Hollywood Makes Deal With BitTorrent Creator

Via CNET: Hollywood studios announced an agreement with Bram Cohen, the creator of the popular BitTorrent file-swapping technology, that will keep him from helping users find pirated copies of movies online.Cohen had launched a service on his Web site last May that searched the Internet for file downloads that use his BitTorrent technology."BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing
films without a license to do so," Cohen said in a statement. "As such,
we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized
content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine."

What does this mean for you and I? Not much. We all know there are numerous sites online to search for torrents, if the need arises. Although many of these sites are taken down via legal action, new ones always seem to fill the void. I may sound like a broken record here, but why does the MPAA keeping fighting this instead of offering alternatives? Make your own darn sites for goodness sakes! Monetize them! Make a business plan! Then advertise the heck outta them! Cut a deal with iTunes! Do something!

The studios have made a tentative first step with the Movielink deal, but they’re a little late to the game. People don’t necessary know or care about Movielink when they know they can torrent it. But the truth is, it’s not that everyone wants something for free — that’s only part of the picture. What they’re not seeing is that people want time-shifted content that can travel with them. We want content we can sync to our portable players, we want movies we can watch on a plane, we want to catch up on our TV shows from our hotel rooms. And here’s the kicker: we WILL pay for the convenience. If iTunes hasn’t proved that, then the MPAA will never get it.

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There is an experiment in place over at WebmasterBrain.com to determine what search engine gives the most relevant results. You type something in the search box they provide (it should be a topic you are familar with), then you determine which of the 3 result sets is the most accurate. The results are dubbed "Brand X," "Brand Y," and "Brand Z." The brands they represent are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN (in no particular order, of course). So I tried it. Imagine my horror when I ended up picking "Yahoo!" 4 times in a row. Try it for yourself — who did you pick? After your results are displayed, you can then see some charts that show everyone’s aggregate data. Thank god Google is still winning there. I feel like a traitor.

Go ahead, show me some love…add yourself to my frappr map! Do you have one? Link to it in comments, and I’ll return the favor!

I was just checking out the extensions over at the Firefox website and found this great extension: Digg This! The extension adds Digg This! to the right-click or Tools menu. The Digg This! menu speeds up the process of submitting to the news website digg.com. Very cool. Now that you know, I want to hear your diggs on the Diggnation podcast!

I found this link on Digg.com, thanks to to having NickStarr in my friends list! He had dugg the link for me — great digg! You plug in your zip code and it will show you where to get an XBox 360 in your area! Joel is in line right now….brrrrr….

TiVo is expanding its service so users can can transfer their recorded TV shows to their PSPs and iPods. This feature is called "TiVoToGo." It also adds copy-protection measures to discourage copyright abuse that would anger Hollywood. Recorded shows will have digital watermarks that give TiVo the ability to trace the origin of a transferred program if it was ever to posted to the internet. Some techies had figured out how to transfer files to their portable devices already, but now, by adding support for the MPEG-4 video format, TiVo will do the conversions in the background. This feature is in beta now, but will be available to the general public early next year.

TiVo gets it! Like I said before, give people what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. Jim Denney, TiVo’s vice president of product marketing, agrees: "There’s a lot of flexibility now in the devices we support, and this puts choices in the consumer’s hands."

The only drawback is the transfer process from the TiVo Series2 set-top-box to a PC (a necessary step before syncing to a portable). The transfer is basically real-time, meaning an hour-long show will take an hour to transfer to the PC, then about another 10 minutes or so to sync to a portable device.

Via BetaNews: Movielink announced on Monday that it had signed a deal with Twentieth Century Fox to offer the company’s movies for download. The agreement means Movielink — a joint venture between five Hollywood studios — can now offer movies from all the major studios.

Now that Movielink offers movies from all the major studios, the question is are you willing to pay in order to legally download them? The price point isn’t bad - $1.99 for a rental. Now in beta, Movielink is offering purchases too - $8.99 to keep a movie you download. Are you okay with the DRM? Is Movielink going to make it if they don’t offer support for portable devices? I suppose time will tell…

Via Technology Blog:

The Top 20 Geek Novels:

1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune — Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson 37% (37)
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman 31% (29)
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham 21%

How many have you read? Apparently, I’m not a geek at all…I’ve only read three!

…because this is one of the prizes in Firefox developers contest. Whoa. Via GetFirefox: We’re giving away dual-processor, Firefox-skinned Alienware machines (price tag: $4700) to the three developers who extend firefox in ways that are worthy of such raw computing power. We’ve also got iPod Nanos, O’Reilly gift certificates and Firefox swag. The contest ends January 6th, so you’d better read the contest site and get coding!

Microsoft’s Office Live program is soon going to be released in beta and you can sign up for that beta now. Office Live is not going to be an online office suite, rather, it is a service that provides a business with "its own domain name, Web site, and e-mail accounts for free." Additionally, it offers "expert business management applications, such as customer, project, and document management tools, and a security-enhanced private Web site—affordably managed and maintained by Microsoft—where you can work together and share information with your employees, customers, suppliers, and contractors." However, it is going to integrate with your existing business software, so you still have to buy Microsoft Office software! To me, it almost sounds like it offering some features of Small Business Server for those who don’t want to invest in a server product.