Buzzsonic.com

Since the blog makeover a couple of weeks ago I’ve been bombarded by comment spam for some reason. Its one of the things that makes blogging work and not fun. So, I finally activated Askimet (Automattic Kismet to give it its full name) on my WordPress install (didn’t really pay attention to it before for some reason?). Its actually working wonders right now and since activating the plug-in its halted more than 2,200 of the most bloodcurdlingly despicable types of spam you can imagine that up to now I’ve been having to edit manually daily.

Askimet comes installed by default in Word Press but you have to activate it in the Plugins area in your admin area and get a free APi key. A five minute task that’ll save you hours of work weekly.

Related Links

Askimet FAQ ( Askimet)

Late last week Google quietly acquired data visualization software tool, Trendalyzer from its parent company, Gapminder. They are already making the tool available for free here and the software developers have moved into Google’s Mountain View HQ.

Trendalyzer generates moving graphics and other novel effects in the display of facts, figures, and statistics in presentations.

The Official Google Blog reports, “We hope to provide the resources necessary to bring such work to its deserved wider audience by improving and expanding Trendalyzer and making it freely available to any and all users capable of thinking outside the X and Y axes.”

via Paid Content

Related Reading
A Word In Motion (Official Google Blog)

I mentioned the Gmail for your domain service back in July last year and things have moved along nicely since and now come under the umbrella of Google Apps which include being able to offer users all the features of Google email and Calendar, Docs and Spreadsheets branded with your own domain name. The Google Apps Premier Edition sign ups remain free until the end of April so its a great service for clubs, schools, small enterprise and groups in either the premier (with 10gb email space per account) or the freebie edition.

Another new-ish feature for Gmail users (or at least some accounts, its still in beta, naturally) is the ability to download POP3 mail from other email accounts. In particular this could be useful if you own a few domain names and need to be able to send and receive mail from several accounts all in one place. At the moment you can add a further five POP3 accounts to your Gmail account. Used in conjunction with Gmail Manager its saving me a bunch of time by alerting me to not only my Gmail accounts but email from five separate domain names too.

To check if the extra POP3 features have been activated on your account open up your Gmail, go to Setting>Accounts> and look for “Get mail from other accounts (download mail using POP3)”. Its worth shelling out the $5.99 it costs for a domain name from somewhere like 1and1 to plug it in to your Gmail account to get all the benefits of the Google service but with your own personal name.

I’m toggling between using Windows Live Writer for posting right now vs. using the Performancing Firefox add-on ScribeFire. Though for the last two days the Live Writer has been crashing everytime I try to add an image to the post. After losing two hours work yesterday I was on the brink of dumping the app completely and returning to ScribeFire.Having second thoughts Writer is simply fuller featured and offers things like the ability to add images to posts (ScribeFire doesn’t) and preview the post in your blog before publishing (much like WordPress does in the admin panel), two features I cant really do without.

Also ScribeFire doesn’t seem to have a minimize option so you either have to put up with it hogging the bottom of your screen, or you save and close. Obtrusive and I hate obtrusive, its what sends me rushing to the delete option!

Anyway, the crashing. Until I find the conflict (it used to work fine) I found an excellent plug-in which works around the problem Flickr4Writer.

Flickr4Writer is a simple plugin for Windows Live Writer that enables you to browse Flickr and insert an image from Flickr into a Writer post. The project is part of CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.

I have three MySpace profiles, one for my latest music project, one to network my travel site and one which acts as an archive for my old bands music. My latest music profile (the 99th Floor Elevators) is the most active and has proved great for networking and making new contacts in that field.

I actually hate manually visiting MySpace daily so a neat ’shortcut’ is to install the unofficial MySpace Firefox toolbar which is unobtrusive enough and enables you to quickly toggle between profile pages, messages and the like. The toolbar auto hides when the MySpace page is closed. One thing the toolbar is lacking is the ability to log-in to multiple accounts, that would make it even handier.

Related Links
Download Unofficial MySpace Toolbar (Mozilla.org)
MySpace Toolbar Home (Freewebs.com)

There’s me rambling on about Firefox extensions in my last post then I stumble across this lunatic (with too much time on his hands?) who installed the top 100 Firefox extensions on his browser. Amazingly it still worked.

Firefox With 100 Extensions Installed @ Flickr

I’ve been using the blogging software WordPress for around three years now and in all of that time there really is nothing to touch it. Why? Its free (Open Source), it has a massive user base and support network, plug-ins, mods, widgets and themes galore, oh and did I mention it doesn’t cost a penny?

Of course free doesn’t always mean great but in this case, you get what you don’t pay for. I have tried literally hundreds of mods over the years, different themes/skins and modifications. Basically I like to tinker and I think I’m getting closer to my ideal WordPress install (at least for my needs).

Buzzsonic.com (as of today) runs on WordPress v2.0.2, so its not the latest install (which is v2.1.2). Anyway, I thought I’d list my top ten (or eleven!) modifications which I’m finding the most useful right now. This could well change soon but these are what I consider the most useful WordPress mods.

1. Glossy Blue Theme- For a simple, quick overhaul of the default WordPress look this neat two column Web 2.0-ish looking theme is one of the easiest ways to get a cool looking make-over. A close second was Glued Ideas Subtle which you might go for if you prefer a three column look. Honorable mentions go to Misty Look and Semiologic (I’m using an older install of this theme here). Read the rest of this entry »

Stan Beer at Australian IT blog IT Wire today talks about a Windows version of Evolution the Linux desktop alternative to Microsoft Outlook.

“Evolution for Windows exists, it’s easy to install and it works! No sooner had the ink dried on an article I had penned bemoaning the fact that OpenOffice.org on the Windows platform does not include an equivalent to Microsoft’s Outlook, when a poster pointed me to a very exciting non-project.” Reports Beer.

Good tip. I’ve been happy with Thunderbird for around three years now but have started to miss having a built in calendaring client. So, this morning I added Lightning, the Thunderbird calendar extension (actually based on the stand-alone Firebird client) and downloaded Evolution for Windows to try both out. Both options seem less daunting than exporting my Thunderbird settings and mail back into Outlook.

Early impressions favor Lightning for me as Evolution for Windows is still very buggy right now with hung screens and such but its worth a look for early adopters and beta testers.

Related Reading

Evolution On Win 32 (Sourceforge)
Novell Drives Nail into Microsoft Office Coffin (IT Wire)
Export Thunderbird To Outlook (Broobles.com)
Importing Thunderbird Mails in Outlook and Outlook Express (Robert Peloschek)

Here’s a neat piece of software that I discovered care of Gina Trapani’s excellent weekly tipsheet ‘Geek To Live’ at Lifehacker.

If you’re like me you probably have a stack of passwords and log-ins hidden away in secure .doc files, scraps of paper and the like. Alternatively you can keep a secure and searchable database to retrieve those hard to remember passwords without compromising security using the free, open source software application KeePass.

There’s a great ‘how-to’ at Lifehacker here, so I wont repeat it.

Related Reading

Strong Passwords: How To Create and Use Them (Microsoft.com)
Choosing Your Password (Yahoo Security Center)

The expected new update of Apple’s all-in-one music jukebox software, iTunes 4.8 was released today and adds new video playback features, including the ability to drag and drop movie clips from your computer into the iTunes Library for easy cataloging and organization. The video clips appear with a new movie camera icon in your library.

There’s three options for video playback under the preferences tab which gives you the choice of full screen, separate window, or main window playback. You can drag the borders of the video to change the size of the screen. There’s also a new iTunes store preference with a choice of 1-click buying (though not sure Amazon will be too pleased with Apple’s use of that term) and ‘buy now’ shopping cart puchasing . Its all pretty seemless and using my Paypal account plugged into iTunes its made buying music the easiest its ever been for me in over thirty years of musical fanatasism, going back to the days of the 8 track cartridge.

Download iTunes 4.8

Related Reading
Apple Releases iTunes 4.8 [iPodLounge.com]

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]

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

Related Reading

Experimenting With BiTTorrent and RSS 2.0 [Blogs.Harvard.edu]
How To Create Your Own Podcast [About.com]
PSPcasting on Your Mac [Engadget]
Video Blogging [VideoBlogging.info]
Ready For Your Close-up? Here Come The Vlogs [MSNBC]
Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings [NY Times]
RSS meets BitTorrent meets TiVo [ScottRaymond.net]
BitTorrent and RSS Create Disruptive Revolution [eWeek.com]
BroadCatching Using RSS + BitTorrent to Automatically Download TV Shows [Engadget]

Quite a few things that we’ve missed whilst we’ve been ‘away’, even since the end of January and the last proper posts here under the old URL, the buzz surrounding ‘Podcasting ‘ has gone from a speculative whisper to a very loud shout, to the point where the grassroots internet broadcasting+P2P+RSS craze has even spawned its own Expo , ‘The Portable Media Expo’, which will debut in California this November.

Weblog pioneer Dave Winer probably explains it best here:

“Think how a desktop aggregator works. You subscribe to a set of feeds, and then can easily view the new files from all of the feeds together, or each feed separately. Podcasting works the same way, with one exception. Instead of reading the new content on a computer screen, you listen to the new content on any capable mp3 player on the computer or hardware player such as the iPod. Think of your player with podcasting as having a set of subscriptions that are checked regularly for updates.”

The latest variation on the Podcasting ‘theme’ is ‘Skypecasting’ which has been picking up mentions over the last few weeks on various websites with many people pulling their quotes from a spartan mention on the News Target website. Though the word seems to have been originally penned by Stuart Henshall on his Skype Journal back in December of last year where he revealed a straight forward how-to.

“The SkypeCasters’ recipe is simple and we have written it up in detail. Add together Skype, Virtual Audio Cables, Windows Sound Recorder, a simple Wav to mp3 converter MT_Enclosures and iPodder and you can be Podcasting later today! The solution will cost you $40.”

The Skype software was founded by Niklas Zennstr�m and Janus Friis, the creators of Kazaa and boasts 29 million users. Skype is the largest of the new breed of companies offering voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, which lets Internet connections double as telephone lines by treating calls no differently than e-mail.

The new development is being done without Skype’s active input. But Skype has made some of its source code public so developers can tinker with new applications, such as Skypecasting, Skype spokeswoman Kelly Larrabee told CNet, “We’re aware of this and encourage developers to help facilitate it,” she said.

Related Links

VoiP Gets the Podcast Treatment [CNet News]
Hot Recorder [HotRecorder.com]
Skype + Podcast Recorder = SkypeCasters [SkypeJournal.com]
iPodder [Sourceforge.net]
Skype + Podcast Recorder = SkypeCasters ( 8 page PDF instructions download) [Henshall.com]
Adam Currys Weblog [Curry.com]
Pod Show [PodShow.com]
iPodder Podcast Directory [iPodder.org]

The much vaunted arrival of the eXeem P2P software application was unveiled yesterday. The software that some peer-to-peer advocates are hyping as “download of the year”, Exeem is said to merge the speedy “swarmed ‘ downloads of BitTorrent with the powerful global search capabilities of Kazaa.

Andrej “Sloncek” Preston, Swarm Systems spokesman-the Caribbean registered company behind Exeem-told CNet News, “We have not created BitTorrent, but a totally new P2P, which is a lot different from BitTorrent.” ‘Sloncek’, who operated the now-defunct SuprNova site added, “I think it’s a fresh approach. Only time will tell if it’s going to work.”

The hype seems to have been working with 120,000+ downloads of the new P2P app in little over 24 hours though like many other file-swapping programs, eXeem comes bundled with several pieces of advertising spyware, including the Cydoor Technologies adware utility and the LookSmart toolbar, which plugs into Internet Explorer.

The software isn’t meeting with universally good reviews around the Net. Some users have already complained about the addition of the advertising software. Needless to say an unofficial spyware free version of eXeem, called eXeem Lite has already appeared online as a pre-emptive strike for file sharers wary of spyware laden P2P software like the underfire KaZaa.

Users looking forward to the ‘decentralised BitTorrent’ claims of eXeem will maybe paying attention to the claims of peer-to-peer tracking company BayTSP, who track illegal downloads for major film studios and record companies. BayTSP said it has long provided information on BitTorrent users, including specific files shared and IP addresses, to its clients. It will likely do the same with eXeem, its executives said.

“We can still identify all the BitTorrent users,” BayTSP Chief Executive Mark Ishikawa told CNet. “Everyone who uses it still has the same issues of getting caught that they’ve always had.”

Related Reading

Exeem Opens New File Swapping Doors [CNet News]
eXeem Decentralises BitTorrent Sharing [BetaNews.com]
Exeem Released [Slyck.com]
Why eXeem Shouldn’t be Replacing our BitTorrent Clients [P2P Consortium]
eXeem Lite Launched [Slyck.com]
More On The Exeem P2P App [MusicbizNews24.com]
Bit Torrent Meets Kazaa? Exeem P2P Arrival Imminent [MusicbizNews24.com]
BayTSP Provides Automatic DMCA Notices [Slashdot.org]

There’s a more indepth look at the much talked about Beta release of the Exeem P2P client on French file sharing magazine/website Ratiatum , revealed today. Screen shots aplenty and some insight into the functions which include searching for specific files ala Kazaa , though as mentioned before the software is built around the ’swarming’ concept used by BitTorrent and uses a BT client authored by Swedish software engineer Arvid Norberg called LibTorrent.

Rather than being the ‘replacement’ for the Suprnova BitTorrent site it seems that Exeem is owned by an offshore development company much like Kazaa and will be using Suprnova owner Sloncek as its ’spokeperson’ and official PR front. Anxious fans of the now defunct Suprnova site will be alarmed to hear that Exeem is to be shackled with adware and be closed source rather than the Open Source BitTorrent. A public beta outside of the closed circle of 5000 testers will be released later this month.

Related Reading

Exeem “Successor” to Suprnova Announced [Slashdot.org]
Bit Torrent Meets Kazaa? Exeem P2P Arrival Imminent [MusicbizNews24.com]
The BitTorrent P2P File Sharing System [the Register]

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]

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

If you had to name the P2P file sharing applications that have sent seismic shockwaves through the music industry (and as broadband catches on, the film industry) in terms of column inches and court appearances, Napster (in its original untethered form) and KaZaa would be the names that came to mind. Next down the list would quite possibly be Gnutella and some of its variants, including Bearshare, Limewire and Morpheus.

Gnutella was written by Nullsoft founder (makers of Winamp and Shoutcast) Justin Frankel who Rolling Stone magazine once called “the worlds most dangerous geek”.

Just as geeky but not quite as ‘dangerous’ is Ian Clarke another P2P software pioneer and the man best known for Freenet which, unlike other peer-to-peer networks, is primarily intended for decentralized content redistribution, to combat censorship and allow people to communicate with near-total anonymity rather than act as a search engine for free Eminem and Britney Spears downloads.

Clarke has recently unveiled his latest project, Dijjer a new open source P2P content distribution tool designed to allow the distribution of large files from Web servers while virtually eliminating the bandwidth cost to the file’s publisher.

The work in progress is aimed at anyone who needs to distribute large files to large numbers of people but who can’t afford to pay for the bandwidth that this would normally require .

Dijjer also offers ’sequential downloads’, so if you tried to download a video through Dijjer you could start watching the video before the download completed. This is because Dijjer behaves like a web server, pieces of a file are download in-order and fed to your web browser when they arrive, allowing your browser to start displaying content before it has completely downloaded. Kind of like a Bit Torrent that streams, though one of the reasons behind the project was Clarkes dissatisfaction with apps like BitTorrent.

Related Reading

Ian Clarke’s New P2P Tool [P2PNet.net]
The World’s Most Dangerous Geek [Rolling Stone]
The Free Network Project [Sourceforge]
Free Radical: Ian Clarke Has Big Plans For the Internet [OpenP2P.com]
FreeNet’s Ian Clarke Answers Privacy Questions [Slashdot.org]

Sydney, Australia based P2P company Sharman Networks today launched version 3 of its of controversial file sharing software Kazaa, this time integrated with VoiP application Skype which enables users with the software (and a headset and microphone) to make free phone calls worldwide. The newest edition of the file-sharing software, also sports enhanced search capabilities and a trial membership with blog service provider TypePad.

Kazaa claim that over 300 million people have already downloaded the Kazaa application and are using P2P technology legally to purchase licensed music files, videos, games and ring tones, though the percentage of that 300 million that actually use Kazaa to buy legal content wasn’t released. Recent research from Comscore Media Metrix suggest that Kazaa’s once all conquering user base of 30 million has dwindled down to 16 million in the face of the increasing legal action and the popularity of more anonymous P2P apps like Bit Torrent and eDonkey.

Kazaa has been heamoraging users in their droves in the last year under sustained legal action from the RIAA who have been targetting users of the software for illegally sharing music files with other users of the software.

Luxembourg based Skype was created by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who famously also authored Kazaa, part of the underlying FastTrack file sharing network (which included Morpheus and Grokster) before selling the Kazaa software to Sharman in January 2002 after being blocked by copyright action in the Dutch courts in December 2001.

Related Reading

Kazaa’s Latest Version Enables Free Internet Voice Calls [NewsFactor.com]
Kazaa Offers Unlimited Free Internet Phone Calls [ZDnet News]
Kazaa Most Scanned in RIAA Subpoena War [P2PNet.net]
Peer to Peer Kazaa’s Offices Raided [TechWeb.com]
Kazaa Raid Stirs up P2P Rivalries [PCWorld.com]
Kazaa Loses P2P Crown [CNet News]
Putting the Hype in VoIP [the Register]
How Not To Get Sued By The RIAA For File-Sharing [EFF.org]
Kazaa Owner Complains of Copyright Infringement [Chilling Effects]

Wirehog, a new breed of file-sharing program spawned by the creators of Thefacebook, made its official debut this week. The program, which is integrated with the popular social networking website for more than 250 colleges and universities in the USA, facilitates the transfer of files between digital ‘friends’ who can share anything from documents and photos to music and movies.

Unlike popular file-sharing programs such as Kazaa and Morpheus,whose users have been the targets of recent lawsuits and which allow users to search and download among a worldwide network of computers, Wirehog only facilitates downloading between two acquaintances in a fashion more akin to the file-transfer feature on instant messaging programs. Users connect directly to their friends’ computers and can only access files already designated for sharing.

The RIAA and MPAA pursue illegal file sharers by connecting to peer-to-peer networks and searching for specific movie or music files owned by their members. Once a user is found sharing such illegal files, the RIAA or MPAA download the offending file, make a note of the user’s Internet Protocol address and choose whether or not to pursue a lawsuit against the individual.

Jarad Carleton, an IT Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan in Palo Alto, California, likened Wirehog to Aimster, a P2P application that piggybacked on AOL’s instant messaging software. “The theory was that you could more safely trade copyrighted material if you were only trading within a trusted community of friends that you choose to include in your contact list,” he told TechNewsWorld.

But if Wirehog takes off like thefacebook.com, which reached the half-million user mark last month after less than nine months online, it could attract the attention of anti-piracy groups which have lobbied and waged legal battles against programs which ‘encourage’ file-sharing.

Chad Tilbury, the director of worldwide Internet enforcement at the Motion Picture Association of America, said a program like Wirehog could run a afoul of copyright laws. “Certainly, we dont really want to group something like this with these mass engines of piracy like Kazaa and others”, Tilbury said. But he said no file-sharing program would necessarily be immune from litigation.

The Beta test of Wirehog is currently only open to Facebook users from Harvard and Stanford. With more expected to be added soon.

Related Reading

Wirehog P2P Melds Social Networks and File-Sharing [TechNewsWorld.com]
Facebook to Feature File Sharing Device [the Dartmouth Online]
Next-Generation File Sharing with Social Networks [OpenP2P.com]
Facebook Creator to Debut Wirehog [the Harvard Crimson]
New P2P Software Could End Illegal Music Squabbles [the Register]
Grouper Beta Review [PCMag.com]
File Sharing Goes Social [Shirky.com]
P2P Routing with Social Networks [Stanford.edu] 19pg pdf

Grokster, which distributes one of the more popular Internet file sharing programs, plans this week to start Grokster Radio, an Internet radio service powered by Mercora. Mercora was formed by Srivats Sampath, who founded McAfee and was at one time the anti-virus company’s president and CEO.

Mercora is a small application, which you download and install on your computer. It scans your hard drive, looks for all sorts of music files - MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA - and builds a tiny database. Then you send invites to your pals, inviting them to join your buddy list. Once they join your buddy list, they can listen and control a special playlist that you create for them.

Existing Internet radio stations stream songs and programming over the Web to individual computers. Mercora’s technology also streams music but works more like a file sharing or peer-to-peer program similar to the original Napster because its users can search for songs stored on other computers connected to the Internet.

Mercora users can hear a song streamed directly from the owner’s computer, but they can’t download a digital copy of the song to their own computers.

P2P radio provides a way of sharing songs with a much-reduced opportunity for copyright infringement. Music fans get to play stuff they like to other music fans, and the music industry gets an opportunity to gauge what’s hot and what’s not - without the risk of losing too much income. Artists get paid a royalty, albeit a very small one, Mercora monitors the streamed songs and pays royalty fees to various music publishing and recording rights organizations. The company pays the same rates set by the government for Web radio stations.

Mercora has signed up about 200,000 users since releasing a beta version of its software in June, and those members are sharing about 10 million song tracks. More than 8 million copies of the Grokster program have been installed on computers around the world since it was introduced four years ago and is almost as notorious for its ‘piggybacked spyware’ as it is for its file sharing capabilities. Mercora claims to be spyware and adware free.

Read More:SFGate.com
Press Release [BusinessWire.com]

Related Reading

Grokster Touts ‘Legal Licensed’ P2P Music Share System [the Register]
Grokster Teams With P2P Radio [CNet News]
Can IM Morph into Instant Music? [CNet News]
Grokster Wins Big in 9th Circuit [Corante.com]
Former McAfee CEO Takes on P2P [Wired News]
Pest Encyclopedia-Grokster [PestControl.com]
Beyond Filesharing:P2P Radio Arrives [TechNewsWorld]
MGM vs. Grokster [EFF.org]
Grokster Forum [Zeropaid.com]
P2P Radio Streaming [SourceForge]
Peercast [Peercast.org]
Internet Radio the P2P Way [OpenP2P.com]
Here Comes P2P Radio [Gigaom.com]

A tiny European software company has done what the giants of the consumer electronics industry daren’t do - and put a potential Napster in every pocket.
Simeda, based in Bucharest, has ported Rendezvous to the Pocket PC platform and bundled it with a web server. The software automatically discovers other devices on a WiFi network and allows people to stream or share music with just a couple of clicks. Simeda’s CTO Razvan Dragomirescu tells us that the inspiration came from a series of speculative articles that ran here at The Register eighteen months ago in which we envisaged an Apple iPod enhanced with Bluetooth and Rendezvous, which is Apple’s trademark for the ZeroConf LAN discovery protocol. We nicknamed this ‘BluePod’.
Razvan says that after being inspired by the idea, he set about examining various implementations. He chose 802.11 networking because of its speed and range advantages. Given the overheads of the protocol, Bluetooth devices typically exchange data at only around 20 kbits/s.

Read Full Story : the Register

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