My Blog Readers Rock!

Grok Headline matches for My Blog Readers Rock!

Viewing Comments in Blog Readers

Viewing Comments in Blog Readers 10/28/2003 11:06 PM

Kevin Lynch: These XML blog feeds come in several different formats today (RSS 0.91, 0.92, 1.0, 2.0) which don't appear to have provisions for embedded comments. Atom is another emerging format for these feeds, and is currently under development by a number of blog software creators. This is an opportunity for us to agree on how both entries and comments can appear in our blog readers. Here are some thoughts on this, building on the ideas on the Atom site.

I've prototyped the first approach here.  Note the addition of a <related> element.  Should entries which are a result of a trackback have two related elements?

Interesting survey of bl0g readers by
Blogads

Interesting survey of bl0g readers by
Blogads 07/18/2004 06:55 PM

eMarketer

Are Blogs Ready for Prime-Time?

June 16, 2004

...A partial profile of blog readers reveals:

* 54% of their news consumption is online
* 21% are bloggers themselves
* 46% describe themselves as opinion makers

...As Henry Copeland, author of the report and CEO of Blogads, summed up: "86% say that blogs are either useful or extremely useful as sources of news or opinion. 80% say they read blogs for news they can't find elsewhere. 78% read because the perspective is better. 66% value the faster news. 61% say that blogs are more honest. Divided on so much else, blog readers appear united in their dissatisfaction with conventional media and their rabid love of blogs."

Interesting statistics derived from a survey of of over 10,000 blog readers. Also asserts that blog readers are older, smarter and spend more money that most people think.

via Smart Mobs

Comment - TrackBack

Newspaper's Election Blog-by-Readers
Experiment

Newspaper's Election Blog-by-Readers
Experiment 07/08/2004 10:15 PM
My colleague Mike Bazeley alerts me that the Seattle Times has announced an "Election 2004 Backyard Blog project," inviting readers to be part of the journalism process. The newspaper asks:

"Are you interested in this year's elections? Know your community? Like to talk politics with your friends, colleagues and neighbors? Want an opportunity to blog about your observations? "Apply to join a grass-roots campaign coverage effort by The Seattle Times. We want fresh thoughts and perspectives about the elections from places and people not often found in newspapers — your neighbors, your favorite cafes and other local hangouts."

The Times will keep control of the material submitted, exercising its editorial authority. I wonder what would happen if the paper just gave folks their own blogs and let things rip. Whether the control is too firm or not, this is an experiment to watch.

New Blog Allows Readers to Track a
Criminal and Geographical Profiler
Working On a Real Murder Case

New Blog Allows Readers to Track a
Criminal and Geographical Profiler
Working On a Real Murder Case 06/05/2005 11:39 PM
For the first time ever, a blog that lets the public keep daily track of an expert criminal and geographical profiler as he develops the psychological picture of the predator and predicts where he is likely to live at. Track the geographical profile of a real murder case. [PRWEB Jun 3, 2005]

K-Rock 92.3 FM In New York Launches
K-Rock 2 Exclusively On The Internet
Expanding Music Offerings To Listener

K-Rock 92.3 FM In New York Launches
K-Rock 2 Exclusively On The Internet
Expanding Music Offerings To Listener 04/08/2005 04:55 AM
Music Industry News Network Apr 8 2005 8:16AM GMT

"Well, wouldn't you know it! All this
time, we've been saying that Henson
should put out Fraggle Rock DVD's, and
all this time, they've been acting like
putting out Fraggle Rock DVD's was just
the hardest thing in the world. Oh, we
couldn't possibly!..."

"Well, wouldn't you know it! All this
time, we've been saying that Henson
should put out Fraggle Rock DVD's, and
all this time, they've been acting like
putting out Fraggle Rock DVD's was just
the hardest thing in the world. Oh, we
couldn't possibly!..." 08/09/2004 09:42 AM

Trouble finding content for your bl0g?
Heres an idea: Make your bl0g into an
answerbl0g

Trouble finding content for your bl0g?
Heres an idea: Make your bl0g into an
answerbl0g 12/19/2004 03:32 PM
This is a new "trend" that I am seeing amongst some of the blogs I follow: People have started reading their keyword logs and begun answering the questions that their visitors obvisouly have. Mind you, some of the questions that...

Wish-of-the-Month Club, Part 1 of 3 -
Archives - Blog - 0xDECAFBAD Blog

Wish-of-the-Month Club, Part 1 of 3 -
Archives - Blog - 0xDECAFBAD Blog 06/18/2004 04:58 AM
0-Click Shopping(tm), using Amazon's Web Services .. Automatic wishlist purchases with Amazon's API .. Make your own wishes come true, once

decafbad.com/blog/2004/06/16/wishofthemonthclub1
track this site | 5 links

Yahoo! Search bl0g Launched (Jeremy
Zawodny's bl0g)

Yahoo! Search bl0g Launched (Jeremy
Zawodny's bl0g) 08/20/2004 06:41 AM
ysearchblog commentators .. background information .. some background info .. weitere Details .. Jeremy Z ..

jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/002431.html
track this site | 5 links

Thanks, Bloggies! BB wins best group
bl0g, and bl0g of the year!

Thanks, Bloggies! BB wins best group
bl0g, and bl0g of the year! 03/14/2005 05:29 PM
Xeni Jardin: Boing Boing pal Scott Beale informs us that our blog just won Group Weblog of the Year at the Bloggies. OMG! What a huge honor! Thank you, Bloggies. We honestly didn't expect this, and we are deeply moved and grateful. There were many other deserving blogs up for awards, backed by talented folks who work very hard, and we raise our collective pirate-eye-patches in their honor: check 'em all out. On behalf of my blog-mates Cory Doctorow, Mark Frauenfelder, and David Pescovitz; our wise "band manager" John Battelle; our sysadmin par excellence Ken Snider; and the rest of the team and extended family that makes Boing Boing possible -- a humble thank you. But most of all, we are grateful to you, our readers, for wasting otherwise productive time on our collective scrapbook of "wonderful things," and for pointing us to even more of those wonderful and undiscovered things each day. We're really sorry that we couldn't make it to SXSW in person to accept the award, but we hope you'll join us in celebrating in person tomorrow at ETCON ( all five of us will be in the same place for the first time). Boing Boing sprouted online a little over five years ago, from paper zine roots planted by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair. It is a privilege to blog for you. With you, we look forward to another adventurous year of link-discuss to come. Link

Update: Holy crap! Reader Nathaneal Heasley sez, "Not only did BB win best group ‘blog, it won “blog of the year/best weblog overall” – congratulations!" For those keeping track, this is the second year in a row Boing Boing has received these two awards: Link to 2004, Link to 2005. Man. We're speechless, and overwhelmed by your generosity.

I don't use RSS readers... until now

I don't use RSS readers... until now 06/28/2004 04:46 PM

After hearing news of Apple adding feed reading to Safari, I was a bit skeptical. As much as I like reading weblogs, I hate using RSS readers. Readers have a lot of basic problems: putting a count on every feed and item like weblogs are suddenly my work inbox that I have to keep down to zero, the counts are recorded by the program, so jumping from one computer to another means you lose count of your feeds, and viewing comments or the rest of a message requires jumping to a browser anyway. Personally I use an update montior, and track the newly updated sites with a sidebar.

But after seeing this quicktime demo of the Safari reader, it just might be the first one I ever use. Gone are the counts on everything telling me how many more posts I must read. In its place is something more akin to Kinja or LiveJournal: you get a universal home page of all the recent items you are interested in. The "personal newspaper" metaphor is one that has been thrown around for years, but few of the RSS readers offer it.

While this new feature isn't perfect (it still ties me to Safari running on a single computer), the display of all feeds on a single page and lack of incessant counting will probably be enough to make me switch over.

Note to Readers

Note to Readers 01/27/2004 11:30 AM
Our traffic has been increasing, and we're seeing extremely high peak loads between 10:30 and noon EST.

Will RSS Readers Clog the Web?

Will RSS Readers Clog the Web? 04/30/2004 04:52 AM
Sure, news aggregators are handy tools, making Web surfing a breeze. But the programs are greedy little buggers that swamp websites with unwanted traffic. Something has to change, and soon. By Ryan Singel.

Word for readers

Word for readers 03/14/2005 05:40 PM
[See note at the end of this post] Microsoft Word lets you view your document in several modes: Normal (=draft), Web page, printed page, outline, and print preview. Yet there's no view designed strictly for readers. That's too bad since many of us end up reading Word pages we have no editing rights to. If Word added a Read view, it could have special functionality: At the bottom of each screen would be Next and Previous buttons Adjust font family and size with a click of a button...and save your adjustments as a theme We could highlight text and have...

CMP decides it doesn't want readers

CMP decides it doesn't want readers 06/24/2004 02:49 PM
i'd love to hear the conversation at the meeting where this was decided

Apology to my readers

Apology to my readers 07/02/2004 03:08 AM

Over the past 2 1/2 weeks while I have been recovering from my injuries/surgery I have been on heavy pain medications and today while reading back thru some of my articles I got to thinking that you all must think I have been drinking while witting.

I think the pain meds would qualify me for being slightly impaired and if you have been scratching your head that may explain some of it. My doctor and I have re-worked my pain meds and hopefully the new prescription I pick up tomorrow will allow me to navigate better and make more comprehensive sense.

Todd aka GeekNews

Readers and friends

Readers and friends 08/02/2004 11:50 AM
When you write for a magazine, explicitly or not you adjust your style to match your readers' expectations. And, if you don't, your editor will do it for you. No matter how diverse the demographics of the readers, their expectations are usually quite precise, including how much profanity to use, how much description, the number of people interviewed per article, how conspicuous the author herself is in the story, the type of vocabulary, and the nature of the narrative. In short, there is such a thing as a New Yorker article, and you can recognize one even if it's not...

Advertisers and Readers

Advertisers and Readers 04/17/2004 11:24 AM

Angie McKaig again inspires me with "please stop making my eyes hurt".

Angie underscores the importance of readers to publishers that support their work with advertising, and she also makes clear the importance of good advertising to readers. Advertising and editorial have to work together on the web more than in any other medium, in my opinion, because there are so many alternatives out there for web users.

Great report Angie.

Thank you, WWdN readers!!

Thank you, WWdN readers!! 12/02/2003 01:07 AM
Turns out that WWdN readers have sent Dancing Barefoot to the top of the Literature and S ci-Fi charts!!! Because of you guys, Powell's is completely sold out!!

Some Readers Want to Lock Up Al Neuharth

Some Readers Want to Lock Up Al Neuharth 12/30/2004 11:53 AM
Pro-War Idiots Want to Lock Up Publisher Al Neuharth; Apparently, it is now an act of treason to offer an editorial opinion on the Iraq war that goes against the conventional wisdom. 12/30 .. left was shrill

editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.j sp?vnu_content_id=1000743012
track this site | 4 links

"Some Readers Want to Lock Up Al
Neuharth"

"Some Readers Want to Lock Up Al
Neuharth" 12/30/2004 11:31 PM

Readers want Linux knowledge

Readers want Linux knowledge 02/17/2004 06:33 AM
A while ago I asked for your thoughts on what appeared to be the takeover of this newsletter by Linux issues as Novell continues to make big noises about the open source operating system as well as the utilities and application vendors it has acquired in the Linux space. I was worried that you might think we were losing our focus. Evidently, we weren't.

What's wrong with feed readers

What's wrong with feed readers 08/27/2004 01:51 PM

The recent Glassdog post about what's wrong with feed readers has generated some buzz, and in general I agree with this post. Feed readers need to do more - much more - to help locate and navigate related information, and this is something I've thought about for quite some time.

Before coding FeedDemon 1.0, I sat down and really studied the other RSS readers, looking for what was missing. It was (almost) immediately obvious that other feed readers did nothing to find information for you, instead acting as though you'd want to read everything. It seemed to me that as feed readers caught on, it wouldn't be long until people were faced with feed overload - too much data, most of which they don't care about. This was why my design specs for the very first release of FeedDemon focused on the importance of features such as "watches" and "search channels" which help you find information you're actually interested in. I also made sure to add basic filtering, grouping, etc., so you wouldn't be stuck with "sorting items by date," as this post suggests.

I considered doing more along these lines in 1.0, but I decided that since most people consider RSS to be brand new, they would need to be introduced to reading feeds using a familiar, email-like UI that wasn't overloaded with RSS-specific features. I know that sounds odd, but the more unfamiliar features a product has, the higher the learning curve - and the slower the adoption. So, my goal with FeedDemon 1.0 was to make it easy for those new to RSS to start reading, without the added complexity suggested by this post. Now that more people are using FeedDemon and other feed readers, of course, I can take things much further in future versions :)

One big problem I see with this post (and others like it) is that they talk about rating/ranking individual items, but I believe that the vast majority of users don't want to spend time doing this. Relationships between items can be made without requiring the user to do anything, so this will likely be my focus. That doesn't mean, though, that I'm ruling out ranking items in FeedDemon, just that I'm not planning to make ranking items central to using FeedDemon.

Gnomedex special for my readers

Gnomedex special for my readers 08/11/2004 09:22 PM

Chris Pirillo is offering readers of this blog a $50 discount off tickets to the Gnomedex conference in Lake Tahoe. Pay only $149 to attend this three-day conference. To get this offer, visit the signup page and sign up as a “Past Gnomedexer” (even if you aren’t). Then email chris AT pirillo.com and tell him you read about the offer on my blog and let him know what email address you used to sign up.

Computers are mind readers

Computers are mind readers 04/04/2005 06:46 AM
USA Today Apr 4 2005 10:47AM GMT

OCW Readers Awards 2004

OCW Readers Awards 2004 01/03/2005 05:20 PM

MacResQ Readers Specials

MacResQ Readers Specials 12/03/2003 10:58 PM
Lexmark X75 PrinTrio All-In-One USB Printer, Copier and Scanner $79.99, take $5 off with Q-Pon Code "TRIO"

PowerMac G4/500 256/27gb/DVD-RAM/Zip Graphite $789.99, take $35 off with Q-Pon Code "G4500"

Shure E5C Dual Driver In-Ear Earphones Own a pair of the nicest headphones, ever! $479.99, get $80 off with Q-Pon Code "E5CHP"

Sennheiser RS-85 RF Wireless Headphones Extended special from last week!! $179.99, take $20 off with Q-Pon Code "RS85RF" and save another $25 via mail-in rebate, for a final price of just $134.99!

iPod MP3 Player, 20 Gigabyte, 2002 Model for Mac & PC - just format to whatever OS you want! $289.99, get $5 off with Q-Pon Code "20GBIP"

Griffin ClearChoice iPod Connection Kit Plug your iPod into your stereo, crank it up -- instant party! $14.99, get $3 off with Q-Pon Code "IPCK"

Exp. 12/08

Newsweek readers react

Newsweek readers react 12/04/2003 08:25 PM
Maine: "For Bill Gates to insinuate that if he had applied Microsoft�s 'advanced ideas to do a Web-scale search engine,' Microsoft -- and not Google -- would ...

Big Discounts For Rebelscum Readers

Big Discounts For Rebelscum Readers 09/15/2004 07:11 PM
By special arrangement with Master Replicas, we have arranged for a limited number of in-stock items to receive very special discounts, making each of them the most affordable offered to date. See the sale page here.

Vive la France! cry Reg readers

Vive la France! cry Reg readers 06/05/2005 11:41 PM
Stern response Otto gets a slapping

RSS readers and bandwidth consumption

RSS readers and bandwidth consumption 05/04/2004 12:32 PM

Wired recently asked wh ether RSS readers will clog the Web, raising concerns about bandwidth problems associated with RSS. While these concerns are valid, they're really less about RSS and more about the poor design of some RSS readers. So, I'd like to point out how FeedDemon was designed to minimize bandwidth consumption.

The primary concern is how often RSS readers download feeds to check for new items. After all, if a feed is updated once a day, there's a huge waste of bandwidth if RSS readers are downloading the feed every few minutes. However, a well-designed RSS reader won't download the entire feed if it hasn't been modified - instead, it will do as FeedDemon does and utilize HTTP If-Modified-Since and If-None-Match (ETag) requests. If the feed hasn't changed, then the server simply returns a 304: Not Modified response, which requires very little bandwidth. FeedDemon also supports GZIP compression and it remembers redirects, which further reduces bandwidth consumption.

FeedDemon honors the RSS <ttl> element, which enables feed authors to state how often the feed should be updated. FeedDemon won't allow setting a feed's update frequency lower than the <ttl>, so be sure to use this element in your feed if you're concerned about unnecessary bandwidth consumption. In addition, FeedDemon honors the <sk ipdays> and <skiphours> elements.

And I should add that FeedDemon defaults to checking for updates every three hours, not every few minutes. Users can set the update frequency lower than this (provided it's not lower than the feed's <ttl>), but in my experience, few users actually do this.

So, while RSS bandwidth consumption is a valid concern, it's a concern that I addressed from the very start when designing FeedDemon.

"one of Glenn Reynolds' readers"

"one of Glenn Reynolds' readers" 04/27/2004 03:32 AM

Total Guitar's readers

Total Guitar's readers 05/03/2004 07:57 AM
Top 20 Guitar Riffs .. Here��s a list .. news.bbc.co.uk

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3677965.stm
track this site | 5 links

Joho the Blog: No, I'm not keeping up
with your bl0g.

Joho the Blog: No, I'm not keeping up
with your bl0g. 06/22/2005 02:45 AM
Joho the Blog: No, I'm not keeping up with your blog .. Dear Blogger Letter .. David Weinberger

hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/004138.html
track this site | 5 links

The Blog Herald: More bl0g news more
often

The Blog Herald: More bl0g news more
often 12/30/2003 01:34 AM
http://www.blogherald.com/ Yup, that's it.......news about......blogs.......

Joho the Blog: Video bl0g

Joho the Blog: Video bl0g 08/01/2004 05:01 PM
video blog .. vlog

hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002909.html
track this site | 3 links

Readers speak: Who's right in iPod
fight?

Readers speak: Who's right in iPod
fight? 08/02/2004 03:24 PM
reader feedback RealNetworks' reverse engineering of Apple's music player puts two tech passions at loggerheads.

"FBI: be on the lookout for almanac
readers, they may be terrorists "

"FBI: be on the lookout for almanac
readers, they may be terrorists " 12/31/2003 09:35 AM

Readers respond to Firefox column

Readers respond to Firefox column 02/06/2005 01:08 AM
Column titled "Business Must Be Cautious With Firefox" generates reader response.
Grok Description matches for My Blog Readers Rock!
GrokA matches for My Blog Readers Rock!

Loki Torrent - Torrent Search, Torrent
Download, You name it, we've got it.

Loki Torrent - Torrent Search, Torrent
Download, You name it, we've got it. 12/30/2004 11:53 AM
fights back .. lokittorrent .. Loki Torrent

lokitorrent.com
track this site | 5 links

"Loki Torrent - Torrent Search, Torrent
Download, You name it..."

"Loki Torrent - Torrent Search, Torrent
Download, You name it..." 12/31/2004 10:23 AM

Yundi Li

Yundi Li 04/18/2004 01:49 AM
Just came home from the concert. Li was born in 1982 in central China, won lots of competitions, and has charisma to burn. The program was pretty well all Chopin and Liszt. I’ve never heard Chopin played better, live. I’m now shopping for his recordings...

Torrent 0.61

Torrent 0.61 01/27/2004 02:58 PM
An arcade game with colored tiles.

Torrent Zip

Torrent Zip 03/31/2005 11:44 PM
The project is live!

My first torrent

My first torrent 07/30/2004 03:00 AM

Thanks to Jim and Ado for setting up the BitTorrent tracker. Here is a torrent for Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture talk in Helsinki that I blogged about earlier.

UPDATE: Please standby. It doesn't seem to be working.

Comment - TrackBack

Bit Torrent question

Bit Torrent question 04/09/2004 10:30 PM
Bit Torrent and the ability to download everything in one click (is this the end of Direct TV, Tivo and the music business?!).

Used BitTorrent a little bit when it first came out and was a bit underwhelmed. It didn’t work, there weren’t a lot of places to find files, etc.

I decided to take another look at it when a designer friend of mine was telling me that he has the latest version of every single piece of design software on his Mac compliments of bit torrent (yes, I know it’s wrong… not the point I’m trying to make, the point is coming :-).

Part I: I installed bit torrent and immediately noticed an amazing new trend (prob. not new to all of you) of people posting dozens of albums in one RAR file for download. Huge file sizes in the 500 to 4,000 meg size range. The last season of seven seasons of Southpark, every Nirvanna album and here is another file with every Howard Stern radio show from March in one file.

In one click you grab one really well organized, clean and deep sets of files—scary.

Part II: A couple of month ago I got the Gateway Connected DVD player. For $195 it connects via WiFi to my desktop and I can hit the My Music or My Videos button on the remote control and pull up those directories on my hard drive (in the other room).

Part III: Today I moved into my new apartment in Santa Monica and was faced with the standard $100 month cable/dish bill and I’m thinking “dang, I only watch less then a half dozen TV shows and they are all here on bit torrent… maybe I should save the $1,200 a year and just download the shows and watch them via my Gateway Connected DVD player?”

The Point/Question: How soon before you’ll be able-with one click-download every prime-time TV show or last year’s top 500 CDs in one click?!

(Note: This is not a trick question, I have yet to find a file containing that much content—however, I did find a file with last weeks top 100 singles that someone put together in one nice package).

[The Digital Music Weblog]

It's the torrent, stupid

It's the torrent, stupid 12/22/2004 01:29 AM
Xeni Jardin: Mark Pesce rants about the recent shutdowns of BitTorrent supersites Suprnova.org and TorrentBits.com.

Hey, Hollywood! Can you feel the future slipping through your fingers? Do you understand how badly you've screwed up? You took a perfectly serviceable situation - a nice, centralized system for the distribution of media, and, through your own greed and shortsightedness, are giving birth to a system of digital distribution that you'll never, ever be able to defeat. In your avarice and arrogance you ignored the obvious: you should have cut a deal with SuprNova.org. In partnership you could have found a way to manage the disruptive change that's already well underway. Instead, you have repeated the mistakes made by the recording industry, chapter and verse. And thus you have spelled your own doom.

It's said that the best sequels are just like the original, only bigger and louder. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for one hell of a crash. This baby is now fully out of control.

Link (via waxy)

Battle Torrent

Battle Torrent 08/11/2004 09:45 AM

Thanks to Dave over at Scripting News for the link. The already easy process of downloading files via BitTorrent has just gotten easier. [Downhill Battle]

Sri Lankan hip-hop mix: torrent

Sri Lankan hip-hop mix: torrent 03/17/2005 03:55 AM
Xeni Jardin: Boing Boing reader Lucas Emery says,

Your big article on M.I.A over the weekend reminded me that I had downloaded a mix mp3 shortly after the Tsunami disaster comprised exclusivly of Sri Lankan hip-hop. I can't remember where I originally found the mix (boomselection, maybe?) so I just made a .torrent. 58.4 Meg mp3 mix by Dr. Auratheft.

Link

Previously: M.I.A. is, well, MIA; and MIA for intergalactic overlord

Torrentocracy = RSS + Bit Torrent + Your
TV

Torrentocracy = RSS + Bit Torrent + Your
TV 06/21/2004 07:41 AM

CC Torrent Hosting

CC Torrent Hosting 12/17/2004 06:33 PM

Torrentocracy has announced a free BitTorrent hosting service for Creative Commons licensed content: Prodigem.

Download one of the beta torrents currently available. Send an email to Torrentocracy creator Gary Lerhaupt to request an upload account.

Update: Download all of the Duke Law School Arts Project Moving Image Contest finalists via one torrent at prodigem.

ShiftyGames Torrent 0.8.2

ShiftyGames Torrent 0.8.2 05/05/2004 10:52 PM
An arcade game with colored tiles.

Bit Torrent : An Analysis

Bit Torrent : An Analysis 12/19/2004 03:10 PM
Hardy news site, The Register, recently published a detailed analysis of the file sharing protocol Bit Torrent. Bit Torrent has received attention in the main stream news after reports that it was carrying as much as 50% of all peer 2 peer (p2p) traffic, which in tern amounted to a massive 30% of all the traffic on the internet. The paper, by Dr. Johan Pouwelse, examines the protocol and looks especially at one of the largest bit-torrent hubs, Suprnova.org. He examines how just 20 moderators solve the problem of fake files, something that plagues the traditional file sharing networks like Kazaa.

Dr Powelse notes that the major problems facing hubs like suprnova are fakes and maintaining hub availability. The availability of files on bit torrent is based on a centralised system; without it, the network fails as users cannot access the trackers. Decentralising bit torrent has already begun - Suprnova have started a project called "Exeem" which apparently has 5,000 beta testers trialling it, and has an ultimate aim of taking the best of Kazaa (a decentralised network) and merging it with Bit Torrent. Decentralisation removes the issue of poor availability at the tracker end, yet0 it also provides more scope for fake files and a reduction in data integrity at the user end.

The paper concludes that bit-torrent needs to evolve to create incentives to users to seed files. Bit-torrent as a protocol is a system that�s here to stay; it enjoys more and more usage from more main stream content providers. Yes, there is a lot of illegitimate use of the protocol, but unlike Kazaa, these users should not be allowed to over shadow the usefulness to legitimate users of the bit torrent protocol.

[Update] Since this article was published, Suprnova has shutdown as a hub for torrents. Although this cannot be confirmed, the shutdown is very likely related to legal action from the Hollywood against tracker websites; earlier in the week many other sites were taken down. The effectiveness of the takedowns could be massive; the paper below notes that when on the Suprnova mirrors went offline during their monitoring period, they saw a massive reduction in the number of users downloading files through the site.

Download: The Paper (pdf) | The Register

Read full story...

Following up on Torrent Shutdowns

Following up on Torrent Shutdowns 12/22/2004 01:40 AM
Slashdot Dec 21 2004 6:33PM GMT

Xcode .torrent

Xcode .torrent 08/08/2004 02:13 AM
Apple just released an update to is Xcode development tools, but Apple's content distribution network is slow and poky, and as Danny notes, it "won't let you resume downloads using wget -c." So here's a .torrent for Xcode. Link (via Oblomovka)

Microsoft builds a better Bit Torrent

Microsoft builds a better Bit Torrent 06/17/2005 03:18 PM
Researchers at Microsoft's computer science lab in Cambridge have developed a peer-to-peer filesharing system that they say overcomes the scheduling problems associated with existing distribution protocols such as Bit Torrent.

The researchers claim download times are between 20-30 per cent faster, using their network coding approach, than on systems that only code at the server, and between 200 and 300 per cent faster than distributing un-encoded information.

View: Full Article @ The Register
View: Avalanche Whitepaper

Read full story...

"Torrent Link for 74 briefs in 20.7MB"

"Torrent Link for 74 briefs in 20.7MB" 03/27/2005 10:28 AM

Torrent Site Status

Torrent Site Status 01/07/2005 04:15 AM
Don’t download too much pr0n .. Torrent Site Status

orbdesign.net/bt
track this site | 3 links

Comrade - Bit Torrent Client

Comrade - Bit Torrent Client 06/24/2004 12:03 AM
Working.

Torrent of video from DV Guide

Torrent of video from DV Guide 08/30/2004 02:55 AM

dv.open4all.info/bblog/torrent_files/20040828_kinberg.mov.torrenttrack this site | 3 links

SP2 Bit Torrent Legal Challenge

SP2 Bit Torrent Legal Challenge 08/11/2004 05:20 PM

Download the Windows XP Service Pack 2: The guys who were doing Microsoft a favor by pushing Service Pack 2 via Bit Torrent got slapped down by Redmond.

Microsoft sent DMCA takedown notices to our two webhosts, one of which was just linking to a torrent file on another server. We've stood up to these kinds of legal threats before (see the Grey Tuesday protests), but we decided not to bother this time, because we started this site primarily as a demonstration and to that end it's already been a huge success.

Click here to comment on this entry

Better Than Bit Torrent, For Internet2
Users?

Better Than Bit Torrent, For Internet2
Users? 11/18/2003 07:54 PM

Grokster briefs torrent

Grokster briefs torrent 03/26/2005 05:13 AM
Cory Doctorow: Thad sez, "This is a torrent of all of the briefs submitted re: MGM v. Grokster, in the zip format provided on the U.S. Copyright Office site." Torrent Link for 74 briefs in 20.7MB

Eyes on the Screen torrent mirror

Eyes on the Screen torrent mirror 02/01/2005 08:38 PM
Cory Doctorow: Eyes on the Screen is an amazing Downhill Battle project that we blogged earlier. The idea is to get people to download the seminal documentary Eyes on the Prize, which chronicles the American civil rights movement. It's a Black History Month perrennial, but because of the prohibitive cost of clearing the copyrights to the archival footage used in the series. Once the series has been downloaded, you'd be encouraged to host a screening party for your friends and neighbors on February 8th, and ensure that the vital messages of this documentary don't fade away due to outmoded laws.

The Downhill Battle torrents for Eyes on the Prize have gone away, but there is still a mirror of them available. Please consider using the mirror to get your own copies and host a party of your own.

At 8pm on February 8th we will celebrate the struggle and triumph of the civil rights movement with screenings of Eyes on the Prize Part 1: Awakenings. Eyes on the Prize is the most renowned civil rights documentary of all time; for many people, it is how they first learned about the Civil Rights Movement (more about the film). But this film has not been available on video or television for the past 10 years simply because of expired copyright licenses. We cannot allow copyright red tape to keep this film from the public any longer. So today we are making digital versions of the film available for download. Join us in building a new mass audience for this film: organize or attend a screening in your city, town, school or home on February 8th.

Link

Defense fund for Bit Torrent indexer

Defense fund for Bit Torrent indexer 12/30/2004 02:45 AM
Cory Doctorow: LokiTorrent is a BitTorrent indexing site -- like the lamented Suprnova -- that has been threatened with legal action by the MPAA for telling people where to download torrent files that allow them to download video and other large data-objects. Unlike some of the other Torrent indexers that shut down last week, LokiTorrent is mounting a legal defense. They're trying to raise a legal defense fund of $30,000, and they've made $11,500 in the first 12 hours. Link (via /.)

Outfoxed interviews .torrent for
remixing

Outfoxed interviews .torrent for
remixing 09/15/2004 11:36 AM
Cory Doctorow: The interviews from the awesome anti-Fox documentary Outfoxed have been released under a Creative Commons license, for you to remix. Here's the .torrent: Torrent Link (via Lessig)

AnimeMonitor RSS (torrent) feed monitor

AnimeMonitor RSS (torrent) feed monitor 04/16/2004 10:22 AM
We're Alive!

Outfoxed interviews available under CC
license via Bit Torrent

Outfoxed interviews available under CC
license via Bit Torrent 09/15/2004 03:51 AM

torrentocracy - blog

Outfoxed Torrent (torrentocracy exclusive)

In working with Lawrence Lessig, Robert Greenwald has agreed to release the interviews within Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism under a Creative Commons non-commercial license (press release). This means that among the rights now granted, interviews balancing out the fair journalism of Fox News can freely be used as anyone sees fit. To see the full movie, you can purchase the Outfoxed DVD or check it out in theaters.

Torrentocracy (along with archive.org) has exclusive initial access to distribute these interviews in their digital form due to the work undertaken to promote a TV-connected, public domain, internet based media distribution network. The torrent file to start your Outfoxed download can be found at http://www.torrentocracy.com/files/torrents/outfoxed_intervie ws.torrent. For more information on how to use bit torrent peer-to-peer filesharing to download this, go here. If you were a Torrentocracy user, you could already be downloading Outfoxed to your television.

Here's some serious substantial non-infringing use of P2P. I bought the DVD and watched Outfoxed. Definitely worth buying the DVD, but being able to download and use the interviews from the documentary is a great contribution to the commons. It will be interesting to see how people remix this stuff.

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Torrent for Windows XP Service Pack 2

Torrent for Windows XP Service Pack 2 08/09/2004 04:48 PM
Microsoft needs to distribute its new Win XP Service Pack 2 to 260 million Windows users at 75MB each. Moving a wodge that big to that many machines is too much even for the biggest software company on the planet. So the folks at Downhill Battle have seized upon this as an opportunity to prove the substantial noninfringing uses of P2P by releasing a .torrent of SP@ (complete with checksum info so that you can verify that this isn't some malware-riddled trojan, except to the extent that it is a typical piece of the Windows XP OS). Join the mesh, shoulder the load, get your medicine -- the 21st Century way. Link (via Waxy)

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