August 30, 2010
Volume XXXII, Issue 1
LimeWire Safeguards Go Above and Beyond to Protect Users Security
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has closed a longstanding investigation regarding LimeWire user security after finding that "LimeWire's incorporation of safeguards against the inadvertent sharing of sensitive, personal documents into the user interface of more recent versions of its software" satisfactorily protects users.
In an August 19th letter to LimeWire from the FTC, it was also noted that "users of some of the older software versions may have been able to avoid disclosure of sensitive personally identifiable information (PII)."
In addressing the FTC's concerns, the company went above and beyond what was requested to ensure the security of its users. Since the time of initial inquiry, the company has established itself as a leader in ensuring users' safety.
LimeWire has taken many proactive and notable steps to come into compliance with Inadvertent Sharing Protection Working Group (ISPG) principles, essentially transforming the service completely, to effectively ensure the security of sensitive file types.
LimeWire will continue to ensure the security of its global user base; and the safety of users' sensitive information remains a priority for the company. LimeWire will also continue to advise consumers to upgrade the software and participate in industry efforts to inform consumers about how best to avoid inadvertent sharing of sensitive documents.
LimeWire's actions in this matter showcase the company's ability to transform quickly and highlight its future potential. By taking a strong leadership role, LimeWire has also demonstrated how effective industry initiatives can be in solving such problems, working collaboratively with regulatory authorities.
LimeWire celebrated 10 years in business this month. The FTC's acknowledgment of LimeWire's success in addressing an important concern in a timely and effective manner is a shining example of how LimeWire has achieved many impressive milestones through a decade of steady progress. It also speaks volumes as to what the company can accomplish in the future.
CDA Offers New Platform for Rich Content Distribution
A breakthrough system for distributing high-value media via a full range of traditional online advertising channels is rolling out this week, aiming to change the way content owners deliver and profit from distributing rich media advertising, video, games, books, movies, and music over the Internet.
By enabling discovery and retrieval of rich media directly from paid or organic search results, social networks, banner ads, e-mails, and even tweets, ContentDeliveryAds (CDA) can help any content owner turn a profit online. The patented system delivers rich media advertising, video, audio, documents, e-books, research reports, or even catalogs of physical goods.
CDA, formerly known as DigitalContainers, is a software company providing patented "super-distribution" of online content. CDA's new technology platform enables content owners to target, advertise, and distribute copyrighted material without loss of control, while providing monetization, metrics, and analytics.
Ads and digital goods are matched to users and search terms to create an instant market for content. Connections involving desire, search, and fulfillment of content offer new opportunities for advertisers and sellers of digital and physical goods.
CDA is also announcing the granting of five additional patents to its growing intellectual property (IP) portfolio.
The new patents include "Delivering Electronic Content" (US Patent Nos. 7,562,150 and 7,272,655), which cover delivery of media files directly to the customer's computer, smart-phone, or web-enabled TV through web advertisements, search results, online games, e-books, Twitter feeds, and social networks such as Facebook.
CDA added to its content and ad tracking IP "Tracking Electronic Content" (US Patent No. 7,673,059), part of a family of patents that covers tracking of the media file as it is transmitted around the Internet to new customers. The company also was granted "Secure Streaming Container" (US Patent No. 7,251, 832) and "Securing Digital Content" (US Patent No. 7,421,741), buttressing its already robust digital security IP assets.
International patents were also granted in Europe, Japan, Canada, India, and other locales. The company has other awarded patents that include key business elements for content owners, search companies, software developers, and communications concerns, including the securing, delivery, regulating and tracking of valuable digital media files.
Benefits of using CDA include, for content owners, the ability to create a marketing plan with digital advertising and search-engine optimization (SEO); then securely track, authorize and monetize content with data collection and customer payment. Analytics and behavioral data are provided through CDA's patented tracking technologies. This will dramatically lower distribution costs, extend existing advertising targeting and revenue models, and enhance current metrics and monetization capabilities (including integrated merchandise).
For content users, CDA offers the ability to discover content via search and to access it directly with one click, to copy and share files legally, and to enjoy a richer user experience that works online and off.
"Using contemporary behavioral targeting and SEO to distribute and monetize rich content via search, advertising and social networks became the Holy Grail for us many years ago, " said Chip Venters, Co-Founder and CEO of CDA. "Giving consumers instant access to the content they want through a variety of channels satisfies their needs and gives control of content distribution back to the owners in favor of aggregators. Content owners can finally generate significant and lasting profits from the Internet."
"With the awarded patents and technology we have in place, CDA bridges the gaps that have historically challenged the technology and entertainment industries," added Gary Blakely, Sr. VP of Digital Revenue Strategy. "The well-worn search and online advertising infrastructure along with exciting new social media channels become the new touch points between content sellers and consumers.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The P4P Working Group (P4PWG) this week announced results of recent ALTO/P4P field testing led by China's largest broadband network operator, China Telecom (CT), and China's leading peer-to-peer (P2P) software system, Xunlei ("Thunder"), working with Yale University.
P4P refers to an advanced technology for optimizing utilization of Internet service provider (ISP) network resources and accelerating P2P distribution of content, in order to both improve Internet efficiency and provide the best possible performance to end-user customers. P4P is a major contributor to Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO), an Internet standard being developed at the ALTO Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
Major US and European Internet service providers (ISPs) including AT&T, Comcast, Telefonica, and Verizon Communications participated with Pando Networks in 2008 and 2009 P4P field trials, which were also coordinated by Yale University and served as the foundation for the latest testing led by CT.
CT's expanded trial took place over a period of four months within one province of China and involved seven million broadband subscribers using Xunlei for both P2P file downloading and P2P video streaming. The trial utilized an enhanced ALTO/P4P server system developed at CT that integrates with its network management system. This trial also introduced the integration of ALTO/P4P and an ISP network storage system called DECADE. CT monitored traffic loads using its network management system on its local backbone.
Results included converting at least 50% of inter-province outbound traffic to intra-province traffic, decreasing Xunlei bandwidth use that leaves the province by more than 40 Gbps. At the same time, average download speeds increased 6% by integrating ALTO/P4P with 16 cache servers.
"We are very pleased with these results," China Telecom said. "We have been looking for an effective and low-cost technology to optimize P2P traffic. The results show that ALTO/P4P is effective in optimizing the P2P traffic flow of our network. We plan to track the development of ALTO/P4P technology and move ahead with more trials and are grateful for the support of Yale University as well as the prior testing undertaken by the P4P Working Group."
"ALTO/P4P significantly improved the capability of this major ISP to positively guide P2P on a large scale. This trial is very interesting on multiple fronts. It is the largest trial so far in terms of the number of concurrent users. It applied to both file downloading and streaming. China Telecom used original approaches to integrate ALTO/P4P, DECADE, and its network management systems to improve application performance and achieve traffic optimization." Yale University Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Y. Richard Yang, added.
Verizon Communications Senior Technologist and P4PWG Co-Chair Doug Pasko noted, "This latest round of trials again illustrates how ISPs can operate more efficiently if traffic remains on their own networks, and marks a major step toward worldwide commercial deployment of P4P."
Pando Networks CEO and P4PWG Co-Chair Robert Levitan concluded, "With China Telecom's field trials now complete, we are markedly closer to production readiness for P4P on a global scale. Pando Networks is happy to be able to work with our partners now to demonstrate the ability of P4P to make a substantial impact on network performance."
The P4P Working Group Ltd. (P4PWG) was established under the auspices of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) in July 2007, and formalized as a non-profit corporate alliance in January 2009.
The P4PWG's mission is to assist Internet service providers (ISPs) and peer-to-peer (P2P) software distributors in accelerating content distribution and optimizing network resource utilization to provide the best possible performance for end-user customers.
It is co-chaired by Doug Pasko of Verizon Communications and Robert Levitan of Pando Networks. Other Members of the P4PWG Board of Directors include Alcatel-Lucent's Mark Peterson, AT&T's Steven Wright, BitTorrent's Eric Klinker, Comcast's Barry Tishgart, DCIA's Marty Lafferty, Solid State Networks' Rick Buonincontri, Telefonica's Emilio Sepulveda, and Yale University's Y. Richard Yang and Richard Alimi.
Additional P4PWG participants and observers bring the total number of organizations involved, including leading ISPS and P2P companies from around the world, to approximately one hundred. Share wisely, and take care.
Ready or Not, Cloud Is Coming
Excerpted from Cloud Computing Report by John Dix
Regardless of whether you are a cheerleader or a naysayer, the fact is the pieces for cloud computing are coalescing rapidly. This stuff isn't vaporware. Our tests of cloud services - the third of which appears in this issue - show a rich and growing list of capabilities.
We started the exploration of cloud services by testing servers, establishing 20 CPUs in each of three cloud providers to learn about everything from provisioning to performance, security and pricing
Next up was the first ever test of public cloud management wares, tools that let us build, deploy, monitor usage and shut down jobs.
In this issue we test cloud storage services, offerings that can be used to support everything from the computing you're doing in the cloud to data warehousing, says lead tester Tom Henderson, Managing Director of ExtremeLabs.
While spending on public IT cloud services (excluding private cloud spending) is only about a 20th of what is spent on traditional IT products today, cloud spending is growing six times as fast, according to Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC.
With a growth rate of 27% per year, by 2014 spending on public cloud services will reach $55 billion and represent 12% of traditional product spending (see here).
2014 is the knee of the curve, Gens says, beyond which things will really take off.
Of course, many issues need to be resolved between now and then. Fujitsu CTO Joseph Reger got it right in a presentation at the Symantec Vision 2010 conference when he said, "The IT industry and the cloud thing are in the dating stage. Dating is when you see only the bright side, the opportunities and you don't sit down and worry about what could be the issues."
Issues include, but are not limited to, concerns about security (although our tests reveal this may be less of a concern than you may think), cloud availability and costs (our tests showing the latter can be tricky).
Then there is the big question about industry maturation. There will be the typical boom and bust/consolidation cycle, and while cloud computing is ultimately supposed to make it easier to swap suppliers, we know it will be rough in the early going.
To move forward, Reger advocates focusing on a private-public approach that complements existing IT instead of subverting it, and we couldn't agree more. The trick will be measured advances that limit your exposure while giving you the opportunity to address specific needs and gain experience.
Oddly enough, some pioneers say one of the biggest challenges can be political: convincing internal line of business owners they no longer need those dedicated compute silos. Turns out that can be a hard sell.
Verizon Introduces Computing as a Service
Excerpted from TMCnet Report by Raju Shanbhag
Verizon has introduced computing-as-a-service, or CaaS, the company's cloud computing solution delivered from Verizon cloud centers in the US and Europe. With this, credit card transactions are expected to become safer and easier to deal with.
Now the merchants can be confident that their customers' data is protected by the most rigorous industry-recognized payment-card security standard available globally. Verizon CaaS underwent a comprehensive third-party examination of its policies, procedures, and technical systems to become PCI DSS-validated. The company also had on-site assessment and system-wide vulnerability scan for this purpose. Developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council, the PCI DSS facilitates the broad adoption of consistent data security measures globally.
Verizon is among the companies that are trying to achieve "everything-as-a-service" model where cloud-based converged solutions are securely delivered through managed and professional services over the company's global IP network.
"Compliance with PCI DSS sets Verizon apart from other players in this space," said Joseph S. Crawford, Executive Director, IT solutions, Verizon Business. "As more enterprises look to cloud-enabled IT services, it is essential that we offer a secure environment for corporate applications. PCI compliance further underscores our ongoing commitment and investment in cloud computing" continued Joseph S. Crawford.
Providing features such as security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical protective measures, the PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that helps organizations proactively protect customer account data. Verizon also offers various other PCI DSS-compliant services, including its transaction services network. With Verizon CaaS, customers can efficiently and securely manage on-demand computing resources, states the company.
Recently, the company announced it has completed a field trial that demonstrated near gigabit-per-second bandwidth to a customer on the currently deployed gigabit passive optical network or "GPON" in a live production FiOS network setting. Verizon's GPON platform supports a total throughput of 2.4 Gbps downstream and 1.2 Gbps upstream to customers connected to the PON. This test successfully demonstrated the ability to serve customers.
Libox Is a Streaming Media P2P Network for the Mac, PC, and iOS
Excerpted from Cult of Mac Report by John Brownlee
For those of us poor souls still feeling for the ghost of Google-gobbled SimplifyMedia and looking for a way to easily share our media across our computers and social networks, Libox has stepped in to fit the bill.
Think of Libox as a personal P2P streaming application for your media. You simply download the software for the PC or Mac and let it scan your computer for media like movies, music, and images. Once it's done, any media will then be available for streaming on any computer you own, or even on your iPhone or iPad through a free and attractive universal app.
Want to share your media with friends? That's easy enough, too: just add them as contacts and they'll be able to play any media you select to share. You can even selectively share media.
I'm really impressed with the technology of Libox, and the iPhone app is great, but on the Mac desktop side, there's a lot of interface work to be done. The Libox Mac application is confusingly designed and even such rote tasks as selecting multiple items to share with your contacts is hellish.
For example, trying to share some old "Betty Boop" cartoons, I tried to select all of them at once by clicking the first, holding down shift then clicking the last file. Only the first was selected. Noticing that the application itself instructed me that "to select several items, click the first and drag," I tried to do just that, only for nothing to happen at all.
In other words, on the Mac side, things feel sloppy, and I still haven't figured out how to share files without clicking them individually. Once that gets cleaned up though, Libox should be a fantastic solution: a streaming, iPhone-friendly P2P social network that even runs acceptably through 3G.
Joyent Partners with Codesion to Deliver End-to-End Solutions
Joyent, the premier provider of smart computing solutions announced this week that it has partnered with Redwood City, CA based Codesion, the leading provider of enterprise-grade Subversion, Git, and CVS hosting, to provide seamless, secure, end-to-end automation of the application development and deployment process.
"Codesion's new push-button publishing feature makes it faster and easier for our customers to collaborate, manage, and deploy their apps directly to the Joyent cloud," said David Young, CEO and Founder of Joyent. "Coupled with Joyent's scalable smart computing architectures, our partnership with Codesion allows for unmatched ease in developing and deploying the next generation of social and gaming applications on the web."
Where most cloud computing solutions focus on replicating physical machines in a virtual space, Joyent delivers a novel approach, providing a purpose-built cloud platform and toolset that enables customers to better harness the power of the cloud and improve the development and deployment process.
By more effectively meeting the needs of developers, Joyent's solutions relieve the system admin burden for developers, allowing them to focus on development, deployment and delivery of applications, improving efficiency and leveraging the true value of the cloud environment.
Through this partnership with Codesion, Joyent continues to build its network of resources to ensure developers have an easier on-ramp to smart computing.
"Our customers require agility in their development processes," said Guy Marion, CEO of Codesion. "By partnering with Joyent, customers can now begin coding with source control in five minutes, provision the Joyent Smart Machine, then one-click publish their application to the Joyent cloud. That is agility."
Joyent is the premier infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) provider offering cloud computing solutions worldwide since 2004. Delivering billions of page views per month, Joyent's Smart Technologies improve performance, scalability, manageability, and security for thousands of web and mobile applications.
Serving a network of service providers and thousands of customers, Joyent is the only company that runs a major public cloud infrastructure, builds the technologies that power that infrastructure, and uses those technologies to enable multiple third-party public, private, and hybrid clouds.
For more information about Codesion, Joyent or how to leverage these agile solutions for application development, please click here.
Getting the Most Out of the Online Cloud
Excerpted from The Telegraph Report by By Hunter Skipworth
It used to be that entertainment, information, and office work all required a powerful desktop PC. But ever-increasing Internet speeds and powerful web servers mean we are no longer bound to our desktops. The "cloud" can be relied on for the majority of many of our computing needs and requires nothing more than a good WiFi connection and a cheap netbook.
Simply put, the "cloud" is a group of websites which host and provide services, data, information, and entertainment online. The functions the cloud provides have become increasingly complex, beginning with vast reference services such as Wikipedia and going right through to bandwidth-heavy entertainment sites such as Spotify or YouTube.
Indeed, broadband connections have become so powerful that entire computer capabilities can now be streamed across the Internet with "remote desktop" applications provided by companies such as Citrix. So a netbook or even an iPad can give you access to a fully fledged PC. And the soon to be launched online gaming service OnLive will provide anyone with a decent enough Internet connection access to ultra-high quality videogame graphics.
But taking to the "cloud" is perhaps not as straightforward as you would think. Competition has led to the emergence of various websites which charge more or less for a relatively similar service. Worse still, much of what is paid for can be found free elsewhere. So here is our step-by-step guide to getting the most out of the "cloud".
Google's free online office software suite does everything from word processing to spreadsheets. Files are saved to Google's servers, which means the constant worry of losing important documents due to hard drive failure no longer exists. Few consumers will need more than Apps offers.
Microsoft's Office web Apps act as online accompaniments Office software, and as such offer real power and familiarity for many users. Documents created on a computer can be viewed and edited from within a web browser. Unlike Google Docs, which relies entirely on online content, Web Apps also can be transferred offline and edited using standard Office software.
Spotify provides a genuine alternative to the now industry standard iTunes. Rather than storing music locally on a hard drive, the service streams tracks to your computer via the Internet. Until relatively recently it was an entirely free service paid for by adverts in between every few songs. Recent times have seen the service change somewhat with free users now limited to 20 hours of streaming music per month. A fee of $15 per month, however, will allow for unlimited music and tracks to be plaid offline both on your computer and mobile phone. Given a single album on iTunes can cost just as much, Spotify provides an extremely good value for money alternative.
The BBC's online television streaming service iPlayer provides access to nearly every program shown for the last week. It means the episodes missed in a series can be caught up on at a later date or other programs watched on demand. BBC iPlayer is also available on a whole variety of formats from mobile phones to iPads, turning any Internet-enabled mobile phone into a portable on demand television player. The forthcoming Project Canvas will offer a similar service for a range of channels.
Wikipedia is the definitive online encyclopedia. Any google search term followed by "wiki" will probably take you to a Wikipedia page. Famous for its inaccuracy, Wikipedia can be edited by just anyone. This has created an ongoing battle between academics and those who feel they know better. Expect to find many interesting birthplaces and dates when searching for celebrities or politicians, but by and large Wikipedia's army of editors keep it comprehensive and accurate.
Flickr is a huge online photo sharing site with connections to just about every other cloud service available. Pictures can be uploaded and edited online using the site's inbuilt Picnik service. Sites such as Picnik.com itself and Photoshop.com offer similar facilities, and companies such as Eye-Fi also produce camera memory cards that upload directly to the site. That removes the need to use a computer to share photos.
QTRAX Promises New Take on Ad-Supported Music
Excerpted from Music Ally Report
Having shifted its focus to beta tests in the Asia-Pacific region, QTRAX has now appointed Lance Ford as its new Co-President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). He previously worked as an advisor to the company at Rebel Digital, with former Spiralfrog boss Robin Kent.
QTRAX says his appointment coincides with a new "cutting-edge 360-degree" advertising model for the start-up.
"Advertisers are looking for concepts and people that accommodate their needs," says boss Allan Klepfisz. "QTRAX has a completely new take on generating ad revenues globally. And what we think are really enticing propositions for consumers that will provide other revenue streams - and impact on piracy."
Watch this space (again).
Grid Computing in the Cloud: A Business Case
Excerpted from RightScale Whitepaper
Grid computing, the use of multiple computational resources in a collaborative effort to perform a large or complex task, is employed across a variety of industries, including pharmaceuticals, financial services, media, microchip, and aerospace design, animation, and oil and gas exploration.
While extremely effective at solving problems where algorithms and data require massive amounts of compute power, grid computing poses challenges for both IT organizations and end-users. It requires a high capital investment, and the demand for resources varies dramatically over time. As a result, IT organizations that need to support grid computing are in a constant balancing act between provisioning for peak demand and achieving adequate capacity utilization - often leaving end-users waiting in line for resources.
Cloud computing offers dramatic relief from these issues. With virtually unlimited compute resources available on demand, each user is first in line with access to exactly the resources they need when they need them. For IT departments, cloud computing relieves scheduling issues and matches costs to demand with a pay-as-you-go pricing model. However, just like in a data center, grid computing in the cloud requires highly technical systems architecture and operational skills to provision equipment and manage processes, including an understanding of the cloud provider's infrastructure.
With the RightScale Cloud Management Platform, many of the technical details of cloud computing have been abstracted, allowing developers and systems administrators to focus on the processes they need to run, not on the underlying infrastructure. Specifically for grid computing, RightScale offers the Grid Computing Solution Pack, which greatly simplifies the deployment of grid computing applications to the public cloud. An easy-to-use management interface and preconfigured components remove the complexities of deploying, monitoring, and managing those applications.
However, if there is ever a need to adjust the configuration at a very low systems level, all of the RightScale components are completely transparent and can be customized to meet specific requirements.
The bottom line: cloud computing managed by RightScale offers both end users and IT staff a more agile and cost-effective solution for grid computing.
Illimitux & Cacaoweb Partner to Promote Online Video
Illimitux and Cacaoweb, two major players in the distribution of online videos, are announcing a strategic partnership to strengthen their presence in the market. The new partnership will provide a better experience to video consumers by joining their flagship technologies into a consolidated offer.
Illimitux, created in early 2009, is a well-known add-on for Firefox and other browsers, and can be used to bypass the various limitations of several videos and file hosting services, like Megavideo, Rapidshare, and others, providing the users with a full-fledged access, without time limits or other annoyances of this kind. Since its inception, the Illimitux add-on has seen considerable growth and success among its user base.
Cacaoweb started a video file streaming service in early 2010 and is also providing a Megavideo limits bypasser. Cacaoweb comes as a software program operating on P2P technology. After installing the software, users can host, watch, and share multimedia content online. Cacaoweb has enjoyed growing popularity in Europe and is now expanding.
By combining their technologies and user bases, Cacaoweb and Illimitux hope to open new channels of growth and gain exposure on untouched markets. Their business model is based on advertising, in contrast to other services in similar markets which are based on subscriptions.
Using Cacaoweb P2P technology allows them to host and distribute videos efficiently and will certainly be a reason for their upcoming success.
Topology Dynamics in a P2PTV Network
Excerpted from Top Manual Guide by Wawan
In recent years, a number of commercial peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) applications have been launched. Yet, their mechanisms and characteristics are unknown. In this paper, we study SopCast, a typical proprietary P2PTV system. Treating SopCast as a black box, we perform a set of experiments that are suitable to analyze SopCast in depth.
We attempt to disclose the SopCast protocol. The dynamic nature of the SopCast overlay, in terms of node degree, is also addressed in this paper. Our approaches in analyzing the SopCast mechanism and characterizing its topological properties reveal important design insights in SopCast, and may help to better understand similar P2PTV systems.
The success of P2P file-sharing systems has spurred the deployment of P2P technologies in many other bandwidth-intensive large-scale applications.
P2PTV has become a popular means of streaming audio and video content over the Internet. Example applications are CoolStreaming, TVAnts, TVU2, SopCast, etc. It is important to evaluate the traffic impact of such applications, while modeling their behavior.
However, P2PTV streaming systems, such as SopCast, are developed for commercial purposes: thus, very little is known about their architectures. Some papers claim that SopCast is based on similar principles as those underlying CoolStreaming, some refer to it as a BitTorrent-based P2PTV system, but all without substantiating their claims. Furthermore, SopCast traffic is encoded, which makes understanding the protocol even more challenging.
In this paper, we will investigate the SopCast P2PTV system by answering the following two questions. What is the operational mechanism in SopCast? How are topology dynamics reflected in the SopCast overlay?
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, related work is discussed. Section 3 describes the measurement settings in PlanetLab4 network. Based on the experiments conducted in Section 3, we present our understanding of the SopCast protocol in Section 4. Our methodology of modeling the time-variant SopCast overlay and the derived results are provided in Section 5. In Section 6, we conclude the paper.
Spotify Adding Folders This Week
Excerpted from Electric Pig Report by Toby Knight
Spotify is rolling out some interface enhancements to make the P2P music streaming service easier to use. For the first time, users will be able to create folders to help organize their collection of playlists.
Spotify social is a great idea, but it has a downside. If you have a lot of friends it is easy to get a huge number of playlists, and having to scroll through them all to find the one you want is a royal pain. To help bring some sense of order back to Spotify, the company is rolling out a new client that will allow users to create folder to store their playlist collections.
Playlists can be moved between folders using drag and drop and if you are feeling adventurous you can even create folders within other folders so you can create hierarchies of musical genres, etc.
Other features in client update include the addition of artist and album pictures into the search view, playlist subscriber pictures at the top of shared lists so you can see who else is listening and official Spotify Twitter posts in the Feed. Windows 7 users will also enjoy support for Snap, Jump To and Taskbar features.
The new client will be deployed to groups of users this week, so let us know if you are one of the lucky ones to get an early copy and tell us what you think of the new look in the comments.
Steam Gamers Are Avid BitTorrent Users
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
With an interesting addition to its survey of customer hardware, Valve has now published its first set of stats detailing which software is installed on the computers of those using its Steam client. While Flash, Acrobat, and Firefox dominate the listings, BitTorrent clients also make a significant appearance. uTorrent is installed on almost as many systems as iTunes.
For quite some time, videogame developer and digital distribution company Valve has been collecting data from users of its Steam client. Up until now the only information gathered has related to the hardware they have installed in their machines, but now the company has made an interesting addition.
Starting July, Valve - which is believed to control around 70% of the digital distribution market for videogames - also began collecting data about the software installed on the machines of its customer base. Although participation is voluntary, the sampling potential is significant since the company is believed to service around 25 million users.
Valve has just published the results of its data harvesting for July from its Windows users and the stats make interesting reading. With 100% install rate, the top position is understandably dominated by the Steam client itself. In second place with a 96.79% install rate is Adobe's Flash Player, with Acrobat (73.18%), Firefox (63.05%) and Office (57.26%) completing the top five places. Eight Microsoft packages pad out the rest of the top 20 along with just one product from Apple - Quicktime.
While Steam is the most famous official game delivery platform around, Apple's iTunes takes that accolade in the music sector. According to the survey it is installed on 30.73% of respondents' machines, a fairly impressive result.
Perhaps even more significant though is the achievement of the package sitting directly below iTunes - the tiny but mighty uTorrent. The BitTorrent Inc. client is installed on the machines of 29.41% of Steam users and is the most popular file-sharing client in the entire list.
This high percentage of uTorrent users even beats the market share of the client among all BitTorrent users worldwide. According to data gathered in December 2009 from 357 million BitTorrent peer IDs, uTorrent was the client of choice for 25.77% of all BitTorrent users.
The Mainline BitTorrent client, which is in use by 4.81% of all torrent users worldwide, is installed on 5.28% of Steam user's machines.
The Vuze client is the client of choice for 4.37% of Steam customers. When taking a worldwide perspective, Vuze does considerably better and is installed on the machines of around 24% of BitTorrent users, but unlike the Steam survey this data was not limited to Windows users.
The 5th most popular client with all BitTorrent users worldwide is BitComet. Overall it has a 4.01% market share, which betters its 2.44% install rate among Steam users.
It is safe to conclude that more than a third of all Steam users are also BitTorrent users, with the vast majority preferring the uTorrent application over others. Compared to average Internet users, Steam gamers are undoubtedly avid BitTorrent users.
Nonetheless, the Steam survey also shows that having access to free games doesn't hold these users back from paying for games on Steam.
The full survey results can be found here.
Cloud Computing Will Outlive the Web
Excerpted from ComputerWorld Report by Bernard Golden
The tech world is all a-twitter (literally!) about an article in this month's Wired Magazine which announces "The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet". The article recites a litany of problems that are choking the web: the rise of apps that replace use of a web browser, the growth of uber-aggregation sites like Facebook that are closed platforms, the destruction of traditional advertising and replacement by Google - the semi-benevolent search monster and even the move away from HTML and use of port 80-based apps.
In short, Wired has published a jeremiad for the end of the freewheeling open web, being rapidly supplanted by voracious wannabe monopolists who seek to dominate the networked world and reduce all of us to nothing more than predestined consumers of "content" served up by monolithic megabrands. You have to look carefully, but, after all mournful moping about the terrible things happening on the web, Wired concludes that the Internet is young and still developing, so new things are right down the pike.
I yield to no-one in my admiration for (or, indeed, enjoyment of) Wired. I always find it stimulating and interesting. Nevertheless, one must admit that in its straining for profundity it often overreaches for effect and overstates for conclusion (indeed, the magazine itself admits this when it notes that it predicted the death of the browser over a decade ago). For example, Wired reached a laughably wrong conclusion two years ago when it declared "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete".
As regards the message of the article, I draw a diametrically opposed conclusion than does Wired. It spends perhaps 90% of the piece bewailing the rise of bad forces, and tosses in 10% at the end in a kind of "but it's still early innings for the Internet, so some good things might happen." I look at the same phenomenon and see the huge problems it poses as perhaps 10% of the reality of the Internet, and certainly nothing to be worried about - in fact, unlikely to remain as problems into the near future.
For example, take the move away from web standards like HTML and port 80. Why anyone should be concerned about what port is used for communication across the Internet is beyond me, but in fact port 80 is increasing in importance. In my experience, entire tranches of applications that would be better served with their own ports and protocols ride on port 80 because its the only one that can reliably be expected to be open on company firewalls. We might shed a tear for poor old port 80, given how it's overworked and overloaded all in aid of letting applications do things that were never envisioned for it when the original HTML protocol was designed - but we shouldn't conclude it's obsolete and abandoned.
Or the rise of the monoliths. What's surprising is how fragile these unassailable entities actually turn out to be in the world of the Internet. Yahoo! owned the portal space, until it was outfoxed by Google. MySpace was everyone's darling until Facebook came along. Let's not even talk about the fate of the little-lamented AOL.
Telefonica O2 to Launch Long-Term Evolution Network
Excerpted from BroadbandBreakfast Report
Telefonica O2 has announced that it will launch a pilot long-term evolution network in September. The network will be deployed in the 2.6 gigahertz and 800 megahertz bands. The network hardware will be provided by Nokia Siemens, which already has contracts to build 25 other trials worldwide.
"We have always held that there is a strong link between broadband deployment, productivity, and economic growth," said Thomas Riedel, head of Nokia Siemens Networks' Telefonica business in Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia.
"We are at the forefront of LTE development and have recently concluded a trial on the digital dividend spectrum. We have already started commercial production of related network products."
Joel Tenenbaum to Appeal Reduced File-Sharing Damages Award
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
Convicted file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum has appealed a 90% reduction in the amount of damages he was ordered by a jury to pay the major record labels for sharing 30 songs online, the Boston Globe reported.
Tenenbaum was ordered to pay $675,000 by the jury, but on appeal the court reduced that amount to $67,500. Tenenbaum has said he cannot afford to pay the reduced penalty, telling the Boston Globe it is "equally as insane" as the higher figure.
His attorney, Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson, has filed notice they will appeal the reduced verdict to the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has also appealed the court's "erroneous and unprecedented" decision to reduce the damages award, spokeswoman Cara Duckworth told the Globe.
Search for Copyright Violators Needs Help
Excerpted from ZDNet Report by Sam Diaz
Will Hollywood ever be satisfied?
It was only a few months ago that a district court judge credited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for working "efficiently" as part of the ruling in the Viacom vs. YouTube case.
That ruling found that YouTube was complying with takedown notices from copyright holders when informed of copyright violations. That's a key element of the DMCA because it keeps the burden of proof of copyright violations on the right party: the copyright holder.
After all, it's a tall order to expect YouTube to determine which copyrighted works on the site are there in violation of copyrights and which ones are not. Many copyright holders put their copyrighted work on YouTube for the exposure.
Now, RIAA President Cary Sherman, while speaking at a conference in Colorado this week, said that the DMCA is no longer working for content creators and later suggested, in response to a question, that the matter be put before Congress, according to a CNET report. Sherman said:
"The DMCA isn't working for content people at all. You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It's simply not possible. We don't have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like file-hosting firm Rapidshare.
Sherman maintains that the 1998 Act has loopholes that allow broadband providers and web companies to skirt past the law and disregard the illegal activities of their customers.
Give me a break.
By his own admission, Sherman is saying that the Internet is so vast that it's impossible to police it - and yet he expects individual websites to do it for him. And let's be frank about this: if the RIAA doesn't "have the ability" to look for infringing content, that sounds like a problem that RIAA should be addressing by either beefing up its enforcement efforts or investing in technology to help address this problem. It certainly shouldn't be the responsibility of a website operator or broadband provider to use its resources to search for violations of someone else's copyright.
And it's not Washington's place to make these website operators do this either. And Sherman seems to be backpedaling on that part. In an update to the CNET post, Sherman clarified that he's not seeking new legislation. Congressional action would only be necessary, he said, to "formalize a voluntary deal with partners such as broadband providers."
Huh? Why would it take an act of Congress to "formalize a voluntary deal?" First of all, I can't imagine why broadband providers or web companies would ever agree to change something that 1) the RIAA asked for and 2) a judge said is working just fine.
Still, if the RIAA can cut a deal with the broadband providers and websites and it's a voluntary deal, can't some lawyers just draw up some papers to formalize it. After all, we know the RIAA has plenty of those - lawyers, that is.
Here's a thought: quit paying those same lawyers to sue people and start shifting some of those dollars from the legal budget into technology to help identify violators.
If search engines can find a way to index the entire Internet and start-ups like Shazam can create mobile apps to identify a song just by "listening" to it, then I'm sure there's some technology out there to help the RIAA with its problem.
If there isn't any such technology, then, well, entrepreneurs, here's your chance to develop some technology for a group that desperately needs it.
Brilliant Plans to Rescue Dying Industries
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Lore Sjoberg
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), that adorable cave man of a gigantic litigious organization, recently announced that it wants electronic devices like cell-phones and music players to be legally required to incorporate FM radio receivers, both to protect broadcasters' revenue streams and to ease the transition of anyone caught up in a time tunnel from the 1960s and brought to our era.
I think this is wonderful news, because I am a humor columnist. This is such a wonderfully goofy idea that I just want to hug the RIAA and ruffle its hair.
Obviously the important thing, in early 21st-century America, is to make sure that no fading industry is left behind. If that means bolting outdated technology to new devices and letting consumers pick up the bill, well at least we can make sure that "morning zoo" DJs are kept off the streets and out of trouble.
This is such a wonderful idea, in the sense of being a terrible idea, that I think other industries should come up with their own ways of making sure they never have to adapt to new technological realities, then lobby the government to enforce the life-saving mandates. If they all pull together, they can provide me with material for a dozen columns.
Let's start with newspapers. They've been having a lot of trouble adapting to the Internet, and there's no guarantee that iPads and Kindles and the like are going to help. Solution: Require companies to bundle a parakeet with every new tablet or e-reader device.
This will create a groundswell of demand for newsprint with which to line the cages of the federally mandated house pets. I strongly suggest that all the major news consortia start talking to their representatives about making this a reality.
Mapmakers are also seeing their profits reduced by the advent of GPS and Google Maps. It hardly seems fair that they're taking a hit from unfair business practices like coming up with better and more responsive alternatives.
Still, there are a lot of companies and individuals who have invested deeply in GPS devices, and we can't just cut them off. The compromise? Make it so that GPS devices can only direct you to places where you can buy maps! The Thomas Brothers get their profits back, and consumers still get to hear a slightly stilted voice tell them to turn left in 400 yards. Let's make it the law.
Travel agencies are another class of businesses desperately in need of shelter from the insidious advance of useful technology. Booking your own flight or hotel has become so easy that most people are willing to overlook how annoying most flight- and hotel-booking websites are. Clearly, travel agents need a little boost to make sure they continue in the proud American tradition of travel and the agency thereof.
How about a law saying all travel arrangements must be made within 12 hours of departure? Sure, if you want to go to a bunch of websites and make all your reservations and arrangements by hand while attempting to pack, give the cats enough food and water, and remember where you put the digital camera battery, you're welcome to - but just remember, a travel agent can make those arrangements for you in a jiffy. Get lobbying, travel agents!
With any luck, these proposals and more will soon make their way to Washington, providing these industries with much-needed income and me with much-needed material. I'd hate to have to lobby for the Comedy Writer Protection Act of 2011.
Coming Events of Interest
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.
M2M Evolution Conference - October 4th-6th in Los Angeles, CA. Machine-to-machine (M2M) embraces the any-to-any strategy of the Internet today. "M2M: Transformers on the Net" showcases the solutions, and examines the data strategies and technological requirements that enterprises and carriers need to capitalize on a market segment that is estimated to grow to $300 Billion in the year ahead.
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.
P2P Streaming Workshop - October 29th in Firenze, Italy. ACM Multimedia presents this workshop on advanced video streaming techniques for P2P networks and social networking. The focus will be on novel contributions on all aspects of P2P-based video coding, streaming, and content distribution, which is informed by social networks.
Fifth International Conference on P2P, Parallel, Grid, Cloud, and Internet Computing November 4th-6th in Fukuoka, Japan. The aim of this conference is to present innovative research results, methods and development techniques from both theoretical and practical perspectives related to P2P, grid, cloud and Internet computing. A number of workshops will take place.
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