TechLuver.com

Feb 05, `08 — This Slashdot article highlights future of the Internet in the US. “Time-Warner is now mulling a plan to charge a per-gigabyte fee for internet service. A leaked memo reveals they’re now watching how many gigabytes customers use in a ‘consumption-based’ pricing experiment in Texas, which we discussed early last month. The announced plan was that they were considering a tier-based approach, as opposed to per-gigabyte fees.”

Steven Levy of Washington Post reports, “If you are an Internet-crazy movie lover in Beaumont, Tex., life may soon take a miserable turn for you.

Time Warner Cable, which also sells broadband via its Road Runner service, has chosen your city for a pricing experiment.”

Mr. Levy further adds, “Time Warner’s move illuminates some of the troubling issues facing the United States in the Internet era, where, in terms of penetration, we are in 24th place — behind Estonia — in the international broadband competition.

The news broke about Time Warner’s plan from a leaked internal memo that company spokesman Alex Dudley confirms as genuine.”

More at Slashdot, WashingtonPost.

At Last !!!  Finally StopBadware.org brought the Real Malware, RealPlayer from RealNetworks, to the light of the day.

StopBadware has brought just some of the bad practises out in the open, while you can find about it in much more details in reader comments I’ve found on highly recognized technology sites like CNET’s News.com, tehRegister.co.uk and PCWorld.com, posted by their tech savvy readers.

Just in case, if you are wondering who / what is this StopBadware.org ?
Stopbadware, an industry-academia group designed to raise public awareness about software that violates fair information and privacy practices, is a collaboration between Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute, with support from companies like Google, Lenovo, and Sun Microsystems.

Cambridge, MA — StopBadware.org, the consumer protection initiative developed to combat badware, on Jan 31, released an alert about RealNetworks Inc.’s RealPlayer software application.

The group found RealPlayer version 10.5 to be badware because of inadequate disclosure of advertising behavior and RealPlayer version 11 to be badware because it bundles an additional application without disclosure.

RealPlayer 11 is the current version of the application, offered on Real (dot) com as an internet video and multimedia player. RealPlayer 10.5 is an older version which is still widely distributed through such sites as BBC Radio and through the Firefox web browser’s “missing plug-in” capability.

The report highlights two areas of concern:
• The Software does not fully, accurately, clearly, and conspicuously disclose the principal and significant features and functionality of the application prior to installation - The advertising software bundled with RealPlayer is misleadingly called a ‘message center’, and is described incompletely and inconspicuously in the EULA as software designed to provide useful software updates. When RealPlayer 10.5 is installed, the advertising features of this ‘message center’ are enabled by default for users who choose not to register their personal information with RealNetworks after the software is installed.
• Software installs deceptively - RealPlayer 11 does not disclose that it installs Rhapsody Player Engine, and does not remove this software when RealPlayer is uninstalled. Users are not informed by the installer or uninstaller of the connection between RealNetworks and Rhapsody Player Engine.

“Software producers have a responsibility to inform users, clearly and unambiguously, about what software will be installed on their computers and what it will do,” said Maxim Weinstein, manager of StopBadware.org at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. “RealNetworks does not allow users to make an informed choice about how their computers will be used. We hope to see a new version of RealPlayer soon that addresses these
concerns.” More at StopBadware.org (in pdf).

According to StopBadware.org’s definition of badware it is “malicious software that tracks your moves online and feeds that information back to shady marketing groups so that they can ambush you with targeted ads.”

Here are some of the reader comments I’ve found on PC world in response to their article on the issue:
User “Yert” writes at January 31, 2008 8:59 PM PT
“About freaking time. Real Player is the worst media software ever. And its competitors have DRM systems in place!

Seriously though, I don’t use Real Player, and uninstall it whenever I am authorized. It is not safe, not sane, and bloated, even compared to iTunes. Real Player should have lost the EU judgement on the fact that their product sucks!”

User “OnlineSolutions” writes at February 03, 2008  6:55 AM PT
“I installed RealPlayer’s suite once as an experiment and signed up to Rhapsody for their 30 day trial. I immediately changed my mind, but was unable to cancel using their website. They required a phone call to cancel, but the 800 number they gave didn’t work. After repeated emails and phone call attempts, I had to change my credit card number to stop the $19 / month in charges that had continued for 6 months. These people are either incompetent or crooks.”

Reader comments on CNET’s News.com:
Reader “GermanVermin” writes:
“realplayer sucks: Yeah. I have always hated realplayer. its chock full of advertisements, a pain to install, and runs background and startup services that slow down your computer. For an official client of a common propreitary video codec, RealPlayer should be more professional.

Use RealAlternative instead, it allows you to play realplayer videos inside of windows media player.”

Reader “MadLyb” writes:
“What a surprise: I stopped using RealPlayer years ago because of their intrusive software and policies. I’m surpised it took this long for someone to ding them.”

Reader “Electric.81″ writes:
“Real Player: Real Player is a piece of ‘crapolla’ and always has been since day one….now they’ve been caught with thier hand in the ‘cookie jar’ ;>) ”

Reader comments I’ve found on theRegister.co.uk:
Reader “Kev K” writes:
“Real Player & Quicktime both suck : QT lite and Real Alternative from free-codecs.com do the job very nicely for me without the bloat or constant nagging.”

Reader “Anonymous” writes:
“It’s been 3 years: since I stopped using this shyteware, just because of this annoying ODRealSched process of theirs that was getting reactivated once in a while despite I deleted it and removed any link to it.

How come you can trust such a company. Good thing they are named and shamed. At last !!!! ”

Reader “Robert Moore” writes:
“Die RealPlayer die!!! : I have come to accept that most media players (In windows) are resource hogs these days, but Real takes it to a whole new level.

I used to work for a retailer, in their service center, and I would regularly get in computers that the complaint was “Choppy DVD playback” or words to that effect. In most cases a quick uninstall of RealPlayer would fix it right up. Only PH would be foolish enought to install RealPlayer.”

Excerpts from the reader janimal’s comment:
“Real Malware: Have you ever read the Real license?? I’m pretty sure satan was involved because, it goes way beyond the usual accepted rights buggery and weasleness of the standard software license.

Happily if you want to view RM files these days (thanks for the access BBC bastards . I complain to them regularly about Real software) you can use Real Alternative avalable here..

http://codecguide.com/about_real.htm

I choose thumbs up because that’s what Real like to put up people’s bottoms.”

Finally, I never get that, when there are choices of free Windows Media Player 11 and Open Sourced VLC Media Player, why in the world any one need to use RealPlayer? Ok how to play the contents that are available only in Real Media ? I just never play those files

Feb 03, `08 — As Swedish prosecutors fixed their sights last week on The Pirate Bay, an Internet file-sharing service that is a scourge of the movie and music industries, the operators of the site responded by hoisting a defiant, digital Jolly Roger, reports the IHT.

The Pirate Bay, on its blog, called for a celebration saying, “This week we’ve hit some magic numbers. We’re tracking over 1 million torrents. We have had over 10 million simultaneous peers on the trackers. We’re at 2.5 million registered users (and they are active as well).”

The 100th post on the Pirate Bay blog further adds, “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site. The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.”

The Wires writes, “Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of the four Swedes charged in Sweden on Thursday, said in a telephone interview that the site has set up a clandestine, double-blind operation with its servers spread throughout the world — and out of reach of the Swedish authorities.

“The Pirate Bay is not in Sweden,” the 29-year-old Kolmisoppi said. Where are the servers?

“It’s a distributed system. We don’t know where the servers are. We gave them to people we trust and they don’t know it’s The Pirate Bay,” Kolmisoppi said. “They then rent locations and space for them somewhere else. It could be three countries. It could be six countries. We don’t want to know because then you’ll have a problem shutting them down.” More at IHT, theWired.

Feb 03, `08 — This Slashdot article writes about Time Warner internet access subscribers in Texas complaining of connectivity issues on Apple’s iTunes support forum.

“Starting on Thursday, January 31st, Time Warner subscribers in Texas starting experiencing connectivity issues to the iTunes store to the point where the service wasn’t usable. General internet traffic issues haven’t coincided with these problems, and many folks have reported that the store works as normal when they head to the nearest mega-bookstore and use their ISP instead. Time Warner has announced that they’re going to begin trials of tiered pricing in one local Texas market, but I’ll be darn sure to switch my provider if I hear the slightest hint of destination/content based tiers instead of bandwidth tiers.”

Excerpts from the Apple - Support - Discussions:

Thread starter post by user “kmcippant”:

iTunes Store Very Slow Posted: Jan 31, 2008 8:33 PM

I was impressed last week when I downloaded an entire album in under 10 minutes, now the store is very sluggish. I could not preview any tracks without it buffering 8 times and now it is taking me 10 minutes just to download one song. The rest of my internet is working fine.

Please check on your servers.

User “ranpritch” writes:
Same problem here in Euless, Tx (suburb DFW). Started to buy movie last night. Estimated download 36 hours. Stopped & started the download several times, but to no avail. Now, almost 24 hrs later the movie is half the way downloaded! I have checked my Time Warner cable speed & get pings from west & east coast from 4.8 to 6.0 mbps. I can normally download movies from ITunes in 15 to 20 minutes. Downloads from other sites are normal. What gives?!

User “hondo01″ writes:
I am also experiencing the same issues with iTunes. It keeps trying to rebuffer the stream with songs or videos. I am using iTunes 7.6 (29) with Mac OSX 10.5.1. I also have a windows machine with iTunes 7.5 loaded and it now does the same thing. I have tried taking both systems off the wireless router and plugging directly into the broadband router and still get the same problems. I have noticed that most all of these threads are from users in Texas. Is everyone using Time Warner Roadrunner? Just curious if this could be an ISP problem.

User “sundevil86″ writes:
I’m a Roadrunner user from Texas too! And I did NOT upgrade to 7.6 yet. Same problem as everyone else, VERY sluggish iTunes performance–but NO problems with streaming media from any other sites. So it may be an ISP problem in part, but is still only affecting iTunes.

User “bdskip” writes:
Experiencing the same issue with TWC in Arlington as well…did notice that a 10:00 podcast downloaded in about 7 seconds, yet a single 3:00 song purchase takes 15 minutes or longer to download.

Not sure what any of that means, but I’m beginning to think TWC is somehow throttling bandwidth related to music and video content on iTunes.

More at Slashdot, Apple Support Discussions.

Feb 01, `08 — Four men who run one of the most popular file-sharing sites in the world have been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Pirate Bay does not store music and video files on its own servers, but instead helps users share them on the internet. The website acts as a directory of the files used by the BitTorrent file-transfer protocol.

“It’s not merely a search engine. It’s an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available,” public prosecutor Hakan Roswall told Reuters. “It’s a classic example of accessory — to act as intermediary between people who commit crimes, whether it’s in the physical or the virtual world.”

Pirate Bay told the news agency that the people running the site cannot be held responsible for how its directory services are used. The website is said to have between 10 and 15 million users around the world and is supported by online advertising.

Police seized computers in May 2006, temporarily shutting down the website.

Prosecutor Hakan Roswall said the website was commercially exploiting copyright-protected work because it was financed through advertising revenues. According to the Pirate Bay website, its users are currently downloading close to a million files.

On the site, a statement says: “In case we lose the pending trial (yeah right) there will still not be any changes to the site.

“The Pirate Bay will keep operating just as always. We’ve been here for years and we will be here many more.”

In an interview with the BBC’s technology programme Click last year Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde said: “I think it’s okay to copy. They get their money from so many places that the sales is just one small part.”

The other three men facing charges are Carl Lundstrom, Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. If convicted, the four men could face a maximum of two years in prison.

The website had up until 2006 based its servers in Stockholm, but moved some to the Netherlands after a raid in May of that year by Swedish police, who seized equipment and held three people for questioning “on suspicion of breaking copyright law or abetting the breaking of copyright law,” authorities said. The site was taken down for a day, but was soon up and running again.

Moves against the site have been backed by entertainment industry groups, including the Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. More at BBC News.

Jan 01, `08 — Nathan Ramella explains his ARCwelder Project at Google code:

Through a technique dubbed “Go Fighting Tabby!”, or GFT for short, you can gain root access on an Archos 605 wi-fi running 1.7.13 firmware and execute arbitrary programs in its embedded Linux environment.

This is the first step to gain access to the running Linux operating system, which until now has not been possible.

Using the GFT technique, you can install the ‘ARCwelder’ package which will allow you to ssh into the Archos 605 wi-fi and run unix commands from a shell.

Currently ARCwelder only provides an ssh package, however in time more packages may be included as they are tested and verified as working, some customization is necessary to ensure that they work on the embedded system, so the term ‘hack’ is definitely applicable.

More at ARCwelder Project.

Little Rock, AR — The world’s biggest retailer, Wal-Mart, has closed its video downloading service less than a year after it started selling films online.

The retreat for Wal-Mart, which accounts for about 40 percent of all DVD sales, follows the company’s 2005 decision to abandoned efforts to build an online DVD rental service. The world’s largest retailer instead turned its rental service over to Netflix.

It stopped the service on Dec 21, according to a message on the discount chain’s video download website. Wal-Mart said the decision had been forced by Hewlett-Packard withdrawing the software running the site.

The move ends a challenge to Apple’s iTunes store, Amazon and Netflix to win customers who rent films over the web.

The market for online video downloads has become very competitive with video rental chain Blockbuster buying Movielink over the summer to expand into this area.

DENVER, CO –Marketwire– Dec 17, `07 — Consumers who long to transfer their favorite movies and TV programs from their DISH Network receivers to their ARCHOS Portable Media Players (PMPs) can now do so in record time through a simple plug-in download.

The plug-in is offered exclusively to DISH Network subscribers with a VIP722 or VIP622 high-definition receiver, and is compatible with the ARCHOS 705 WiFi and 605 WiFi players. The plug-in is available today at Archos.com. Beginning in January, the Archos 605 and 705 models will also be available at retail outlets where DISH Network satellite TV service is sold.

“The DISH Network plug-in will allow consumers to transfer content faster than real-time from their DISH Network receiver to an Archos PMP. A two-hour movie can be transferred in just a few minutes,” said Henri Crohas, founder and chief executive officer at ARCHOS. “Now DISH Network subscribers with a VIP622 or VIP722 receiver can experience the fastest transfer times to their ARCHOS players, getting them out of the house faster and enjoying their favorite TV shows anywhere and anytime.”

The exclusive ARCHOS plug-in for DISH Network customers is part of a larger strategic alliance between parent company EchoStar and ARCHOS that has been in place for almost three years.

ARCHOS 605 WiFi and 705 WiFi demonstrations, including the high-speed content transfer from DISH Network’s receivers, will be on display in the EchoStar booth — Central Hall #9020 — at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 7-10, 2008.

New-Generation XSPAN Delivers 11n Performance at Price Points To Enable Broad Deployment of Triple-Play Gateways.

SANTA CLARA, Calif — Dec 17, `07 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Atheros today announced two single-chip 802.11n solutions developed expressly for the carrier gateway market.

The new dual-band, 2.4GHz/5GHz, AR9220 and single-band, 2.4GHz AR9223 PCI designs join the comprehensive Atheros XSPAN family, the world’s most widely adopted draft 802.11n Wi-Fi solutions.

These latest 802.11n designs provide reliable, market-proven performance at price points that allow carriers to broadly deploy home gateways capable of supporting data, voice and video on a single wireless network.

The AR9220 dual-band, 2×2 MIMO, PCI design is ideal for high-end, multiplay gateways and set-top boxes, which must robustly support multimedia applications requiring uninterrupted throughput — IPTV, HD video streaming, VoIP calls and multi-player online gaming on the 5GHz channel-while using the 2.4GHz band for simple data networking.

This solution provides leading 802.11a/g/n performance, supporting up to 300 Mbps physical data rates and 200 Mbps of actual user throughput on both the uplink and the downlink. With the dual-band design, users will enjoy universal connectivity to any 802.11 device through their gateway or set-top box. More at Atheros.

Dec 13, `07 — A Canadian man has been shocked to receive a mobile phone bill for nearly $85,000, BBC News reports.

The 22-year-old oil-field worker from Calgary, Piotr Staniaszek thought he could use his new phone as a modem for his computer under his $10 unlimited mobile browser plan from Bell Mobility.

He downloaded high-definition movies and other large files unaware that this incurred massive extra charges. Bell Mobility has since lowered the bill to $3,243, but Staniaszek says he intends to fight the charges anyway.

“The thing is, they’ve cut my phone off for being like $100 over,” he told CBC News. “Here, I’m $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on.”

Bell Mobility said they would lower the bill to $3,243 in a “goodwill gesture” to match the best data plan available for using mobile phones as a modem, the Globe and Mail reported. More at BBC News.

London — Nov 27, ‘07 — The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together hundreds of hours of television programmes in one place, BBC News said on Tuesday.

The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material. Plans will have to be approved by the BBC Trust and the other broadcasters’ boards, and a name for the service will be unveiled ahead of its launch.

The three broadcasters currently offer their own separate on-demand services.

The BBC’s iPlayer, ITV’s catch-up service and Channel 4oD will continue to exist along the new online “aggregator”, which will provide a complement to the established providers.

Programming from all three broadcasters will be available for free download, streaming, rental and purchase via the internet, with expansion on to other platforms planned.

John Smith, the chief executive of BBC Worldwide, said the venture was a “historic partnership” between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

“The new service will contain some of the very best of the UK’s content for consumers to view in one place, which will be both easy to use and great fun,” he added.

The BBC and ITV’s on-demand services launched earlier this year, with the commerical broadcaster initially concentrating on soap opera catch-ups.

Channel 4’s service offers hundreds of hours of programming from current series such as Ugly Betty to classic shows including Father Ted. Other on-demand services are offered by other providers including Five, Sky, BT Vision and Tiscali.

Consumer demand for bandwidth could see the internet running out of capacity as early as 2010, a new study warns. US analyst firm Nemertes Research predicted a drastic slowdown as the network struggles to cope with the amount of data being carried on it.

Such gridlock would drastically affect how people use the web and could mean the next Google or YouTube simply doesn’t get off the ground, it said. The report said billions needed to be spent upgrading broadband networks.

It put the figure at around $137bn (£66bn) globally. For users, the slowdown could see a return to the bad old days of dial-up, the report predicts. “It may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube,” the report cited. But it is the knock-on effect for new services that could be the real problem, report authors think. “The next Amazon, Google or YouTube might not arise, not from a lack of user demand but because of insufficient infrastructure preventing applications and companies emerging,” the report warned.

The demand for bandwidth-intensive applications shows no sign of abating. Nearly 75% of US internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video and viewed more than 8.3bn video streams during May, according to research by measurement firm comScore.

The financial invested required to “bridge the gap” between demand and capacity would range from $42bn to $55bn in the US, Nemertes estimates. The report is part-funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA) which campaigns for universal broadband in the US.

Los Angeles, CA — Nov 20, ‘07 – Sony BMG Music Entertainment has signed a licensing deal with Yahoo that clears the way for people to upload files with music or video content by the record company’s artists to Yahoo, the companies said Tuesday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Like similar deals, the agreement calls for Sony BMG to receive a cut of advertising revenue, Yahoo said. The deal also covers the distribution of music videos via Yahoo player applications and widgets that computer users can place on other Web sites.

The agreement marks the first time Sunnyvale-based Yahoo has reached a deal with a major recording company over licensing content in user-created videos. Sony BMG, home to recording artists such as Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen and Slayer, reached a similar licensing deal with Google Inc. last year. That agreement also includes Google subsidiary YouTube.

Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. The Sony BMG-Yahoo deal reflects the popularity of computer user-created videos, which often include copyrighted content.

Last month, a coalition of major media and Internet companies issued a set of guidelines requiring Web portals that host user-generated videos — as Yahoo does — to use filtering technology to block clips with unauthorized content from being posted.

Independently, Yahoo is deploying video identification and filtering technology early next year, the company said.

Nov 17, ‘07 — News.com is reporting on the US House of representatives passing an amendment to the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (in pdf), that should make folks in Hollywood, the RIAA, and the MPAA well pleased.

The House of Representatives education committee passed a bill on Nov 15, ‘07 that would set higher-education policy for the next five years — and despite the efforts of campus officials and lobbyists, the measure directs colleges to take steps to combat illegal file sharing.

In the House Education and Labor Committee’s mammoth College Opportunity and Affordability Act lies a tiny section, which dictates universities that participate in federal financial aid programs “shall” devise plans for “alternative” offerings to unlawful downloading, such as subscription-based services, or “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.” The committee unanimously approved the bill Thursday.

Supporters and opponents of the proposal disagree, however, on what the penalty would be for failure to comply with the new rules. The proposed requirements would be added to a section of existing federal law dealing with federal financial aid.

Some university representatives and fair-use advocates worry that schools run the risk of losing aid for their students if they fail to come up with the required plans.

“The language in the bill appears to be clear that failure to carry out the mandates would make an institution ineligible for participation in at least some part of Title IV (which deals with federal financial aid programs),” Steven Worona, director of policy and networking programs for the group Educause, said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Worona acknowledged that “there does appear to be a great deal of confusion with respect to what penalties would be involved in not carrying out the mandates in this bill.” Still, Educause, which represents college and university network operators, continues to “strongly oppose these mandates,” he said. More at News.com.

TOKYO & SAN DIEGO –BUSINESS WIRE– Nov 13, ‘07 — DivX today announced that DivX video technology will be integrated into PLAYSTATION3 (PS3) from Sony. The popular computer entertainment system will be added to the ecosystem of devices that currently support DivX video playback. To date, over 100 million DivX Certified products have been shipped into the market, and it is anticipated PS3 will significantly expand that number.

“We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to bring DivX to PS3,” said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. “Our technology will expand the multimedia functionality of PS3 by enabling users to enjoy access to the broad library of content in the DivX digital media format.”

DivX is currently working to certify PS3 and deliver a superior digital media technology to consumers in the near future. Current PS3 end users will be able to add DivX functionality to their systems via a separate system software update at a forthcoming date. PS3 game title developers will be able to utilize DivX’s decoder technology by updating the system software of PS3’s Software Development Kit to version 2.00, which was released by SCE on November 2^nd. DivX.

Nov 10, ‘07 — BERTOLLI, NBC has launched NBC Direct where you can download full episodes of NBC shows for free and enjoy them from the comfort of your PC, IF:

1. You have updated Intenet Explorer
2. You have Windows Media player 10
3. You download proprietary NBC Direct player

Videos will last 7 days only:
“The NBC Direct service uses a “fixed” and a “temporary” license arrangement. Under the terms of the “fixed” license agreement, all videos can be downloaded and viewed for seven (7) days from the date they are made available. However, within this timeframe, the user is required to renew a “temporary” license every 48 hours in order to continue viewing your selected content. ” says NBC Direct.

And yea, there’s more coverage to “Bertolli” than NBC at NBC Direct.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — BUSINESS WIRE — Nov 06, ‘07 — Debuting today, the newest members of Hitachi GST’s CinemaStar cast of hard drives are ready for their close-up. Hitachi is offering multiple form factors to address a wide variety of needs in the growing consumer electronics market. A 3.5-inch drive with capacities up to 500GB provides industry-best power utilization and performance, while the more compact 2.5-inch drive with capacities up to 250GB is well-suited for use in sleek set-top boxes and portable digital video devices.

The abundance of digital video has been fueling consumer demand for digital video recorders (DVRs) with more storage capacity and new slim, space-saving designs. The CinemaStar C5K250 and P7K500 are the latest in a long line of Hitachi drives optimized for use in home entertainment applications.

More at Hitachi, Press Release, CinemaStar 7K500, Cinemastar C5K250.

San Francisco, CA–Nov 02, ‘07 /PRNewswire/ — blinkx, the largest video search engine on the Web, today announced a partnership with GONG, the first and only anime TV network that brings the best cutting-edge Japanese animation anywhere, anytime, on any screen. Under the terms of the agreement, blinkx will transcribe and index video content from GONG, making it easy for users to find and watch at blinkx.

Dedicated to teen and adult anime fans alike, GONG is the first international on-demand, online anime channel in Europe and North America. GONG offers the best in Japanese anime including sci-fi, horror, heroic fantasy and epic space opera content. Currently available online and direct to a variety of devices including computers, mobile phones and MP3 devices, GONG also offers on-demand access to unique Animitles, trailers, wallpapers, news, alerts and free podcasts.

San Francisco, CA – October 31, 2007 – Building on the success of its industry-leading video search engine, Truveo has announced plans to expand its rapidly growing service into several major markets for online video worldwide.  As the first step of this international expansion, Truveo is unveiling video search portals for France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.  These new sites are available starting today at:

  ·         France - http://fr.truveo.com ·         Germany - http://de.truveo.com ·         India - http://in.truveo.com ·         Japan - http://jp.truveo.com ·         Korea - http://kr.truveo.com ·         Spain - http://es.truveo.com ·         Taiwan - http://tw.truveo.com ·         United Kingdom - http://uk.truveo.com  

Over the next two months, Truveo™ will continue to build on this expansion with the launch of video search sites for additional countries including Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia and Turkey.  

The Truveo video search engine lets users search and browse through tens of millions of videos from thousands of sources across the Web.  Over the past year, Truveo’s service has experienced widespread adoption, and it currently reaches over 40 million users a month.* Truveo’s critically acclaimed flagship destination, Truveo, has received widespread praise since its August launch, establishing itself as the leader in the fast growing video search market. 

“The recent explosion of online video is a worldwide phenomenon.  All over the world, individual users as well as major media companies are making their video available on the Web,” said Timothy Tuttle, CEO and Co-Founder of Truveo and Senior Vice President of AOL Video. “Truveo’s ongoing mission is to index and organize all of the video on the Web so that users can easily find the video they want – no matter where in the world they reside.” 

With a large percentage of its traffic originating from outside of the United States, Truveo currently serves a worldwide audience. To better serve its users from around the world, each new Truveo international destination will feature popular, high-quality video of regional interest and allow users to search and discover videos in their native language. 

Truveo is a one-stop destination where consumers can search across a wide range of content from major video websites around the world.  In addition to indexing user-generated video from popular video uploading sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Kewego, MyVideo.de, Pandora.tv, and Tudou, Truveo also features a wide selection of high-quality, professionally produced video from many of the world’s major media brands. For example, Truveo’s video sources include: L’Equipe, Le Monde, France 24 and TF1 from France; Berlin TV, Spiegel and ZDF from Germany; NDTV, IBN Live and India Times from India; KBC from Korea; El Mundo, Telecinco and Digital+ from Spain; Taiwan Television from Taiwan; BBC, Daily Star, EuroNews, EuroSport, ITN, Skynews, The Sun, and UEFA in the United Kingdom; and thousands more. More at AOL.

New service provides safe and simple way to share personal videos via the Web – minus the advertising.

MINNEAPOLIS, October 30, 2007 – Best Buy today launched Best Buy Video Sharing, an online-based solution for customers to safely store and share home movies and videos via the Web.

Best Buy Video Sharing is a subscription-based service for users to upload their personal videos for sharing on web sites and blogs, with family and friends, or in e-mail messages. Unlike many other video sharing services, Best Buy Video Sharing allows the user to choose who can view their home videos, and enables the user to do so in an advertising-free environment.

Best Buy Video Sharing was created in partnership with Mydeo, a provider of quality streaming video hosting for home and business users. The service will be merchandised online and in Best Buy’s retail stores. Best Buy will also take a minority, equity stake in Mydeo.

“With the growing popularity of video, fueled in part by social networking sites, we’ve actually seen an increase in customer demand for alternative video sharing solutions. Many customers, particularly families with children, don’t want their personal memories available for anyone to see in the public domain nor do they want to share them in a cluttered environment that includes advertising,” said Kevin Winneroski, vice president, Best Buy. “Through Best Buy Video Sharing, customers can safely store their videos and share them only with the friends and family they choose.”

Base plans start at $6.97 for 100 minutes of video hosting and video lengths up to 30 minutes each. Customers can chose premium plans for extended video lengths, additional video storage capacity, and other sharing features. More info at Best Buy Videosharing.

Florham Park, N.J. - October 29, 2007 — Global Crossing, a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced expanded VoIP access options in Japan, China, Singapore, India and Thailand to support the rising demand in the region for Ready-Access — Global Crossing’s flagship on-demand and reservation-less audio conferencing service.  

Global Crossing has experienced strong demand for collaboration services by customers in Asia during the last three years. As a result, Breauninger said, plans are underway to extend collaboration service throughout South Korea by the first half of 2008. Earlier this year, Global Crossing extended Ready-Access to customers in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand via new VoIP platform access options in the region. 

The company further announced key enhancements to Global Crossing Ready-Access Web Meeting, such as the ability to edit recordings of meetings and training sessions and transform them into rich media podcasts that can be shared effortlessly with mobile and geographically dispersed employees, customers and partners.  

These new features are part of Global Crossing’s latest update to Ready-Access Web Meeting. A fully integrated audio and Web conferencing productivity solution, Ready-Access Web Meeting provides companies with global business communications to maximize time, resources and productivity anytime, anywhere.  

Podcasts are ideal for publishing recordings of department meetings, training sessions, sales presentations and project work. Listeners can tune in at their convenience to podcasts on their portable media players on airplanes, trains or in automobiles, maximizing time and productivity. Podcasts can also be distributed to subscribers via iTunes-compatible RSS feeds for playback on MP3 players, desktop computers, televisions or set-top videoconferencing systems. More at Global Crossing here and here.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct 29, ‘07–Akamai, the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, today announced The HDWeb, a ‘proof-of-concept’ portal designed to showcase the experience consumers can have with high definition content online. The Website, available at TheHDWeb, showcases content from a variety of industries including music, movies, professional sports, games and news. Akamai customers are now delivering a consistent, high-definition video experience on Akamai’s uniquely distributed edge delivery platform that is specifically tuned for optimal delivery of high-definition (HD) files online. As an industry leader and pioneer in online video, Akamai has raised the bar for what a service provider must offer companies in order to deliver this content effectively and efficiently online today.  

Companies providing HD content for the initiative include Apple, BBC Motion Gallery, CBS, Gannett, MTV Networks, NBA and more. The proof-of-concept portal will serve as a temporary Internet Programming Guide to HD video on the Web and provide access to a complete HD experience. These companies understand the value that HD content brings their brand and are ahead of the curve by offering HD programming online. 

Akamai’s goal is to provide high bandwidth consumers with a superior online HD experience and highlight the content providers that are pushing the industry forward. The HDWeb portal will:  

- Bring together the most powerful brands online to showcase premium content
- Offer a glimpse into the ‘future’ of the Internet