Get a Glimpse of NextShare TV

In a previous post, we were anxious to see how NextShare TV, a set-top-box project developed by P2P-Next, would be.

The P2P Blog gives us a first look with this picture that clearly lets us catch sight of a part of this new tool. On it we can see that the streaming appears to be live and that we will be able to navigate between TV channels. It also appears that we will be able to use it to watch media content stored on our computer.

I'm sure there are several other features available on this P2P TV that we haven't seen yet. So let's keep our eyes open for any new pictures or info on the matter..

The BitTorrent Clients Top Five

Sorry to disappoint you but this post won't list the five best BitTorrent clients. What you will find however is the link to vote for your personal favorite BitTorrent tool.

If you're not a first-time poster on Lifehacker.com, leave a comment stating your choice and wait for the final five nominations that will get reviewed in a later article.

The idea of the High Five articles is a good initiative since it directly implicates the readers who take part in the topic by expressing their opinions, and assures the blogger that its content will correspond to what people are interested in.

The Gaming Experience Enhanced Thanks to P2P

BitTorrent technology enhances considerably bandwidth management so its use for Online games shouldn't come as a surprise. Yet it is still noticeable as it's still not a spontaneous move.

Thus the news of BitTorrent partnering up with two big Online game providers, Aeria and IAHGames, could very well be the beginning of a new gaming experience as users will be able to download clients and patches without their games being slowed down.

Indeed, the BitTorrent DNA is described on their Website as "a content delivery service that uses a secure, private, managed peer network to power faster, more reliable, more efficient delivery of richer content. BitTorrent DNA works with your existing CDN or origin servers, seamlessly accelerating your downloads or media streams."

Good news for every Online gamer out there!

Credits

P2P-Next is Shaping the Internet Television of the Future

It has been established for a while now that regular TV sets are no longer adapted to today's viewers. There have also been talks about the limits of Web streaming, particularly when bandwidth is concerned. So the P2P streaming technology developed by P2P-Next seems opportune.

Indeed on February 19th, 2008, in Brussels, this conglomerate of 21 industrial partners was granted 14 million dollars by the European Union to conduct its P2P project in order to develop the Internet Television of the Future.

According to their own statement:

"The P2P-Next project will run over four years, and plans to conduct a large-scale technical trial of new media applications running on a wide range of consumer devices. If successful, this ambitious project could create a platform that would enable audiences to stream and interact with live content via a PC or set top box. In addition, it is [their] intention to allow audiences to build communities around their favorite content via a fully personalized system."

This Set-top-box (STB) project, which carries the name of NextShare is being demonstrated at the IBC 2008. Besides, its Open-Source base promises to bring new ideas and talents to the table.

So I'm sure we're all in a haste to see how this all turns out... ;-)

Credits

The Recognition of iPod's Real Inventor Gets Apple Out of Trouble

The DailyMail just published a story related to iPods and to the recently known Kane Kramer (see the picture on the left), that quickly spread on the Web.

Indeed Kane Kramer has officially been recognized as the original inventor of an ancestor of the iPod, which was created in 1979 and was called the IXI (see the picture below). This device which looks a lot like the iPod could store 3.5 minutes of music.

But following money issues, he unfortunately couldn't afford to renew his patents in 1988, thus leaving them for anyone to grab. Anyone knows the sequel of this story.

So it is kinda sad that it took Apple going to court for the truth to be admitted. Indeed Apple used Kramer's former patent to win its trial against Burst which claimed to have invented the concept.

Besides, as much as it is good news for Kane Kramer to finally have his work publicly recognized, he still won't get any money compensation for it.

But he saw the silver lining in all of this: "To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all."

Now, let's just hope that it won't take trials every time for big companies to recognize the rightful authors of their products.

BitTorrent users, Beware of Email Scams

As their number has been growing significantly over the past few years, BitTorrent users have become an interesting target for scammers. Thus, chosen randomly, they have been receiving spam emails related to anti-piracy surveillance.

Indeed, these emails, stating to come from MediaDefender, accuse users of having illegally downloaded copyrighted content and give them an attached virus disguised as a report of the illegal act. If you want to get a preview of what they look like, you can find an example of these spam messages on TorrentFreak.

This scam, though imperfect, can appear legitimate to the unwarned eye since "MediaDefender, Inc. is the leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy-Prevention (IPP) industry". Besides MediaDefender is known to have put fake files on Torrents platforms in the past.

So beware of these fake emails and stay on the look-out for others...

The Foundation for P2P Alternatives Has its Wiki

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete". This quote from Buckminster Fuller marks the introduction of The Foundation for P2P Alternatives wiki.

This wiki which is a real resource for information and discussions related to P2P technology has assembled a community which functions as "a clearinghouse for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives".

In addition to its wiki, the foundation also has a blog that displays its principle, that is to say "Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices".

For further readings on this topic, you can check out the list of essays displayed on the wiki here and there.

Get a New Web Browsing Experience With Google Chrome

As you must have heard or read many times by now, Google has just launched an open-source Web browser named Google Chrome.

I have installed and tried it myself so I'm going to give you my first impressions on this little gem which, as you will understand, completely won me over. Just like Google Search Engine, Google Chrome has a simple and clear interface that aims to be an "invisible" browser, so that in the long run you will use without realizing it.

But what really sets Google Chrome apart from other Web Browsers is that it was completely designed according to current Web users' needs and Web applications. This is why Chrome is a treat to use and Web pages load really fast. Besides, tabs are completely separated from each other which means that, in addition to providing a more secure browsing, if a tab crashes, the other tabs won't be affected.

This new Browser also presents some cool functionalities. Indeed it has a tasks manager which enables you to measure the memory consumption of your Web applications with the option to deactivate them.

Moreover, Chrome has a single entry field, called the "omnibox", which is particularly useful for those who mistakenly type their search queries in the address bar (haven't we all, at least once?). But the real innovation here is the possibility to create desktop shortcuts for your Web applications.

I will conclude this review by saying that, apart from a few bugs that we forgive a Beta release, Google Chrome has kept its promises and appears to be indeed really fast, flexible and stable even with a lot of memory consuming Websites opened. So what are you waiting for? Try it here.

Also, for the little anecdote, it was fun to see that our Podmailing Website blends so well with Google Chrome colours. ;-)

Service Maintenance

This short message to let you know that following some modifications of our hosting system, the VIPeers blog will be down tomorrow at 9h30 Paris time (GMT+1) for a few hours. If Feedburner does its job right the RSS feed should remain accessible.

Get a Notoriety Insight on BitTorrent Clients with Google Insights

When you own a blog or a Website, it's always good to know what key words people usually type in search engines in order to improve your SEO. That's the main use of Google Insights, a popular words search engine.

In a recent article, TorrentFreak used Google Insights to study the evolution of BitTorrent clients' notoriety and more specifically that of the top 3, that is to say µTorrent, Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) and BitComet.

The overall result puts µTorrent as the clear current user favorite whereas Azureus used to be in the front followed by BitComet. The last two are now in decrease but remain fairly used especially in Asia for BitComet and in Greece for Vuze.

So with this tool, you can search any words for fun or for professional purposes. Besides it's always good to know what other people are looking for. ;-)