't think these characters will be found anytime soon, though I do still have some hope left.
