Azureus just announced a deal with Bennet Media Woldwide that will allow them to distribute HD shows via their Zudeo.com P2P download platform. From their news release:
"Among the Bennett Media original productions to be featured in HD on Zudeo include Bikini Destinations, The Wild Side, The Extremists, Xotic Xtreme and Snowology. Bennett Media content will be available on Azureus later this year."
No word yet on the costs of the content. The shows are pretty much the same ones that were licensed to Guba.com for distribution "on a pay-per-view, download-to-own and ad-supported basis" late last year, so that might be an indicator for what Azureus could do with them.
Obviously paying for a show like Bikini Destinations might not be that compelling to the average Azureus user. After all, there is lots of this stuff available for free onyour average porn tracker sites like Mariposahd.tv.
What makes this interesting is that Mark Cuban used to show Bikini Destinations at industry conventions back in the days when he wanted to persuade the audience of the power of HD but didn't have Dan Rather yet. In fact, Cuban's network HDNet still lists Bikini Destinations as "original programming".
Now this type of original programming will be available via P2P. Maybe this would be a good time to rethink that whole "HDTV is the Internet video killer" claim?
"Among the Bennett Media original productions to be featured in HD on Zudeo include Bikini Destinations, The Wild Side, The Extremists, Xotic Xtreme and Snowology. Bennett Media content will be available on Azureus later this year."
No word yet on the costs of the content. The shows are pretty much the same ones that were licensed to Guba.com for distribution "on a pay-per-view, download-to-own and ad-supported basis" late last year, so that might be an indicator for what Azureus could do with them.
Obviously paying for a show like Bikini Destinations might not be that compelling to the average Azureus user. After all, there is lots of this stuff available for free on
What makes this interesting is that Mark Cuban used to show Bikini Destinations at industry conventions back in the days when he wanted to persuade the audience of the power of HD but didn't have Dan Rather yet. In fact, Cuban's network HDNet still lists Bikini Destinations as "original programming".
Now this type of original programming will be available via P2P. Maybe this would be a good time to rethink that whole "HDTV is the Internet video killer" claim?
Tags: azureus, zudem, p2p, bittorrent, hd, hdtv, cuban, markcuban, hdnet, bikinidestrinations, bikini, bennetmediaworldwide
Torrentfreak recently featured a piece about the possibility to run Bittorrent on your iPhone. From the article:
"The technical specifications of the device certainly make it possible. It has more than enough cpu power for it, assuming a nice, tightly coded client was written. The built in WiFi (802.11b/g) and use of the EDGE 2.75G wireless network data transfer system allows a fairly widespread availability of reception."
Hold on, not so fast. Sure, the hardware may be suitable for Bittorrent, but Apple's locked down iPhone OS makes it hard to imagine that anything like this will be available in the near future.
The iPhone doesn't allow the installation of any third party applications. In fact it doesn't even allow any plain old http downloads, meaning that you can't download MP3s, or Torrent files, for that matter. Bittorrent friends might be out of luck even if hackers were able to bypass both of these restrictions: Apple could always lock down the device with the next system update.
Still, there is a trick to use your iPhone for Bittorrent downloads. More and more Bittorrent clients offer their users web interfaces to control their downloads from a second computer. Just install µTorrent or Azureus on your home PC, access it through a web browser from your office machine and you're able to start and stop Torrent downloads remotely. There is no reason that this wouldn't work with an iPhone. There are some obstacles though:
µTorrent has been a favourite with the Windows PC crowd for years now. The client is very lean and ressource-friendly, and it features a beautiful web UI that resembles the application's original interface. However, this web UI doesn't work with Safari - and since the iPhone uses Safari / Webkit as it's browser, µTorrent users are out of luck.
Azureus can be extended through various plug-ins, some of which offer remote control capabilities through a web interface. More advanced users tend to like the Swing Web Interface, since it emulates the look and feel of the original Azureus interface. Unfortunately this won't work for the iPhone either. The Swing plug-in makes heavy use of Java, and the iPhone doesn't support Java yet.
iPhone users might want to give the Azureus HTML Web UI plug-in a try instead. It's very ressource-friendly, uses only a little bit of Javascript and runs under Safari. I don't actually own an iPhone, but I tested this WebUI with the and it seemed to run just fine. The only downside: The search function doesn't seem to work, so users still have to find Torrents through third-party websites.
Advanced users can even skin it through CSS. I wonde how long it will take until someone makes a dedicated iPhone skin that is optimized for the phone's screen resolution?
"The technical specifications of the device certainly make it possible. It has more than enough cpu power for it, assuming a nice, tightly coded client was written. The built in WiFi (802.11b/g) and use of the EDGE 2.75G wireless network data transfer system allows a fairly widespread availability of reception."
Hold on, not so fast. Sure, the hardware may be suitable for Bittorrent, but Apple's locked down iPhone OS makes it hard to imagine that anything like this will be available in the near future.
The iPhone doesn't allow the installation of any third party applications. In fact it doesn't even allow any plain old http downloads, meaning that you can't download MP3s, or Torrent files, for that matter. Bittorrent friends might be out of luck even if hackers were able to bypass both of these restrictions: Apple could always lock down the device with the next system update.
Still, there is a trick to use your iPhone for Bittorrent downloads. More and more Bittorrent clients offer their users web interfaces to control their downloads from a second computer. Just install µTorrent or Azureus on your home PC, access it through a web browser from your office machine and you're able to start and stop Torrent downloads remotely. There is no reason that this wouldn't work with an iPhone. There are some obstacles though:
µTorrent has been a favourite with the Windows PC crowd for years now. The client is very lean and ressource-friendly, and it features a beautiful web UI that resembles the application's original interface. However, this web UI doesn't work with Safari - and since the iPhone uses Safari / Webkit as it's browser, µTorrent users are out of luck.
Azureus can be extended through various plug-ins, some of which offer remote control capabilities through a web interface. More advanced users tend to like the Swing Web Interface, since it emulates the look and feel of the original Azureus interface. Unfortunately this won't work for the iPhone either. The Swing plug-in makes heavy use of Java, and the iPhone doesn't support Java yet.
iPhone users might want to give the Azureus HTML Web UI plug-in a try instead. It's very ressource-friendly, uses only a little bit of Javascript and runs under Safari. I don't actually own an iPhone, but I tested this WebUI with the and it seemed to run just fine. The only downside: The search function doesn't seem to work, so users still have to find Torrents through third-party websites.
Advanced users can even skin it through CSS. I wonde how long it will take until someone makes a dedicated iPhone skin that is optimized for the phone's screen resolution?
Speaking of Red Swoosh: Akamai did get some new opportunities when they bought the P2P company, but they also got themselves a potential conflict with some open source Bittorrent developers.
Red Swoosh has been working on a browser-based Bittorrent client called Foxtorrent. Turns out there is already another Foxtorrent project out there that is working on a Firefox frontend for Azureus. A few days ago the Foxtorrent members wrote an open email to the Red Swoosh folks:
"Gentlepeople: Please change the name of your software to something else. The name FoxTorrent is already taken. "
Doesn't sound too threatening, does it? Which is why I think Akamai should be good sports about it too - and just drop the disputed name. After all, there are plenty of other names still available. Akamaitorrent would be an obvious choice, but it's a little too long if you ask me.
But what about Akatorrent? Sounds cool, hasn't been used - and it even offers some opportunities for word plays, as in:
"We use an efficient content delivery technology (aka torrent)."
Red Swoosh has been working on a browser-based Bittorrent client called Foxtorrent. Turns out there is already another Foxtorrent project out there that is working on a Firefox frontend for Azureus. A few days ago the Foxtorrent members wrote an open email to the Red Swoosh folks:
"Gentlepeople: Please change the name of your software to something else. The name FoxTorrent is already taken. "
Doesn't sound too threatening, does it? Which is why I think Akamai should be good sports about it too - and just drop the disputed name. After all, there are plenty of other names still available. Akamaitorrent would be an obvious choice, but it's a little too long if you ask me.
But what about Akatorrent? Sounds cool, hasn't been used - and it even offers some opportunities for word plays, as in:
"We use an efficient content delivery technology (aka torrent)."
11/15 2007 | 10:02 PM
Posted by: Janko Roettgers
I'm still in SF and offline most of the day, so catching up to the news of the day is a little slower that usual ... but this one is worth mentioning: Azureus CEO Gilles BianRosa almost didn't make it to NewTeeVee Live yesterday because the company decided to get involved in the fight for net neutrality with a petition to the FCC that addresses various types of blocking and throttling methods ISPs have put into place to limit their customer's Bittorent usage.
The most prominent example for this obviously is Comcast, but Gilles reminded us yesterday that Comcast is no isolated incident and that ISPs have been experimenting with stuff like this for the last 24 months. The company now wants the FCC to step in and stop these interferences, but is also open for direct discussions with ISPs to relieve some of the pressure P2P traffic is putting on their networks and peering bills.
The complete petition is available as a PDF online. Here is a quick excerpt from today's press release:
"'Now is the time to embrace the sea changes in entertainment consumption that are occurring. The rapid convergence of the entertainment and Internet industries has enabled the delivery of high-quality video, and these throttling tactics represent growing pains as ISPs resist inevitable change,' said Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze. 'We hope our Petition will trigger a public discussion, but we also need the FCC to act. The industry needs transparency into what ISPs are doing and an environment that fosters innovation in online entertainment.'"
The most prominent example for this obviously is Comcast, but Gilles reminded us yesterday that Comcast is no isolated incident and that ISPs have been experimenting with stuff like this for the last 24 months. The company now wants the FCC to step in and stop these interferences, but is also open for direct discussions with ISPs to relieve some of the pressure P2P traffic is putting on their networks and peering bills.
The complete petition is available as a PDF online. Here is a quick excerpt from today's press release:
"'Now is the time to embrace the sea changes in entertainment consumption that are occurring. The rapid convergence of the entertainment and Internet industries has enabled the delivery of high-quality video, and these throttling tactics represent growing pains as ISPs resist inevitable change,' said Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze. 'We hope our Petition will trigger a public discussion, but we also need the FCC to act. The industry needs transparency into what ISPs are doing and an environment that fosters innovation in online entertainment.'"
Bittorrent client maker Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, quietly closed down its P2P porn site StudioHD late last year as part of a bigger restructuring process, according to a company spokesperson.
Vuze had launched StudioHD with licensed clips from a number of porn companies early last year. The site was promoted within the Vuze client, and paying users of StudioHD were asked to download the Vuze software to access HD porn movies.
I wrote about the launch of StudioHD for Newteevee in May of '09, and a company spokesperson told me back then that this was the first step to launch other premium offerings. However, it looks like those plans didn't last very long. The site was apparently canned in November. The fact that no one really noticed until now is probably a good indicator for the fact that StudioHD wasn't exactly a blockbuster success story.
Vuze had launched StudioHD with licensed clips from a number of porn companies early last year. The site was promoted within the Vuze client, and paying users of StudioHD were asked to download the Vuze software to access HD porn movies.
I wrote about the launch of StudioHD for Newteevee in May of '09, and a company spokesperson told me back then that this was the first step to launch other premium offerings. However, it looks like those plans didn't last very long. The site was apparently canned in November. The fact that no one really noticed until now is probably a good indicator for the fact that StudioHD wasn't exactly a blockbuster success story.
Limewire has taken a big, bold step forward with the release of version 5.0 alpha of its file sharing client today. The new version features a completely revamped UI, an integration of the Limewire store, support for private file sharing and chatting based on Jabber / XMPP and contextual text ads, among other things. It's a major milestone for Limewire, and it could help to stop the erosion of its user base as well as actually win over some new and former users.
I had a chance to test the new client as well as talk to the Limewire folks a few times over the last couple of weeks, and one of the first questions that they asked me was what I thought about Vuze's efforts to revamp its client. I didn't think that much about it at the time, but it has now become clear that Limewire has studied the transformation from Azureus to Vuze very carefully.
One thing that turned Azureus users off of early Vuze versions was the in-your-face nature of the content platform that seemed to have taken over the entire client. Limewire carefully tried to avoid this mistake. Users are first greeted with a splash screen and explains some of the new features, and search is still front and center of the new client, with the store actually taking a back seat.
Limewire uses XULRunner for its new UI, which makes the whole thing look very much like a modern media client, hiding all the Java ugliness that Limewire users have learned to hate but live with over the years. The look is very clean, and many of the advanced network information pieces are now hidden in a separate menu.
One of the most remarkable features of the new client is undoubtedly the ability to share files with your friends. Limewire uses the Jabber / XMPP standard to achieve this and actually makes use of existing Jabber servers, which makes it possible to simply log in with your GTalk, Jabber or Livejournal account.
I had some occasional trouble logging in today, but was able to try the feature with a preview version supplied to me by Limewire a few weeks ago - and it is actually very nicely done. The new client lets you manage a media library of files that are not automatically shared with anyone, and you can go ahead and selectively share single files or folders with your Limewire-using GTalk / Gmail friends.
You also automatically see all the shared files of your friends as soon as they are online. You explicitly have to share files with the entire Gnutella network if you wish to do so, and a separate sidebar tab makes it easy to see what exactly you are sharing with the world.
One last thing to mention are probably the contextual ads. Limewire has been talking about big plans for its upcoming advertising network for a while now, and the company always made it clear that they want to separate themselves from P2P ad companies that inject "sponsored content" into search results.
The new version of the client definitely shows where things are going: Ads are separate from search results, and pretty much look like the contextual advertising you see on a search engine like Google. Very unobstrusive, in other words. For now, these ads only link to Limewire's own download store, but one could easily see this work for other advertisers as well.
Limewire's new alpha version 5.0 can be downloaded here.
I had a chance to test the new client as well as talk to the Limewire folks a few times over the last couple of weeks, and one of the first questions that they asked me was what I thought about Vuze's efforts to revamp its client. I didn't think that much about it at the time, but it has now become clear that Limewire has studied the transformation from Azureus to Vuze very carefully.
One thing that turned Azureus users off of early Vuze versions was the in-your-face nature of the content platform that seemed to have taken over the entire client. Limewire carefully tried to avoid this mistake. Users are first greeted with a splash screen and explains some of the new features, and search is still front and center of the new client, with the store actually taking a back seat.
Limewire uses XULRunner for its new UI, which makes the whole thing look very much like a modern media client, hiding all the Java ugliness that Limewire users have learned to hate but live with over the years. The look is very clean, and many of the advanced network information pieces are now hidden in a separate menu.
One of the most remarkable features of the new client is undoubtedly the ability to share files with your friends. Limewire uses the Jabber / XMPP standard to achieve this and actually makes use of existing Jabber servers, which makes it possible to simply log in with your GTalk, Jabber or Livejournal account.
I had some occasional trouble logging in today, but was able to try the feature with a preview version supplied to me by Limewire a few weeks ago - and it is actually very nicely done. The new client lets you manage a media library of files that are not automatically shared with anyone, and you can go ahead and selectively share single files or folders with your Limewire-using GTalk / Gmail friends.
You also automatically see all the shared files of your friends as soon as they are online. You explicitly have to share files with the entire Gnutella network if you wish to do so, and a separate sidebar tab makes it easy to see what exactly you are sharing with the world.
One last thing to mention are probably the contextual ads. Limewire has been talking about big plans for its upcoming advertising network for a while now, and the company always made it clear that they want to separate themselves from P2P ad companies that inject "sponsored content" into search results.
The new version of the client definitely shows where things are going: Ads are separate from search results, and pretty much look like the contextual advertising you see on a search engine like Google. Very unobstrusive, in other words. For now, these ads only link to Limewire's own download store, but one could easily see this work for other advertisers as well.
Limewire's new alpha version 5.0 can be downloaded here.
The new version 3.1 of Vuze features an option to share torrents with your friends and contacts, offering not only social recommendations but also higher download speeds. Read all about it over at Newteevee.com. There is however one catch: Friends have to register with Vuze.com, and some people might be wary of the fact that the company could log what kind of torrents you share, since this is content you have most likely downloaded as well.
I asked the Vuze team to explain how exactly these torrent suggestions are shared between clients and if any of the information ever touches their servers. The info didn't make it in the article on Newteevee anymore, but I thought it might be worth sharing. Here's their reply:
"Each client generates a public and a private key. The private key is only ever known or accessible to that client. The public key enables encryption of files and the private key, unencryption. When two users become "Friends" they exchange the public key that allows them to encrypt torrent files. Therefore, when they send a torrent file to a Friend they use their Friend's public key to encrypt the file and then when their Friend receives the torrent file, they use their own private key to unencrypt. This communication happens directly between clients when both Friends are online. If they are offline, then it is relayed by Vuze, but as the keys are generated by the individual clients Vuze has no knowledge of the keys."
I asked the Vuze team to explain how exactly these torrent suggestions are shared between clients and if any of the information ever touches their servers. The info didn't make it in the article on Newteevee anymore, but I thought it might be worth sharing. Here's their reply:
"Each client generates a public and a private key. The private key is only ever known or accessible to that client. The public key enables encryption of files and the private key, unencryption. When two users become "Friends" they exchange the public key that allows them to encrypt torrent files. Therefore, when they send a torrent file to a Friend they use their Friend's public key to encrypt the file and then when their Friend receives the torrent file, they use their own private key to unencrypt. This communication happens directly between clients when both Friends are online. If they are offline, then it is relayed by Vuze, but as the keys are generated by the individual clients Vuze has no knowledge of the keys."
Paidcontent published an "interview with the pirate king" today, the king being Bittorrent CEO Ashwin Navin. In the text writer Jeremia Kiss reported that Bittorrent is employing 32 people now and that their new content distribution platform will launch at the end of the year.
One detail Kiss mentioned was previously unreported tho. From the text:
"There will be plenty of changes to improve the user experience and the new service will no longer be open source."
This caused a bit of a stir in the P2P world, with P2Pnet rumbling about "BT's relegation to the dark realm of closed systems". It's also a bit surprising because much of the success of Bittorrent is based on it's Open Source license, which allowed software deveopers from Azureus to Opera to develop their own clients.
P2P Blog asked Bittorrent Inc. for a clarification, and the company's Director of Communications Lily Lin replied:
"We are committed to maintaining an open-source reference implementation of BitTorrent. That hasn't changed. To power our new retail marketplace and for other technology implementations, there will be an enhanced, closed-source version of the BitTorrent client."
This certainly makes more sense than going closed source completely. One can assume that the "technology implementations" have to do with the previously announced cooperation with Cachelogic, allowing Bittorrent to maintain localized superseeds of licensed / commercial content.
It's hard to tell yet which, if any, effect the development of an improved but closed source client will have on Bittorrent's client market share. But it's probably safe to say that it won't help to improve the already strained relations between Bittorrent and other vendors.
One detail Kiss mentioned was previously unreported tho. From the text:
"There will be plenty of changes to improve the user experience and the new service will no longer be open source."
This caused a bit of a stir in the P2P world, with P2Pnet rumbling about "BT's relegation to the dark realm of closed systems". It's also a bit surprising because much of the success of Bittorrent is based on it's Open Source license, which allowed software deveopers from Azureus to Opera to develop their own clients.
P2P Blog asked Bittorrent Inc. for a clarification, and the company's Director of Communications Lily Lin replied:
"We are committed to maintaining an open-source reference implementation of BitTorrent. That hasn't changed. To power our new retail marketplace and for other technology implementations, there will be an enhanced, closed-source version of the BitTorrent client."
This certainly makes more sense than going closed source completely. One can assume that the "technology implementations" have to do with the previously announced cooperation with Cachelogic, allowing Bittorrent to maintain localized superseeds of licensed / commercial content.
It's hard to tell yet which, if any, effect the development of an improved but closed source client will have on Bittorrent's client market share. But it's probably safe to say that it won't help to improve the already strained relations between Bittorrent and other vendors.
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