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Archive for the "Downloads" Category

Apr21

Browser Battle. Firefox Catching Up

Posted at 10:31 PM • No Comments

I know there has been a lot of hype about Firefox, its faster, its this, its that. Its actually not massively faster than Internet Explorer (IE) but its a damn site more secure. Here we’re still using both browsers , simply because its going to be a long time before web design becomes compatible with both browsers by default. Some web sites look absolutely cack in Firefox believe it or not whilst I bet 99% work just fine in IE. A lot of sites load slowly in Firefox too, simply because they were optimised with IE in mind.

Anyway, its not all hype. There’s a little additional search box on my Firefox that enables me to search Google, Yahoo, Amazon, IMDB, the fabulous Wikipedia and tons more without having to use a load of toolbars. Although I have it there on IE by default, the Google toolbar slows things down a tad.

One thing we have noticed on this site (taking in its previous incarnation as MusicbizNews24.com too) and one of our search directories, Floorelevators.net, a short while ago the browser % of our visitors was 80/10 (with 10% using other alternatives) in Internet Explorers favour. From this weeks figures on the server stats there has been a big swing with figures now 52/31% in favour of IE, with the remaining 17% of browsers split between Safari, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror and Camino. If people have any doubts that IE could ever be over taken, look at what happened to the original Netscape browser.

Related Reading

Comparison Of Web Browsers [Wikipedia.org]
Are The Browser Wars Back? [Slate.MSN]
Browser Wars [Wikipedia.org]

Apr17

AntTV Broadcatching Software Released For Windows

Posted at 12:36 AM • No Comments

Everyone who is anyone now seems to have a ‘Podcast’ or is name dropping some obscure micro broadcast show nowadays. Others are already looking at the possibilities of “broadcatching”, put simply, podcasts with video besides just compressed audio content delivery.

Broadcatching refers to the use of RSS feeds and BitTorrent peer to peer file sharing as an alternative to distributing multimedia content on the Internet. Podcasting meets Tivo said some wise spark, other people have already labelled it Vlogging, or the self explanatary ‘video blogging’.

Latest sofware app for Windows users is a beta version of ANT which was released last week. ANT is an video RSS aggregator and player that has been available for Mac for a while now and has already been incorporated into a hack with the Sony PSP.

ANT can playback any media format and will sync audio with iTunes for playback on any MP3 portable. You can subscribe to any ‘Podcast’ or RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures and ANT will automatically download any audio and video content. ANT is currently freeware and still in Beta for both Mac and PC.

Thanks to Scobleizer

Apr15

War Of The Worlds Gets Mashed Up

Posted at 12:54 AM • No Comments

Seems nobody and nothing is sacred in the world of the bootleg remixer, the bastard pop purveyer or the mash-up DJ/remixer. Impeccable coincidence it seems in light of Steven Speilbergs forthcoming (June 29th in the US) Tom Cruise starred remake, but latest opus to get the once over is Jeff Wayne’s 1976 ‘rock musical concept album of the film’, ‘War Of The Worlds’, courtesy of one Grafyte (aka Alex C) Dundee student by day, DJ and Masher by night.

War Of The Worlds gets the DJ mash-up treatment from Alex C

Thankfully he edited the whole thing down to less than half an hour and threw in a bunch of breaks and the like from Leftfield, Faithless, Led Zeppelin and the Prodigy to liven up the prog rock classic and make it into one of the best mash-up projects I’ve heard in many many months. A bit of a keeper and handled with great respect for the original it has to be said.

Download from here

Trailer for Steven Spielbergs remake of ‘War Of The Worlds’ here.

Related

War Of The Worlds Trailers [Apple.com]
The Complete War of the Worlds [WOTW.org]
Study Guide for H. G. Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898) [Washington State Uni.]
Get Your Bootleg On [GYBO.org]
Yet More Beatles Mash Up Mayhem [Buzzsonic News]
Music For the Bootleg Generation [Buzzsonic News]

Apr13

Internet2. The Honeymoon Is Over

Posted at 1:20 AM • No Comments

We ran a report on the uber-fast Internet2 college broadband network back in November last year. At the time the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) were said to be in tentative talks with the administrators of Internet2, hoping both to test next-generation video delivery projects and to monitor peer-to-peer piracy on the ultra high-speed network.

No great surprise that today the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed lawsuits against 405 students at 18 colleges in the U.S. , alleging that they are using the private-research network to trade pirated songs. According to the RIAA, students with access to Internet2 are increasingly using a file-sharing application called i2hub to “steal copyrighted songs and other works on a massive scale,” the organization said in a statement released yesterday.

“Students find i2hub especially appealing because they mistakenly believe their illegal file-sharing activities can’t be detected in the closed environment of the Internet2 network,” it continued.

To connect to this extremely fast network students need to download a free client from Direct Connect whoâ€™s website states, â€œUnlike other impersonal, server-driven file-sharing networks, Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network.”

Internet2 is part of the Abilene network and is essentially a vastly faster version of the Internet, a proving ground for high-bandwidth technologies. Speaking to Tech Republic last year Steve Corbato, the director of backbone network infrastructure for Internet2 said, “Abilene has become a necessity for research universities,and it’s not just about building a really fast network. University members rely on it to collaborate with colleagues and students around the world.”

The network used by Internet2 was launched in 1998 by a nonprofit consortium of 206 universities, 70 corporate partners (including IBM and Microsoft) and a number of government agencies, including the Library of Congress, to develop the next generation of Internet technologies.

The RIAA has sued more than 9,000 people for distributing songs using peer-to-peer software like Grokster and Morpheus in the past two years.

In a seperate action announced yesterday the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the world governing body for the international music industry said they were launching the biggest wave of legal actions against internet music file-sharers yet. New cases were launched against 963 individuals in 11 countries across Europe and Asia. Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Iceland and Japan pursued illegal song-swappers for the first time

Jan23

Yet More Beatles Mash Up Mayhem

Posted at 12:27 PM • No Comments

We’ve already mentioned the Beastles and the ‘Revolved’ Beatles remix mash-ups on these pages in recent weeks and now there’s another one worthy (or not) of your attention. Beatallica.

Although they’re not in the truest sense of the meaning, mash-up or ‘bastard pop’ as celebrated vigorously on the bootleggers ‘bible’, ‘Get Your Bootleg On’ (or GYBO to those in the know), Beatallica have the spirit of the art down to a tee. A sense of humour and an unlikely clashing of musical genres. Online rockzine Blabbermouth probably summed them up the best by saying that musically they were, “arrangements of Fab Four standards with wonderfully unsubtle references
to Metallica’s songs and a spot-on imitation of James Hetfield’s distinctive vocals…”

So probably more in common with parody like the Rutles and Dread Zeppelin than the genius of Loo and Placido but worthy of a mention here also for their usage of BitTorrent to distribute both their albums, ‘A Garage Dayz Night’ and ‘Beatallica’, not only in the ubiquitous MP3 format but in the lossless audio format Flac. Props all round and great fun to boot (no pun etc….).

Related Reading

Another Beatles Mash Up [MusicbizNews24.com]
Meet the Beastles [MusicbizNews24.com]
Music For the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]
Culture Deluxe [CultureDeluxe.com]

Jan23

Chemical Brothers Get Mashed Up

Posted at 1:34 AM • No Comments

Big Beat ‘Godfathers’ the Chemical Brothers are the latest big names from the world of ‘Electronica’ to get booted and remixed on the eve of the release of their new album ‘Push The Button’.

The Prodigy have been given the same honour twice. Last November ‘Music For The Bootleg Generation’ an unofficial remix of the ten year old rave classic ‘Music For the Jilted Generation’ appeared on BitTorrent and mash-up websites. Their last album, ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ appeared on P2P networks, remixed, as ‘Always Outsiders, Never Outdone’ even before the release of the official album.

The Chemicals unofficial remix/mash-up album ‘Flip The Switch’ will be available for download tomorrow, with renegade reworkings from mash up scene hipsters like Cry.On.My.Console, Fake ID, Dunproofin, McSleazy, Big Bad Baz and others. The official album ‘Push The Button’ is released the same day.

Related Reading

Flip The Switch [ChemicalBrothersRemixed.com]
Chemical Brothers-Official Site [ChemicalBrothers.com]
Music for the Bootleg Generation [MusicbizNews24.com]
Boom Selection [BoomSelection.info]

Dec31

Bit Torrent Meets Kazaa? Exeem P2P Arrival Imminent.

Posted at 4:36 PM • No Comments

The P2P underground is buzzing this week with further news on the imminent appearance of Exeem, the new file sharing app from the people behind the popular outlawed Bit Torrent site Suprnova.org. Suprnova.org, deemed a Universal BitTorrent source, was a web site which distributed descriptor files for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Many of these torrents described could potentially have been used for copyright infringement.

Although the Slovenian based site didn’t actually host any illegal files, but links to Torrents, the owners pulled the plug on the site December 19th 2004 after various legal threats from, in particular the MPAA after a protracted worldwide clampdown on movie file sharing from the film industry body and various copyright and legal bodies.

In an interview conducted by net radio station NovaStream.org yesterday (December 30th) spokesman Sloncek explained that eXeem is “like Kazaa and BitTorrent,” though unlike the Bit Torrent tracker sites Exeem is decentralized. The software is being developed by an anonymous (so far) company called Swarm Systems Inc., registered on the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis an ‘offshore ruse’ used to good effect more recently by the under fire Kazaa.

Cynics and critics have already expressed disappointment in the much hyped file sharing application with its proposed use of adware to finance development and the possibility of it being just another decentralised P2P network like Kazaa. There’s an early Beta test review here and latest screenshots here and you can download the Beta software for Exeem here.

Related Reading

Sloncek Announces Upcoming Arrival of eXeem [Slyck.com]
Is Suprnova Exeem For Real? [P2PNet.net]
Novastream Radio Sloncek Interview [Novastream.org]
Decentralizing Bit Torrent [Slashdot.org]
TorrentBits.org and Suprnova.org Go Dark [Slashdot.org]
Suprnova.org Wikipedia [Wikipedia.org]
BitTorrent Operator Bites Back at MPAA [InternetNews.com]
The Bit Torrent Effect [WiredMag.com]
BitTorrent Plus Kazaa Equals… Exeem? [ExtremeTech.com]
Interview with Sloncek of SuprNova [Slyck.com]
The BitTorrent P2P File-sharing System [the Register]

Dec24

Meet The Beastles

Posted at 11:13 PM • No Comments

Boston, Mass. based spinner DJBC is the lastest Mash-up instigator to have a bash at the Beatles with his Beastles project. A mash-up of the Beastie Boys and the Beatles, unsurprisingly. There’s 9 tracks on the site and even downloadable cover art. Not sure if its on par with the much mentioned ‘trendsetting’ DJ Dangermouse ‘Grey Album’ Beatles mash-up but its a lot of fun and better than the Beatallica project.

Widespread publicity will probably mean a C&D somewhere along the line so grab the downloads while you can.

Related Links

Beastie Boys
The Beatles
Get Your Bootleg On [Gybo V3]
At Last the Mash-up Has Gone Mainstream [NewsDay.com]
Raiding the 20th Century, the History of the Cutup [MusicalBear.com]
Protest Music [Alternet.org]
BeatMixed [Beatmixed.com]
Boom Selection [BoomSelection.info]
Grey Tuesday, Online Cultural Activism and the Mash up of Music and Politics [FirstTuesday.org]

Dec17

BitTorrent Gets Some Competition

Posted at 11:24 PM • No Comments

Everybody who knows a little about P2P file applications will be aware of BitTorrent, the fact that it has long been the most popular P2P measured by the amount of data transferred between users and that it was created three years ago in the Python programming language by Bram Cohen.

More importantly, BitTorrent uses a file sharing system known as ‘swarming’ . It works by breaking a file into lots of little packets, distributing those packets around to computers that have downloaded the file, and randomly requesting those packets from whoever has them. Most notably, the system allows many people to download the same file without slowing down everyone else’s download effectively making more efficient useage of bandwidth.

Though BitTorrent is the P2P app gaining all the column inches in the worldwide press due to recent litigation from the MPAA the first peer-to-peer content delivery system to use the term “Swarming Downloads” was Swarmcast, invented by Justin Chapweske and bought by open source P2P developer OpenCola back in 2001.

Chapweske’s latest project from his Onion Networks outfit, SwarmStream –software algorithms that will let users stream video and audio data more rapidly– was unveiled this week . “If people are impressed by Bittorrent, they’re going to be absolutely blown away by swarmstreaming and how far we’ve taken swarming since its humble beginnings five years ago,” promises the software author.

This third generation swarming technology greatly enhances swarming by allowing streaming or progressive playback of media files. This means that users can watch videos while they are still being downloaded. “Swarming is mathematically provable as the fastest way to download data,” says Chapweske, founder and CEO of Onion Networks. “Whether it’s a web page, a pdf or a video file, computers are now going to be able to stream it.”

“The technology improves swarming by ensuring that the bytes that the user wants next are scheduled to be received next. So if they’re playing back a video file, the bytes from the front of the file will be received first. If the user (or application) skips forward to the middle of the file, the bytes at the middle of the file will be prioritized. Thus, unlike first generation swarming systems like Swarmcast or Bittorrent, you don’t have to wait for the entire file to download to do something useful with it!.”

The technique of downloading a single file in pieces from multiple sources is also used in peer-to-peer systems
derived from Gnutella such as BearShare and LimeWire.

Related Reading

Data Swarms to Speed Net Streaming [NewScientist.com]
Swarmblog [Chapweske.com]
Brian’s BitTorrent FAQ and Guide [Dessent.net]
Has Hollywood Met its Napster? [Wired.com]
P2P Makes its Business Case [InternetNews.com]
Open Cola:Swarming Folders [OpenP2P.com]
OpenCola Creates Collaborative Computing Solutions for Content Communities [EContentMag.com]
Dissecting BitTorrent: Five Months in a Torrent’s Lifetime [Pam2004.org] 12pg PDF