June 21, 2010
Volume XXXI, Issue 3
Digital Media Conference This Friday in Washington, DC
The seventh annual Digital Media Conference will take place this Friday June 25th at the McLean Hilton in Tysons Corner, VA, near Washington, DC, with an expected 500 attendees.
Featuring 70 speakers, this year's conference will be of particular interest to anyone interested in digital marketing and interactive advertising, social media, mobile content and applications, television and online video, or digital media start-ups and entrepreneurship.
For out-of-town delegates, event organizers offer a special hotel rate of $159 per night at the McLean Hilton.
The DCIA is presenting "Content in the Cloud" at 3:30 PM. Speakers in this session include Claude Tolbert, VP, Business Development, BitTorrent; Moritz Steiner, Member of Technical Staff, Bell Labs; Bob Stankey, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine; Chris Cali, CEO & Co-Founder, Panvidea; and Chris Phenner, EVP, Business Development, Thumbplay.
New services are emerging for music, video, games, and other content freeing users' hard drives and moving content into the cloud. This timely and strategic panel discussion will address these key questions:
In the ten years from Napster to Spotify, how have distributed computing technologies evolved through file-sharing to peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading and streaming, and now the cloud? What are the latest technological solutions and legal mechanisms for combating copyright infringement globally in this space? How are business models progressing and what more needs to be done to fully legitimize this distribution channel? What kinds of marketing and promotional tactics show the most promise for profitably exploiting these uniquely consumer-based systems?
75% of US Households Use Social Networking
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Alison Diana
A Nielsen study shows Internet users spent an average of more than 6 hours a month on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter during May.
US consumers are spending more time online - and devoting a growing percentage of those hours to social networking sites - a trend expected to create a surge in spending on advertising to this audience.
In May 2010, US consumers spent an average of 6 hours, 13 minutes a month using social networking websites, according to a study by the Nielsen Company. And users did not restrict themselves to checking their status while at home: the average US worker spent almost 5.5 hours each month visiting social network sites from the office, the research firm found.
Of all active US Internet households, 75% visited a social networking site in May 2010, according to Nielsen. About one-fifth of US adults online publish or own a blog, and 55% have at least one or more social networking profiles, the report said.
20% of those surveyed frequently provide advice about movies; 18% share their opinions about TV shows and 16% often advise others about music, Nielsen said.
In fact, consumers often turn to social networking sites to share and find opinions on products, providers, and services, according to a recently released study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In turn, this is creating an up-tick in spending on the entertainment and media market - items like Internet advertising, music and game downloads, and satellite radio subscriptions.
"The use of the Internet has become one of the great unifying experiences shared by billions of people across the world and this is now causing a parallel trend with the "re-socialization" of the media consumption experience. Historically, reading books or newspapers has been a solitary activity," said Marcel Fenez, global leader, Entertainment & Media practice at PwC.
"However, the combination of digital access, mobility, and social networking is seeing consumption of all forms of media migrate from a solo activity towards being a social experience with viewers using social networking forums to discuss and share their views and content," said Fenez.
In fact, the digital transformation will drive the entertainment and media market toward revenue of $1.7 trillion in 2014, compared with $1.3 trillion in 2009, PwC estimated. The United States is expected to spend $558 billion in 2014 vs. $460 billion last year, the report said.
FCC Moves to Expand Role in Broadband
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Edward Wyatt
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-to-2 on Thursday to move toward giving itself the authority to regulate the transmission component of broadband Internet service, a power the commission's majority believes is central to expanding the availability of broadband.
The vote formally begins a period of public comment on an FCC proposal to overturn a previous commission ruling that classified broadband transmission as a lightly regulated information service.
The proposal would designate broadband transmission as a telecommunications service, which, as with telephone service, would make it subject to stricter regulation.
The Commission has said it intends to exempt broadband service from most of the regulatory options it has under the stricter designation, keeping only those regulations that are necessary "to implement fundamental universal service, competition and market entry, and consumer protection policies."
It would not regulate Internet content.
Opponents of the reclassification say that it would give the FCC the power to regulate rates charged to consumers by broadband service providers, something that Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the Commission, has said that it does not intend to do.
The FCC began reconsidering its broadband regulation policies after a federal court of appeals in April invalidated the approach that the commission had long taken. That decision involved the Commission's ability to require that Internet service providers (ISPs) not discriminate against any content or application.
Mr. Genachowski said the Commission was seeking comment on three possibilities - keeping regulation as it is, imposing a full telecommunications regulatory regime, and a "third way" approach of limited regulation. He likened that approach to the way the Commission has regulated mobile phone services for nearly 20 years.
"The third way approach was developed out of a desire to restore the status quo light-touch framework that existed prior to the court case," Mr. Genachowski said. "Let's not pretend that the problems with the state of broadband in America don't exist; let's not pretend that the risk of excessive regulation is not real, or, at the other extreme, that the absence of basic protections for competition and consumers is acceptable."
Commissioners Michael J. Copps and Mignon Clyburn joined Mr. Genachowski in voting to open the comment process, while Meredith Attwell Baker and Robert M. McDowell opposed it.
In her dissenting statement, Ms. Baker said the proposal "will place the heavy thumb of government on the scale of a free market to the point where innovation and investment in the 'core' of the Net are subjected to the whims of 'Mother-May-I' regulators."
Future Commission members, she said, could overturn current decisions to regulate broadband service only lightly.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 As expected, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted this week to open a notice-of-inquiry (NOI) period through July 15th (with replies due August 12th) for public comments regarding Chairman Julius Genachowski's so-called "third-way" plan to regulate the Internet.
This proposal would reclassify broadband from its current status as a lightly regulated informational service (Title I) to a more heavily controlled telecommunications service (Title II), but purportedly, with "forbearance," meaning that the full measure of Title II common-carrier constraints would not be implemented by the current FCC.
The other "two ways" would be to leave broadband classified as it is, or to fully reclassify it under all aspects of the Title II regime devised in 1934 for monopoly telephone networks.
Comments are also being sought regarding other proposed new rules for enforcing network neutrality, redirecting phone subsidies, and putting into place other pieces of the Commission's national broadband plan.
While the NOI will nominally consider all options, and the Chairman has signaled a preference for a relatively narrow regulatory focus, this process raises concerns about unwarranted government intervention by a federal agency absent both marketplace justification and clear direction from Congress.
Internet service providers (ISPs) believe that the negative consequences for online users and the Internet ecosystem would be severe and have ramifications for decades.
In a press conference following the vote, however, FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick said that, just as in 2002 when the FCC originally classified broadband under Title I, the Commission is prepared to simply issue a declaratory ruling upon completion of the NOI in order to reclassify broadband under Title II, without the need for a further vote.
This is despite the fact that this approach is being met with growing resistance not only among broadband industry participants and observers but even within the FCC itself, which is deeply divided on the subject.
Dissenting Commissioners warned that the "third way" plan will chill innovation and investment, ultimately harming broadband deployment, rather than encouraging it. At a time when more jobs are needed to boost an ailing economy, the Chairman's scheme would almost certainly push industry in the wrong direction, adding greater uncertainty in this area, and not reducing it.
Commissioner Robert McDowell said, "I fundamentally disagree with the premise that has been offered to support this." He argued that the Title II proposal was not only unnecessary but had already caused harm to the marketplace and added that whatever clarification the FCC needs for its broadband authority needs to come from Congress.
Commissioner Meredith Baker underscored the fact that this approach would bring unnecessary government involvement to an area that does not need it, subjecting private sector decisions regarding broadband advancement and expansion to regulatory caprice. Worse yet, future Commission members would be able arbitrarily to increase the amount of control they could exert over the Internet under this scheme.
She also voiced concern that the Chairman has prejudged this issue and intends to proceed with his "third-way" plan, a misguided reaction to the April 5th federal appeals court judgment affirming that the FCC lacks such authority, regardless of rising opposition in many quarters.
In addition to dissenting Commissioners, federal lawmakers are increasingly alarmed by what they characterize as an unjustified and unjustifiable "power grab" by the FCC to seize control over the Internet.
Within hours of the FCC's vote, Congressmen Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and Joe Barton (R-TX) requested that House Democrat leaders convene a hearing "on the legal validity" of Genachowski's scheme. "With 95% of the country having access to broadband, and 200 million subscribers and counting, we do not see any urgency," they added, noting that his plan would "only cast prolonged legal and policy uncertainty over the future of broadband."
The most troubling aspect of what would be lost under Genachowski's "third-way" proposal is a current, and possibly even unintended, regulatory balance that exists between major Internet content sources, like commercial search engines, and ISPs. Only ISPs would be constrained in new ways, while web-based content suppliers would not be, and this could have profound repercussions to users going forward that would not necessarily be positive.
As we have previously indicated, the DCIA believes that the Internet has represented the greatest positive example of human progress over the past several decades - with enormous unrealized potential still ahead - while its many remarkable advances have been the least influenced in any helpful way by regulatory activity. Broadband usage has, in fact, exploded thanks to a lack of such regulations.
The open Internet currently exists. And the private sector has adopted and continues to develop methods to effectively address challenges that arise, which reflect growing pains in this rapidly evolving and highly complex technological environment.
These methods range from those practiced by the long-established Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to the new Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG), and also feature a number of highly focused efforts such as the DCIA-sponsored P4P Working Group (P4PWG).
The advancement of technological solutions and business practices preserves the reality of an open Internet. Ongoing innovation continually improves network management processes for the benefit of consumers.
A consensus around these processes for dynamically addressing challenges in an area as fast-moving and complex as the cutting-edge of Internet technology implementation, with ever-changing consumer expectations regarding usage and performance parameters, would be far more valuable than further empowering the FCC using a seriously obsolete regulatory structure. What should be addressed first is the now outdated Telecommunications Act of 1996.
This is an area singularly unsuited to such government heavy-handedness and is clearly a case of, "If it's not broken, don't fix it" - especially with the specter of bludgeoning regulatory agency intervention absent clear Congressional direction.
Chairman Genachowski has claimed that under his "third way," the current FCC would not employ many of the potentially applicable rules under Title II of the current Communications Act, so that his desired "light touch" over Internet regulation would be maintained.
The extreme awkwardness as well as self-contradictory and subjective nature of this approach beg the question as to whether imposing the old common-carrier regime, even under severe constraints that would limit its scope to anti-discrimination against third-party applications, content, or services, will really be the optimal approach.
Would it not simply be better to invest the necessary time and effort to develop a new approach uniquely appropriate to the realities of the Internet?
More than 280 of the 535 members of Congress now question the wisdom of the proposed reclassification of ISPs from information service providers to telecommunications service providers.
As the Washington Post opined, what is needed is a "fourth way - the agency, industry, consumer groups, and other interested parties should work with Congress to craft clear but limited rules tailored to broadband."
The more prudent course now would be to embark upon a careful and deliberative review of the now outdated Communications Act, which could address this issue in a more appropriate and meaningful way.
As Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, said this week, "We need to develop consensus to update the law, further safeguard consumers, and spur universal broadband deployment."
For now, industry participants need to get involved in the NOI process and also weigh-in to lawmakers with their views. Share wisely, and take care.
Verizon to Tie Cloud Storage with Computing
Excerpted from PC World Report by Stephen Lawson
Verizon Business is set to announce a cloud-based storage service on Tuesday, leveraging the formidable Verizon Communications global data network as a draw for large enterprises to subscribe.
Starting in October, the company will launch storage facilities at Verizon data centers around the world. These facilities will be provided by cloud storage provider Nirvanix but will be located in the carrier's data centers, on its global IP network, said Patrick Verhoeven, manager of cloud services product marketing.
Verizon will get started on the offering in July by using Nirvanix's Storage Delivery Network, which is used for services sold wholesale by providers like Verizon. The five Nirvanix facilities will remain part of the offering, providing local access to storage in specific cities for customers that need it, Verizon said.
Many players are diving into the cloud-based storage business even as enterprises approach the concept warily because of worries about security, reliability and getting their data back. Storage vendors such as EMC have joined Amazon.com's S3 (Simple Storage Service) unit in building such offerings. Verizon said it can offer better value and faster access by combining network services with the storage capacity, all on a pay-as-you-go basis. The carrier already has a cloud backup service for transactional data, called Managed Data Vault. The new offering is designed more for unstructured data, according to Verizon.
Because the data centers are on Verizon's global IP network, customers will be able to get access to their data with fewer network "hops" and the security of Verizon's infrastructure, Verhoeven said. The cloud storage capacity will also be located in the same data centers with Verizon's cloud computing resources, with fast internal links between them, so the carrier can create a more complete cloud service for enterprises that want it.
Customers of the storage service will be able to reach their stored data using a variety of tools, including application programming interfaces, third-party applications and backup agents, and via standard CIFS (Common Internet File System) and NFS (Network File System), Verizon said. They will be able to manage the service, including moving data between Nirvanix and Verizon data centers, via a browser-based portal.
Alongside the cloud-based storage service, Verizon is introducing a suite of consulting services, Verizon Data Retention Services, to help customers develop storage policies and practices that fit their business objectives.
Prices for cloud storage, based on usage, will begin at US$0.25 per gigabyte per month and go down with greater volume. The first nodes on Verizon's network, in San Jose, California, and Beltsville, Maryland, will go live in the U.S. in October. European facilities in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Stockholm will start up later in the fourth quarter, and as yet unnamed sites in the Asia-Pacific region will start early next year.
Is Cloud Computing the Future of Videogames?
Excerpted from CNN International Report by Doug Gross
Playing high-profile videogames quickly from portable devices such as your iPad might get easier after this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
While the E3 "game changer" tag has been reserved largely for innovations such as 3-D and motion-sensor systems, several companies hope using cloud computing to store games will be the real shift by letting gamers play high-end titles anywhere, on almost any machine.
If fully realized, they say, cloud gaming could be a console killer.
Gaming company OnLive announced Tuesday that it will make 23 popular console games, including "Assassin's Creed II," "Batman: Arkham Asylum" and "Mass Effect 2," available through an online subscription service.
"Today we're taking the first step toward a future where videogame content is increasingly free from the restrictions of device and location, while showcasing the ability to instantly play the latest, most advanced games at the touch of a button," said OnLive Founder & CEO Steve Perlman.
Cloud gaming uses rapid data compression to let users store their games "in the cloud" - on web servers - and then pull them down and play them using a regular web browser. It's the same concept as storing photos on a site such as Flickr or music videos on a MySpace page.
The user doesn't actually have those files on any one particular computer but can access them from anywhere.
OnLive has partnerships with gaming companies such as Electronic Arts, UbiSoft, and Warner Bros. Interactive and announced several new ones, including Sega, on Tuesday. More titles were expected to be available as they are released.
OnLive's service, which launches Thursday, will offer free subscription for a year. OnLive has not announced what fees will be beyond that, but a spokesperson said Wednesday they will be "much less" than $15 a month.
OnLive isn't the only one in the cloud-gaming business though. Rival Gaikai announced this year it had raised $10 million for a streaming game service that will let users sample games before buying them.
"We host the games, we run them, we worry about hardware and software updates, and we stream them to you," Gaikai said on its website. "The only thing you need is a browser and an internet connection."
Also at E3, Sony announced PlayStation Plus, an online subscription service that expands its PlayStation Network.
Launching on June 29th, the pay service will offer gamers a chance to play exclusive and preview versions of top games, ramping up Sony's bid to compete with the Xbox Live network from Microsoft.
A 90-day subscription to the service will cost $17.99 and will go for about $50 a year.
And billionaire Sir Richard Branson made the space even more interesting Tuesday with the rollout of a revamped Virgin Games - an online home for competitive console gamers.
The subscription site will host top-line games that gamers would typically buy for themselves.
"With Virgin Gaming, we're offering members more than just a place to compete. We're offering them the best, safest and most secure online experience with the fresh, fun approach Virgin is known for," said Rob Segal, CEO of Virgin Gaming.
In his typical, bigger-than-life style, Branson pulled up at E3 in an armored car purportedly carrying $1 million - representing the total payout for a series of cash prizes Virgin will pay in competitive tournaments hosted on the site.
The cloud-computing concept had insiders talking at E3 - which started Tuesday and runs through Thursday.
GamersFirst Picks Pando to Improve Performance
Pando Networks, a leading provider of accelerated game delivery services, this week announced that GamersFirst has deployed Pando Networks' services to improve download performance for its popular Free2Play MMO titles including "Knight Online," "Sword 2," and "War Rock: Clan Warfare."
Currently delivering more than 3 million global downloads per month, Pando Networks will optimize download delivery for the GamersFirst Free2Play community and enable gamers to download game files quickly and efficiently. GamersFirst serves more than 30 million gamers in over 160 countries. The company's portal, GamersFirst.com, offers a range of multiplayer online games as well as rich community features.
Pando technology currently delivers more than 3 million game downloads around the world each month.
GamersFirst has committed to providing gamers with the best possible gaming experience. Pando Networks' technology enables GamersFirst to deploy a highly scalable game delivery platform with network capacity that expands as demand increases. This is especially important for online game distribution as new releases of popular games frequently result in a sudden surge in download demand that may otherwise degrade download performance for gamers.
"At GamersFirst, we work very hard to implement technologies that continuously help improve the gamer experience," says Bjorn Book-Larsson, COO and CTO of GamersFirst. "Our partnership with Pando Networks gives us yet another opportunity to improve our Free2Play MMO game service and to really put our gamers first. Integrating Pando means we can now offer additional options to our community for even faster, streamlined downloads compared with our traditional third party site download options."
"GamersFirst is a recognized pioneer of the Free2Play game business and we are thrilled to be working with such an industry leader." said Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks. "Our detailed performance data shows that gamers at GamersFirst are now experiencing faster download speeds and higher completion rates."
Pando technology currently delivers more than 3 million game downloads around the world each month.
Octoshape Raises $5 Million through Nexit Ventures
Nexit Ventures, a mobile venture capital firm focused on wireless technologies and services, announced a $4.951 million investment in Octoshape, the leader in high-quality, large-scale, and cost-effective Internet and mobile media delivery that leverages P2P technology to provide crystal-clear real-time video experience on fixed and mobile networks.
Octoshape's patented Infinite Edge P2P technology lets users enjoy true HD-quality video regardless of their device or location. It has powered some of the largest live video events ever, including President Obama's inauguration, Michael Jackson's funeral, Eurovision Song Contest, and major sporting events such as the 2010 Olympics, PGA, and NBA.
Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and with offices in the US and Singapore, Octoshape offers broadcasters and content delivery networks (CDNs) the most efficient and economical Internet video delivery available. Infinite Edge provides better quality, scalability, and economy than any competing offering and is being used by major players worldwide.
The CEO and Co-Founder of Octoshape, Stephen Alstrup, said, "Video is already a key part of the mobile experience and video traffic is expected to account for over 50 % of all mobile data in the next few years. We are happy to have Nexit onboard as their mobile expertise and transatlantic bridge will help us take a leadership role in mobile video delivery."
Octoshape's patented technology optimizes video delivery end-to-end and makes it possible to serve a global audience without deploying costly hardware all over the globe near the users.
Michael Mandahl, a General Partner of Nexit Ventures, commented, "With proven technology and world-class customers, Octoshape is poised for explosive growth. Video and other rich media are going to be key elements of the next-generation mobile experience and Octoshape will be a key player in that game. I am looking forward to working with Octoshape to make high-quality video truly mobile."
Nexit Ventures invests in mobile and wireless high-growth companies, primarily in the Nordic countries and the US. Nexit's other portfolio companies include Aava Mobile, Axel Technologies, Brightkite, Conformiq, Ecrio, Ekahau, Funambol, and Futuremark.
More Secure Environment for Cloud Computing
Excerpted from PhysOrg Report
Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham has put together a team of researchers from the UTD School of Management and its School of Economics, Policy and Political Sciences to investigate information sharing with consideration to confidentiality and privacy in cloud computing.
"We truly need an interdisciplinary approach for this," she said. "For example, proper economic incentives need to be combined with secure tools to enable assured information sharing."
Thuraisingham noted that cloud computing is increasingly being used to process large amounts of information. Because of this increase, some of the current technologies are being modified to be useful for that environment as well as to ensure security of a system.
To achieve their goals, the researchers are inserting new security programming directly into software programs to monitor and prevent intrusions. They have provided additional security by encrypting sensitive data that is not retrievable in its original form without accessing encryption keys. They are also using "Chinese Wall," which is a set of policies that give access to information based on previously viewed data.
The scientists are using prototype systems that can store semantic web data in an encrypted form and query it securely using a web service that provides reliable capacity in the cloud. They have also introduced secure software and hardware attached to a database system that performs security functions.
Assured information sharing in cloud computing is daunting, but Thuraisingham and her team are creating both a framework and incentives that will be beneficial to the Air Force, other branches of the military, and the private sector.
The next step for Thuraisingham and her fellow researchers is examining how their framework operates in practice.
"We plan to run some experiments using online social network applications to see how various security and incentive measures affect information sharing," she said.
Thuraisingham is especially glad that the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) had the vision to fund such an initiative that is now becoming international in its scope.
"We are now organizing a collaborative, international dimension to this project by involving researchers from Kings College, University of London, University of Insubria in Italy, and UTD related to secure query processing strategies," said AFOSR program manager, Dr. Robert Herklotz.
uTorrent Introduces Web Control for iPhone
Excerpted from Zeropaid Report by Jared Moya
This past January BitTorrent launched Project Falcon, a new version of uTorrent that offers on-demand streaming and uTorrent Web, a secure web access feature that allows remote control of your downloads. Now, in an effort to make its "products more accessible," it's introducing uTorrent Web for the iPhone.
"In our ever-connected world, users want the ability to control their torrents on the go anytime, anywhere. So, in a continued effort to make our products more accessible we are introducing uTorrent Web for iPhone," said Simon Morris, BitTorrent's VP of Product Management. "While uTorrent Web is currently only available as part of our experimental Project Falcon software, we continue to fill out the feature set prior to a large-scale rollout. With today's introduction, users can now control their torrents from any computer or iPhone via their web browser."
To get started users will first need to install the program and enable uTorrent Web remote access. After this, simply go here and follow the prompts to enter your chosen username and password.
"In essence, uTorrent Web for iPhone is a mobile website that allows users to remotely access and control the uTorrent client that is installed on their computers," added Morris. "Before users can employ it on their iPhones they will need to make sure that they have the latest uTorrent client from Project Falcon installed on their computers, which can be found here. The site also provides detailed instructions about how to download the client and setup remote access."
The new feature marks another important step forward for uTorrent as it endeavors to make the BitTorrent application more useful, allowing users to control their downloads anytime, anywhere.
World Community Grid Aids Cancer Research
Scientists have devised a way to automate and accelerate a manual, complex process that enables researchers to more easily discover the structure of cancer-related proteins, and, eventually, formulate cancer cures. This new, automated approach may also help the exploration of other diseases and food-related research.
The breakthrough was made by the Help Conquer Cancer project in conjunction with IBM's World Community Grid, a system of linked personal computers from volunteers who donate spare processing power for humanitarian projects. World Community Grid, sponsored by IBM, provides researchers around the world with the equivalent of millions of dollars of free computational power to enable medical, nutrition, energy and environmental research.
Tapping World Community Grid, the Help Conquer Cancer Project created a system that accurately recognizes when protein samples undergo a solidifying process called crystallization, which makes the proteins ready for further examination by special x-ray. The process is necessary for identifying, and eventually exploring, how the structure, shape and interaction of some proteins may have a role in causing cancer.
Using the Grid, scientists trained the system to successfully recognize 80% of crystal-bearing images and 98% of the clear drops of protein solution that existed prior to crystallization. This enables six times as many images per protein to be examined compared to human review, and in dramatically less time.
Automating the identification of crystals could speed research in numerous biological science and genetic research projects, as crystallization holds the key for investigating a variety of biological processes. It could also validate the efforts of other projects that seek to obtain protein structures, such as the Nutritious Rice for the World effort, which is also using the Grid to explore ways to create hardier, healthier strains of rice.
An article about the breakthrough, authored by the lead researchers of the Help Conquer Cancer Project, was recently published in the Journal of Structural and Functional Genomics.
The Help Conquer Cancer project was launched on the Grid on November 1, 2007, under the auspices of the Ontario Cancer Institute at Princess Margaret Hospital at University Health Network in Toronto, Canada, and Buffalo, NY's Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute.
Since then, Grid volunteers have contributed 50,981 CPU-years to the cancer project to date, an average of 54 years of computing per day. It is helping to identify and map Hauptman-Woodward's archive of 100-million images of 12,500 unique proteins that could be linked to cancer, captured in the course of more than 19.2 million experiments there.
This comprises the most comprehensive database on the chemistry of a large number of proteins, a resource that will help researchers around the world unlock the mystery of how many cancers grow, such as breast, prostate or childhood leukemia.
Computer examination provides both qualitative and quantitative advantages. For instance, it is impractical for humans to review all 9,216 images for a given protein. And even if a person tried assessing one image per second, it would take 1,333 days to examine all 12,500 proteins under study. Human evaluations may also vary widely and reveal inconsistencies, even from the same person.
In earlier stages of automating the process of verifying crystallization, computers were accurate only about 70% of the time, and could examine only about 850 features, compared to about 15,000 now capable of being analyzed.
ViFiB Wants You to Host Cloud Computing at Home
Excerpted from Network World Report by Peter Sayer
French hosting company ViFiB thinks it can save on expensive data center space by placing its servers in homes and offices with broadband Internet access, putting it somewhere between cloud computing services such as Amazon Web Services and distributed computing projects such as SETI@home.
By distributing its servers across France, ViFiB hopes to avoid creating the single point of failure that a data center might become during a major power outage. ViFiB's customers will have to implement their own redundancy and security strategies on top of the servers it provides, although ViFiB will provide advice on how to do this. It should be possible to build an online service with five-nines (99.999 percent) availability, even though individual servers may only be available 99 percent of the time, according to ViFiB co-founder Jean-Paul Smets.
ViFiB will rent out a virtual machine with 1GB of RAM and 10GB of solid-state disk (SSD) storage space, running on one core of an 8-core Intel i7 860 processor, for around $9.70 per month.
ViFiB is looking for people willing to plug two high-end PCs into their Internet connection and electricity supply. In return, ViFiB will pay up to $37.17 per month to subsidize the cost of the FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) Internet connection necessary to guarantee fast access.
There are a few conditions: Subscribers must have a fiber Internet connection with an IPv6 address, and must pay the electricity bill for the servers. ViFiB estimates that will come to around $12.39 per server per month. For the many French homes with electric heating, though, the waste heat from the servers would reduce the heating bill by a corresponding amount for around six months of the year. That makes ViFiB more environmentally friendly than most data centers, which pay for servers to heat the air, and then pay even more for air conditioners to cool it, Smets said.
So far, only one French ISP, Free.fr, offers a fiber connection meeting ViFiB's requirements. Its FTTH service costs $37 a month, offering download speeds of up to 100 Mbps, and upload speeds, more relevant for hosting operations, of up to 50 Mbps.
Although the terms and conditions of Free's home Internet access forbid reselling the service, Smets doesn't see that as a problem. "We're selling computational power, not Internet access," he said, which makes the activity no different to distributed computation applications such as SETI@home.
ViFib is starting small: Last week, it had placed just a handful of its initial batch of 50 servers.
While Smets has plenty of would-be hosts, few of them have FTTH connections, he said.
Around 860,000 French homes were within reach of a fiber connection by the end of March, a number increasing by around % each quarter, according to the French telecommunications regulator. However, there were only 75,000 FTTH subscribers, compared to around 18.8 million DSL subscribers, Arcep said.
Its first customer will be TioLive, a hosted ERP company also run by Smets.
Sherpa Takes Legacy E-mail Data to Cloud Services
Excerpted from ChannelWeb Report
Sherpa Software is helping customers who adopt cloud computing to easily migrate their legacy e-mail data from personal folders and PST files to the cloud and be ready for use with software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.
Sherpa, a developer of e-mail management, eDiscovery, and e-mail archiving software, is working with partners LiveOffice and Mindcast to make it possible for their users to make legacy data quickly available through their services, said Rick Wilson, Senior Product Manager of the Pittsburgh, PA based company.
The problem with adopting cloud-based applications is that they work well on data generated after the customer signs up for the service, but bringing in legacy data can be a lot of work, Wilson said.
"Hosted service providers do a great job from day-one forward," he said. "But the problem is in the legacy data on customers' hard drives. There's no good way to get that data from the desktop. We provide a way to take legacy data and add it to the hosted solution."
Wilson said many vendors have tools to migrate the data fairly quickly if it as either centralized on a server or sent via a USB hard drive. However, most customers also have their data scattered on multiple servers and desktops.
"The cloud providers are not so sophisticated as to be able to go to multiple desktops to collect data," he said. "And that function is not a revenue generator for them."
Sherpa's software automatically locates personal folders and PST files in a distributed computing environment, and makes the legacy e-mail data from those sources available to move to a centralized cloud repository, Wilson said.
The goal is to get that legacy e-mail data to the cloud as quickly as possible to protect it from being lost, he said.
Sherpa already has a reseller agreement with Mindcast, a start-up developer of cloud-based batch processing and sharing of image, text, and data files. Mindcast is currently in beta testing for its services.
The company is also providing professional services to LiveOffice, a Torrance, CA based provider of cloud-based e-mail archiving, e-mail compliance, e-mail discovery, and mailbox management.
Other similar partnerships with cloud-based e-mail service providers are in progress, said Eric Ortosky, Sherpa's Director of Channel Sales.
File-Sharing Consortium Backs New TV Series
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
The largest file-sharing consortium ever assembled is supporting this week's launch of the first episode of Pioneer One. The show, made for and made possible by the file-sharing community, is actively promoted by uTorrent, LimeWire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay (TPB)and EZTV.
With millions of daily users, BitTorrent is a great platform for filmmakers and musicians to promote their work. One of the main challenges that independent content producers face today is not infringement, but finding ways to get their work noticed. This is where the BitTorrent-powered distribution platform VODO comes in.
By harnessing the power of all the major players in the file-sharing field, VODO offers a unique platform through which independent filmmakers can share their work with the masses. Downloaders in turn are encouraged to donate if they like what they see.
Thus far, all the previous VODO releases have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people, and that's just the start. With backing from uTorrent, Limewire, and TPB, the number of downloads for this week's release might exceed one million.
VODO's newest release is titled "Pioneer One," a brand new seven-part TV-series that raised enough funds to film the first episode through donations from TorrentFreak readers and other supporters. Unlike traditional television, the sci-fi-ish series will debut on the Internet, on BitTorrent.
"Pioneer One" is an ambitious project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on "The Lionshare," a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year. With support from even more big names than before, Bernhard, who wrote the script for the TV series, hopes that the new release will set a record.
"Based on 'The Lionshare' stats and the amount of coverage we're getting on this, I'm hoping we'll hit a million downloads. Some have higher expectations, but I don't want to jinx anything by putting it in print," Bernhard told TorrentFreak.
Answering the question why they chose VODO for the release of their series, Bernhard said that it was a logical choice because he didn't expect the pilot to be picked by a network anytime soon because it's so hard to break into that industry now.
"There's only so much of that TV pie to go around. There's only so much real estate on networks. We would have to storm the gate just to get a meeting with somebody," Bernhard explained. "Why would they pick up a show from two nobodies outside their industry?"
Besides this pragmatic issue, the makers of "Pioneer One" also believe that the Internet and BitTorrent have the future. In the old fashioned TV system, it doesn't really matter how engaged people are in a show. Passion is not rewarded in today's numbers game on traditional television, something that has to change.
"TV has other priorities than making good TV," Bernhard told us. "You have vocal fanbases whose enthusiasm is ignored, because to networks, their passion isn't worth more than beating 'American Idol' in the ratings. The fact that TV can't sustain a show like 'Firefly,' to use a well-known example, with such passionate viewers, shows that something is wrong with how that system works."
The interesting contradiction is that, thanks to VODO, "Pioneer One" will not be an obscure indie release at all. In the coming week more than a million people are expected to download and watch the episode - numbers most network TV shows can only dream of.
Although Bernhard hopes that a network or other sponsor will come along to fund the rest of the season, he emphasizes that it will always be released for free to the public. "Our plan has always been to distribute the whole season through VODO. That's how we want to do it, and a big part of why this show is so exciting to us," he said.
For VODO, this release is yet another milestone. Not only is it supported by more file-sharing partners than ever before, but "Pioneer One" is also the first release that has a commercial sponsor, MOFILM, to bring in additional revenue aside from donations. VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak that now there are so many partners in place, they will put more emphasis on the network itself instead of the distribution channels.
"In the next six months, we're going to be rolling out a new VODO infrastructure for incentivizing donation and getting more peers into active relationships with our creators. To put it simply, we continue to be incredibly optimistic about developing an independent creation culture on top of P2P infrastructure - and really making it work. 'Pioneer One' is really the first step towards that."
It's going to be interesting to follow the progress of the "Pioneer One" project, a TV series that is a true pioneer itself. BitTorrent has already revolutionized the TV viewing experience for millions of people and through VODO and the high quality it brings this can only accelerate even further.
People can download "Pioneer One's" first episode on VODO.
Isohunt Not Dead Yet, Attorney Says
Excerpted from Wired News Report by David Kravets
The attorney for search engine Isohunt urged a federal appeals court to block a lower court ruling that might lead to the collapse of the site.
Isohunt, which has 30 million unique monthly visitors, asked the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to block a March takedown order in what was the first US ruling testing the legality of BitTorrent search engines, said Ira Rothken, the site's attorney. Hollywood's legal tactics shuttered TorrentSpy in the United States in 2008, but the merits of that BitTorrent search engine's case were never decided.
Isohunt, the Canadian-based site run by 27-year-old Gary Fung, is challenging US District Judge Stephen Wilson's injunction as being too broad, Rothken said. That judge ruled that Isohunt was an unlawful avenue to free, copyrighted movies and television shows.
One issue concerns how Fung should remove searches from his three search engines: Isohunt, Torrentbox and Podtropolis. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which brought the case, has sent keyword searches it wants removed, like the number "10," "Alice in Wonderland," and "Dracula," Rothken said.
"One person's copyrighted 'Wizard of Oz' is another person's public domain work," Rothken said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday. He said the movie studios should provide URLs or hashes, which would positively identify which search link should be removed.
"The motion picture studios do not have a monopoly on names of things. That is where the injunction is violating the First Amendment," he said.
The MPAA, which won the March 23rd injunction, declined comment.
Even if the appeals court does not immediately intervene or stay the Los Angeles federal judge's injunction, Rothken said Isohunt would not go under anytime soon, if at all.
"Depending on what happens, there may or may not be proceedings to interpret the injunction in the trial court," he said.
The judge said "upwards of 95% of all dot-torrent files downloaded from Isohunt's three websites returned infringing material or works that are "at least highly likely to be infringing."
Judge Wilson ruled Friday that he would not stay enforcement of the injunction unless by an order of the federal appeals court. The injunction gives Isohunt about two weeks to comply with Hollywood's takedown notices.
The judge attempted to clarify the injunction on Friday, saying the keyword searches "shall only apply to film and television works copyrighted by plaintiffs."
Resnikoff's Parting Shot: LimeWire Blood
Excerpted from Digital Music News Report by Paul Resnikoff
Here's a riddle. Why are the brains behind Kazaa - Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis - still worth billions and readying Rdio, while LimeWire Founder Mark Gorton is potentially facing bankruptcy? Why is Rdio getting all the hype, while LimeWire is getting eviscerated?
Once upon a time, Zennstrom and Friis couldn't even enter the US because of label lawsuits, even while structuring their $2.6 billion sale of Skype. Eventually, the duo shelled out a settlement chunk estimated at more than $100 million, medium-sized potatoes after the eBay purchase. "We resolved the past," Warner Music Group (WMG) Executive Vice President of Digital Strategy Michael Nash recently told the New York Times. "These guys are focused on the future."
But can Gorton "resolve the past" in a similar fashion? Or, will Gorton's body get dragged through the streets to set an example? This time, things seem a bit different. Label groups and publishers are out for blood, and if history offers any guide, Gorton will also be forced to launch a half-baked LimeWire remake.
And that's too bad. For starters, a filtered, legitimate LimeWire is almost an oxymoron. This is an experiment that has been tried before with great failure. Because no matter how well the app is retreaded, paid P2P is just fundamentally different from free P2P.
Just ask LimeWire. They've been trying to develop their LimeWire Store for years. And how's that going?
The real solutions are more tricky. Entrepreneurs rarely create concepts like Rdio with a gun pointed to their heads. But how can the team that created one of the most popular P2P apps in history help to solve the modern-day monetization problem? Is there a way for the industry to settle, and still keep the leash loose enough for future innovation?
Perhaps that is the more important riddle to answer after the legal dust settles. Because Gorton and LimeWire are much more useful alive than dead.
Coming Events of Interest
Digital Media Conference East - June 25th in McLean, VA. The Washington Post calls this Digital Media Wire flagship event "a confab of powerful communicators and content providers in the region." This conference explores the current state of digital media and the directions in which the industry is heading. The DCIA will present a "Content in the Cloud" panel discussion.
Distributed Computing & Grid Technologies - June 28th - July 3rd in Dubna, Russia. This fourth international conference on this subject, also known as GRID2010, will be held by the Laboratory of Information Technologies at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and is focused on the use of grid-technologies in various areas of science, education, industry and business.
NY Games Conference - September 21st in New York, NY.The most influential decision-makers in the digital media industry gather to network, do deals, and share ideas about the future of games and connected entertainment. Now in its 3rd year, this show features lively debate on timely cutting-edge business topics.
Digital Content Monetization 2010 - October 4th-7th in New York, NY. DCM 2010 is a rights-holder focused event exploring how media and entertainment owners can develop sustainable digital content monetization strategies.
Digital Music Forum West - October 6th-7th in Los Angeles, CA. Over 300 of the most influential decision-makers in the music industry gather in Los Angeles each year for this incredible 2-day deal-makers forum to network, do deals, and share ideas about the business.
Digital Hollywood Fall - October 18th-21st in Santa Monica, CA. Digital Hollywood Spring (DHS) is the premier entertainment and technology conference in the country covering the convergence of entertainment, the web, television, and technology.
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