Software: Grokster Goes Pro

By | November 24, 2011
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 If you haven’t heard of it before, it sounds like something painful that happens to a guy in his mid 40s, or a vital piece of plumbing under the sink, but Grokster is actually a file-sharing program, and it’s going pro. From its haven in the West Indies, the company has released a $20 version “in response to a growing user demand and willingness to pay for a version of the software that is void of annoying pop-up ads and the cluster of optional software  programs that accompany all of the major P2P software clients on the market today.” (In English that means the free version that everyone uses now comes with lots of pesky ads and snooping software to annoy you while you download pirated music illegally.)
 
 
Grokster last April won a suit brought against it by the RIAA and the MPAAand has, it says, “since secured its position as one of the world’s most popular software programs and has established a brand name known around the globe, boasting users in every country on earth.” I don’t want to get into the ethics and legality of MP3 swapping, but it strikes me that if folk are exchanging music for free online, they’re not likely to be the kind of folk to want to shell out $20 for software. And if they are, they can hardly plead poverty for their piracy, can they? Or am I missing something?

Update: No Dead Horses Around Here

By | November 24, 2011
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  Further to my mention of Phlogging/moblogging, whatever you want to call it, just received an interesting email from Elan Dekel, founder of Fotopages. Elan reckons “we are experiencing a watershed moment. First of all the Internet is so accessible, even in dictatorships (we even have a fair number of Fotopages from Iran!), and digital cameras are so cheap, that (a) mass media has really become democratized – ie. everyone can get their message out to the world – and build relationships via the web with supporters and readers all over the world, and (b) it will be really hard for a dictatorship to keep its atrocities secret. Quite amazing in my humble opinion. In any case its fun to be a part of it.”
 
 
Interesting stuff. And if you thought all this sending photos to a website was phlogging a dead horse (sorry, couldn’t resist that), here are some sites that show something of what Elan is talking about (and his comments):
 
http://moja_vera.fotopages.com (an american soldier in iraq, who uploads photos from the “front line”. I find it amazing – this is the first time that soldiers on the front line can broadcast their day to day experiences and their personal view of the situation, in real time).
 
http://salampax.fotopages.com (this is Salam Pax’s Fotopage - the blogger from baghdad)
 
http://geeinbaghdad.fotopages.com (Gee – an Iraqi photographer).

News: Legal Eagles in MP3 format

By | November 24, 2011
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  Interesting story on Wired about how a university is taking the original recordings of Supreme Court cases, converting them to MP3 and putting them online — for free.
 
 
The Oyez project, run by Northwestern University, is aiming to convert nearly all the oral arguments recorded since 1955. So far it has done about 2,000 hours. May not beat listening to U2, but it’ll make a change from an e-book.
 

Service: Phlog? Photog? Photblog? Phoblog?

By | November 24, 2011
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 From my friend Rani in Singapore, I read with interest of a new service designed by two 19-year old twins Keng and Seng. It’s called Phone Logger, or Phlogger, and it allows anyone (not just those residing in Singapore) to update their blogs (online journals called web logs, or simply blogs) via their handphone’s Short Message Service, or SMS. Actually it utilizes the more advanced MMS, or Multimedia Messaging Service, which includes longer messages and photos. The service is free, and while testing has already got 340 registered users.
 
An interesting idea, and great that it’s being developed in this part of the world. My main worry, apart from the less-than-mouthwatering name, is that it’s already been adopted to mean Photo Logging — see phlog.net, by a guy called Alan from Reading in the UK. Who was first? There’s also moblogging, for mobile blogging, which is pretty much the same thing as Photo Logging, firing off photos from your handphone to a website. Fotopages is one example of this. Other terms still floating around: Photog, Photblog, Phoblog. I’d plump for moblog to mean any blog that’s being updated wirelessly, whether it’s pictures or text. Objections, anyone?

Software: A Different Kind of Browser

By | November 24, 2011
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 Here’s an alternative browser that promises to “take care of many routine and tedious tasks” so you “won?t have to scrape through a mess of web pages and application windows on your desktop, won?t have to wonder whether you have already accessed a particular site, and can forget about the tiresome task of having to click a bunch of web links one-by-one”.
 
I haven’t tried it out but it sounds interesting. iNetAdviser Professional 2.0 was launched this week, and costs $25.