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“Harvard releases innovative P2P video software” these titles abound at the moment, concerning Tribler, the p2p file sharing client…

A news release issued by Harvard University last week, was distilled by the New Scientist, and produced the title: Bandwidth could be a new global ‘currency’. Tasty little soundbite and prime candidate for a few front pages, you might think ? You’d be right.

Tribler, lest it be forgotten, was developed by a team of researchers from two Dutch Universities - Delft University of Technology (one of the top tech institutions in Europe) and De Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who launched a beta version in March last year. It is good news that Harvard has teamed up with Tribler though, a leg-up for a system with high ideals, designed to encourage fair sharing, wont go amiss.

“Using bandwidth as a kind of currency helps to encourage better habits,” said Dr Johan Pouwelse, an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, Amsterdam and co-creator of Tribler. Dr Pouwelse has been working with associate professor David Parkes from Harvard University to add an accounting system to Tribler to encourage users to upload as often as they download. “In our model your TV would use “TV watching minutes”, our form of P2P currency, to download content,” said Dr Pouwelse. “The TV would connect directly to the internet and provide video on demand in HDTV quality. “After you watch a program on TV, the system would automatically share this program during the night with other people, until your ‘TV watching minutes’ credit is healthy again,” he said.

The Tribler software (free) combines a modified version of the BitTorrent file-trading algorithm and adds on YouTube and LiveLeak, plus the VLC player and codecs. It also has a thing called intelligent taste recognition.

Social networking technology is also inlaid which helps to police the system and encourage fair sharing. “In the case of sharing and playing video, our network-based system already allows a group of ‘friends’ to pool their collective upload ‘reserve’ to slash download times”, says the Harvard statement - p2pnet

Will cutting down on download times be a big enough carrot to accept the policing, however friendly ? “the ability for users to“gossip” or report on the behaviour of other peers. Their eventual goal is to find a way to create accurate personal assessments or trust metrics as a form of internal regulation.” But then, I suppose that’s more or less what social networks have been doing for a while now…no?

YouTube demo video

Harvard download page

FlashEarth, the marvelous mashup of online mapping services by Paul Neave from the UK, has broken into new territory, thanks to Valery Hrosunov and Barry Hunter.

“What if the current view in Google Earth was quickly viewable in other maps, such as those made accessible by FlashEarth? Well, now it is. As you move around the globe a little white arrow follows you around, simple click it to get an approximation of the current view in FlashEarth in a popup balloon”. #

First, Valery posted to the Google Earth Community that you could include FlashEarth within a placemark bubble - if you are using GE 4.2 on Windows. Then, using the new capability of Google Earth to embed Flash into placemark bubbles, Barry Hunter has produced a KML network link. Open it in Google Earth, and a white arrow will appear in the center of the screen. Click on the arrow, and a bubble will pop up giving you the Flash Earth choices of imagery for that area.

Layers available in Flash Earth are

* Google Maps
* Microsoft Virtual Earth (VE) Aerial
* Microsoft Virtual Earth (VE) Labels
* Yahoo Maps
* Ask Maps
* Ask Aerial
* Open Layers
* NASA Terra (Daily)

via | gearthblog

Previous post on FlashEarth:
Flash Earth adds NASA satellites

“Deezer is the first juke box on demand totally free in the world!” that’s according to Deezer.

Brief recap: BlogMusik - French mp3 streaming site - is closed down by SACEM (equivalent to ASCAP or BMI in the US, or SOCAN in Canada). BlogMusik sheds skin, becomes Deezer. Deezer signs a deal with almighty SACEM (first of its kind in France - publicity revenue sharing - exact terms kept secret). Deezer’s on a roll, signs deal with Free - France’s 2nd largest ISP - to provide users with unlimited streamed music (nearly 200,000 tracks to date) for nowt!

Sun shines from Deezer’s backend…

Meanwhile on the other side of town… Universal Music France teams up with France’s 3rd largest ISP (neuf.fr - same parent company, Vivendi) to launch a Windows DRM-based, unlimited music job. Universal don’t take kindly to the Deezer/Free deal announced just 2 days after their ‘heavily marketed‘ ‘First of its kind‘ - ISP deal. Universal decides Deezer are unlawfully exploiting the Universal music catalogue and say ‘remove them or we’re all in court’.

“It’s a logical position for Universal to take, Deezer is in the wrong from an “intellectual property” point of view” says SPPF boss (which regroups the independant labels in France), Jérôme Roger.

Sun to set on Deezer ?

No, not now, not after the SACEM handshake & the Free deal. Apart from being the second most important ISP in France, Free are “the last independent one, probably the most innovative and net-savvy” [#]. Although it does seem strange that Deezer have yet to strike a deal with any of the major labels like EMI, Warner or Sony-BMG, nor the SPPF for that matter.

‘Free music financed by ads’ is a model that will be adopted by many, or so they saying. YourFreeMusicDownloads is up with more than a million tracks and 500 more added daily. A few more are on the horizon, Qtrax, Spiral Frog and Airtist for example. Free music with artists still being renumerated - everybody’s happy, no ?! Except the major labels of course…what a shame. As a slashdot reader notes: “Hopefully this will prove to be enough of a viable business model in France that the RIAA/SoundExchange will take note and head down a different road than their current one…”

For the latest news on the U.S.A. SoundExchange scuffle | Internet Radio Saved - For Now

BlogMusik/Deezer has been around sinces June 2006, created by Daniel Marhely & Jonathan Benassaya, it’s available in 16 languages.

slashdot [#]

>> The Filter will be expanding thanks to a £2.5 million cash funding from Peter Gabiel and Eden Ventures. Exabre, the U.K. based music recommendation technology company, who released a new version of the program last week, are said to be preparing The Filter’s software for recommendation services beyond music, such as video and film.

“The first wave of the digital revolution was about the freedom of choice, trying to make everything accessible to anyone, any place, any time. I think the second wave will be about freedom from choice. It will be able to filter and focus so that you get more of what you want,” Peter Gabriel said.

The Filter is a playlist creation program that allows you to build playlists from the music stored on your PC. The engine can identify 5 million songs and the Filter’s user base is reported to be growing at 25,000 a month. The Filter works by using Bayesian mathematics and it was developed by physicist Martin Hopkins.

>> A PirateCinema House showing free downloaded films in Finland, has been raided. The Cinema in Helsinki was closed down and one of the organisers arrested, according to radiatum.com ! Is there a serious lack of crime in Finland, or was it a well planned and reasonable reaction against those dirty film junkies spreading despair and addiction?

>> A new mp3 search engine from France - FranceRadio.net

“Great site with a clean and fast interface” according to GHacks

>> Jooce is a new Flash based web OS/Desktop from Paris - Techcrunch write-up

>> Speaking of Paris - cestsoparis.com (as in, ‘c’est so Paris’) is a French site that has short video lessons on street French as well as general info about the French capital.

Numbered lists: top ten, top fifty, 5 best ways to… 10 things you should know about… the list, like most lists - goes on.

Lists are a firm favourite on the Net, as a regular glance at the Digg home page will tell you. What gives us an idea of just how popular some lists are is the fact that Smashing Magazine is being touted by eBizMBA as the 25th most popular blog on the planet! and this is after only one year online for the lords of the lists for web dev resources. Amazing! [Read the rest of this entry...]

Two posts on Mashable (UK) this week show us why we simply don’t care about the new Moveable Type 4 release. The first, on Thursday, knocked up a neat little list of 30 plugins to tune-up, pimp-up, ad-up or do just about whatever it is you want to do, to your WP posts. Not content with that, the Mashable team wrapped up the series yesterday with an xxl-list: 300 favourite WordPress tools & plugins! [Read the rest of this entry...]

35 open-air sites and 70 municipal buildings in Paris and the ‘Ile de France‘ region are now set to offer free, unlimited, wi-fi access to the Internet. These 105 sites are equipped with 160 hotspots and a further 155 public emplacements are scheduled for September, this will take the number of hotspots to around 400. [Read the rest of this entry...]

At a time when Google holds 90% of the search market in Germany and Spain, and almost 75% in Britain and it is generally acknowledged that European companies in spend far less on research than those based in other parts of the world, one of the many fragmented ‘EuroGoogle’ efforts is about to receive state funding. [Read the rest of this entry...]