Marc's Webvox [Memex My Brain]

Is this for real or an elaborate PR stunt ? We will see... It's for real:

STOCKHOLM, Jun 30, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The listed software company, Global Gaming Factory X AB (publ) (GGF) acquires The Pirate Bay website, http://www.thepiratebay.org, one of the 100 most visited websites in the world and the technology company Peerialism, that has developed next generation file-sharing technology. Following the completion of the acquisitions, GGF intends to launch new business models that allow compensation to the content providers and copyright owners. The responsibility for, and operation of the site will be taken over by GGF in connection with closing of the transaction, which is scheduled for August 2009.

"We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site, " said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/global-gaming-factory-x-acquisitions-of-the-pirate-bay-and-new-file-sharing-technology-p2p-20

Napster never achieved a lot of success after its legal renaissance. Will the Pirate Bay 2.0 future be any different ? Will the content owners sue the new TPB ? Which P2P network takes the traffic and trackers ? Questions, questions...

The Pirate Bay says about this...

We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us.

The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we're fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It's win-win-win.

The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!

http://thepiratebay.org/blog/164

Looks like a team broke the 10% barrier...

http://www.netflixprize.com/leaderboard

(( More about the Netflix prize here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize ))

PS: The entrant "Just a guy in a garage" is still in the top 20...

At first, it seemed some geeked-out supercoder was going to make an easy million.

In October 2006, Netflix announced it would give a cool seven figures to whoever created a movie-recommending algorithm 10 percent better than its own. Within two weeks, the DVD rental company had received 169 submissions, including three that were slightly superior to Cinematch, Netflix's recommendation software. After a month, more than a thousand programs had been entered, and the top scorers were almost halfway to the goal.

...

"Just a guy in a garage" was the exception to all this openness. He didn't even have a link attached to his screen name, which kept creeping higher and higher on the leaderboard. By mid-January, there were just five teams, out of 25,000 entrants, ahead of him. And still, no one knew who he was or by what statistical magic he kept improving. "He's very mysterious," says Koren with unconcealed interest. "I hope you will at least be able to find out his name."

His name is Gavin Potter. He's a 48-year-old Englishman, a retired management consultant with an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master's in operations research. He has worked for Shell, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and IBM. In 2006, he left his job at IBM to explore the idea of starting a PhD in machine learning, a field in which he has no formal training. When he read about the Netflix Prize, he decided to give it a shot — what better way to find out just how serious about the topic he really was?

In 2001, Potter cowrote a book called Business in a Virtual World that described how companies could best take advantage of new technology. So he's well aware of the commercial value of improving recommender systems, which tend to perform poorly, sometimes comically so. (You liked The Squid and the Whale? Try this Jacques Cousteau documentary.) "The 20th century was about sorting out supply," Potter says. "The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand." The Internet makes everything available, but mere availability is meaningless if the products remain unknown to potential buyers.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_netflix?currentPage=all

Past...

Online Journalism ((Eyeballs to profit, fail since 1995))

Present...

Twitter Fire ((@aplusk: Help me!))

Future...

Google 2084 ((Brave New G))

Hello Kitty wird bald 35 Jahre alt. Dem Phänomen ((aus einem Land wo Trends meist nur wenige Monate dauern, deshalb ist der Erfolg umso erstaunlicher)) ist auch im  Westen ein Buch gewidmet worden...

Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon

Ken Belson

Nun ist Hello Kitty im Jubiläumsjahr mit drei offiziellen Lizenzen auf dem Apple iPhone gelandet...

Welcome to the Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary!
Hello Kitty has finally come to the iPhone and iPod touch.
Born in 1974, Hello Kitty celebrates her 35th birthday on November 1st, 2009.

Hello Kitty is 5 apples tall!
She weighs the same as 3 apples!
Her favorite food is Mama’s apple pie!
Hello Kitty just loves apples!

As part of the Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary celebration Hello Kitty now enters the realm of iPhone & iPod touch applications.
We look forward to seeing all of you there!

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=317065151

Die Kamera-Applikation mit Cute-up Funktion wird sicher viele ((weibliche)) Käufer finden....

Hellokittycam

...gerade einen kleinen Test der Applikation gestartet. Harrison Ford im Christopher Street Day Hello Kitty-Modus:

Bladerunner Kitty :)

PS: Ich warte auf die iPhone Gundam-Lizenz zum 30-jährigen Jubiläum :)

Hier alle Einzelheiten und Detailverbesserungen des neuen Betriebssystems...

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.html

Einige Tage läuft schliesslich noch MUPromo.com-Aktion mit vielen Applikationen für nur USD 50; darunter auch Parallels, das den Preis schon alleine Wert ist...Details auf MUPromo.com

Aus aktuellem Anlass....

http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,627794,00.html

eine Bildstrecke aus der ehemaligen "Motor City"...

"Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes...the volatile result of the change of eras and the fall of empires. This fragility leads us to watch them one very last time: to be dismayed, or to admire, it makes us wonder about the permanence of things."

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089,00.html

Leider wieder nur einen Blumentopf gewonnen in dieser Saison.

YB siegt auswärts in Basel, leider ein Jahr zu spät.

http://www.bscyb.ch/yb-news-detail?id=19663

Ja, ja. Vizemeister ist auch etwas...vielleicht klappt es ja 2010.

Die Seite ist einigen iPhone-Benutzern noch nicht  bekannt, deshalb wollte ich sie nochmals erwähnen...

http://appshopper.com

Die Seite zeigt alle Preis- und Versionsänderungen, was im "offiziellen" Verzeichnis auf iTunes so nicht ersichtlich ist.

Sehr nützlich.

Ab dem 1. Juni übernimmt Conan O' Brien die Tonight Show auf dem US-Fernsehsender NBC. Und Conans ehemaliger Sidekick Andy Richter kehrt ebenfalls zurück. Was will man mehr ? Eine Vorschau...

Video and IPv4 bottlenecks ahead.

Eindrückliche Zahlen und Prognosen von CSCO ((die natürlich alles Interesse an grossen Zuwachsraten haben))...

Globally, mobile data traffic will double every year through 2013, increasing 66 times between 2008 and 2013. Mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over 2 exabytes per month by 2013.

Mobile data traffic will grow from 1 petabyte per month to 1 exabyte per month in half the time it took fixed data traffic to do so. In the 7 years from 2005 to 2012, mobile data traffic will have increased a thousand-fold. The Internet grew from 1 petabyte per month to 1 exabyte per month in 14 years.

Almost 64 percent of the world's mobile traffic will be video by 2013. Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 150 percent between 2008 and 2013. Mobile video has the highest growth rate of any application category measured within the Cisco VNI Forecast at this time.

Mobile broadband handsets with higher than 3G speeds and laptop aircards will drive over 80 percent of global mobile traffic by 2013. A single high-end phone like the iPhone/Blackberry generates more data traffic than 30 basic-feature cell phones. A laptop aircard generates more data traffic than 450 basic-feature cell phones.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-520862.html