Just implemented vRewrite for Zeropaid’s forums to get those catchy SEO’d urls. Hope it works. Also a few days ago we made a change in the site logic so you no longer have to have a verified account and be logged in to download programs – just made sense.
Just watched an awesome video of Jason Calacanis going on a rant about DRM, Apple’s FairPlay in particular. He is a smart guy and therefore expounds on the obvious points, like how no content company is going to license their products without some kind of digital locks. He also makes this great point:
“I bought a song online, I paid for it, and I can do less with that song than if i had stolen it.”
Yes DRM is a necessary evil at this point, but the point is that the average consumer is trapped between both worlds. We WANT to pay for music and movies, but the fact remains that all the cool things we can do with all these new technologies are being limited by scared people. But it is their content that people want to consume so who can knock them for wanting to control it. I just wish we had more faith in our fellow man.
Jason recently sold his company to AOL so he is kind of a big company guy but is smart enough to keep saying what he thinks. Kudos.
Not sure where this video is from, looks like a panel at some conference.
Watch the Video
Just posted another interview with Michael Weiss, CEO of Morpheus. They are expecting big news from the Supreme Court tomorrow morning, so stay tuned to Zeropaid for minute by minute updates.
I have often times raved about google’s adsense. It is hands down the best solution I have ever seen to online advertising, from both an advertiser’s perspective and a publisher’s point of view. Switching gears (hang on I’m getting somewhere), file sharing programs have historically struggled to generate revenue, walking the fine line between pissing off users (bundling spyware/adware) and generating no revenue (ad free versions). Some programs like LimeWire and BearShare offer an ad-free “pro” version for twenty bucks or so. So getting to that point I am getting to (I swear), a former LimeWire developer named Susheel Daswani has launched a new gnutella advertising program that delivers paid ads in response to gnutella queries, called Gnutelligence.
Basically the way this works is I am an advertiser that sells Britney Spears posters. I come to Susheel and buy the keyword “britney spears,” agreeing on some figure like forty cents a click or so. Then some user fires up his gnutella client and searches for britney. Susheel’s software then acts like it is returning a result from another client, but actually delivers a shortcut to the sponsor’s URL. The user thinks he is getting the new Britney but actually gets redirected to the advertiser’s Britney Spears posters page, and Susheel cashes a 40 cent check.
I commend his innovation, but I see a few problems here. First of all, Google’s Adsense is a boon because everyone makes money. Under Susheel’s system, only he (and potentially the advertiser) profits, and the entire network suffers. He can also go beyond delivering links to advertisers and straight to delivering DRM protected content a la KaZaA’a Altnet technology. There is also going to be a rash of copycats, as people rush to not be left off the bandwagon. My real concern is that he will be using gnutella users to pass along his ads without their knowledge. Susheel is also the owner of Gnoozle, a gnutella client. I don’t pretend to know how Susheel is planning on seeding the gnutella network with his ads, but it would be a fairly trivial feat of coding to get his Gnoozle client to keep a hash of his advertisers and their relevant keywords and deliver those in response to queries on the gnutella network. Meaning the ad you get in response to your Britney Spears query could be coming from the nearest peer running gnoozle. I state again, I do not know if that is how he is delivering his ads, I am just saying he could.
*yawn*
Haven’t blogged in a while, been pretty busy. Working on a bunch of new web projects, doing some consulting for Seamless P2P. Pretty cool technology, im+skype+email+darknet+encryption. Basically a lightweight custom p2p vpn. Sweeeet.
I REALLY want a new phone with a full keyboard and imap support. Any suggestions? I am looking @ the Nokia 9500, the sidekick 2, and the blackberry. Can’t decide.
So a while back I posted about an NPD study that prompted a reporter from Forbes.com to ask me “Why is WinMX the most popular music downloading service?” I kind of let it go because after I told her i thought her study was completely erroneus she didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Go figure, she must have spent a pretty penny on the report so I don’t blame her.
Ok, so on to the new developments. Yesterday, CNet Staff (no reporter wanted this byline – shocker!!!) used the study and reported it as news. It even got picked up and believed by slashdot. I immediately called bullshit, and several other p2p sites joined in. The difference here? Cnet actually responded, pulling the story from the homepage. If that’s not enough, John Borland writes a post on his Cnet blog supporting our position and bashing the NPD numbers. He has always been a good guy and stepped up here and did the right thing. Jeez, maybe these blogs are worth something after all. 
Made some tweaks to Zeropaid yesterday, just want to log them here so I can do some testing.
Changes for today:
Had a conversation with a writer from Forbes.com who was curious about the stats of online music services. We chatted back and forth and she was asking why WinMX was so popular. When I responded that it wasn’t, she told me the data she had bought from NPD indicated the top 5 were WinMX, iTunes, BearShare, KaZaA, and LimeWire. No eDonkey, and gnutella broken down by program. Hmmm.. I took a quick pass at NPD’s site and came upon this text:
NPD MusicWatch Digital collects information continuously from the PCs of 40,000 members of NPD’s online consumer panel, balanced demographically to represent the online population.
Not exactly rocket science. So my question is, how loud do you have to yell about your “credible information” before someone will buy it? Sheesh, I guess people will buy anything these days if you tell them its true.
Woke up this morning to my datacenter calling me telling me they were watching my power circuit melting. Cool. So I had to go to the datacenter (my favorite place), power down 5 customers boxes (some 15), switch to a different circuit, and bring the machines back up. Of course, Murphy being the bitch he is, the one box that won’t power on is the zeropaid web server. Sweet. Finally got it to go, no idea whats wrong. Super. Had a few lingering issues but nothing serious.
Did an interview yesterday with Rick from P2P Revolution. Grab the torrent here. To use that link, grab a bittorrent client here. Long interview, I sound like a dork. Go figure.
Speaking of BitTorrent, they had a BUSY news week. They released trackerless torrents, teased a new search engine, released said search engine, and caused a huge scene. In case you have been living under a rock, EliteTorrents.org was taken down by the FBI, Dept of Homeland Security, and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) under the prodding of the MPAA. Seems they thought bittorrent was biting into Star Wars. (side note: at least someone thinks this was a waste of government resources. Or at least maybe have the agencies do SOMETHING related to the name of the agency in question)
Now I haven’t downloaded star wars III: revenge of the sith from the internet. I have, however, gone to see it in theaters. And I am going to see it again. I think anyone who wants to see this movie and doesn’t go see it in the theater is cheating themselves, not George Lucas. That movie is awesome. Here’s hoping it gets out in HD DVD.
Oh yeah, and the Padres are .5 games back in the NL West, and playing #1 AZ Diamondbacks tonight. Let’s go pads!!!
Jorge and I have been working our asses off on Zeropaid, and the results are showing. We are breaking pageview and cpm records almost daily, and our user count has exploded. We are now averaging 1,000 new members a day. That is insane.
As happy as we are with this, we are continuing to push forward. We have something planned for Zeropaid that is nothing short of, well, astonishing. A simple idea that when executed properly will revolutionize our space. Or at least make some people think. Can’t tell you waht it is yet, but no one ever accused me of not being able to drop a hint.
Also have more shows coming up, hope to bring you some down south dirty flavor from Nappy Roots soon, as well as some more summer fun.
Which reminds me, go check out my boys Dirty Sweet. They rock.
Ok, after a pretty hassle-free evening the new Zeropaid has been launched. This despite my desktop pc waking me up this morning with “Error loading Operating System”. Used Jorge’s laptop to get it done, and it’s finally done. I am sure there are many bugs and wrinkles to be ironed out, since we don’t have a qa person, but at least its up. Let the bug squashing begin.
Recent Comments