Legal P2P Video Downloads

Peer Impact is a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) service that offers legal downloads of TV shows, movies, music, and games (read more in my previous post here). A service of Wurld Media, Peer Impact has just signed deals with Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros., which adds to their catalog that already included NBC Universal content. I applaud the studios and labels for getting on board with P2P and legitimizing the usefulness of this technology. By offering an easy-to-use, legal alternative to bitTorrent, the download tool of geeks, average users now have another legal resource that lets them join in the fun of downloading videos, songs, and games to their computer and mobile devices. If you want to try Peer Impact, you can download the Peer Impact client here. The only complaint I have is that there is no way to browse their catalog from the website - you have to download the client first. Hmph.

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It’s here! Google launched Google Checkout, an online payment system. Google Checkout is not a person-to-person payment system like PayPal, but a system for merchants and shoppers alike. Google Checkout can be used as an alternative to existing checkout options on a retailer’s website. If you have a Google account (which you already have if you’re a Gmail user), you can sign into your account on the retailer’s website and complete the checkout process using the credit card number stored with your Google account. It will also eliminate the need for you to fill out the detailed shipping and billing fields, too. Using Google Checkout, you won’t have to share your credit card info with the merchants - just Google, of course. But hey, why not? Google already scans your email, indexes your computer, and saves your search history, so what’s the big deal about giving them your credit card number? Besides, Google guarantees that users will not be responsible for unauthorized use of their account.

A nice feature of Google Checkout is that it allows you to control email from the merchant - if you don’t want email from a merchant, you can turn off in your Google account. Also, Checkout stores the  transaction history of all your purchases. For merchants, Checkout offers review ratings from Checkout users. The merchants are offered the Checkout code at no charge.

I am certainly looking forward to using this new system…are you?

Cool! But wait, is it? YouTube just announced a deal with NBC to bring promos of the network’s primetime lineup and other content to the YouTube website starting this fall. Not only will there be promos, but there will also be internet-exclusive content, and behind-the-scenes videos. First up in rotation will be content from "The Office", then "Saturday Night Live," and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." It sounds great, actually….but then I started thinking - if the networks sign on with social video sites like YouTube, that gives them a lot of leverage and power to boot out the copyright violators they find uploading content to that same site. And who are these dastardly copyright violators? None other than the most rabid fans of their shows! Who else will make video montages of their favorites scenes from their favorite shows? Or make music videos from their favorite shows set to their favorite songs? Fans do! And this user-created content is what makes a site like YouTube so fun. Partner up with the major players - the networks, the studios, the labels, whoever - and the grey area of copyright law will become very black and white. I’m not so sure this is a good thing.

Guba is a website where you can rent or buy movies and TV shows to watch on your computer, portable device or networked TV. It’s easy to use - you find the movie or TV show you want to watch by browsing or using the search box, click rent or buy, then pay & watch. Renting lets you to watch a movie for a limited time (usually 1 day) while buying a movie allows you to keep it permanently. Now that a major studio, Warner Brothers, has signed on with Guba, there is a lot of great content. Guba will start off by selling nearly 200 movie and television titles, and this will increase over time. Another legal, easy way to download content. Thank you, Warner Bros., for providing us legal ways to watch videos. More please.

Sweet! The new version of Digg went live today. The new Digg website focuses not just on tech and geeky news, but now also World & Business, Science, Videos, Entertainment, and Gaming. The navigation menu, has been conveniently located on the left, with easy access to your profile, your history, your friends’ activity, and digging tools. However, if you would prefer the old-school menu, this guy has a hack via Firefox extension posted on his blog.

Gada.be is a website that lets you find content based on social tags. When you do a search on
Gada.be, your results page has results from many of your favorite search engines, and the links are categorized by the search service. So you will have Yahoo! results, then Google results, then MSN results, etc., all on one page. (See my previous post here). The weird domain name was picked because it’s easy to query from using a mobile phone.

It was just announced that Gada.be is getting revamped and getting a new name: TagJag. (NOTE: the TagJag site is not live yet! Redirects to Gada.be right now!) There are screenshots of the new look over at TechCrunch. I have to say, I love the new look. HUGE improvement. Very Web 2.0. It looks to be better-organized and more useful - especially with the categories across the top. I’m certainly looking forward to testing this out.

A new patent granted to Google on June 20th, 2006 is for the Google File System (or GFS). According to the patent, the Google File System is "A system [that] may facilitate performance of a data-modifying operation in a file network that includes multiple servers that store replicas of data. One of the servers may serve as a primary replica for one of the replicas of data and at least one other one of the servers may serve as at least one secondary replica for the replica of data. The system may send data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica based on a network topology and independently send a data-modifying control signal that requests execution of the data-modifying operation using the data associated with the data-modifying operation to the primary replica and the at least one secondary replica."

So, in English, what this means is that Google has patented a system of storing and accessing data that is distributed over multiple file servers. "What Google recognized was that if they built their own system using cheap, off-the-shelf PCs and ran their own operating system, they could afford limitless expansion," stated Chris Sherman, the executive editor of SearchEngineWatch stated in an interview with CIO Magazine last month. The tens of thousands of servers have the ability to process requests lightning-fast, making Google, essentially, a supercomputer.

This system is already running the Google Search engine and the myriad of other Google Services, so what’s the big deal about the patent? Because this makes it official - if Google has now patented the distributed file server model of storing and accessing data, then really, the Google OS for consumers cannot be too far away. I’m serious! Spelling out the details of GFS in public record for the world to read? Sounds like GoogleOS is on its way. Just my theory.

If all you need is a browser to make a spreadsheet, check your email, instant message, & use a database, then how much longer will it really be before GoogleOS arrives?

Wait! Didn’t they already confirm it was in the works? Ah, yes…in January, they most certainly did.

I love trying to see what my T-Mobile phone with its basic internet (aka T-Zones) package can do. As you may know, I don’t have a data plan…a data plan on a Razr would be overkill, I think. (Time for an MDA, perhaps?) I was interested in Soonr, a remote access client that lets you access your PC from a mobile phone with a data plan. Data plan? Ha! I forged ahead anyway.

Soonr’s key selling point was that there was no software that had to be installed on the phone, just the PC. I downloaded the desktop client and installed it on my computer. Going through the setup wizard, I got a weird bug - an error message box -  but hey, this is a beta, and there was still an "OK" button to click, so I clicked it and all was well. I had configured some folders to share, and these were easily accessible from the Soonr website, which I logged onto from my laptop in the living room. Accessing Soonr from my phone was another story…

For the record, it’s probably not a good idea to drop the phone on a tile floor before testing its functionality, but, after putting the battery back in, the phone still worked, so I decided to go ahead and try using Soonr. Also, if they say you need a data plan, you probably do, so I wasn’t expecting this to work at all. However, surprisingly enough, I could log in to Soonr.com from the phone and see my folders and files. I couldn’t open most of the files, since my Razr has no idea what a ".xls" or ".doc" file is, but I could view a ".bmp" easily. I tried to email a file with the link provided, but I got a message that the Data Server was not available. This seems to be a message from T-Mobile - I’ve seen it before when I lose a signal. Granted, my house isn’t in the best coverage area, but the phone works inside for making and receiving calls. I guess data is a little trickier. Combined with a half-charged battery, these were probably not ideal testing conditions…I’ll have to try again from somewhere else.

Overall, even the minimal functionality of Soonr on my phone was exciting to see. However, without a true handheld with a data plan, I have limited patience for navigating the net this way. The time it takes pages to load seems an eternity and "packet data temporarily unavaiable" messages abound. The only web service I’ve really been able to use on the phone is the mobile Gmail page, and believe me, I’ve used it.

I suppose since I don’t have a handheld with a data plan, this wasn’t meant to be, but it was a fun experiment. Anyone else using Soonr? What do you think?

I read an interesting Wired news story today about the rise of crowdsourcing. It seems the power of the net these days is all about the power of the crowd. Sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, flickr, and many, many others not only exist, but thrive because of the intelligence that rises from the masses. Thousands of people upload videos, but the best rise to the top as the masses vote for favorites. More and more, the power of the crowd is being harnessed in new ways, leaving us potentially on the verge of a cultural and societal shift, a shift that’s bigger than the next great viral video, greater than the most popular bookmarks; it’s one that could rapidly push forward innovation as discoveries aren’t made by one person working alone, solving one problem. Instead, problems, tasks, and other challenges are presented to the online world, and just as "Lazy Sunday" rose to the top, so will the most innovative solutions. Collective intelligence, paticipatory learning…"crowdsourcing," (a term coined by the Wired article.)

One example of crowdsourcing is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program, an online marketplace that helps companies find people to perform tasks that computers can’t do, like "identifying items in a photograph, skimming real estate documents to find identifying information, writing short product descriptions, transcribing podcasts. Amazon calls the tasks HITs (human intelligence tasks); they’re designed to require very little time, and consequently they offer very little compensation – most from a few cents to a few dollars." (quoting Wired)

Another program exists at a site called InnoCentive, which has been around for 5 years now. InnoCentive helps companies connect with people outside their scope for help with the trickiest R&D problems. Companies like Boeing, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble pose their R&D problems and pay "solvers" anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 per solution. Often, these "solvers" are regular folks, hobbyists, self-taught scientists, whose specific skill sets lead to innovative solutions.

So, is this what web 2.0 really brings us? Not just flashy AJAX websites, but a new online culture of participation. Participating benefits you, and benefits everyone as you tag and vote, solve and query, upload, download, blog and podcast. We’re not just surfing the web anonymously anymore. We’re citizens building a new community — each of us a worker bee, contributing to the hive.

The question is not "are you participating?", but how. Because if you’re not participating at all, you’re not really ONLINE, are you?

New from Amazon.com - a grocery store! With little fanfare, the Amazon grocery store opened in late May, offering over 10,000 non-perishable food items for sale. To encourage shopping, Amazon grocery items are competitively priced and can all be shipped via Amazon’s free Super-Saver shipping service to anywhere in the United States. Other Amazon Grocery features include a shopping list, product recommendations, and savings opportunities for bulk buys.

Also, from their site, Amazon states:  "when we carry a brand, we’ll try to carry every flavor available: not just the most popular flavors of Jell-O, but all flavors, from apricot to wild strawberry and the 70 flavors in-between. We’re also making regional favorites like Andy Capp Hot Fries available nationwide, and making hard-to-find specialties like Zico Pure Coconut Water a standard part of our mix."

Cool, does that mean I can get Coca Cola Black? Hmmm…no, but searching for coke brought me to Pimpjuice. Well, how about Sun Drop? No.
Tab? No. In fact, the soda selection is rather sparse. Oh well. At least I could order a breakfast cookie.