Thursday, May 03, 2007

Swapper, for faster file transfers via caching

While the application’s key features - swapping music, photo and videos with trusted friends - are on tap from any of the dozens of start-ups, what is different about Swapper is that it combines a P2P distributed file system with upload caching, which gives application some speed oomph.

Classic caching (reverse proxies, CDNs) saves bandwidth only where downloads of popular content is concerned. This helps boost the download speeds. Swapper is the exact opposite - aka upload caching. Given that most broadband connections are asymmetrical (at least in the US), the upload speeds are the biggest issue with P2P apps.

Personal peer-to-peer (p2p) and personal file sharing services are dime a dozen. Not a day passes when some new start-up shows up with a new offering, with a slightly different twist.

Wambo (previously known as Perenety), is throwing its hat in the ring, with Swapper, a new software-service that promises to address the biggest pain of file transfers: upload speeds.

Wambo was started by co-founders Arnaud Tellier (CTO), Guillaume Thonier (Chief Architect), and Xavier Casanova (CEO) and company’s first product, Shooter had launched almost a year ago in beta. It tried to do too much, and had a difficult interface.

The trio and their distributed work force (India, Estonia and California) went back to the drawing board and came up with a simpler and easy to use application called Swapper. For now it is a Windows only application. “Shooter was the early prototype and we used it get users and build a small P2P network of a few hundred nodes, for development and testing,” says Casanova.

While the application’s key features - swapping music, photo and videos with trusted friends - are on tap from any of the dozens of start-ups, what is different about Swapper is that it combines a P2P distributed file system with upload caching, which gives application some speed oomph.

Classic caching (reverse proxies, CDNs) saves bandwidth only where downloads of popular content is concerned. This helps boost the download speeds. Swapper is the exact opposite - aka upload caching. Given that most broadband connections are asymmetrical (at least in the US), the upload speeds are the biggest issue with P2P apps.

Here’s how it works: when you are sending a friend a song (legal of course), Swapper checks with its servers to see if that file has already been uploaded by you or someone else. This check is anonymous an fast.

For instance, you upload a photo album and sent it to a cousin. A week later you send it to your cousin - the system checks for a special file signature, and sees if there is something matching that signature on the servers. If there is a match, your uncle gets the photos you already sent to your cousin with Swapper, since they are cached on the servers. No need to upload again.

“The entire process is anonymous and doesn’t ever expose any of your content,” says Casanova. “Most MP3s, personal photos, and mini-videos are less than 20-25MB. We compress, cache, and pre-fetch to make these fly. That’s our market. Not the large gigabyte sized files.”

Wambo hopes to make money two ways: by delivering promotional content delivered in Swapper (similar to email newsletters) for a fee and offering a pro-version of the service for small and medium sized businesses.

There are two big concerns I have about the product - first and foremost, the legal issues could cause major migraines for the company, even though Casanova points out that their EULA makes it pretty clear that illegal uses are prohibited. I am not sure the RIAA and MPAA gun-men who who shoot first, ask questions later, will appreciate the nuance of an EULA.

The overcrowded nature of the market should be a nagging worry for Casanova and his co-founders. Despite have a seemingly good technology, they would have to fight for mind share and grow subscribers. And that’s not easy.

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Secret AACS numbers, the photoshopped edition

from Boing Boing by Wired News has a gallery of the lovely photoshops of the notorious AACS "secret key," a 16-digit number that is illegal to possess and disseminate. AACS is the anti-copying system built into HD-DVDs (and you're out of your mind if you buy one of these boxes -- their future is apparently so fragile that it can be unmade with a 16-digit number!) and controlled by the AACS Licensing Authority. The AACS LA shot itself in the head this week by sending legal threats to sites that contained the number, sparking a user revolt on Digg and many other outraged blogs, pages and posts. Right now, 368,000 pages contain the number, up from 3,600 yesterday. Good luck getting the food coloring out of the swimming pool!

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Somehow, Flickr has created a marketplace for professional photography and made it look like an accident.

May 02, 2007 By Daryl Lang (From the May issue of PDN) Excerpts "What did these photographers do to drum up work? Almost nothing. They uploaded their photos to Flickr and the work found them." "With millions of keyworded pictures, the site resembles a big stock library. Photo buyers praise the quality of the photographs... and with so much traffic it seems like a logical place to set up shop." "But Flickr has done little if anything to welcome professionals. It offers no e-commerce features. It expressly forbids commercial uses of its site." "Paul Buckley, vice president and executive art director for Penguin, uses Flickr to find photographs, something he mentioned in a story about book publishing in PDN's March issue." (thanks, Andy) Your Friend Flickr? May 02, 2007 By Daryl Lang (From the May issue of PDN.) Ryan Brenizer landed a job covering events for Wired.com. Paul Wilcock licensed his concert photos to a few newspapers. Hamad Darwish got an assignment to shoot desktop backgrounds for Microsoft Windows. What did these photographers do to drum up work? Almost nothing. They uploaded their photos to Flickr and the work found them. Flickr went online in 2004 as a powerful yet easy-to-use program for storing and sharing personal images. It was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. Today it leads a double life as a hugely popular site for amateurs to share personal snapshots, and as a growing marketplace for licensing photo rights. With millions of keyworded pictures, the site resembles a big stock library. Photo buyers praise the quality of the photographs and the ease of the Flickr search engine. Professional shooters say the site's forums are a good source of tips and inspiration. Joining the site is free, and with so much traffic it seems like a logical place to set up shop. But Flickr has done little if anything to welcome professionals. It offers no e-commerce features. It expressly forbids commercial uses of its site. "If we find you selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account," its guidelines read. Many of its users happily give their photos away for free. Transactions that take place off the site are not forbidden, however. Flickr neither encourages nor discourages art buyers from e-mailing photographers to ask for photos, a spokesperson says. Members say such e-mails are on the rise. Flickr's forums bustle with discussions about requests users get for their images, and how much to charge. Sherri Jackson, a Flickr member who says she shoots for fun and personal expression, noticed more people contacting her in the last few months asking to use her images. "I get more requests every week and it's exciting to learn how people wish to use my images," she says. "I like the fact that my work can be out there and available and I really don't have to do anything to market myself." Another Flickr member to notice this trend is Matthew Blake Powers, a graduate of architecture school who takes photographs as a hobby. "Many times, the e-mails I receive are very casual and get to the point. They simply state who they are, what image they are interested in, and how/why they would like to use it," Powers says. In one case, someone designing the annual report for the Milwaukee Art Museum e-mailed Powers seeking to use one of his photos on the cover. After researching how much to charge, and weighing the fact that he never had anything published before, Powers decided to ask $250. To Powers' disappointment, the museum selected another cover. Paul Buckley, vice president and executive art director for Penguin, uses Flickr to find photographs, something he mentioned in a story about book publishing in PDN's March issue. "I use Flickr as any other stock photo source with a search engine," Buckley says. "That may not be its intended purpose, but it works beautifully, and the site has a smart, powerful search engine." Penguin recently used a Flickr photograph on a book cover. There is no way to know how much business is conducted through Flickr. One member claims a major ad agency paid him $2,500 to use a Flickr photo as a background in an unaired TV commercial. Darwish's job for Microsoft, shooting landscapes to be included with Windows Vista as desktop wallpaper, was almost certainly a multi-thousand-dollar job. At the other extreme, some blogs and small companies ask to use Flickr photos for free. Some don't even ask. "I think a lot of companies are using it as kind of a fishing site for cheap stuff from people without a lot of experience," says Jim Hunter, a stock and assignment photographer and editor of StockPhotographer.info. But even Hunter posts work on Flickr, which he says drives a fair amount of traffic to his professional site. His wife also uses Flickr to share family photos. Brenizer, who has been shooting events like the New York Comic Con for Wired.com thanks to a Flickr connection, joined the site as a casual member a few years ago. Brenizer credits the site's message boards with teaching him to be a better photographer and jumpstarting his photo career. "The passion just totally captured me," he says. "There's that positive reinforcement of all the people on there. . . . Then the people who contacted me started to be clients." A former newspaper editor, Brenizer now works in the publications office of the Columbia University Teachers College, where a large part of his job is shooting photographs. On his own time, he shoots weddings and events, and he spent a week as the photographer-in-residence at a biological research center—all jobs he got through Flickr. "I've never solicited, I've never done any advertising," he says. Flickr has made some photographers into cult celebrities. David Hobby, a Baltimore Sun staff photographer, publishes a blog about lighting called Strobist. To complement the blog, he started a Flickr group so his readers could share advice and photos. The Strobist group spun out of control and now has more than 7,100 members, who post dozens of messages a day. Hobby doesn't have time to answer all the questions people send him. A lighting seminar he organized sold out weeks in advance. Hobby says he is impressed by how good Flickr photographers are, pointing to the Strobist photo pool. "Almost every one of those pictures has earning potential," he says. Like a lot of Flickr fans, Hobby thinks it's only a matter of time before the service finds a way to monetize this collection of talent. "You don't sit on a big oil well and not drill down eventually," he says. A Flickr spokesperson would not comment on future plans. For now, Flickr makes money off advertising and by selling upgraded memberships for a small annual fee. It has some direct competitors (including Zoomr, SmugMug and Photobucket) but none with the kind of popularity and goodwill Flickr has achieved. Flickr allows members to set free usage terms by attaching Creative Commons tags to images, so a logical next step might be to let users set prices for certain kinds of usage. Another strategy could be to partner with an existing stock photography site, perhaps one of the royalty-free micropayment sites that also appeal to semi-professional shooters. Or it could do nothing. To better understand Flickr's future, it may be helpful to step back and look at how Yahoo! and its investors view the site. In earnings calls and media interviews, no one asks Yahoo! executives how they're going to make money off photographs. Instead, the buzz is all about "Web 2.0," the user-generated, community-focused sites that have attracted huge audiences. Sites like Flickr, MySpace and YouTube are hot because they engage people in a way that traditional media increasingly cannot. Yahoo! recently began requiring Flickr members to use the same ID to log in to Flickr as they use for other services like Yahoo! Mail. As a result, the company can collect more information about users and their online behavior. To Yahoo!, Flickr's value is not its photography, but rather the desirable audience it attracts for advertisers and marketers. This may explain Flickr's failure to embrace, denounce, or even officially care about the pro community. Somehow, Flickr has created a marketplace for professional photography and made it look like an accident.

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Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Ask.com To Launch Contextual Advertising Product

Apr. 25, 2007 at 12:01am Eastern by Barry Schwartz Ask.com To Launch Contextual Advertising Product Ask.com is launching a new sponsored listings contextual product and will go live the week of May 21st. The Ask contextual product will initially launch within IAC's own network of sites including Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch and will then expand to trusted third party publishers. Individual publishers will most likely have to wait until next quarter to gain access to this contextual product. Current Ask Sponsored Listings advertisers will be automatically opted into the contextual network, but will have the option of opting out before the product launches. In addition, advertisers will be able to preview the features and controls they have, prior to the launch date. The advertiser controls will be separated; there will be unique bid prices for contextual ads as well as unique, separate reporting tools, and referrer blocking. The publishers will have two unique features that are not currently available in the Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network. Publishers will be able to set "page yield thresholds" and set "relevancy thresholds." There will be levers to allow publisher to determine if they want higher paying ads or if they want more relevant ads with these levers. In addition, the ads will be unique from that of Google and Yahoo ads. Ask told me that they will allow "very customized" interfaces for the contextual ads; such as customized backgrounds and graphics. Let me just clarify one more time that they will first launch with IAC's own network and trusted publishers, then possibly, in the next quarter, allow other third party publishers sign up to the contextual program. Here is the full release: IAC Advertising Solutions Announces Contextual Advertising Product Contextual advertising offering creates new revenue options for publishers, expands distribution options for Ask Sponsored Listings advertisers OAKLAND, Calif. – April 25, 2007 – IAC Advertising Solutions (IACAS), a wholly-owned business of IAC (Nasdaq; IACI), today announced a contextual advertising product that enables publishers to generate revenue via contextually-relevant ad units on their content pages. The contextual product is integrated into the Ask Sponsored Listings (ASL) platform and allows ASL advertisers to seamlessly extend their pay per click advertising campaigns to content pages. Reaching over 34 million unique users each month the ASL content advertising network will launch with sites from IAC’s portfolio of brands including Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite and Citysearch. “IAC Advertising Solutions already operates the 3rd largest search advertising network1. We’ve achieved this scale by providing innovative and flexible monetization solutions to more than 90 publishers. We are excited about this new offering and the expanded set of publishers that we’ll be able to serve through a content advertising network.” said James Speer, GM Search Marketing at IAC Advertising Solutions. IACAS continues to make significant investments in people and technology to better support a growing network of publishers. “We have consistently heard that publishers want more diversity in their revenue streams and transparency into the true value of their inventory. We fully expect that our new contextual product will satisfy the needs of these content owners” said Speer. The value of contextual lies in its ability to deliver relevant high yield advertisements deep within the content channels of web properties. As a result publishers are free to focus resources on other revenue streams including integrated brand sponsorships. The ASL contextual product provides superior sell through today for publishers of technology, telecommunications, travel, automotive, real estate and finance content. Contextual Advertising Features and Benefits Increased Page Yield Higher revenues due to an established and growing advertiser base Improved relevance and higher yields than ROS/RON CPM ads Customizable yield thresholds to support page yield management Self-serve revenue reporting portal Revenue reporting across multiple channels and products Enhanced Editorial Control Customization of ad look and feel (background color, font, layout, graphics) Customizable relevancy settings to meet user experience goals Editorial control of advertisers (competitive advertiser blocking) Editorial categorization of site pages is supported Improved Integration Capabilities Contextual ad tags can be served via existing publisher ad servers (i.e. DFP, AdManager) Standardized ad tags promote quick and easy implementations with little or no maintenance The Ask Sponsored Listings contextual product will be available during the week of May 21st. For more information publishers can send email to bizdev@ask.com 1 Source: comScore and internal data, January 2007 About Ask Sponsored Listings Ask Sponsored Listings, introduced in the Fall of 2005, is an automated open-auction system allowing marketers to purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask.com and its publisher network. The ASL search advertising network is now the 3rd largest reaching 61.4 million monthly unique users. More than 30,000 advertisers use the system to bid on more than 25 million keywords. Additional information about ASL is available at http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com IAC Advertising Solutions is also demonstrating its commitment to stemming click fraud as a member of the IAB Task Force on the issue. About IAC Advertising Solutions One the world’s largest online advertising solutions and sales groups, IAC Advertising Solutions offers complete solutions for a variety of communication needs and a comprehensive range of advertising products, including search, media, and direct marketing. Search solutions include Ask Sponsored Listings, an automated open-auction system allowing marketers to purchase, manage and optimize campaigns on Ask.com and its advertising syndication network. Media solutions include online templated ad units and integrated sponsorships, as well as offline media capabilities on IAC’s network of leading online brands, including Ticketmaster Citysearch, Evite, Match.com, iWon, Excite, and Expedia. Direct Marketing solutions include email, lead generation, co-registration, sweepstakes and promotions. IAC Advertising Solutions is a division of IAC Search & Media, a wholly-owned business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI). IAC Advertising Solutions can be contacted at www.iacadvertising.com or 212-404-1000. Postscript: Marchex released a press release that shows they are one of the few early contextual ad partners in this program. Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHX, MCHXP), in conjunction with its IndustryBrains subsidiary, today announced that it has signed contextual advertising agreements with four online publishers, including Computer Shopper, Engineering.com, Wall Street Reporter, and SitePoint. Under the agreements, Marchex will provide its contextual advertising solutions to selected areas of the publishers' Web sites, or to channels associated with the sites, such as targeted newsletters and blogs. Postscript #2: The Ask.com Blog just covered this explaining that this product different from the competitors because of three reasons: * It gives publishers more control over yield and relevancy * It gives publishers more creative ad unit opportunities * It allows both advertisers and publishers more control over where and what ads are displayed

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Blogger hack: Expandable posts with Peekaboo view

Blogger hack: Expandable posts with Peekaboo view Your blog's main page usually shows the entire content of each post. If your posts are usually more than 2 paragraphs, then your visitor will find it difficult to quickly find the topic of interest to him because he needs to scroll down a lot. This is where expandable post summaries helped in the old Blogger. This hack serves the same purpose for the new Blogger and more! That is, main page will show only post summaries and when you click "Read more", the full post appears in the main page itself (Peekaboo view)!! I got some requests to do such a hack and I managed to get it working. Later, Hans improved it by adding a "Summary only" link with which you can collapse the post back to summary. link to full instructions here http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/2006/09/expandable-posts-with-peekaboo-view.html

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