Winamp creator Frankel's new online jam

Justin Frankel, the programmer responsible for Winamp, Gnutella, WASTE, and probably a dozen or so ulcers at previous employer America Online's headquarters, is back with a new piece of software aimed at musicians.

Dubbed Ninjam, it allows bands to play together over the Internet. Typically this is impractical in real time, since latency (the time it takes information to go from one computer over the Internet to another machine) makes it difficult to sync up the different instruments.

Frankel's software instead embraces latency, essentially letting a server in the middle record what each musician is playing, and then play it back a measure later or loop it for others to jam over. It takes a little adjustment to think in this way, but it allows several people to work out parts together online with only minimal confusion.

For now, the service is free, although there's not unlimited slots online available to play. He's thinking about opening up a paid hosting service a little like multiplayer game sites, where musicians could pay a small fee to jam online together.

Frankel has been thinking about audio tools quite a bit since leaving AOL last year. Another project he's got posted on his Web site is Jesusonic, a software-based audio effects processor that can be used in digital music projects.