A new Russian web site is offering millions of copyrighted music MP3s for free. Tagoo, a popular Russian start-up is attracting millions of Web surfers and providing a huge Variety of MP3 music tracks and full albums to its members.
Russia has long been known as a hotbed of Web piracy. Last summer, for example, authorities finally succeeded in shutting down the mega-popular AllofMP3.com, a pirated music side that charged in the range of one to two cents per MP3 download. The site failed to pay royalties to any of the artists and music labels involved, and after several years online were finally shut down on order of the Russian Ministry of Commerce.
Likewise, the Swedish MP3 download site known as “Pirate Bay” was finally thwarted. Swedish authorities have arrested four individuals in connection with the web site, though it is likely the men will only receive token jail sentence or perhaps even probation..
But just as soon as the authorities are able to close one free download site, 10 more seem to appear out of nowhere to replace them. Tagoo is just the latest example of this phenomena, and it’s growing popularity underlines the difficulty officials face in controlling copyrighted material online.
Recently, Tagoo was listed on the hot list of the social bookmarking web site Del.icio.us, bringing an even greater rush of Web traffic to the pirate download site. But on that day, the site was down — at least temporarily — presenting only an error page warning that the URL had “too many connections.”
You can be sure though, that Tagoo will be back online very soon, and it would appear that the only reason the site is on accessible at the moment is due to its staggering popularity.
Russian sites, along with a few Scandinavian and eastern European counterparts, are becoming the Napsters of the new millennium. There are many reasons why, including widespread public opinion in Europe — and elsewhere — that large American corporations, such as the major music labels, are corrupt and fueled by greed. Therefore, even many of the most law-abiding and mild-mannered Europeans see no harm in getting one over on the US recording industry.
Of course, it doesn’t help matters that the US’s public image is at an all-time low right now. Even US-friendly allies like Sweden and Norway find themselves having very little sympathy for anything American at the moment, and especially American-based global conglomerates.
It’s hard to imagine that simply downloading illegal MP3s could be a sign of the US’s tarnished image abroad, but the unbridled success of European pirating sites like Tagoo could be partially attributed to a strong cultural bias against the policies of the United States over the last few years.
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There have been rumors about a looming Internet “crash” for well over a decade now. Back in 1995, a few IT professionals claimed that the increasing popularity of the net would crash the entire system by 1996. Meanwhile, 12 years later the Internet has proven (mostly) “uncrashable,” though there are concerns surfacing yet again that the Internet is heading for a fall. And this time, even the FCC is taking them seriously.
The difference between 1996 and 2008 is that online streaming video has become hugely popular, and the demand for online video is increasing at an astronomical rate. Unlike normal web pages, or even streaming audio, online video requires a tremendous amount of bandwidth. The popularity of sites such as YouTube and other streaming video providers is beginning to put a strain on service providers according to recent surveys.
To deal with the increased demand for Internet bandwidth, many providers, especially cable companies, are changing the way they distribute Internet bandwidth and deliver data. But as online traffic continues to grow, there are many who speculate that these half measures will not be sufficient, and consumers could end up paying “per download” or in other bandwidth-limiting schemes.
Several companies are also considering blocking peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent and Kazaa, though the FCC will be investigating this practice later this year. Basically, by blocking peer-to-peer networks or other high-bandwidth activities online, the cable companies are violating “net neutrality.” Consumer groups have already filed complaints with the FCC against Comcast for this type of net neutrality violation.
But while the FCC has a general policy that prevents Internet service providers from blocking applications, the details of the rules regarding this point are unclear. FCC regulations do provide an exemption to allow Internet providers to limit access in cases of “reasonable traffic management.” Comcast is claiming that blocking peer-to-peer networks falls under this category, though the FCC has yet to make a ruling in this case.
With more and more individuals electing to watch television and movies online, the bandwidth required to meet demand is increasing about every few months. And with the broadcast networks and film studios quickly moving into the online world, we could see a 500% increase in the popularity of online streaming video over the next five years.
The big question is, what happens when we run out of bandwidth? Would it actually be possible to “crash” the Internet? Technically, the answer is no… probably.
Experts predict that there could be the equivalent of a massive “traffic jam” online, wherein wait times to access streaming media, e-mail and other services could be significant, but it is highly unlikely that there could be a worldwide crash of the system. Local crashes, such as that recently experienced in India and the Middle East, are possible and are far more likely according to experts.
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Making money online doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be the first to launch a service, or the first to come up with a crazy idea. There are thousands of people that make a solid living online utilizing a much simpler and less frustrating method. They blog, and not even for themselves! There are more and more average people being hired these days by companies and blog networks to be full time writers for their blog. Pretty cool, eh?
You’re probably thinking, “Yeah right, those jobs always get taken, I don’t stand a chance!” You couldn’t be further from the truth. There are multitudes of opportunities to knock down a comfortable monthly salary by blogging for someone else; you just need to know where to look and how to land them.
First and foremost, the easiest way to land a nice blogging gig is to run an active blog yourself. This can be done very easily, and even for free. Most (if not all) expert bloggers will recommend spending the $10-$20 to get your own domain name and hosting, which will be well worth it for building credibility and recognition. Just consider it an investment in your future. By maintaining and running your own blog, chances are that you’ll end up networking with dozens, if not hundreds of other bloggers during the course of several months. If you can write smartly, and have a unique voice and opinion on things, then at one point you’ll surely catch the attention of a big blogger that may need writers for blog network, or even their own blog. This is the easiest way to land a nice paying blogging gig, because they came to you, instead of vice-versa. This happens on a very regular basis, and it could easily happen to you. Not sure where to get started or what topic to write about? (Hint – The Presidential elections are around the corner, a good political blog could be very much worth your time!)
Another common way of landing a paying blogging gig is to go look for them. There are numerous job boards on the internet that cater especially to the internet crowd. A quick Google search should provide enough job boards to last a while. Just concentrate on searching for paying blogging positions and you’ll surely end up with a few that you can apply for. One of the most popular job boards that deal exclusively with blogging jobs is the Problogger Job Board. Go check it out for yourself.
Last but not least, if you want to build a name for yourself, volunteer to guest post on some of the more popular blogs. This method, while great for building credibility, is a much slower route, but over time it can be well worth your trouble. Most popular bloggers are very busy, and are always looking for quality guest posts. Write a fantastic article (one that you’re truly proud of) and email it to an “A-List” blogger to see if they’ll consider using it as a guest post. If one turns it down, then go to the next. Eventually, if your article is good enough, someone will take it, and it has the possibility of opening many doors to paid blogging jobs in the future.
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Struggling to keep up with Facebook.com, MySpace is expanding third-party development to allow programmers to create applications specifically for the site’s members.
MySpace came on strong in 2005 and 2006, garnering millions of members worldwide, and projecting the site to the top of the net. But 2007 was a very different story. The company faced security issues, as parents became increasingly concerned about online sexual predators. Several high profile cases brought MySpace negative attention in 2007, and new memberships have slipped somewhat from their high point in 2006.
FaceBook, on the other hand, has flourished in the wake of MySpace’s troubles. With a reputation for increased security, and a slightly older demographic, FaceBook seemed a logical alternative for many Web surfers, especially in light of the bad publicity surrounding MySpace.
But now, MySpace is taking the offensive, and is launching a new web developer’s site to provide tools for programmers to create applications to run directly on the site. Developers will be able to produce applications in a “sandbox” environment, where consumers will not have access to them until they are given the green light by MySpace officials.
In a sense, MySpace is playing catch up when it comes to third-party applications. FaceBook already has more than 14,000 software applications created specifically for their site, a move that has increased the popularity of the site and is helping to attract new members.
Even though MySpace is showing up late in the game when it comes to third-party development, the company is determined to “out-app” its rival by the end of 2008. And MySpace is not the only social networking web site following FaceBook’s lead. Google unveiled its OpenSocial project last November, which aims to establish a common set of application interfaces (or API’s) for all social networking web sites.
Google’s OpenSocial program would allow applications built specifically for one social networking site — MySpace for example — to work on any other social networking site. Currently, each of the social networking giants has their own specific format, and applications produced for one site are not transferable to others.
This is obviously bad for software developers, as it requires them to reprogram their most popular applications in a wide variety of formats. It’s also bad for consumers, as many users of FaceBook, for example, would like to be able to use some of the same applications on their MySpace page.
Google’s attempt to standardize third-party software on social sites should help on both counts… assuming that all of the major players can agree to Google’s standardized format, something that has yet to happen.
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There have been rumors circulating for years that it is possible the entire Internet could “crash,” crippling commerce and communications worldwide. While most experts have dismissed these rumors as blatant fear mongering, in recent weeks it appears that the Internet did indeed suffer a kind of “partial crash,” affecting both the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.
India in particular, was hard-hit by the Internet “black-out,” which affected the country’s sizable outsourced services industry, web hosting companies, and other high-tech commerce.
Experts blame the two continents’ Internet outage on a pair of undersea cables that appear to have been damaged late last month. The cables, which handle most telecommunications between Europe and the Middle East, run along the ocean floor between Alexandria in Egypt and Palermo in Italy. The cause of the damage is not yet known, though terrorism is not suspected at this time.
CNN reported that an official from Egypt’s Ministry of communications believes a boat anchor may have damaged the two communication lines, causing the Internet slowdown.
The outages affected most Middle Eastern countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. Israel, however, was not affected by the outage, as they use a different Internet traffic route. Both Lebanon and Iraq were also unaffected by the fluctuations and Internet slow-down.
In India, there were concerns that the Indian National Stock Exchange could have been affected by the Internet outage. And other communications methods were affected by the outages as well. There were major disruptions in television and telephone services throughout much of India and the Middle East.
Dubai was particularly hard hit by the Internet slow-down, with officials claiming the incident “will have a major impact on our voice and Internet service.” Dubai is notoriously cutting edge when it comes to Internet technology, and the country is easily the most technologically savvy in the Middle East.
Still, even the most progressive and technical minded nations — like Dubai — were affected by the damaged lines and a slowdown in Internet and communications services. Dubai’s business center, which handles billions of dollars of transactions on a daily basis, was also affected.
Luckily, there was only low to moderate activity within the Dubai stock market on that day. If the outage had occurred on a day of heavy trading, the communications problem could potentially have been crippling to the market itself, as well as to hundreds of trading companies who rely on instant access to information in order to buy and sell stock for their clients.
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The Yahoo board of directors has officially rejected Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover offer today. After reviewing the offer over 10 days, Yahoo decided that the $31 per share offered by Microsoft “substantially undervalues the company.”
Bloomberg.com is reporting that Yahoo co-founder and chief executive officer, Jerry Yang e-mailed the company’s employees today outlining the board’s decision to reject Microsoft’s “unsolicited offer.” Yang says that Yahoo’s recent investments will help drive visitors to the company’s sites, and with online advertising expected to reach US81 billion by 2011, the company is positioned to see significant growth over the next few years.
In effect, the Yahoo board of directors is gambling that they can create a more valuable company that Microsoft could, if allowed to keep the reins. The official rejection statement by Yahoo pointed to its growing ad network and portfolio of acquired web sites to make their case. But some analysts are skeptical. For example, in the online advertising department, Google’s ad sales increased seven times faster than Yahoo’s in 2007, leaving Yahoo a very distant second, and increasing pressure on the company to further develop its advertising network.
Meanwhile, the word on Wall Street is that Microsoft is currently weighing its options, and considering if it should raise its offer or take the matter straight to Yahoo’s shareholders for a vote, bypassing the Company’s Board of Directors altogether. There were rumors last week that Microsoft may seek to overthrow the Yahoo board by appealing directly to shareholders if its offer was rejected.
The real challenge for Yahoo’s board now is to convince shareholders — many of which are company employees — that rejecting Microsoft’s offer was the right thing to do. After all, Microsoft was offering a 62% increase on the current price of the stock. Yahoo directors may face an uphill battle convincing shareholders not to sellout to Microsoft if “The Big M” begins pressuring individual investors to sell.
And there are signs that Microsoft may not give up so easily on the acquisition. A combined Microsoft and Yahoo Company would control more than 25% of the worldwide online advertising market, making them a potential challenger to the (thus far) unstoppable Google Inc.
And even though the company is not directly involved, the role Google plays in this transaction cannot be underestimated. Some analysts are suggesting that Yahoo could essentially “cut a deal” with Google to help them thwart off a hostile takeover by Microsoft. The New York Times is reporting that Google CEO Eric Schmidt has approached Yang about the possibility of a partnership between the two companies.
Yahoo is so far refusing to comment on the possibility of a partnership with Google.
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A study released earlier last month found that California still leads the US in access to broadband Internet connections. Unfortunately, there is still a sizable “technology gap” that leaves 1.4 million California state residents without broadband access.
InformationWeek.com is reporting that an 83 page report released by the California Broadband Task Force (CBTF) shows that around half of all Californians have broadband Internet access at home. But as much as 42% of California’s lower income families don’t even have access to a computer, much less a high speed Internet connection.
As you might expect, California’s large urban areas lead the state in the highest percentage of homes with broadband access, while lower-density rural area are the least likely to have broadband. For example, in the northern Sierra Mountain area, less than 60% of the region has access to high-speed Internet connections.
Although these numbers might suggest that California still has a long way to go when it comes to standardizing broadband Internet access, the reality is that the state leads the United States in access to broadband Internet, as it has done for several years now.
Unfortunately though, the US is still lagging behind internationally when it comes to broadband access. For example, even California is quite behind when compared to many European countries, especially those in northern Europe and Scandinavia. Officially, California ranks 10th internationally for access to broadband Internet.
But when you consider that California is light years ahead of many other US states when it comes to broadband — Mississippi or West Virginia both come to mind off-hand — you can begin to see how far behind the U. S. is lagging in developing widespread broadband technology.
Scandinavian countries offer a stark contrast to the “hit and miss” broadband access currently available in the United States. In Norway, for example, every town with a population greater than 20,000 is wired for broadband access, and a surprising number of tiny rural areas are also wired.
And when it comes to so-called “very high speed” broadband — connections of 10 MB per second or greater — the US is also trailing behind the Europeans. Heavily populated California cities have the highest percentage of “very high speed” broadband, with San Francisco boasting more than 99% coverage throughout the Bay Area. But in many mid-western cities, that figure sinks to less than 30%.
This latest study shows that, while there are high-tech urban areas in the US that feature almost ubiquitous access to broadband Internet — particularly in California and the Northeast — the vast majority of American states still have a long way to go.
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Trying to keep track of lots of different logins and passwords is a real hassle. As a web developer, I have been well aware of the modern annoyance known as “password fatigue” for a long time. But it was only recently that I discovered what a widespread problem this actually is.
A few weeks ago I spoke to a relative of mine who is an Air Force chief flight engineer. While talking, we began to discuss what our usual workdays consisted of. Surprisingly, he informed me that, as a chief flight engineer, he normally spent five to six hours every day retrieving information or inputting data on a computer.
It was even more surprising to both of us when we realized that, even though we have very different occupations, we both spend five or six hours per day staring at a computer screen, and we both experience password fatigue because of the many different logins and passwords we must keep track of in order to conduct our daily business.
This anecdote just goes to prove that more and more, nearly everyone is dealing with the same types of technology related annoyances — not just web developers such as myself or other computer “geeks.”
But Yahoo.com believes they have found a way to improve the lives of people who spend a great deal of their time online: a standardized web-wide identity.
Wired news is reporting that Yahoo will be introducing a new ID service that takes advantage of the so-called OpenID protocol, which can provide a single login for hundreds — or perhaps thousands — of different web sites. And while it may be premature to suggest that the Yahoo web-wide ID will ensure that we never have to create another login name or password, it is certainly a huge step in the right direction.
Although the OpenID concept has been around for some time, to date only a few of the big players in the industry have supported it. But Yahoo is now negotiating with the likes of AOL and other huge industry players to accept a single ID for all web sites.
Hopefully, the days of trying to remember a dozen or more separate logins and passwords will soon be a thing of the past. The Yahoo open protocol began to be implemented on January the 30th, though experts predict it may still be several years before the majority of sites online accept the web-wide ID concept.
Let’s hope that the new OpenID protocol spreads like wildfire, and puts an end to password fatigue once and for all.
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Okay, here’s the good news: it looks like there may finally be some serious competition to Google’s domination of the online world. After all, competition benefits everyone in a free market, right?
Now here’s the bad news: the competition could very well end up being Microsoft. Oh brother!
Bloomberg.com is reporting that Microsoft is attempting an “unsolicited takeover” of Yahoo Inc. Microsoft has put in a $44.6 billion bid to buy out Yahoo lock, stock and barrel. The offer breaks down to $31 per each individual share of Yahoo stock, and represents a staggering 62% increase on the current price of shares held by Yahoo investors.
With an offer so large, you have to believe that shareholders are taking it seriously, especially in light of Yahoo’s recent quarterly earnings, which fell a belt-tightening 23% in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Microsoft has been “chomping at the bit” for some time to gain a stronger online presence, and beef up their fledgling Microsoft Live search engine. Purchasing Yahoo would give Microsoft access to a much greater worldwide search network, all of Yahoo’s portal and social networking sites, and make them the only true competition for Google.com.
Microsoft is claiming that by taking over Yahoo, operating costs for the two companies could be decreased by as much as $1 billion per year. Although Yahoo corporate executives have been tight-lipped about the proposed merger/takeover so far, a company representative said that Yahoo plans to evaluate the proposal “promptly.”
Yahoo shareholders have taken a bit of a beating over the last few years. Selling out to Microsoft would provide them with a type of “golden parachute” to dump their Yahoo stock, while realizing a sizable profit. Overall, the value of Yahoo shares have declined by nearly 50% over the past two years, leaving shareholders anxious, and the company ripe for an “unsolicited” takeover attempt.
But while Yahoo has been floundering, Google.com continues to thrive; the company reported a staggering 52% increase in sales the fourth quarter of 2007, representing Google’s 14th consecutive quarter of increased sales.
Even though Yahoo’s search network has barely made a dent in Google’s online search domination, when combined with Microsoft’s Live search service, it could represent as much as 35 to 40% of North American search engine traffic, giving the combined Yahoo/Microsoft company a fighting chance to compete against Google online.
Many Web experts have been praying for the day when Google finally receives some serious competition, but few of them will be relieved that that competition might finally come from Microsoft, a near-monopoly in its own right. So while having a serious competitor to Google’s dominance sounds like a good thing, the fact that it could be Microsoft leaves many in the IT industry feeling uneasy about the possible merger, and the future of the web.
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