creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

Lately I’ve been playing with utterz, it’s kind of hard to explain but think of it as the gateway to blog from your cell phone.  It’s a short term blip based podcast – call in and leave a message and it can post the audio to your blog.   Send Utterz a picture, it will send it to your blog or service.   Send it a video and utterz will post it on your blog and youtube.

The coolest thing about Utterz is they keep adding connections, thereby making you more likely to use their service as your gateway for interacting with the online world.   It also seems to have a vox-like community that really intereacts with each other instead of some other web services.   The great thing that prompted this post however was not about the great community, it’s about crossposting.

Here are the innate services that Utterz will crosspost to:

Blogger

Livejournal

Tumblr

Pownce

Flickr

Yahoo Groups

Typepad

Twitter

WordPress

Movable Type

Twitxer

Drupal

Live Spaces

YouTube

Blip.tv

and MetaWeblog API compatible sites

(if I missed one I’m sorry Utterz)

Going to one places allows you to hit up everyone else,  I would almost wish to use Utterz as a distribution point instead of a web service, but I already have most of those covered (hey wordpress plugin writers, compose a pownce crosspost plugin).   I’m not sure how often I’ll use it, but it’s a nice option to literally just call in a blog post.   So with this I’ll use it for what it is.  I’ll let my wordpress handle most of the data dissemination across the blogosphere.

But this brings up the question, what am I crossposting to from Utterz?

Well the obvious is that is posts from Utterz to my main blog, the other settings I configured more mood.   All videos I post will go to my blip.tv profile and youtube accounts.  Pictures will go to my twitxer account and flickr accounts to be publically displayed.  Any additional messages will also cross post over to my pownce account (this will go away once I have a way to post to pownce from wordpress).

The only thing I’m unsure of  at this point is archiving my utterz – utterz uses a flash player to play the locally stored audio file.   WIth video files I do have a recourse of pulling them off of another service or using the source file for life caching purposes.   This is really the only bummer about the whole thing.

The awesome thing is when I call up utterz to post an audio clip now, my voice is now spread across about 15 sites at once.   That is true internet broadcasting of yourself.

If you head over to Utterz make sure you add me as a friend, here is a link to my profile.

Facebook Group Wants to Draft Lessig For Congress Posted: 15 Feb 2008 04:45 PM CST …

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Morgan Goes Back to the Future With 1930s-Style Hydrogen Car Posted: 14 Feb 2008 09:56 PM CST …

Blogger gets 72 mpg from stock Euro Honda Civic diesel Posted: 15 Feb 2008 11:12 AM CST …

I’ve written a few articles on life caching.  For those that need to catch up check out this article. For those that don’t need the refresher course, let’s dig in.

What is coComment?

I’ll let them speak for themselves:

coComment keeps track of all the online conversations you’re following in one convenient place, and informs you whenever something is added to a conversation.

coComment will centralize all your conversations in one convenient place so you won’t lose any more contributions you have made on other websites. Stop bookmarking your comments to keep track of them, we will do that for you!

• We will inform you when somebody follows up on your comments, turning the web into a true and reactive global conversation. No need to go back and check on every comment you’ve made to see if the conversation has developed. We’ll let you know!
• Interested in following what people are commenting on? If they’re coComment users, (like heavyweight tech bloggers Pete Cashmore or Robert Scoble), you can follow what they’re saying in the “commentosphere” by checking their comments on their respective pages!
• Keep your conversations organized using tags so you find and follow them more efficiently.

Now why is this useful to you? 

Do you ever post on a blog and say something that comes out so  well written that you wished you saved it?  Do you want to keep track of all the online discussions you participate in?   Do you want to have a copy of all that data you post that Google is going to cache away on their servers? If you said yes to any of the above statements, for the low cost of 19.95 a month….er sorry mindset of what I was saying.  If you said yes then coComment can help you on your journey to maintaining this.

CoComment works as a browser plugin.   Currently I have tested it with Firefox 2.x-3.x and Flock.  Tranparently in the background it looks at the type of web site you are looking at, if you try to make a comment it sends a copy to the coComment servers.   The supported forums/blogs/etc that it supports are:

You participate in many online conversations on blogs and others websites. coComment supports most existing conversational spaces and additionnally lets you start conversations on any webpage:

On blogs and community websites:

• coComment helps you managing existing conversations
• coComment works all major blogging platforms, on services like Digg, Flickr or Youtube and some Forums.
• coComment automatically collects your participations, add conversations to your account, and let you organize them with tags directly from the current page

On conventional websites:

• coComment let you initiate new conversations
• In a single click, every website has now a commenting section
• Being on CNN.com or any other website, feel free to discuss the information.

OK that’s cool it’s another social network based around comments, but what does this have to do with life caching?

The key feature that this does is that it gives you an RSS feed output of all of your comments.   If you are doing a simple life stream application or a full blown life caching that involves archiving all of your data, this allows you the input to save it.   Until EVERYTHING suppors a data portability initiative this is just one more tool to get you closer.

If you decide to try out it, go ahead and add Creeva to your friends list.

207 pranksters stand still for 5 mins in Grand Central Stn Posted: 01 Feb 2008 03:39 PM CST …

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Ron Paul, Dr. No-body, beats Rudy and Fred–again!!

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Researchers put circuits on contact lenses, freak out rabbits

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Yahoo throws its weight behind OpenID single sign-on

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Flickr Takes Historical Imagery To The Masses

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Network Solutions steals domain ideas; Confirmed!

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Top 20 Internet Millionaires Under 30

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gOS 2.0 Rocket is Now Available

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Bill Gates: World Entering ‘Second Digital Decade’

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Pentagon Won’t Probe KBR Rape Charges

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McDonald’s boss blames video games for childhood obesity!

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6 Arrested For Hanging Anti-Bush Banners

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Flipping the Linux switch: Package management 101

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WeStream: Streaming Music From A Torrent File

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Blu-ray supporters scent victory

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Digg, CBS Interactive team up for political coverage

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OpenID and DataPortability.org to gain major support

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Sysadmin tries, fails at being l337 hax0r, gets jail time

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AT&T torpedoes its own stock, takes other telcos down too

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gOS 2.0 Now Available For Download

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Everex’s Cloudbook coming to Wal-Mart by month’s end

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FCC To Investigate Comcast’s Bittorrent Blocking [Comcast]

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Two very different milbloggers post from beyond the grave

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Circumcision doesn’t affect sexual satisfaction, performance

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Virtual Banking Banned in Second Life

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The Demise of the PC is vastly overrated.

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Why Mitt Romney is Bad if We Want to Return to Reagan

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Problems with Plaxo

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Mimimizing phishing attacks on your organization

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Creeva’s Twitter’s

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My Flickr Photos

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Creeva’s World 3.0

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Google Calendar Feature Needed

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Migrating an entire Family to Google Apps: The Definitive Guide

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Appendix_E.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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AppendixA-D.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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Creeva’s Shared items in Google Reader

Rare Atari Breakout handheld shows up on eBay Posted: 03 Jan 2008 04:58 PM CST Filed under: Gaming It’s certainly not the first bit of super rare Atari gear to show up on eBay, but those looking to expand their collection may want to take stock of their bank account right about now, as the Super Breakout handheld prototype pictured above (apparently one of only two known to exist) is now up for auction with less than a day to go. As you might have guessed, it doesn’t actually work, or even have the finished branding, but it apparently is the real deal — purchased directly from the handheld’s designer, no less. If that’s got you all nostalgic for what could have been, you’ll only have to beat $385 (as of this writing) to be the top bidder, although you can be sure you’ll have to drop a good deal more than that if you actually want to get your hands on it.[Via OhGizmo!]   Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Plaxo Flubs It Posted: 03 Jan 2008 12:22 PM CST News leaked prematurely today about a new Plaxo Pulse feature that allows users to match Facebook contacts to Pulse contacts, and then import contact data about the matches into Pulse. Plaxo has been testing the feature with a number of journalists and bloggers. It involves running a script against Facebook. You tell Plaxo your Facebook account credentials; Plaxo then goes in to Facebook, looks up every one of your friends, and pulls down their contact information. Plaxo could have done most of the work via the Facebook API (and in fact we covered a startup called FriendCSV that does just that). But the Facebook API doesn’t allow exporting of a crucial piece of data, email addresses. In fact, emails are shown as images instead of text on Facebook so that scripts cannot easily download them. So Plaxo avoided the API and went with screen scraping. They developed optical character recognition software to recognize email addresses and add them to the export. Facebook doesn’t like this, of course. But it isn’t Plaxo that’s paying the price. It’s the journalists and bloggers who’ve been testing out the service. Robert Scoble was banned yesterday from Facebook for running the script. He received an email from Facebook that said “Our systems indicate that you’ve been highly active on Facebook lately and viewing pages at a quick enough rate that we suspect you may be running an automated script. This kind of Activity would be a violation of our Terms of Use and potentially of federal and state laws.” Plaxo was certainly aware of the risk. In an email from the company asking me to try the service last week, they said “We don’t know whether Facebook will try to shut us down (despite their increasing verbal support for the concepts of open-ness), so we want to let a few key folks have access to the functionality before we make it available to everyone.” Yeah, they guessed right. Plaxo started running automated scripts against Facebook without any warning or discussion with them beforehand, in violation of their terms of service and, I’ll add, common sense. Of course users were shut down. Facebook must regulate this kind of behavior, without it the service would crumble. Beyond the automated script issue, Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses – user privacy. Robert Scoble may be perfectly fine with having my contact information be easily downloaded from Facebook, but I may not be. Ultimately it should be me that decides, not him. And if Plaxo wants to push the envelope on user privacy issues, again, perhaps they should at least have given Facebook a heads up. And be prepared to take the consequences themselves instead of passing them off to their users. Robert Scoble was Plaxo’s lab rat in this experiment. I’m glad I wasn’t one, too. Update: Loren Feldman basically agrees with me. Plaxo Loading information about Plaxo… Facebook Loading information about Facebook… Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

A fair use primer for online content creators Posted: 03 Jan 2008 11:31 AM CST Fair use wasn’t just bolted on to copyright law; it stems from the very purpose of copyright. A new report hopes to teach creators of user-generated content about when using other material is fair and when it might not be. Read More…

IPv6: coming to a root server near you Posted: 02 Jan 2008 11:43 PM CST On February 4, 2008, ICANN will add IPv6 addresses for four root DNS servers to the root zone file, making full IPv6 Internet connections a reality. Time to check that DNS software and those firewalls to avoid any possible trouble. Read More…

Iowa State Presidential Primary: Online Caucus Coverage Posted: 02 Jan 2008 05:40 PM CST Share This

Creeva’s Shared items in Google Reader

Web Wandering Dump

10 New Years Resolutions Every Geek Should Make

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 03:08 PM CST

It’s the end of the year – almost quite literally. I’ve only got a few more hours to figure out what my personal goals list will be for next year, but I can at least publish my geek goals so that I’ll have some public accountability as to whether any of these will be achieved in 2008.

Most of these are fairly open, too. My guess is that most of you will be able to adopt most or all of this list as your own. Let’s make it a year to remember. Let’s actually achieve some New Year’s resolutions.

01) Log-in to my social networks more than twice a week.
Whether it is because of the copious amounts of spam on MySpace, or the unending piles of Pirate v. Ninja notifications on Facebook, I somehow can’t bring myself to log into either one of them more often than a couple times a week. Interestingly enough, I’m finding that Twitter fills the gaps that I joined Facebook for in the first place. I wanted to be a part of Facebook so that I could communicate with interesting folks in my industry, but as my Twitter network grows, I’m finding that it is much easier to find folks I’m interested in talking to there, than wading through the hassle that is a web-based social network.

Still, there are benefits, like the centralized apps and mini-feed views, that are afforded from Facebook that you simply can’t get out of Twitter. Having one spot for productivity and a quick glance at what my friends have been up to recently is something I’m missing out on.

02) Drink the Apple Kool-Aid
I got my first new laptop computer in several years. Typically, I’m the sort of guy who will buy a machine that’s a generation or two back because I love bargains, and most of the time it is good enough for what I do daily. Since joining up at Mashable and spending literally 12 hours straight on the computer every day, I figured it was time to upgrade. I got a Black Friday special laptop from Dell, a speedy little Vostro 1000. Unfortunately, it came with Vista, and I must say I’m slightly less than impressed with it.

On the other hand, folks with the Apple laptops are always expressing their condolences and telling me how super-great Leopard is. They’re finally starting to wear me down. I want to be one of the shiny happy people now. The Hare Krishna act has finally worn me down. At some point next year, I suppose I’m going to need to drink the Apple Kool-Aid, and hope the increased productivity is worth the sack to my identity as a PC guy.

03) Set up a spam bot for Ron Paul
Because as much as he concerns me with his associations with the Alex Jones’ of the political fringe, unfortunately he’s the one that most closely represents my political desires (based on his Congressional voting record). Additionally, he’s probably the most tech-friendly Presidential candidate. I can vote for him, as I voted for Badnarik last cycle, but voting for the underdog doesn’t always get the job done.

What does get the job done? Apparently setting up spam servers works. Got him all that campaign money. I’m tech savvy, it is the least I can do to help the old coot.

04) Get control of my personal brand.
Not only is my personal website under construction, but as I try out more social networks and lifestreaming utilities, I’ve spread my personal brand all over the Internet. I’ve got podcasts, domains, writings, tumblogs, linkblogs and RSS feeds scattered all over the internet bearing my name. I need to find one or two good utilities and a slick looking format with which to consolidate it all in a useful, user-friendly manner.

05) Invest in the next Google.
I see and profile, what, twenty, thirty startups a day? I should be able to spot the next winner out of this bunch. I wanna be a Web 2.0 billionaire (or whatever we end up calling the buzzword du jour next year).

06) Get my calendaring organized.
This is the one area of my life I’m still really sucking at getting migrated out to the cloud. I still manage my calendaring with a local exchange server that synchronizes with a copy of Outlook on my local machine, which synchronizes with my ancient Asus WinCE unit and my wife’s video iPod. I really like Google’s calendaring, and I know that sites like Upcoming and others are great. I just haven’t found the one calendaring site that manages all my task list and todo needs as well as synchronizing with my ancient mobile devices.

07) Travel to more conferences.
I enjoy networking. I enjoy learning. I enjoy showing myself off as an expert. I even enjoy traveling. I should go to more conferences.

08) Fix my grammar errors.
I’m sure the regular Mashable readers can back me up here. WordPress doesn’t have grammar correction like desktop based word processors, and thus many dangling participles and silly “its-it’s” errors often slip past me. WordPress either needs to implement grammar into the SpellChecker, or I need to get more attentive to these errors. I don’t care which one happens, but I’m tired of Suezanne always calling me out on my grammar errors, I know that much.

09) Make the next blockbuster online video podcast.
It has been a minute since I’ve done any work in video podcasting. My last valiant efforts were before the rampant investment in video monetization firms. With YouTube monetizing, Revver paying out $30 CPM, and BlinkX boasting upwards of $60 CPM, now is the time to make something happen.

10) Get my email under control.
As I write this, I have 2551 unread messages sitting in my inbox. Aside from the 500 emails a day into the Mashable inbox that are forwarded to me, I’ve also got WordPress forwarding me everyone’s comments and track-backs, as well as a 10 year old email account that sends me a hundred or two pieces of Bacn a day. Add to that notifications from my social networks and the occasional email from someone I can actually correspond with, and it’s a monumental task to deal with. I need to set up more advance filtering and make more liberal usage of the delete button.

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New FAA rules limit batteries in checked and carry-on baggage

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 12:45 PM CST

Planning on packing plenty of spare battery power to that New Years party? You might run afoul of new air travel rules that go into effect on January 1, 2008.

Read More…

The Showdown: Street Fighter IV in action… good or bad?

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 11:58 AM CST

Hot off the heels of their last debate, Frank and Ben square off again: this time about the newly-released footage of Street Fighter IV and where the series may be going.

Read More…

Top 10 Business Debacles Of 2007 [Top 10]

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 09:47 AM CST

Maybe we’re just getting better at the job but it seems like the debacles this year were bigger and more scandalous than last year. Every time we turned around, there was another deadly product or breach of consumer rights or act of malfeasance. Here’s our roundup of the top 10 worst moments in business this year…

10. VerizonFiOs Setting People’s Houses On Fire

Verizon’s new fiber optic cable network is blazingly fast, but their technicians can’t be accused of the same swiftness as they keep drilling through customer’s electrical lines and gas lines, leading to small fires. In an effort to put out the PR blaze, the Verizon Policy Blog always seemed to find a way to spin each story into a tale of how wonderful and in-demand their new network is. The phrase goes, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” yet Verizon’s PR mavens felt they could reinvent physics and claim that the smoke at some of the incidents occurred in the absence of fire. (Link to stories)

9. Comcast Throttles Bit Torrent

Though long suspected on tech-oriented sites, the internets went into a frenzy after the AP proved that Comcast was disrupting the traffic of customers using popular file-sharing program BitTorrent, preventing its use. Though often used to trade pirated movies and music, the software is used by popular online game World of Warcraft and open-source groups to distribute new versions of their software, and in the AP’s case, the decidedly non-copyrighted Bible. Comcast denied disrupting BitTorrent traffic, but said that they reserved the right to manage their network. (Link to stories).

8. E.Coli In The Meat Kills Topps Meat Company

Late 2007 saw an extremely high number of meat shipments recalled for e.coli contamination. At Topps Meat, the recall was so massive that the company went bankrupt carrying it out. Insiders say the USDA’s ineffectuality and meatpacker-friendly loopholes have lead to higher tolerances for e.coli at plants. When the meat tests too high for e.coli, meatpackers only have to slap a “Cook Only” label on to and still get to sell it without reporting it to the USDA. Quoth Fast Food Nation, “There’s shit in the meat.” Medium-rare no longer looks so appetizing. (Link to stories).

7. Best Buy Caught Stealing Porn From Customer’s Computers

Following up on insider tip-offs of systematic porn pilfering, The Consumerist rigged a computer to make a video of itself, loaded it with porn, and it took it Best Buy. On video, we caught one of the techs purloining porn from our computer. The video went viral and Best Buy conducted a nationwide internal investigation, outsourced to ex-cops. Kids were interrogated. Kids were fired. Store hard drive were searched and seized. Pants were shat. According to some reports, most of the worst “porn caches,” communal computers where employees swapped porn, movies, music, and documents taken from customer harddrives, somehow managed to escape being hooked up for remote review. (Link to story).

6. Student Loan Scandal

Attorneys General sued and fined prominent banks and universities after uncovering widespread collusion and conflicts of interest between the two to sell college students on high-priced student loans. One of the techniques was to give students a “preferred lenders” list, which is to say, the private institutions the university preferred you to use because it meant kickbacks, gifts and expense-paid trips for them in referral rewards. While they were being shuttled into expensive private loans, the students were often not informed of the array of Federal loans that should be exhausted first. Seems some universities slept through their own Intro to Ethics classes. (Link to stories).

5. Jet Blue Passengers Stuck On The Tarmac

A winter storm swamped discount airline Jet Blue’s operating capacity, with planes grounded, passengers stuck on the tarmac for over four hours, flights canceled, call centers jammed, and thousands of passengers unable to reschedule their flights. The CEO initially won kudos for making an online video apology, but that, and his subsequent apologies upon apologies weren’t enough to save his job. The airline has developed contingency plans for future fiascoes, including new “stranding policies” for passengers, which includes paying passengers if they’re stuck inside a metal tube on a runaway for upwards of four hours and not given any food or allowed to disembark. The debacle helped galvanize a growing passenger’s rights movement and spurred pro-passenger legislation in New York, legislation which the airlines then quickly moved to scuttle. (Link to stories).

4. TJMaxx’s Largest Data Breach In History Of The Universe

Unsecured wireless systems at TJ Maxx lead to the largest data breach in the history of the universe, with millions of credit card numbers compromised. As is typical, the credit card companies and banks tried to keep everything as hush as possible and most customers only were curious as to why they and all their friends were getting their credit cards forcibly replaced. The issue highlighted how retailers have been quick to adopt the convenience of wireless information systems without taking the security measures to make sure they weren’t also conveniencing potential thieves. Who would have thought you could conduct the world’s greatest bank robbery without a note, gun, or even leaving the parking lot? (Link to stories).

3. Menu Foods Kills Pets With Fake Pet Food

Before there was lead, there was the counterfeit pet food. Menu Foods of Canada was found to be selling pet food tainted with fake protein. Swapping out the cheaper ingredients lined their and their suppliers’ pockets, and the intestinal tracts of their customer’s pets with poison, leaving dozens of pets dead. Consumers were livid. A massive recall ensued, and readers got their first glimpse into how Chinese ingredient makers get their contracts approved, only to later replace certain key ingredients with cheaper and sometimes fraudulent components, a practice that would come to be at the center of the massive lead recalls that were to come later that year. (Link to stories).

2. Mattel’s Lead-Tainted Toy Recalls

Worries about children consuming lead were largely confined to jokes about avoiding eating paint chips on old houses, until Mattel was forced to conduct the largest toy recall ever after it was found a number of their toys contained lead well above the federally allowed toxicity levels. As parents, agencies, advocacy groups, and other manufacturers began scrutinizing products and supply chains, scores more products were recalled for high levels of lead. Congressional hearings were held and the story became a staple of local and national news broadcasts. It may not be until 20 years from now that we know the true impact, when we start wondering why national IQ levels have dropped 45 points. (Link to stories).

1. Sub-Prime Mortgage Meltdown

Housing prices stopped going up and banks stopped refinancing houses, pulling out the bottom blocks of the giant Jenga tower that was the housing frenzy. In fact, it was Jenga towers upon Jenga towers, with the mortgages being carved up and reshuffled until they looked like sensible investments. Now banks are washing out billions upon billions of losses, and homeowners across the country are worried about losing their homes. Everyone in the confederacy of dunces; homeowners, loan officers, credit agencies, banks, investment firms, stand to lose. Who will get stuck holding the hot potato? (Link to stories).

(Photo: jgodsey)

Most Bookmarked TechCrunch Posts of 2007

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 09:37 AM CST

Okay, final list for 2007. Here are the top-25 bookmarked or shared posts from the year, as determined by people who used the “Add This” bookmark button at the bottom of each post (see also our other year-end lists: Popular, Headlines, Launches, Deals, Deadpool):

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

TorrentFreak’s Most Memorable Quotes of 2007

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 07:48 AM CST

Some of the quotes are pretty straightforward, others might not make that much sense without context if you’re not a regular TorrentFreak reader. You can always subscribe to our feed if you want to stay stay up to date in 2008.

Happy New Year!

The quotes…

The MPAA after they were caught infringing the copyright of Patrick Robin’s blogging software “Forest Blog”:

“The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.”

BitTorrent Inc. co-founder Ashwin Navin on iTunes DRM:

“iTunes DRM Inspires People to Pirate Content.”

The Pirate Bay’s Gottfrid Svartholm about his favorite anti-piracy organization:

“The MPAA can most accurately be described as rabid, obsessed lunatics.”

Mediadefender CEO Randy Saaf when we found out about Miivi:

“This is really fucked.”

Mark Cuban to Bram Cohen, in a rant about the new BitTorrent movie store:

“But where are they ? Not just the customers Bram. The content? I searched for Prison Break. Lots of torrents. None of them Legal. Is this what Fox had in mind when they signed up with you?”

President Basescu (Romanian President) on copyright infringement:

“Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world … Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania’s friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.”

Shaw, Canadian ISP gives advise on how to configure BitTorrent:

“Set the KB/s LAN max upload speed [0:unlimited] value to 1.”

MPAA’s Dean Garfield about Pirate Party politicians:

“There’s nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate.”

P2P virus to its victims:

“Ah, I see you are using P2P again……if you don’t stop within 0.5 seconds, i’m going to kill you!”

Scener about Feds that try to stop the Scene:

“No matter how hard the Feds try to stop the scene there are always people smarter than them out there. What they should be doing is leaving us to it and catching pedophiles, rapists and psychopathic killers rather than wasting resources on a few geeks.”

The Pirate Bay about the Caribbean pirate Jack Sparrow:

“Hollywood is trying to ridicule us pirates by portraying us as crazy but sympathetic adventurers. Not far from the truth, but in the 21st century real pirates are riding other torrents than that of the ocean”

BitTorrent admin about Leaseweb:

“It looks like we’re not going to be very safe anymore on Leaseweb, we are putting backups in place on another location, just in case.”

Demonoid explains why they were offline for almost a week, and moved from The Netherlands to Canada:

“We had a system problem which will force us to restore everything from backup. The disks are pretty much empty right now and until we are able to upload the backup and set up everything up, we have to close down.”

IsoHunt’s Gary to Brokep from The Pirate Bay:

“You are either illiterate and don’t check the frontpage of sites you are pointing fingers at, or you are a communist. Or both. What makes you think you have rights to content you didn’t produce? People’s rights vs. copyright holders’ rights? Please. I will laugh at you when you are marked a terrorist and US armies hunt you down. Not that I like the whole anti-terrorist thing from the US but I digress.”

Marnie stern about her BitTorrent addiction:

“Since I’ve been here I have downloaded…I mean I feel I’m going to jail– well, I discovered the torrent– but I feel I’ve downloaded, I would say, honestly 40 or 50 movies, which I hear isn’t that bad, you know, for jail. But I mean, because I’ve pretty much been staying in the studio and a little bit with Zach [Hill], I have all of this time to just sit….”

MPA to “Christmas” movie Pirates:

“We can say this to all the pirates out there: you’d better watch out, you’d better not try”

Pirate Bay admin Brokep on US politics:

“The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don’t want to see us give in to them.”

NiN’s Trent Reznor about OiNK after it was raided:

“I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted.”

TorrentSpy’s Justing Bunnel on the power of the entertainment industry:

“Unfortunately many companies use their power and influence to halt and punish innovations they cannot think of ways to make money with. The monopolies tried to stop the VHS, DVD, and MP3 player, but thankfully failed when they took it to Court. Now Imagine for a second all the amazing products they did manage to squash…”

Dave Peters, frontman of “Throwdown” on supporting musicians:

“If you wanna really support a band, “steal” their album….help bury the label….and buy a tshirt when you show up at their show and sing every word.”

“A former music buyer writes to the CRIA:

“The music industry itself needs to recognize that they are to blame for sagging record sales. For years, they have been marketing recycled crap, and people are getting tired of it.”

Comcast to its customers:

“Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.”

(but we do slow it down)

Researchers on the effect of filesharing on CD sales:

“We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.”

Noël St-Hilaire, head of copyright theft investigations of the Canadian police on piracy:

“Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted. It is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it,” he added.

TorrentFreak council in an open letter to the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN:

“Your “news release” is peppered with inaccurate information, calculated to mislead and intimidate the millions of legitimate users of the many peer-to-peer filesharing services that are in common use throughout the world.”

50 Cent on filesharing:

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”

Eric Wilkinson, the producer of the independent film “The Man from Earth”, wrote an email to RLSlog in which he thanks them for the free promotion they gave him:

“In the future, I will not complain about file sharing. When I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”

New Years Eve, Live On The Net

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 04:38 AM CST

Another year has passed us all, and 2008 beckons tomorrow. For those not out and about this New Years Eve, here’s a few places you can join the experience online:

Video Streaming Sites

Sites such as Ustream, Kyte, Justin.tv and others will have many users live stream the new year from where ever they are.

Twitter

Twitter will provide a rolling text version on NYE around the world. The first off the mark are two new Twitter friends I met today, Eli and n8duke, who are both located in Antarctica.

I did a brief interview today with Eli, one of the two most remote Twitter users on the planet:

how long have you been down there?

I’ve been living (and working) at McMurdo Station (on Ross Island) for 3 months, and I’ve got about 6 more weeks to go before the end of the summer season.

How long have you been using Twitter?

my first tweet was posted on 07/07/07 and i’ve really loved it from the very beginning.

Do you find Twitter helps narrow the distance to the rest of the world?

definitely. i have friends all over the planet (US, Europe, etc) using twitter right now and it makes it so easy to stay in touch. it is especially helpful for me down here because the internet connection is pretty terrible, so it’s nice to just hope on to twitter, type a few characters, and be done with it.

What are you doing for new years eve? will you be watching others on the net?

well, it’s 10:45pm on new years eve for me right now, so in a few minutes i’m going to suit up in me ECW (extreme cold weather) gear and hike to the top of Observation Hill with some friends. there’s about 6 inches of snow on the ground (in the summer!) and it’s still snowing. we’re going to bring in the new year in true antarctic fashion!

There’s also live streaming cams as well.

Earthcam is streaming NY NYE live, -5 GMT. MSN is promising a live NYE feed as well, but just don’t try to open the link on a Mac, or not in IE…ouch.

If anyone else has some NYE live links let us know in the comments.

Update: BlogTV has a live zone here.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Top 10 Web Tech Stories of 2007

Posted: 31 Dec 2007 04:06 AM CST

2007 was an eventful year in Web Technology, with the rise of Facebook, some frenzied acquisitions from the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, and of course the iPhone. To round out the year (and put an end to the December lists!) here is a look at what we think were the 10 biggest Web tech stories of the year. They’re ordered in terms of technology impact and innovation – however it’s a subjective list, so let us know in the comments what you think should be in there.

This post doubles as the final Weekly Wrapup of 2007 — it’s been a great year and all the best everyone for 2008! Here’s looking forward to more Web innovation and startup success in ’08!

1. iPhone Launch

On January 9, 2007 Steve Jobs announced at Macworld “three revolutionary new products”: an iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. But turned out it was all one device: the fabled iPhone. This is our number 1, because it finally made the Mobile Web real for the influential US market (and the geeks who bought it in America, then took it overseas and unlocked it! cough).

2. Facebook Announces Platform

Much has already been written about this announcement on May 24, but suffice to say that it ushered in a new era for social networks – where outside companies could deploy advanced functionality inside the Facebook site.

3. Google Acquires DoubleClick for $3.1B

On April 13 Google acquired online advertising company DoubleClick, which set off a frenzy of acquisitions in this space – notably Microsoft’s $6B purchase of aQuantive. The Google/DoubleClick deal confirmed that online advertising was in a bubble period.

4. Google Announces OpenSocial

At the end of October Google launched OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for building social applications across the web, in a bid to cut off Facebook’s momentum with third party developers. Perhaps the biggest part of this news was the world’s largest SNS MySpace joining OpenSocial the day after.

5. Amazon Launches Kindle eReader

Despite mixed reviews of this e-Reader device with internet connectivity from Amazon, the Kindle promises to shake up the e-commerce giant’s core business model – by delivering books electronically instead of the familiar brown box.

6. CNN/YouTube Debates

On July 23, eight Democratic presidential hopefuls took the stage in South Carolina — a crucial early primary state — for a debate sponsored by CNN and YouTube in which all of the questions were submitted by users of YouTube. The Republicans got their chance in September. In the same vein, 2007 also saw the MySpace/MTV Candidate Forums and the rise of web 2.0 tools in politics.

7. Google Announces Android

On Nov 5, Google announced an open-source mobile operating system called Android. This could significantly change the way that Mobile Web applications are developed.

8. Steve Jobs’ open letter against DRM

On Feb 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted his Thoughts on Music in the ‘Hot News’ section of the Apple website. In it he outlined why DRM should be abolished by record companies. And Jobs’ pleas seemed to be heard by the record industry, with first EMI and then later Universal and Warner on AmazonMP3 ditching DRM.

9. Facebook Beacon Saga

Late this year Facebook announced a new advertising system that used retail data collected from its users. But after howls of privacy protests, Facebook had to back off some and make the system opt-in. It’s also worth mentioning here another Facebook story that just missed this list: in October Microsoft invested in Facebook at a $15b valuation.

10. Adobe AIR

On June 10, Adobe officially unveiled Adobe Integrated Runtime, or Adobe AIR for short. Formally called Adobe Apollo, it is a cross-operating runtime developed by Adobe that allows developers to create Rich Internet Applications for the desktop. It was a close call between this and Google Gears (the offline browser plug-in), or Microsoft’s Silverlight (a Flash-like plug-in) – both of which were also launched in ’07.

What have we missed? What were your top Web tech stories of 2007?

BBC Censored Bhutto’s Reports that Bin Laden Was Murdered

Posted: 30 Dec 2007 11:30 PM CST

When a news organization as venerable as the BBC censors the reportage of a story as important as the assassination of Benzir Bhutto –a highly visible critic of Bush/British policy with regard to the “War on Terrorism” et al –it is fair to ask: who is the BBC protecting? Are they covering up the motive for her murder?

Worship Your Plastic Heroes in <cite>The DC Comics Action Figure Archive</cite>

Posted: 30 Dec 2007 11:00 PM CST

Worship your plastic heroes in The DC Comics Action Figure Archive.

Winning Even When You Lose

Posted: 30 Dec 2007 07:33 PM CST

* April 1, 2004: Gmail launches in a private beta and starts to offer 1 GB of free storage.
* May 13, 2004: Yahoo increases the free storage from 4 MB to 100 MB. In 2005, Yahoo Mail’s free storage grows to 1GB and now it’s “unlimited”.

* August 25, 2005: Google Talk launches. “Built to support industry standards, Google Talk enables Google users to connect to the Google Talk service and exchange IMs using any client that does the same, including Trillian, Adium, iChat, GAIM, and Psi.”
* October 12, 2005: “Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced a landmark agreement to connect users of their consumer instant messaging (IM) services on a global basis. The industry’s first interoperability agreement between two distinct leading global consumer IM providers will give MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger users the ability to interact with each other, forming what is expected to be the largest consumer IM community in the world, estimated to be more than 275 million strong.”

* July 2007: To bid for the 700MHz spectrum in the US, Google asks four conditions, the most important being to allow people to use any application and any device (these two conditions were accepted).
* November 27, 2007: Verizon Wireless announces “that it will provide customers the option to use, on its nationwide wireless network, wireless devices, software and applications not offered by the company”.

* November 2, 2007: Google launches OpenSocial, “a set of common APIs that make it easy to create and host social applications on the web”.
* December 13, 2007: Facebooks opens its application platform. “Now we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms.”

At the end of the day, it’s not important if your product doesn’t win when your offerings can make changes for everyone.