Ad-supported music

Slashdot It! At the Midem conference in Cannes, France, Qtrax and its parent company Brilliant Technologies Corp. announced deals on Sunday with all four major labels that would make it the first free and legal ad-supported P2P service with major label music. By allowing users to share DRM-protected files with label approval, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz said he expected the service to offer over 25 million songs, dwarfing the catalogs of iTunes and other online music stores. The service launched today, after what Klepfisz called four and a half years of negotiations with the labels. But the resulting deals are nowhere near as firm as Klepfisz indicated they were during conversations with the press last week. For example, here's an audio sample of Klepfisz telling me that his company would announce deals with all of the major labels: Although the company is said to be negotiating with all four labels, and has at least one confirmed current major label deal (with EMI's publishing division), Qtrax apparently lacks current deals with the major labels to offer song downloads. "EMI Music had an initial agreement with Qtrax, essentially a license designed to help them experiment with this ad-supported model had licensed songs to Qtrax," said an EMI spokeswoman. "Qtrax didn't launch the service during the period of the agreement -- I think we initially did this two years ago. We're now in talks with the company about a possible new deal, but as of today, they don't have a license with EMI Music." Qtrax does have a deal with EMI Publishing, she said, but its license for offering EMI sound recording downloads has expired. An agreement with Universal Music Group has also apparently expired, while a Warner Music Group spokeswoman flatly denied any deal with Qtrax: "Warner Music Group has not authorized the use of our content on Qtrax's recently announced service." However, she confirmed that negotiations between Warner and Qtrax are ongoing. A spokesman for Sony/BMG said the label had licensed Qtrax to offer tracks from its catalog on a limited play basis in April of 2007, so long as Qtrax included an option to purchase the track once the play limit had been reached. However, Qtrax's new service offers unlimited playback, and so it is not covered by that agreement. The spokesman confirmed that Sony/BMG is also in talks with the company to forge a new deal. Apparently, Qtrax, eager to make its announcement during the Midem conference, misrepresented ongoing negotiations and expired deals as official major label sign-off. The company certainly didn't earn points with the media over this strategy -- at least one major publication had to "stop the presses" over the weekend, according to one source. The flub could hurt negotiations too. Now that Qtrax has promised major label catalogs to consumers, its bargaining position with the labels may have been weakened, although a spokesman said company executives "still feel they have the backing of the industry." Assuming that QTrax can untangle its licensing situation, it will offer a socially-driven music source for the 94 percent of internet users Klepfisz says do not and will not pay for music online. "You can't change the attitudes and habits of what is now probably amounting to two generations who believe that music ought to be free on the internet," said Klepfisz. "Those people are not going to be discouraged by Supreme Court decisions, they're not going to be discouraged by technological interference. Ultimately, what will discourage them is a demonstratively better service." Songs will be wrapped in Microsoft's Windows Media subscription DRM. This means that unlike the free, ad-supported services offered by imeem and Last.fm, Qtrax's songs can be downloaded onto compatible players. The application is based on the Songbird engine, so sharing and downloading occurs within a customized Firefox browser -- no separate application required. As of now, the tracks are not compatible with the Apple iPod, but Klepfisz said that the service would be compatible with iPods before too long -- an indication that Apple could apply the subscription technology developed for iTunes movie rentals to the music market. To get the industry on board with P2P, Qtrax will sign over "the lion's share of revenue" to labels and publishers, paying out on per-download and per-play bases. The site also categorized the music of the world into three lists. One list includes artists who do not permit their music to be made available online in any capacity. "The blacklist is fast disappearing -- my prediction is that in a year, the blacklist won't be in existence," said Klepfisz. The white list consists of the standard digital catalogs from major and indie labels -- the same 5-million-plus songs that are on iTunes. The gray list constitutes the difference between what's available on iTunes and what's available on BitTorrent. "Then you have the gray list, which is that vast body of stuff that's out there on P2P, where there are rights holders, but the rights holders themselves may not even know that a song is being downloaded frequently.... To the best of our ability, we identify the rights holder and pay them a percentage of the advertising revenue. In the minority of cases where we can't identify a rights holder, we will actually put up the song for claiming, and will reserve the portion of the ad pie until that song is appropriately claimed." As with other free, ad-supported services, revenue comes from advertisers who want to target ads to specific types of listeners. In negotiating with Qtrax, with whom some of them have signed deals in the past, the labels are demonstrating an openness toward revenue streams that deviate from the record-store model. "This is a tacit acknowledgment that 'bulletproof' wasn't working," said IDC consumer audio analyst Susan Kevorkian. "And it hasn't been working. But it was an experiment the music industry needed to undertake in order to figure out how to address digital distribution. It was a very long learning process, but fortunately there's still the possibility of finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow." 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Lots of unlocked iPhones

Slashdot It! More than a quarter of people who bought Apple's iPhone are using them on wireless networks other than AT&T's, the exclusive iPhone carrier in the U.S., a "stunning" number that will pressure the company's business model, an analyst said Monday. Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi said analysis of sales numbers from Apple and AT&T revealed about 1.45 million phones were "missing in action " at the end of 2007. About 480,000 of those iPhones were believed to be held by AT&T as inventory, leaving another 1 million phones, or 27 percent of the total, that Sacconaghi said were "unlocked" so they could work on non-AT&T networks. Apple executives said last week the number of unlocked phones was "significant" but declined to give an estimate. Most analysts had estimated the portion of unlocked phones at less than 20 percent. Spokespersons for Apple and AT&T declined to comment. The higher number is worrying for Apple because the company receives a cut of AT&T's iPhone service fees, revenue that carries a high gross margin and has fueled optimism over its earnings potential. Via Cnet Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Sony Ericsson cuts deals with 10 music labels

Slashdot It! Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said it had signed deals with 10 music labels to add content to its PlayNow service, which lets users download music via their mobile phones. Sony Ericsson, owned by Ericsson and Sony, said the deals added 5 million new tracks to its catalog. The venture said in a statement it had signed deals with Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, EMI, The Orchard, IODA, The PocketGroup, Hungama, X5Music, Bonnier Amigo, and VidZone. Sony Ericsson, which made the announcement at a trade show in Cannes, France, said it was negotiating further deals with regional labels. The company introduced PlayNow in February 2004 as a way to listen to and then purchase ringtones for mobile phones. Since then, it as expanded the service, allowing full music tracks and games to be downloaded and other features. It said PlayNow was available in 32 countries. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Windows 7 isn't headed for 2009, says Microsoft. More like 2011.

Slashdot It! Hey, it's not Microsoft's fault that 2011 sounds like the realm of jet pack VR massage cars, but it's certainly a long ways away any way you slice it. Contrary to previous rumors of Microsoft planning a Windows 7 release sometime in 2009, Microsoft has apparently gotten in touch with WinVistaClub and set the record straight: Windows 7 is in "planning stages," and development will take approximately three years. Microsoft wouldn't comment on that supposed leak we spotted last week, and of course denied any implications that development was being accelerated to make up for Vista shortcomings. We can't help but wonder how different the OS landscape will look three years from now, with Linux rapidly reaching feature and usability parity, while Apple plugs away at OS X and cloud computing lands everywhere, but we're sure Vista SP1 won't be the last bid Microsoft makes at this generation. Update: Other quotes from Microsoft has the date set at 3 years from the launch of Vista, which would indeed land it around 2009, so perhaps all hope is not lost. No date is set yet, and our money is on 2010 at the earliest. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

SP1 coming out soon

Slashdot It! For the second time in two weeks, Microsoft Corp. has released a new build of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to its invitation-only group of approximately 15,000 testers, giving weight to recent speculation that the final code is close. The newest version, dubbed Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) Refresh 2, was released to testers yesterday, Microsoft confirmed today. "This group includes corporate customers, consumer enthusiasts, software and hardware vendors, and others," a company spokeswoman said. "The code is not available for public download." Microsoft made the same claim two weeks ago, when on Jan. 11 it unveiled SP1 RC Refresh, saying then that it would keep the build private. Two days later, however, it posted the refresh to the Windows Update service. Microsoft has repeatedly said it has slated the release of Vista SP1, the long-anticipated first major update to its newest operating system, for the first quarter of the year. This week, however, fueled by a report out of Taiwan that claimed Feb. 15 would be SP1's day, talk intensified of the service pack's imminent release. When asked about the rumors, the Microsoft spokeswoman answered: "The final release date is based on quality, so we will continue to track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date." Microsoft also issued a new build of Windows XP SP3 this week. Tagged as SP3 RC Refresh 2, the update went to the same group of 15,000 testers, and like Vista SP1, was made available via the company's Connect beta site. An earlier preview of Windows XP SP3 was released to the public about a month ago, and is still available for downloading. XP SP3 is scheduled to go final in the first half of 2008. Windows XP SP3 has consistently been given shorter shrift by Microsoft. Unlike its public relations efforts via company blogs on Vista SP1, the company has made little effort to broadcast XP SP3's features or changes. In fact, some analysts have noted that the biggest barrier to Vista adoption is the continued devotion of business customers to Windows XP. In November, for instance, Forrester Research Inc. analyst Benjamin Gray said: "Vista's biggest competition isn't Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it's Microsoft itself, it's XP." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Apple V.S AirPod

Slashdot It! A Delaware company specializing in air purification is suing Apple Inc. in order to get the iPod maker to stop causing a ruckus over the airPOD name used to market its desktop-based air filtration systems.

Apple sued for stifling air filtration firm By Kasper Jade Published: 01:00 PM EST A Delaware company specializing in air purification is suing Apple Inc. in order to get the iPod maker to stop causing a ruckus over the airPOD name used to market its desktop-based air filtration systems. Related AppleInsider articles: Apple faces new lawsuit over iPhone concept Lawsuit alleges Apple lifted idea for iChat... Class-action charges Apple with illegally... Apple may face iPhone trademark issue in Japan Apple sued over power adapters, store receipt... In the 4-page complaint, filed last week in an Illinois district court, BlueAir Inc. alleges that counsel for Apple have been making a big stink since last summer over its request for a trademark on term airPOD. Lawyers for the Cupertino-based gadget maker have reported asserted likely confusion of BlueAir's airPOD mark with Apple's iPod mark, threatening to file oppositions with the United States Trademark Office, and more recently "making threats of seeking attorney fees and more." BlueAir charges that it's Apple, rather than itself, which is therefore creating the actual controversy between the parties and causing harm by way of those threats of trademark infringement and unfair competition. Introduced in June of 2006, BlueAir's airPOD product stands at 6-1/2 inches wide, 13 inches tall, and 3-1/2 inches deep. It comes clad in aluminum with the mark "airPOD" embossed on its front-side and must be plugged into a 110-volt outlet to operate. "There is no reasonable likelihood of confusion, mistake, or error in the marketplace for persons of even the lowest perceptive capabilities who are seeking an iPod music player considering or buying an airPOD desktop air cleaner instead," BlueAir's attorneys at Chapman and Cutler LLP argue in the suit. "'AirPOD' and iPod are distinct in sound, appearance, and connotation as applied to their respective goods," they add. "Although the ending --POD portions are identical, the initial portions AIR-- and i-- are distinct in appearance and connotation and distinguishable in sound as well to any ordinary observer." Nevertheless, the complaint claims that Apple requested an extension with the trademark office to allow it time to file opposition to BlueAir's trademark application, and that lawyers for the Cupertino-based firm subsequently e-mailed and telephoned counsel for BlueAir demanding the company withdraw its application for the "airPOD" name and rebrand its product under a new mark not containing the three successive letters "POD." "On information and belief, neither BlueAir nor Apple knows of any single bona fide instance of confusion between the AIRPOD mark on personal desktop air purifiers and the iPod mark for personal portable music players," BlueAir's attorneys say. "Indeed Apple has not opposed federal registrations or impending federal registrations of AIRPOD marks for air fresheners, carrying cases, and industrial air filters, nor has it, on information and belief, sought to stop the hundreds of other uses of AIRPOD and AIR POD marks for other products such as 'air time' recorders for snowboarders, and the like, findable in any Internet search for those terms." BlueAir is seeking an order from the Court that would end the harassment by declaring that its airPOD mark is not confusingly similar to Apple’s mark and that it may be used and registered without further interference from the iPod maker.

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No more domain testing websites in Adsense

Slashdot It! A confidential informant says Google will stop monetizing all domains if they are less then five days old. This potential new policy change by Google could stop all Domain Tasting in its tracks. The Add Grace Period (AGP) is a time period when registrars can delete a domain at no cost, but in this time frame a registrant could register millions of these temporary domains and place Google Adsense for Domains on them. The result is the ability to produce millions of temporary websites that literally generate millions of dollars in income per week for Google. It was disclosed in court that one partner that Google had was generating as much as $3 million dollars a month from the practice and that was after Google’s revenue share. Oversee.net and other companies have been using this practice for years and it will have a direct impact on them. The gravy train of free money might be coming to a halt very fast. This policy change at Google should be announced to the channel partners soon and it will have a huge echoing impact on the Industry. The Good news is that the Quantity of advertising will be spread among fewer domains now and so those domain owners that actually own real full domains should receive more money if bid prices start to rise as a result of this. However some advocates of Domain Tasting say that perhaps no one will be able to serve the niche for some ads and no one will make money on the unserved ads. I think this is a return of the “Be Good” motto Google had a few years ago. Google has been quietly enabling this practice for years now. This is a smart policy move on Google’s part to ward off impending litigation that might have hit them in the coming months. Trademark lawyers have been getting crafter at taking down Kiting by suing under other laws. The new weapon of choice is not using Trademark laws but Forgery laws. The penalty for forgery is much worse and cares a much higher fine per article that is forged. Dell, Yahoo, and BMW have all filed lawsuits in the last two months that ask for millions of dollars of damage from Google partners and I think Google sees the writing on the wall, they might be named next. The question that remains, will Yahoo follow suit and block all advertising on domains less then 5 day old as well? I have a feeling Yahoo will because Yahoo was one of the groups that is suing Domain Tasters using the Forgery law tactic. Most of the big Domain Tasters are using Google ad syndication feeds to monetize the traffic right now and the money will come knocking on Yahoo’s door now. UPDATE: The new Google policy will go into effect before the end of February. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Cable Co. Empties 14,000 E-Mail Accounts

Slashdot It! Charter Communications officials believe a software error during routine maintenance caused the company to delete the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts. There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company. "We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error," Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaff. Charter, one of the nation's largest cable TV operators, also provides telephone and high-speed Internet service. It has applied a $50 credit to the bill of each customer whose account was affected by the mistake, Lamont said. Via My Way Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Microsoft: Vista Has Fewer Flaws Than Other First-Year OSes

Slashdot It! Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system brought home its first-year security report card today: Vista logged less than half the vulnerabilities that Windows XP did in its first year, according to the Microsoft report. Report author Jeff Jones, security strategy director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, compiled the number of vulnerability disclosures and security updates in Vista's first year, and compared them to Windows XP, Red Hat rhel4ws, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.4 in their first years. According to Jones, Vista came out ahead of all of the other first-year OSes: Microsoft released 17 security bulletins and patches affecting Vista, versus 30 for XP in its first year, for example. And Microsoft fixed 36 vulnerabilities in Vista, versus 65 for XP, according to the report. There are 30 vulnerabilities in Vista that have not yet been patched, and 54 for XP in its first year. "The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista has an improved security vulnerability profile over its predecessor," Jones writes in his blog. "Analysis of security updates also shows that Microsoft improvements to the security update process and development process have reduced the impact of security updates to Windows administrators significantly compared to its predecessor, Windows XP." But he also admits that looking at vulnerabilities is just one facet of security. "Is there anything in this analysis which will prove one piece of software is 'more secure' than another? No, that is not my intention," Jones says in his blog. "This report is a vulnerability analysis, which may provide some elements that could be part of a broader security analysis." Fewer vulnerabilities "make it easier to manage risk," he says. "All other things being equal, fewer patches mean more time to spend on other security projects to reduce risk." Rich Mogull, founder of Securosis LLC, says exploits and criticality are two additional important vectors to measure for OS security risk. "I think a measure of vulnerabilities, with criticality, mapped to exploitability, mapped to active exploits, is a more interesting metric. Not to take away from Jeff's work. It would be a good follow-on," he says. "[Vulnerabilities] are only one factor in a risk measurement, and alone [aren't] a true measure of risk," Mogull says. "That's what drives this 'my OS is better than your OS' pissing-match garbage." In the Vista report, Microsoft notes that there were more vulnerabilities fixed in other OSes in their first years than in Vista: 360 in Red Hat rhe14ws (reduced) in its first year; 224 in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS' (reduced) first year; and 116 in Mac OS X 10.4's first year. Jones also charted patch events for each OS and found that Vista required fewer patch activity than other OSes. So what does the Vista report card really mean? "It proves that it [Vista] is quantitatively more secure, but not that it's quantitatively less risky -- what I call security versus safety," Mogull says. "IT managers need to know the overall risk assessment, which includes that data as well as other information sources." Vista underwent more quality assurance and security testing than any other OS, Mogull says, and it paid off. "The Trustworthy Computing Initiative has resulted in material improvements in the operating system, and other OS vendors should adopt similar practices." Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Google eyeing operations in Malaysia

Slashdot It! Web search engine giant Google is interested in setting up operations in Malaysia, citing the country's technology infrastructure and strategic location, newspapers reported on Sunday. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Google has started discussions with Malaysia's Multimedia Development on establishing a base in the country. "They want to make their presence felt in Malaysia. It will be a big boost for our ICT industry," he told reporters after meeting Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Abdullah said Malaysia ranked as the top users of Google in Southeast Asia, which was another reason why it would make sense to use the country as a base for its operations. In Asia, Google has offices in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Plam to close all but one of their shop

Slashdot It! Palm Inc. will close all but one of its retail stores over the next five weeks, in keeping with its effort to cut costs and focus on its next-generation smartphone platform, according to the company. Palm has eight branded stores in California and 26 “stores within a store” at major metropolitan airports around the country. It will maintain the Palm store within its own corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. The smartphone maker will continue to sell its handsets through carrier stores, resellers and other retail and online channels, including its own Web site. The closings are slated to be complete during Palm’s fiscal third quarter, which ends in late February. “We continue to focus our company around core business initiatives and are consolidating more resources behind fewer programs in order to compete most effectively,” the company said in a statement. The company did not post a press release about the move on its Web site, but made the information and statement available to the press upon request, perhaps a reflection that while it is taking cost-cutting steps it is not aggressively publicizing its shift in sales channels. The move comes on the heels of an undisclosed number of job cuts at the roughly 1,200-person company in December and the cancellation of its Foleo product, a keyboard-and-monitor accessory, in September. The Treo maker also made a round of job cuts in June, shortly after attracting a $325 million infusion of private equity and raising an additional $400 million in new debt, while adding two former Apple Inc. executives to its board. While many analysts believe Palm has a shrinking window of time to introduce a compelling new smartphone platform, analyst Tavis McCourt at Morgan Keegan said that the company is poised to show “substantial financial improvement” after the company’s current, fiscal quarter ends in February. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

'Beavis' goes portable on PlayStation format

Slashdot It! The Universal Media Disc, a proprietary format for Sony's PlayStation Portable, failed as a movie format. But Sony's continued attempts to portray the PSP as a multimedia device rather than a game player now find the company trying again, this time with TV shows. Sony Computer Entertainment America on Thursday announced that it is offering popular MTV programming on the UMD, marking the first collaboration between Sony and a major TV content provider. Headed for UMD are Beavis and Butt-Head: The Mike Judge Collection, volumes 2 and 3; Jackass, volumes 2 and 3; Wildboyz, volumes 1 and 2; Viva La Bam, volumes 2-4; and Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

HD-DVD DEAD?

Slashdot It! Warner Home Video's defection from the HD DVD camp may have put a damper on hardware sales. In the week since the studio's surprise early-January announcement that after May it will support only the rival Blu-ray Disc format, sales of HD DVD players ground to a virtual halt, giving Blu-ray hardware a whopping 93% sales advantage, according to data from the NPD Group. According to raw retail data collected by NPD, consumers bought just 1,758 HD DVD players the week of January 12, down from 14,558 players the week before. In contrast, consumers bought 21,770 Blu-ray Disc machines, up from 15,257 the previous week. NPD would not confirm or deny the actual sales figures, saying they are proprietary. (A copy of the report was provided to The Hollywood Reporter by a third-party source.) But analyst Stephen Baker confirmed the weekly market-share shift, with the caveat that it's too soon to tell whether this is the start of a long-term trend. "It's always very dangerous to make long-term assumptions based on one-week sales data," he said. Update Sales data for HD-DVD and Blu-ray players and movies has been misconstrued lately by various outlets, with reports implying that HD-DVD sales have fallen at an amazing pace while Blu-ray sales have blasted through the roof. Not so fast, says the NPD Group. While select articles have implied that HD-DVD as a format is doomed and the sky is falling for the format's supporters, the NPD Group this afternoon reinforced that sales results from a single week do not necessarily indicate a trend, and that the week in question had several intriguing variables that have gone unreported. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Smartphones Patented

Slashdot It! This past Tuesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent on "a mobile entertainment and communication device." Reading the patent, you realize it describes the quite common smartphone. It's a patent for a mobile phone with removable storage, an internet connection, a camera and the ability to download audio or video files. The patent holding firm who has the rights to this patent wasted no time at all. At 12:01am Tuesday morning, it filed three separate lawsuits against just about everyone you can think of, including Apple, Nokia, RIM, Sprint, AT&T, HP, Motorola, Helio, HTC, Sony Ericsson, UTStarcomm, Samsung and a bunch of others. Amusingly, the company actually first filed the lawsuits on Monday, but realized it was jumping the gun and pulled them, only to refile just past the stroke of midnight. The patent itself is based on a bunch of continuation filings, which are commonly used by patent holders who want broad patents to cover the latest technologies well after they've already come about in the market. It would seem like the concept itself, merely combining a bunch of things that people were already talking about, should never have been granted based on the Supreme Court's recent KSR ruling that merely combining existing concepts doesn't deserve a patent. Also, as noted in the comments to the link above, it would appear that there's a fair amount of prior art. In fact, Apple even sent over some prior art concerning the patent just before it was originally supposed to be issued last summer -- but somehow patent holder's lawyers talked their way around it. In the meantime, it looks like we've got yet another case of an overly broad and obvious patent being used against a huge number of firms. I'm sure that's exactly what Thomas Jefferson expected when he created our patent system. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

PB reaches 10 million users

Slashdot It! The Pirate Bay is no stranger to making history, and today is no different. In an achievement that conjures an achievement from the annals of file-sharing history, The Pirate Bay has broken an impressive milestone. Today, The Pirate Bay asserts itself as the self-proclaimed "World's Largest Tracker" by topping over 10 million peers, while managing over 1 million torrents. Let's consider these staggering numbers. 10 million simultaneous users represents a number never duplicated by any file-sharing entity. The largest P2P networks, such as FastTrack and eDonkey2000, both topped out with approximately 5 million users. Gnutella, fronted by LimeWire, is more difficult to calculate, however reasonable estimates place Gnutella's population among the P2P heavyweights. Despite these impressive stats, The Pirate Bay has managed to exceed all previous file-sharing populations. 10 million users is more than the population of New York City (8.1 million) and The Pirate Bay's home country, Sweden (9 million). To imagine the scale of The Pirate Bay's ubiquity, it would be similar to every person in New York City running a BitTorrent application and using The Pirate Bay as their tracker - and even then, there would still be 2 million individuals to spare. Skype manages to have similar ambitions to The Pirate Bay; as of the time of this writing, the VoIP P2P network has approximately 9.1 million individuals connected - but still short by 1 million users. The Pirate Bay has also managed to break another achievement, as the BitTorrent tracker is now managing over 1 million torrents. Specifically, The Pirate Bay's statistics show that "10.044.335 peers" are currently connected, with "1.015.489 torrents" managed by the tracker. "We're very happy to be part of all of this and we hope our users keep sharing those files!," Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay told Slyck.com. "And we're looking to break 20 million as well." The Pirate Bay's journey to this milestone was interrupted in late May of 2006, when it's server farm was raided by Swedish authorities. Its machines were confiscated, leaving many to wonder if the tracker would ever return. To put matters in perspective, The Pirate Bay had only 2.1 million peers during those events. Now, The Pirate Bay's server farm is scattered globally, giving the administration, and indeed many of its users, the confidence that it will be immune from any future prosecution. That confidence is under attack by entertainment industry, pressured ISPs, and governments world wide who are attempting to thwart that critical mass of users. ISP bandwidth throttling and filtering could be on the way shortly, with the aim of cracking down on the productivity of the file-sharing community. Despite this pressure, concerns are held in check with the knowledge that history is on the opposition's side. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post

Google CEO bullish on mobile Web advertising

Slashdot It! The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution," Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said. "It's the re-creation of the Internet, it's the re-creation of the PC (personal computer) story, and it is before us--and it is very likely it will happen in the next year," he told a panel at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland. Current estimates for mobile advertising are cautious, with consultancy Forrester predicting revenues of under $1 billion by 2012. But Schmidt said this figure was too low and failed to take into account the fact the mobile Web was reaching a tipping point. Google aims to be a prime mover by bidding for coveted airwaves to launch an open U.S. wireless network, pitting it against established telecommunications players. The move will take the Silicon Valley-based company well beyond its core Web search and online advertising franchises. Some analysts are worried at the high costs involved but Schmidt said he was confident that location-based advertising--which could, for example, direct hungry travelers to nearby restaurants--would be "a very, very good business." Content providers, already struggling in the modern world of music and film downloads, are less convinced that mobile Internet is a minefield. "It is not going to be easy to hang on the price of content," said Howard Stringer, chief executive of Sony. Get Daily Updates via Email Protect your computer with Windows Onecare Get paid $7.50 for reviewing my post