November 30, 2009
Volume XXVIII, Issue 10
Early-Bird Rates for P2P MEDIA SUMMIT at CES End 12/1
Special pre-registration rates for the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT at CES end on Tuesday December 1st. Register now for the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and sign-up for this extraordinary Partner Program taking place on Wednesday January 6th. Please scroll down to this week's Report from the CEO for details.
DCINFO readers will also be excited to learn that Josh Silverman, CEO of Skype, the P2P industry's greatest financial success, will deliver the keynote address at the Leaders in Technology Dinner (LIT) to be held at CES.
CNBC Anchor, Maria Bartiromo, will deliver opening remarks for the evening, followed by Silverman's keynote address. The dinner, which honors the technologists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers instrumental in furthering technology innovation, is scheduled for Friday January 8th.
"Josh Silverman is a true technology visionary, and we are thrilled to welcome him as the keynote speaker for the 2010 Leaders in Technology Dinner," said Gary Shapiro, President & CEO, CEA. "Through his leadership, Skype's software is connecting millions of people around the globe, enabling seamless audio and video conversations that span oceans and time zones. We look forward to Silverman's address as he shares his vision for the future of Skype."
Newest Flash Player Enables P2P Video Streaming to Millions
Excerpted from NewTeeVee Report by Janko Roettgers
By far the most disruptive - and overlooked - feature of the Flash Player 10.1 that Adobe launched this week is its ability to transmit video via P2P multicast. In fact, Adobe built some enhanced P2P capabilities into both the new Flash Player and Air 2 beta that could be used to replicate BitTorrent functionality within Flash, build large-scale P2P groupware solutions that work right within the browser, and stream video to millions of viewers without having to pay a fortune for bandwidth.
Adobe has been hinting at big plans for P2P ever since it bought a small P2P start-up called amicima in early 2007. It made some of amicima's technology available to developers about a year ago, but restricted it to small-scale use cases like P2P video-conferencing or multi-player games based on a few Flash players directly connected to each other via P2P.
With Flash Player 10.1, Adobe appears ready to open the floodgates. CDNs and P2P video solutions providers would be well-advised to take notice.
Adobe's P2P technology is based on its proprietary Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP), which was previously restricted to one-to-one connections. That means your Flash Player 10 could directly exchange data with another client, but not relay the data. Transmitting video to 10 other clients meant opening 10 connections to other Flash Players, a method that doesn't scale very well.
All of that changed with 10.1, which supports true P2P multicast, making it possible to retransmit a video stream from a single source to a large number of viewers. And not just a few hundred viewers, or even thousands.
"When we think of large, we think of millions," amicima Co-Founder and Adobe P2P Project Lead Matthew Kaufman said when he introduced the technology to developers at last month's Adobe MAX event. In fact, he said, it should be capable of handling viewing audiences larger than that of the US presidential inauguration, which has to date been the largest live P2P streaming event ever.
Kaufman's MAX presentation, which is available as an archived video, is fairly technical, but it contains a few very interesting tidbits. Adobe put a lot of work into making Flash P2P both scalable and reliable, which is why it combined a number of cutting-edge video delivery mechanisms. Publishers can, for example, distribute a video stream via IPv6 multicast and back it up with P2P multicast, or they can source a stream from a server and then opt to distribute it via P2P. Kaufman also claimed that the latency of Adobe's P2P implementation is a lot lower than many of the existing P2P video solutions out there.
The whole experience should be pretty painless for the end-user. "A permission dialog box will pop-up for people using Flash Player 10.1 in the browser for P2P multicast," I was told by Adobe's Flash Media Server Product Manager, Kevin Towes.
But wait - Adobe's got a few more P2P tricks up its sleeves. Developers will also be able to use Flash player 10.1 to build various other P2P applications right within the browser as well as within Air. One possible scenario mentioned includes object replication, more commonly known as file sharing.
"It's a lot like BitTorrent", explained Kaufman, adding that one could use this to "write a crazy file-sharing application" or to "replicate how Groove worked in Actionscript." Adding to that, Air 2 now supports writing your own file servers and similar stuff through a dedicated API.
We'll probably still have to wait a few months before we can get a true grasp on what all of this is going to mean for online video delivery, but there's obviously a potential for huge disruptions.
For starters, P2P video companies might have a hard time convincing publishers to opt for their solution, if only for the fact that end-users won't have to install any additional plug-ins to access Flash P2P video streams. At the same time, P2P adoption could skyrocket, as live-streaming sites and others start to leverage Flash Player 10.1 to cut down on bandwidth costs.
So what's in it for Adobe? Well, RTMFP is true P2P, but you still need a so-called rendezvous server to connect users to the P2P swarm before they can access the video. Adobe already offers this functionality though a hosted service called Stratus, which is capable of serving hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. In the future, you'll just use your own Flash Media Server as a rendezvous server. In other words: Adobe's use of P2P may cut out a whole bunch of middlemen, but it still places the company itself squarely in the center of the online video world.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Early-bird rates for the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT at CES, which save delegates hundreds of dollars, end December 1st. Register now for the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and sign-up for this extraordinary Partner Program. The DCIA is an allied association of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).
Don't miss this seminal industry event coming January 6th to the Las Vegas Convention Center. There's no better way to get a head-start on what to expect in the New Year from the very forefront of online service development than by personally attending.
The third-annual P2P MEDIA SUMMIT at CES features keynotes from top peer-to-peer (P2P), social networking, and cloud-computing software companies; tracks on policy, technology and marketing; and panel discussions covering content distribution and solutions development. Enterprise deployment as well as consumer adoption trends will be covered.
A key theme will be the use of P2P and cloud computing for games. DCINFO readers can now view Abacast's archival video of the DCIA's first special event on this topic here.
DCIA Members now offer a panoply of solutions to help content delivery networks (CDNs), network operators, client applications, content providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and other participants in the rapidly emerging P2P & cloud computing channel distribute material at astonishingly low costs and with astoundingly high quality of service (QoS) and security.
We are very pleased that our keynotes now include Jim Kott, Co-President, Abacast; Mitchell Edwards, CFO & General Counsel, BitTorrent; Christopher Hennebery, Director of Software Distribution, Yummy Interactive; Robert Levitan, CEO, Pando Networks; Scott Tilghman and Daniel Ernst, Principals, Hudson Square Research; Joe Porus and Milt Ellis, Vice Presidents, Harris Interactive; Sean Varah, CEO, Motion DSP; George Searle, CEO, LimeWire; Jin Li, Principal Researcher, Microsoft; Gilad Peleg, VP of Marketing & Business Development, Oversi; and Hemanshu Nigam, Chief Security Officer (CSO), MySpace.
There will be a continental breakfast, conference luncheon, and VIP networking cocktail reception.
Policy Track panelists will include Derek Broes, Former SVP, Digital Entertainment, Paramount Pictures; Jim Burger, Partner, Dow Lohnes; Russell Frackman, Partner, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp; David Johnson, Of Counsel, Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro; Travis Kalanick, Founder, RedSwoosh; Steven Masur, Managing Partner, MasurLaw; Jon Potter, Former Executive Director, Digital Media Association (DiMA); and Eddie Schwartz, President, Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC).
Technology Track panelists will include Jonathan Anderson, CEO & Founder, Selfbank Mobile; Nathan Good, Chief Scientist, Good Research; David Hassoun, Founder, RealEyes Media; Norman Henderson, VP of Business Development, Asankya; Lawrence Low, VP of Product Management and Strategy, BayTSP; Doug Pasko, PMTS, Verizon Communications; Stuart Rosove, VP, Media & Entertainment, Digimarc; and Jonathan Zuck, President, Association for Competitive Technology (ACT).
Marketing Track panelists will include Frank Bernhard, Managing Principal, OMNI Consulting; Ted Cohen, Managing Partner, TAG Strategic; Stephen Condon, Director, Market Development, AT&T Digital Media Services; Devon Ferreira, Founder & CEO, SocialNotions; Murray Galbraith, President, Cavalier Digital Media Services and Gameboyz; Colin Sebastian, Senior Vice President, Lazard Capital Markets; and Seth Shapiro, Principal, New Amsterdam Media.
Content Distribution panelists will include Melike Amjarv, Independent Producer; Ethan Applen, Director, Technology & Business Strategy, Warner Bros.; Richard Conlon, VP, New Media & Strategic Development, Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI); Max Davis, Director, DataRevenue.org; Mark Friedlander, National Director, New Media, Screen Actors Guild (SAG); Larry Kenswil, Of Counsel, Loeb & Loeb; and Nicholas Longano, Founder & CEO, Music Mogul.
Solutions Development panelists will include Dan Coffing, Founder & CEO, Mingle360; Bob DeAnna, CTO, Recursion Software; Ian Donahue, President, RedThorne Media; Vincent Hsieh, CEO, Aleric; Ed Pimentel, Owner, Gluegle; Neerav Shah, VP, Business Development, Verimatrix; and Barry Tishgart, VP, Internet Services, Comcast.
Consumer Protection panelists will include Robert Boback, CEO, Tiversa; Hal Bringman, Founder & President, NVPR; Tom Chernaik, Principal, DigComm; Gary Greenstein, Of Counsel, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Robert Hunter, Digital Rights Consultant, Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA); Arthur Pober, American Associate, European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA); and Chris Ullrich, Writer / Producer, The Flickcast.
Registration can be done online here or by calling 410-476-7965. For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz, DCIA Member Services, at 888-890-4240. Share wisely, and take care.
Private Investor Group Completes $1.9 Billion Skype Purchase
Excerpted from AltAssets Report
A group of private investors has completed the purchase of a 70% stake in P2P telephony service Skype from online auction site eBay. Silver Lake, one of Silicon Valley's largest technology-focused private equity firms, led the group, which also included Joltid Limited, creators of P2P file-sharing service Kazaa, as well as venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
The consortium paid $1.9 billion for the majority stake, and a note in the amount of $125 million. eBay, which retains a 30%, said that it had purchased senior debt securities with a face value of $250 million as part of a debt financing for the company. The deal values Skype at $2.75 billion.
Joltid is owned by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, meaning that the duo will gain a substantial holding in their creation.
eBay purchased Skype in 2005, thinking it would support the online auction site by providing bidders and sellers an easy means of communication with one another. The integration failed to work, however, and eBay has been trying to offload the investment ever since. It also owns web payment provider PayPal.
Founded in 1999, Silver Lake is a technology-focused private equity investor with $13 billion in assets under management and offices in Menlo Park, New York, London, San Francisco and Hong Kong.
PPStream Starts New Round of Pre-IPO Funding
Excerpted from Marbridge Consulting Report
President Xu Weifeng of Chinese online P2P video service PPStream revealed that the company recently began a new round of funding, and could become China's first video-sharing site to achieve a public listing.
PPStream had previously received $30 million in third-round funding. The company has been profitable since this May, predicts "very small" losses for the full year, and is projected to be profitable for the year 2010.
PPStream's needs for cash are modest at this point; its main interests are reportedly in other types of resources it can gain from strategic investors. In its new round of funding, PPStream seeks to target three categories of investors: traditional media, telecom companies, and Internet companies.
As the company's operations are currently in a good state, PPStream will not seek large investments. Thus far, PPStream has yet to publish detailed plans for this round of funding, and has not indicated where it will seek to list.
Swedish Television Experiments with Octoshape P2P
Excerpted from P2P Blog Report by Janko Roettgers
Swedish broadcaster SVT has started to experiment with live-streaming based on Octoshape's peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) plug-in for coverage of the computer gaming convention Dreamhack that is taking place in the Swedish town of Jonkoping.
SVT will provide around 10 hours of live coverage of the event online, and the programming will include in-game video of e-sports tournaments, according to The Local.
From the newspaper's website: "The web-based Dreamhack broadcasts will also allow SVT to beta-test a new webcasting technology that the station hopes will allow it to send higher quality video to more viewers. The technology relies on a P2P distribution network, which utilizes viewers' free bandwidth to send SVT's video stream on to other viewers nearby."
The Local doesn't mention Octoshape by name, but a quick look at SVT's website reveals that the broadcaster is in fact utilizing Octoshape's technology.
Of course, SVT isn't the first one doing so for live video. CNN previously utilized Octoshape for live coverage of the Obama inauguration, serving 25 million streams in the process.
Atari Relaunches Website with Free Games
Excerpted from Marketing Daily Report by Aaron Baar
Atari, the once iconic video game maker, has relaunched its Atari.com website, giving surfers the opportunity to play coin-op arcade and classic home video games like "Asteroids," "Lunar Lander", "Battlezone" and "Yars Revenge" for free online.
In addition, fans will be able to buy new games through the site, access exclusive merchandise and buy licensed clothing through the site. According to a statement from Atari CEO Jim Wilson, the relaunch is "the first stage in Atari's ongoing commitment to growing its online business."
Games Technology Aids Scientific Research
Excerpted from Simple Thoughts Report
Reports indicate that the technology designed to blast aliens in computer games is part of a new graphics processing units (GPU) computer cluster that will process research data thousands of times faster and more efficiently than a desktop PC.
The new GPU cluster will allow scientists to explore what may well be the next generation approach to supercomputing, the use of GPU technology for parallel processing. The first of its kind in Australia, the cluster is about the size of six large refrigerators and contains 61,440 compute cores.
CSIRO Computational and Simulation Science leader Dr. John Taylor said that the computer cluster combines central processing units (CPUs) like those in PCs with more powerful GPUs to make it more efficient. "GPUs have been around a while, hidden in your computer game console but now we're seeing them in scientific computing," Dr. Taylor said. "They were initially designed to render 3D scenes in computer games."
"GPUs speed-up data processing by allowing a computer to massively multi-task through parallel processing," he added. Per unit of processing power, a GPU cluster is typically less expensive and more energy efficient than a CPU-based supercomputer.
GPUs are not just useful for image data, they can tackle big science challenges - processing petabytes of data and more, very quickly. Projects to be run on the cluster include figuring out where tiny fragments of genetic code sit on a genome, 3D reconstruction of medical images from the Australian Synchrotron, and modeling the interactions between nutrients and plankton in the oceans.
Using GPUs to analyze complex research data is becoming a global trend in computing. "It's pleasing to see the first installation of a GPU cluster in Australia," CSIRO Information Sciences Group Executive Dr. Alex Zelinsky said.
"This cluster will be part of our family of high-end computers in CSIRO and important to our e-Research Strategy," he added. It will be used for research in advanced materials, cloud computing, data and visualization tools, genetics and more.
Taiwan's Cloud Computing to Reach $192 Million in 2010
Excerpted from Taiwan News Report by Fanny Liu
Taiwan's cloud computing services market is estimated to reach $172 million for 2009, up 12.8% from last year, and to hit $192 million in 2010, a well-known market research institute said Tuesday.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which provides co-location and security operation center services, will occupy the bulk of the cloud computing market for 2009 with an amount of $157 million, according to the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC).
Meanwhile, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which provides online software solutions such as Salesforce.com CRM and Cisco WebEx, will account for $15.1 million of the cloud computing market in 2009, the MIC said.
Lin Hsin-heng, an industry analyst at MIC, said that nearly 35% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Taiwan are using cloud computing services.
Citing the results of an MIC survey that was conducted between November 2008 and January 2009, Lin said most SMEs use cloud computing because of its flexibility in terms of deployment and low investment risks.
Lin said that companies with fewer information technology (IT) engineers tend to employ more cloud computing services.
Cloud computing is comprised of web-enabled software solutions that use the Internet as a platform for performing tasks on the computer and delivers a range of inter-operable applications.
DCINFO Editor's Note: Please see also Go East for Cloud Computing Expansion and Cloud Computing in the Land of the Rising Sun.
FLM Premieres Series on Discovery's Planet Green
What do tofu-turkey, crazed holiday shopping, and the Internet all have in common? Bea Wildered, of course! Fun Little Movies' (FLM) newest show, which centers around a woman bewildered by all things green, is premiering on the perfect channel for it - Planet Green!
Planet Green, a service of the Discovery Networks, the first and only 24-hour eco-lifestyle television network, has ordered the first six episodes in the enthralling "Bea Wildered" series. Since Planet Green launched in June 2008, it has reached more than 50 million homes with an offering of more than 250 hours of original green content.
"The chance to work with the Planet Green and the Discovery Channel has been amazing," says Frank Chindamo, the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Fun Little Movies, "They had the vision to invest in producing a series that would appeal to women, still be liked by men, and be great for the environment!"
This FLM original series centers around a woman who wants to be environmentally friendly, but always manages to botch the situation. With adventures ranging from fighting a Mulch Monster to a Thanksgiving dinner tight-spot, Bea Wildered navigates her eco-awkwardness to discover exciting green solutions that defend the planet from environmental catastrophe.
Written by Lynn Chindamo, "Bea-Wildered" was produced by FLM, the recipient of more than 22 awards and helmed by award-winning writer/producer Frank Chindamo.
Slipping into the P2P Channel: Where Trends Begin
Excerpted from MediaPost Report by Steve Smith
Somewhere beneath the marketing radar, millions of users are online every day registering their desires on the massively popular file-sharing networks. Despite worries about content infringement, P2P technologies like BitTorrent and Gnutella have become enormously powerful channels for content swapping among the most connected and media hungry users.
There are tastes and behaviors exposed here that marketers ignore at their own peril. In years of studying these networks, both for anti-piracy projects and for marketers, The Jun Group says that one unmistakable pattern has emerged. "When a property is traded more on file-sharing networks, it sells more," says Mitchell Reichgut, CTO. "When it doesn't trade, it doesn't sell." File sharing is not only a barometer of tastes but also of media purchase-intent.
Whatever the worries over copyright infringement occurring on these networks, media companies continue to watch the file-sharing channel like a hawk, because they know that early adopters and trend-setters operate here. Jun Group operates on the Gnutella P2P network, which is dominated by the LimeWire client software.
The company helps brands place media and marketing content like film trailers, free music, and viral video into this ecosystem so that they show up as choices when users search for related material.
Jun tells me that LimeWire has been downloaded 180 million times, and some metrics find the client on one third of all desktops. That translates into massive numbers of media searches - 5 billion a month across all types of file-sharing networks, one survey found. "That is more than Yahoo and MSN searches combined," says Reichgut.
According to Jun principal Corey Weiner, young adults remain "the sweet spot" for file sharing. "I would say 60% to 70% are between 13 and 34." And despite their reputation as havens for geeky boys, recent Quantcast stats suggest that 56% of the file traders are female.
That female demo is precisely what Kristen Colonna, Frito Lay Account Director at OMD, was after in distributing the "Only in a Woman's World" video series. The branded webisodic features four women friends and their angst over diet and exercise.
"The digital platform was the key to staying connected and in the know," says Colonna, because the target audience uses the web to find support from friends as well as information and entertainment. Along with multiple other video distribution platforms, she used Jun Group to seed the video into search results for beauty, fashion, and celebrity-related content. The series was not a commercial so much as a series of comic takes on the struggle to seem perfect, with Frito-Lay products featured as part of permissible indulgence.
While the file-sharing environment comes with certain hazards, Colonna says that it made sense to be there. "We're really seeing what we call the 'set it free' principle," she says. "We have been learning that with all of their fragmentation, people already know where they want to go online. You need to be where they are going. They consume it on their own terms. We need to be in as many places as we can and align ourselves with something bigger than ourselves."
Marketers are creating branded media like the "Woman's World" series, but too many just lap it onto YouTube and hope it goes viral, says Jun Group's Weiner. Leveraging the P2P channel works much like SEO. Jun has hundreds of thousands of connections into the Gnutella network, so it is seeing what people are searching for and can answer specific requests with a certain file. "We can make the content rise to the top of search," he says. "We will have a predetermined search term list so that whenever a term on it is sent out, we will reply with the videos." Back-end metrics can determine whether the video was played to middle or end and how often it was re-viewed. View-through stats can help the marketers understand whether the creative is appealing to users or if some optimization is needed.
It's hard to beat P2P as a content distribution vehicle, since some estimates show that a large share of all Internet bandwidth is actually being used for personal file sharing. The most videos Jun ever delivered on a campaign so far approached 8 million downloads, but most campaigns that deliver over 1 million show up in the Visible Measure's viral video charts, and Jun claims this level of performance usually ranks them in the top 10% of campaigns for the year.
Despite the scale, the real appeal of the P2P channel is the quality of the audience. These are the people who actively pursue digital content online. The record and film industries may say they loathe the folks who seek out unlicensed copies of this weekend's blockbuster film release, or a leaked track from the next hip-hop sensation. In fact, though, these are the very entertainment junkies content companies need to watch and sell.
TorrentFetcher Searches for Torrents from the Desktop
Excerpted from Lifehacker Report by Whitson Gordon
Windows only: Most people use torrent sites like MiniNova or The Pirate Bay (TPB) to search for torrents online, but free program TorrentFetcher lets you search straight from a desktop program and quickly start the transfer in your BitTorrent client of choice.
Torrent sites offer a lot of information about the torrents they have available, but sometimes you just don't want to navigate to the site and look at all the annoying ads, or maybe you just want something a little simpler. TorrentFetcher is an easy solution, offering desktop search of btjunkie.org so you don't even have to open your browser.
While the program doesn't offer some of the really advanced information that web sites might, it is a quick, easy alternative that does offer some advanced options. Like most torrent sites, you can search by the usual predetermined categories such as Music, Movies, or Software and you can choose how many results show up in the window (up to 1,000).
It even has green and red color coding for good and bad quality torrents, respectively. There is also an option to decide whether you want them to automatically start after downloading - that way, all you have to do is search, double-click on the torrent you want, and it will automatically open up in your default BitTorrent client.
BitTorrent's Future: DHT, PEX, and Magnet Links
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
The Pirate Bay's (TPB) recent confirmation that it had closed down its tracker since distributed hash tables (DHT) and peer exchange (PEX) have matured enough to take over, was coupled with the news that it had added Magnet links to the site. This news has achieved its aim of stimulating discussion, but has also revealed that there is much confusion over how these technologies work.
The key thing to understand is that nobody is being forced to use Magnet links or trackerless torrents. While these long-standing technologies may prove to be the future, they will co-exist with tracker-enabled torrenting for quite some time. For now, nobody will be forced to immediately change their existing downloading habits, although it may be wise to switch to a BitTorrent client that is compatible with these technologies.
In an attempt to clear some of the mystery surrounding DHT, PEX and Magnet links we will walk through all three briefly.
Using DHT instead of trackers is one of the things TPB is now trying to encourage, and torrent downloads that rely solely on this technology are often referred to as trackerless torrents. DHT is used to find the IP addresses of peers, mostly in addition to a tracker. It is enabled by default in clients such as uTorrent and Vuze and millions of people are already using it.
DHT's function is to find peers who are downloading the same files, but without communicating with a central BitTorrent tracker such as that previously operated by TPB.
DHT is by no means a new technology. A version debuted in the BitTorrent client Azureus (Vuze's predecessor) in May 2005.
Peer exchange (PEX) is yet another means of finding IP addresses. Rather than acting like a tracker, it leverages the knowledge of peers you are connected to, by asking them in turn for the addresses of peers they are connected to. Although it requires a "kick start," PEX will often uncover more genuine peers than DHT or a tracker.
Traditionally, .torrent files are downloaded from torrent sites. A torrent client then calculates a torrent hash (a kind of fingerprint) based on the files it relates to, and seeks the addresses of peers from a tracker (or the DHT network) before connecting to those peers and downloading the desired content.
Sites can save on bandwidth by calculating torrent hashes themselves and allowing them to be downloaded instead of .torrent files. Given the torrent hash - passed as a parameter within a Magnet link - clients immediately seek the addresses of peers and connect to them to download first the torrent file, and then the desired content.
It is worth noting that BitTorrent cannot ditch the .torrent format entirely and rely solely on Magnet links. The .torrent files hold crucial information that is needed to start the downloading process, and this information has to be available in the swarm.
All the main torrent clients: uTorrent, Vuze, BitTorrent, BitComet, Transmission, and others support PEX and DHT. Neither BitComet nor Transmission yet support Magnet links, but Transmission is planning to include Magnet link support in its upcoming release. Bearing in mind that no site, including TPB, has yet abandoned support for traditional torrent files, there is plenty of time for support to be added.
Opera 10.10 United with Unite Again
Excerpted from Think Digit Report by Kshitij Sobti
It has been quite some time since P2P company Opera announced its upcoming Unite technology that would "reinvent the web." In the meantime, we have seen Google Wave, Chrome OS, and SPDY. None have anything to do with Opera, but the fact is the web is being reinvented with or without Opera.
So for those who missed out on Opera Unite, it is a new innovative feature in Opera 10.10, which embeds a web-server into your browser. What would be the benefit of that you ask?
Web 2.0 has made us more than just consumers of a pool of static information, but actual participants in the online community. We visit websites to leave comments, participate in forums and interact with other people. The popularity of P2P has shown that the Internet can go on without needing big companies to spoon feed content to people. We can get by on our own.
With Opera Unite, your web browser becomes less of a consumer of web content, and more of a P2P application that allows you to become a true member of the Internet. You can share your music and images, set-up your own website, run a messaging service, or allow people to leave notes on your computer while you are away - and these are just the "applications" bundled with Opera 10.10.
Opera also has a gallery of applications available online, which allow you to do anything from running a music streaming service, to creating your own openid provider! The Opera Unite Server is in fact a framework that allows you to create your own application, which runs on a user's computer and provides any kind of service. The Unite Server framework called Yusef can execute your JavaScript application on the server side, which in this case is also the client side. Yes, P2P can be confusing!
With Opera Unite, you get a simple URL for all your applications that you can share with your friends, and Opera takes care of getting it through firewalls. The resulting URL can be used on any browser, not just Opera.
It is by no means impossible to achieve such tasks without Opera Unite. We can set-up our own web-server and use a dynamic IP service. You can install your own application and share content from your PC with the web. However, few such systems come close to making it as simple as downloading Opera and starting Unite.
It is nice to see Opera keep up its trend of adding innovative features. Opera is the source of many of the features we see in browsers today - such as tabs, gestures, and speed-dial.
''Mega'' Sites: Bigger Than Facebook
Excerpted from Forbes Magazine Report by Andy Greenberg
The name Carpathia Hosting hardly seems to belong on a list of Internet heavyweights that includes YouTube, Google, and Yahoo. But last month, Internet research firm Arbor Networks and the University of Michigan released a bandwidth usage study reporting that the little-known web hosting firm generated 0.6% of all online traffic in July. That's twice as much as the bandwidth consumed by Facebook and half as much as is used by all of Microsoft's Internet properties combined, including Hotmail and Bing.
The source of Carpathia's booming popularity? Arbor researcher Craig Labovitz points to a new set of customers that switched to the hosting service a year ago and caused its traffic to jump a hundredfold. They include Megavideo, Megaupload, Megarotic, Megaclick, and other "mega" sites. "Forbes readers probably haven't heard of them," says Labovitz. "Almost every teenager has."
That's because the user-generated sites, particularly Megavideo and Megaupload, have become the digital equivalent of the Somalian coastline in the fight against online "piracy." Together they offer, at no cost, practically every popular television series episode-by-episode, music albums, and films including several still in theaters.
Hollywood, needless to say, isn't a fan. The MPAA describes Megavideo and Megaupload as copyright scofflaws and says that they host unlicensed content "at their own peril."
Maybe, but these sites, registered in Hong Kong, seem to know how to avoid lawsuits. They are following at least the letter of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), removing infringing material at the copyright holder's request.
But at the same time, the mega sites pay users to post popular content - every one million views of such material are worth $1,500. That means that after a hit movie or album is removed, it's often posted again within days and linked to by sites like Quicksilverscreen or Filestube that catalog the infringing content.
The mega sites say they don't pay for copyrighted material. But by our count, the movie "District 9" was uploaded to Megavideo at least 127 times and removed at least 89 times. The megas' revenue comes from selling ads and from $60 memberships that make users eligible for the paid uploads and viewings beyond a 72-minute time limit.
Freenet Lets Users Browse the Web Freely
Excerpted from PC World Report by Preston Gralla
Large swaths of the world are subject to censorship, or else are subject to governments that track their citizens' use of the Internet. Free program Freenet lets users anonymously browse the web, share files, chat on forums, and more - no matter where they are.
Download and run the software, and you become part of a decentralized P2P network that uses encryption and other tools to keep you hidden and anonymous. As you browse, your data is encrypted and sent through a series of Freenet nodes, making it very difficult to track you.
After you install Freenet, you'll go through a brief set-up procedure in which you answer questions about the level of security you want. Once you do that, you can begin browsing. You'll notice that browsing is slow, because of the nature of the way Freenet works. The higher the level of security, the slower your performance will be; there can be a noticeable lag when browsing the web. Over time, though, as you connect to more nodes, your browsing speeds up so that the lag is not particularly noticeable.
Freenet is most useful for those who need to get around their government's control. But even if you live in a free country, you might want to use it to protect your privacy. If you want to protect your Internet privacy without having to do any special set-ups, Freenet is well worth the download.
The Rock Band and the Cloud
Excerpted from No Jitter Report by Sheila McGee-Smith
Last week I was at Moscone Center in San Francisco for DreamForce, the user group meeting for salesforce.com. Billed as the "Cloud Computing Event of the Year," it was indeed impressive. Nineteen thousand strong filled both Moscone North and South and keynotes and breakout sessions alike were packed to capacity.
The big news during CEO Marc Benioff's keynote address was the announcement of a new salesforce cloud called "Chatter." (The existing clouds are "Sales," "Service," and "Custom.") Similar to Cisco's announcement the week before of its Enterprise Collaboration Portal (ECP), Chatter is described as providing a social computing application and platform environment that allow enterprises to collaborate with business colleagues in real time. When released in January 2010 (months before Cisco will likely announce general availability of ECP), Chatter will be an included feature of any existing salesforce licensed application. For enterprise users who want to use Chatter and don't have a CRM desktop, Chatter Edition will be sold at $50 per user per month.
One of the interesting components of Chatter NOT found in the Cisco ECP is the ability for content and applications to join the conversation by talking to users through a feed whenever there is a change in data or status. For example, when a new version of a PowerPoint deck is available, its status can change and anyone who subscribes to the document is apprised.
Which brings me to the rock band. During a press lunch, three salesforce users gave interesting case studies and then answered questions. One of the speakers was D.A. Wallach of the band Chester French. Having played after the morning keynote, Wallach described Chester French's use of salesforce. Sounding more like an MBA than a rocker, Wallach explained that 98% of all bands fail and that most bands starting out fill venues with their friends, or friends of their friends. So to increase the probability of success, they went about figuring out how to get more friends.
Enter social networking, including My Space, Facebook, and Twitter. But being smart rockers, they also decided they needed a CRM system to manage their growing fan base. The use of a cloud-based application made perfect sense to the on-the-road rockers, who can now maintain personal relationships with a centralized database of fans and check sales activity from anywhere they have an Internet connection. With the release of their first album, Chester French found their VIP friends were happy to spend on average $25 for not just a music download, but T-shirts, CDs and vinyl versions of the music.
At last count, Wallach showed 842,449 followers on his Twitter account. This kid may be one of the first to make a million dollars from Twitter.
16 Year-Old Launches Vye Music-Sharing Site
Excerpted from VentureBeat Report by Craig Agranoff
With the help of close friends and family, 16-year-old Charles Allatt, has launched Vye Music, an online meta-search app for music files around the Net. The site pulls search results from other music sites - including Skreemr, MP3Codes, and 4Shared Music - which in turn index hundreds of thousands of sites, blogs, and artist pages. Vye collates all of this content for the user and applies a simple, AJAX-based interface to let you build playlists, stream songs, and download them.
Letting users share and download music for free is what got Napster in trouble for copyright violations back in 2001 and led to the end of that free service. But Allatt claims that the distinction between his website and Napster is that his site is legal, despite the download availability. An inability to download music has been the legal distinction that other sites in the music-sharing space have used to stay out of court.
Allatt says that as a search engine, "Vye Music permits users to download the content, operating under the premise that exterior copyright controls (i.e., the copyright compliance of our APIs and content hosters) as well as users' own judgment will let users stay well within the law."
In other words, Vye doesn't actually have any direct control over the content that appears on the site. The control is with the ultimate host of the music being streamed or downloaded. Vye merely links to those hosts through a search index. Allatt plans to comply with copyright law: "DMCA takedown notices are forwarded to the relevant API providers, and the direct hosts of content wherever possible."
The site interface and features are nicely done. You can use the simple, intuitive interface without login, but you'll need a username if you want to access more advanced sharing and storing features. DRM-free music tracks can be downloaded directly from their links as well.
Allatt, who's Australian and based on Australia's Gold Coast, developed and maintains the site under the auspices of his company VEXiS Media. He self-funded the company, and several friends and family members assist him with the site for free.
Are Entertainment Industry Tactics Working
Excerpted from TechDirt Report by Mike Masnick
It's been somewhat amusing over the last day or so to see a bunch of our usual critics all submit the same exact story with some sort of triumphant "I told you so!" It's a report that music sales are up in Sweden following the strict anti-infringement law that went into effect earlier this year.
The claim is that this is proof that the RIAA/IFPI/BPI strategies work. To them, this is clear, irrefutable evidence that draconian measures to crack down on unauthorized file sharing really do make people buy. That would be quite interesting if true, but our friends employed by these companies might want to wait a bit before breaking out the champagne over a dead cat bounce.
First, there are some who are questioning the actual numbers. So far, the only numbers have come directly from IFPI, which has a long history of publishing questionable, fact-challenged numbers. In fact, the very lack of detail would likely indicate that there are extenuating circumstances here.
And, when we're talking about Sweden, it has to also be noted that services like P2P music streaming program Spotify (which dragged the labels kicking and screaming into the modern world) were just launched at the very end of last year. So, it could be that it was one of these more modern P2P services that helped convince people to buy music rather than any crackdown.
But, of course, the bigger question is whether or not any boost is sustainable. It was reported that there was a drop in file sharing after the Swedish IPRED law went into effect. Again, many argue that the "drop" was simply because more people started using encryption and those who measure file-sharing traffic had no way to deal with it, so pretended they all stopped. Yet, it didn't take long for the traffic numbers to bounce back up.
And that's the issue. If your entire business model is based on whacking people with a stick and telling them what they can't do, you may get brief moments of compliance, but at the first chance they get to go back to a more consumer-friendly system, they will.
So while our friends in the entertainment industry will likely misread this situation into believing that its strategy of pissing off pretty much everyone makes business sense, let's wait and see how this works out in the next year or so. Dead cat bounces can fool lots of folks, but there are very few industries that succeed by basing their future on such things.
Why the Music Industry Will Profoundly Change
Excerpted from Motley Fool Report by Michael Molenaar
A phenomenon you may or may not be aware of is occurring in electronic media. Contrary to what you may of have heard, or what some people have said, this phenomenon is not going to go away, and in fact, will be the defining characteristic of the new era in the technological world.
In the past ten or so years, the spread of file-sharing programs has rendered the conventional business model for selling music obsolete. Some of these programs you may of heard of, programs and websites like Bearshare, Ares, FrostWire, LimeWire, BitTorrent, The Pirate Bay (TPB), isoHunt, and others are now the dominant methods for the acquisition of music.
At this point, 95% of music is downloaded online without paying. The CD is dead. Online music stores like iTunes and Rhapsody are hardly hanging on to a sliver of the music market, and every day more people leave for the aforementioned programs.
The music industry doesn't want you to know this. They have spent a fortune trying to sway public opinion that this trend is only temporary, and that with proper government regulation and a healthy public awareness campaign, they can end this problem.
Oh, how wrong they are.
No one in high school and hardly anyone under 25 pays for music anymore. There is actually a huge negative stigma on those that purchase music. You're seen as "paying the man" for something you can and should get for free. The public ad campaign launched by the RIAA is absolutely laughable. They are never going to be able to stop it.
The arguments made against downloading are laughed down by anyone even mildly familiar with the situation:
1. "Downloading music will give you viruses." Response: A decent firewall or anti-virus program will keep you clean, and you should only download music that is "at the top of the list." Many viruses, trojans, and malware are planted by RIAA agents to discredit download sources, and this only stirs up anger towards them.
2. "Downloading hurts artists." Response: Music downloading helps smaller bands by increasing their exposure. It's hard for people to feel guilty about this when they know only a few cents on every download goes to even the large established artists.
3. "It's stealing and uncool to download." Response: With a product that can be duplicated for no cost, it's no wonder that people will take it for free. Coolness is and always will be thumbing your nose at the so-called establishment - something every kid loves to do.
The music industry is petrified about the future, with good reason to be. The future of music is going to be bands releasing their music for free, and making their money on merchandise and touring. In other words, the middle man is cut out and the large music companies are left out in the cold.
Coming Events of Interest
Future of Film Summit - December 8th in Santa Monica, CA. This inaugural event brings together top executives, creators and professionals from major and independent movie studios, film distributors, talent agencies, law firms, financiers and digital media companies for high-level discussions and debate.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT at CES - January 6th in Las Vegas, NV. The DCIA's seminal industry event, featuring keynotes from top P2P, social networking, and cloud computing software companies; tracks on policy, technology, and marketing; panel discussions covering content distribution and solutions development.
2010 International CES - January 6th-10th in Las Vegas, NV. The industry's largest educational forum to help companies expand their businesses and understand new technology. Over 200 conferences and more than 300 expert speakers encompass International CES.
MIDEM & MidemNet - January 23rd-27th in Cannes, France. MIDEM is where music professionals from across the industry meet face-to-face to do business, analyze trends and build partnerships. MIDEM brings together music leaders looking for concrete solutions and insights. MidemNet's renowned digital business conference program is now included free with your MIDEM registration.
Vator Splash Event - February 4th in San Francisco, CA. Vator, a leading platform for innovators and entrepreneurs to broadcast themselves, is holding its inaugural Vator Splash Competition to find 10 promising early-stage start-ups to present at this special event. Enter the competition today using the 25% discount code: VatorDCIA.
P2P MARKET CONFERENCE - March 9th in New York, NY. Strategies to fulfill the multi-billion dollar revenue potential of the P2P and cloud computing channel for the distribution of entertainment content. Case studies of sponsorships, cross-promotion, interactive advertising, and exciting new hybrid business models.
Media Summit New York - March 10th-11th in New York, NY. MSNY is the premier international conference on media, broadband, advertising, television, cable & satellite, mobile, publishing, radio, magazines, news & print media, and marketing.
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