Yawn? Surely you jest. Oh I know that multihead conferencing has been around. Most of it corporate using dedicated circuits and equipment. Or public services like WebEx. But what makes VuRoom is that is does not require a lot of specific gear. If your PC can run the latest version of Skype it can run VuRoom.

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ViVu, Inc. (www.vivu.tv), an emerging leader in creating innovative and easy-to-use solutions for live video participation, today released VuRoom – a ViVu-powered plug-in for Skype, the popular software that enables the world’s conversations. VuRoom is built on the Skype platform to provide customers with instant multi-user video conferencing – an exciting new breakthrough previously unavailable to Skype users. Along with its presentation and desktop sharing functionalities, VuRoom is designed to help remote business users collaborate in real-time, while also saving valuable time and money.

“Having experienced the technology, I believe that ViVu is well positioned to deliver on the video collaboration needs of SMB and enterprise customers. In particular, I see strong potential for ViVu’s new Skype plug-in.”

“Our recent research studies predict a big year for global growth in the web conferencing market,” said Krithi Rao, an analyst in the Information & Communication Technologies Practice at Frost & Sullivan. “Now more than ever, enterprises are looking for cost-effective communication and collaboration solutions to help them succeed.”

Demo here.

Now why the tither Dog? The price. The problem with most of the other services is they run $30-40/month. That can run into some serious coin on a 10 person team every month. This is running $10/seat. A fourth the price. At that price point if using the software for the entire team replaced but one airline ticket a month it paid for itself and then some.

The fact that it is on Skype provides for a very ubiquitous platform. One could add external input sources as needed into the video conversations with little cost or set up charges. The real question is does it last in its current biz plan form. Skype with there latest release now provide P2P video on the three major OS platforms. That is probably 60% of all the Skype usage out there. Couple that with some geek will pull this off as a freebie somewhere as well. Time will tell.

But while it lasts VuRoom lowers the bar on multihead video.

Linky.

The Suits from Hollywood and Vine are all gaga to get Pirate Bay shutdown. They are going after the site which is still up not the individuals involved. –

Although the owners of the notorious BitTorrent tracker face prison time and hefty fines, the sentence handed out in April did not include an injunction forcing the site to close down.

Now a coalition of studios including Columbia Pictures, Disney, NBC, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, and Viacom is demanding that the website be shuttered to protect the illegal distribution of roughly 100 films and television programs. A writ to sue for closure was presented Monday to the Stockholm District Court.

“They’ve been sentenced to prison for criminal activities but haven’t stopped carrying out those activities,” Monique Wadsted, the lawyer for the studios, told Sweden’s The Local.

Sadly this is like Napster round 2. Rather than embracing the opportunity they would prefer to just destroy it and move on. The opportunity of course is to monetize the sharing rather than destroy it. The destruction route just ends up being a game of whack-a-mole. If they could leverage the P2P framework MLM style they could profit beyond belief. But then that’s not their style, so no worries there.

Linky.

Readers probably know I am not a big fan of the Twitter. Its the Western Union of the electronic age. But I am also not blind to the fact that if Twitter is working for someone it’s not to be discouraged —

It wasn’t an overnight thing; Dell’s been on Twitter for two years. But Dell blogger Stephanie Nelson says they’ve managed to steadily grow followers for their outlet store via @DellOutlet, earning $2 million via Twitter referrals for their “certified refurbs, scratch and dent and previously ordered new Dell products.” They took in another $1 million from people who went from the outlet store to Dell proper for new stuff.

The account — unmistakeably commercial, no celebrities — now has 600k followers, “close to the top 50 most followed Twitter users according to TwitterCounter, sharing the stage with brands like @Zappos … , @JetBlue and @WholeFoods.”

Their strategy? You won’t need to write this down: “… by offering a mix of Twitter-exclusive offers, Dell Outlet deals and Outlet-specific updates and information.”

This is Dell. So $3m for them is their electric bill for the Round Rock plant for half a year. But as a tool for daily marketing I can see the merit. Technically the channels are opt-in so a local bakery can’t be accused of spamming. The customer asked for it. It also does keep enterprise front and center in the customer’s mind. So for a local firm, using Twitter could be the difference between having a profit or not.

More here.

There has been a drumbeat over the last couple of years than much content, years old has value if if not many sales. That the ‘longtail’ in the sales cycle have more to offer as a business model than what is sold in the first two years. Last year some economists tested that theory and found it did not hold and that most sales occurred at the ‘head’. -

This really isn’t the upbeat fairy tale message Anderson has spent four years selling on the conference circuit. However, as he took his “message” to Davos and beyond, the Long Tail has gradually developed into a ‘Policy Based Evidence Making’. Having convinced himself of the truth of his hypothesis by looking at one US music service, Anderson widened his search for facts that might fit his theory. But he didn’t examine the numbers closely or critically enough, say the economists.

“You need to consider much more than just some flimsy volume-based Rhapsody data if you’re going to say the world’s changed,” says Page. “For instance, understanding value both in terms of retail spend and then marginal profitability to the artist and songwriter would have been a logical extension”

In another surprise, 80 per cent of the revenue came from 52,000 songs. What’s eye-catching about the number? Well, the typical inventory of a conventional high street record store was around 4,000 CDs. Or … around 52,000 songs.

But that has import to the music business —

“If sellers sell it, it might never be bought. But if the swappers offer it, at least one person will likely take it,” the authors point out.

Polls suggest many music fans would gladly pay for such a service. The University of Hertfordshire last year found over 80 per cent interested in voluntarily paying for services which offered exchanges of sound recordings, and a survey of music fans in Sweden - home of The Pirate Bay - found that over 86 per cent would cough up: over half the sample would pay up to £12 a month.

The world’s first voluntary P2P service was due this spring from UK cable giant Virgin, but the ISP suspended the initiative late in the day due to record company nervousness.

So what’s the uptake? More on Is the Longtail Vapors?

Well it is if you start reading some forums and web sites. Some are saying that VoIP traffic will be affected. Generally false. Others are saying that the efficiency of the internet will drop as a consequence. False. First the announcement off the Torrent website for the new UDP based client –

New alpha! The main change is that uTP (UDP torrenting) is added and enabled by default. It also has real-time transfer rate control and latency minimization.
This build will probably download slower than 1.8.1, particularly if the entire swarm is 1.8.1.

This whole thing has been a boil for about 2 years now between Torrent users and network ISP’s in their use of network capacity. We have had FCC endorsed round tables on the situation. Its finally come to head with Bell Canada impacting P2P traffic altogether. The result is that the Torrent developers have built a UDP based client to get around it. What the ISP’s don’t understand is that they are on the short end of the stick here from a technology perspective. The developers have the upper hand in any tech war. Example? Well how would ISP handle a Torrent client that did the following –

• Stored the existing client protocols table.
• Randomly remapped that table for its own purposes.
• Started a faux spread spectrum-like bounce across the breadth of the protocols table between the seeders and the receivers
• Upon competition restores the saved protocols table back to the system

Its not fool proof. But it is sufficiently involved that it fiscally escalates the costs on the ISP’s side that they just cry uncle. It is not a road we as a global society should go down. Its like restricting free speech.

The other trend I am seeing is the lack of understanding by many in the press on this issue. As a data transmission layer, UDP is MORE efficient than TCP. UDP institutes a full data stream with no framing checks. It just streams till EOF. But there is no checking for data integrity of the file. TCP on the other hand checks blocks of packets for receipt till the whole file sent. In some cases it adds up to 20% overhead to the transmission. So if you were doing a torrent you would WANT them using UDP.

The other falsehood is that VoIP traffic would be impacted. Hate to say it, probably not true. Two protocols dominate the VoIP world — SIP and SSCP. Well SIP uses TCP for build up and tear down of the connection and either TCP or UDP for the transport. The split being about 50/50. If its a problem, providers can switch to a pure TCP transport. SSCP uses TCP for build up and tear down of the connection and only UDP for the transport. But SSCP is generally associated with Cisco CallManager installs. So most of the UDP traffic is intrabuilding, like in call centers. The outbound traffic being wrapped in TCP or TCP-VPNd traffic, building to building.

The solution? How about some profit? The P2P client providers should cooperate with the ISP’s and provide a means to a) strip the traffic easily and b) forward store the traffic on end nodes like Akamai. The ISP’s cooperate by providing a premium data channel that P2P traffic can ride on. The users pay for the privilege. Profits are split by all concerned.

I prefer this solution over data caps.

Linky.

I’ve long  had the suspicion that the heartburn AT&T and the cable guys get from P2P is more about getting paid more for content delivery and avoiding the necessary investment in infrastructure to accommodate users demands. The fact is ISP revenue is up and the cost of capacity is in free fall. This makes providing more capacity at current prices levels very profitable, just not as profitable as raising prices without making new investments.

In the connected world, bandwidth capacity must continuously increase. At the same time we must find ways to do more with less. Anyone within minimal understanding of technology can look at P2P vs server to client content delivery will discover that P2P is an exponentially more efficient way of delivering a large file or stream. That takes us back to the debate about getting paid more to deliver content and avoiding new investment, which seems to be what the cable guys and the death star are really interested in.

Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s senior vice president of technology agrees with me on the efficiency of P2P:

Peer-to-peer is a distribution enabler. But often when people talk about P2P, it gets lumped into a category with things that are bad, mainly because it takes up so much capacity on the network. But whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, there is underlying technology for P2P that can be used to everyone’s advantage to get content like video, which everyone is asking for, distributed in the most efficient way.

We conducted some tests with the P4P group and Yale University, and showed that customers have a better experience, and we use fewer resources, when we used the P2P technology. It’s really a win-win situation for us and the customer.(Cnet)

In what has to be the most galling of lies, Comcast has been caught again. But first lets set the stage for why. Comcast in a informational filing before the Commission made the statement that they only block P2P traffic when conditions warrant the necessity –

As described in detail below, Comcast manages the use of certain P2P protocols in a
minimally intrusive way, and only when necessary, based on purely objective criteria; these management techniques are not based on the content of the files users are sharing or the identity of the users who are doing the sharing. More specifically, Comcast’s network management practices (1) only affect the protocols that have a demonstrated history of generating excessive burdens on the network; (2) only manage those protocols during periods of heavy network traffic; (3) only manage uploads; (4) only manage uploads when the customer is not simultaneously downloading (i.e., when the customer’s computer is most likely unattended) (“unidirectional sessions” or “unidirectional uploads”); and (5) only delay those protocols until such time as usage drops below an established threshold of simultaneous unidirectional sessions. These network management practices are fully consistent with the Internet Policy Statement.

Comcast is asserting that they do this on an as needed basis. But hold on a moment. Germany’s equivalent of MIT, Max Planck Institute conducted a study in may that both Cox and Comcast blocked P2P traffic at all hours generally without let up. –

The Max Planck Institute collected data between March 18 and May 15 from 8,175 unique hosts that ran its BitTorrent tests. Participating hosts were in 90 countries, connected through 1,224 ISPs, and ran the ‘Glasnost’ testing tool.

The only locations where cable ISPs blocked BitTorrent traffic to a significant extent were in the United States (Comcast and Cox) and Singapore (Starhub).

Tests showed that Comcast blocked at least 30 per cent of BitTorrent upload attempts and, during most hours, Comcast blocked between 50 to 80 percent of BitTorrent traffic. Cox blocked at least 20 per cent of BitTorrent uploads (except for one period at 3 AM where one request wasn’t blocked) and, during most hours, Cox blocked between 50 to 100 per cent of all BitTorrent traffic.

Puts the lie to their Commission filing. Personally, if Comcast wants to manage traffic it would be fine with me provided there were alternatives for customers. Sadly in many locations that is not the case. You have Comcast for broadband or dialup. But what should not stand is the Commission doing nothing. Comcast committed the equivalent of perjury and in my view they ought to be slapped with a $10m fine because of their duplicity.

The twist on the old saw — “The omission was more costly than the crime.”, comes to mind.

Linky.

What’s this? After telling us the P2P traffic is the arch nemesis of all things good on their network, Comcast investing in a P2P video delivery network.

Seattle-based GridNetworks on Monday said that Comcast would make an unspecified investment in the company and collaborate on developing so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing techniques that are “friendly” to Internet service providers.

Comcast, the country’s second largest Internet service provider, hampers some file-sharing traffic by its subscribers in an attempt to keep the traffic from slowing down Web surfing by other subscribers. Complaints by consumer groups and legal scholars that the company is discriminating against particular software have led to an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.

Comcast has said that it will stop targeting specific types of traffic by the end of the year. It has also reached out to file-sharing companies to try to develop mutually acceptable techniques. (Yahoo)

The more conspiracy minded may think Comcast is buying in to collect more useful data on new ways to meddle with P2P traffic. I think the scenario that is closer reality is someone in the tech dept has convinced the suits that P2P is likely to be the most efficient way to do IPTV for themselves. Perhaps they could be even more forward thinking to understand doing TVoIP to any network (not just their own) may be the real path to growth for any content provider. Naw, maybe they are not quite that smart. One thing for sure, mixed signals that continue to come out of this company show a real disconnect between technology and operations .

Yes folks were talking the Tanya Anderson case. The one where RIAA accused her of downloading files even though she does not have sharing software loaded and their own expert testified that she had not done so. The outcome is that the RIAA must pay $108,000 in legal fees so far. The class action suit, a seperate action, is still pending. But it ain’t looking good for the RIAA right now in regards to Anderson.

An Oregon federal magistrate has awarded nearly $108,000 to a Beaverton single mother who said the recording industry falsely accused her of illegally downloading music.

The money represents Tanya Andersen’s attorney fees and costs in successfully fighting a lawsuit filed by the recording industry against her.

The attorney fee award is separate from a national class action lawsuit Andersen filed against the recording industry last year.

RIAA’s biggest problem is that once they lose one case they will start losing many. The first winning case becomes a template to all further defense actions.

Well there is a new P2P in town — Alliance. Has all the usual attributes of a P2P. But it does not stop there. First, it does not indiscriminately look for traffic partners. Those are set up by the Alliance participants. Sort of like a ‘Friends and Family Plan’ P2P. The second is the data packets are encased in SSL.

So why should Comcast be upset? Well the schema has been that they would look for patterns in the network data streams. If they found a candidate they would do a deep packet analysis to ascertain if a Torrent or P2P was occurring. Well that will be very hard to do if the underlying data packets are encrypted in a SSL layer. Best they will be able to do is monitor usage then do a simple block on the traffic rather than the usual packet reshaping to cause the traffic to cease. Its just more headache.

What makes this tough for the RIAA is that unlike normal P2P; Alliance requires that you be invited to join an existing Alliance network. So if 6 kids are off ripping CD’s [and 'The Man'] unless one of the members of the network is crazy enough to invite an unknown to the network how are they going to know?

Alliance has versions for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. I can see quite a few uses for this type of P2P in the corporate world. Ad Hoc teams can pull together shares for projects without the hassle of waiting for IT. With AES-SSL encryption the teams can be in remote locations and not worry too much about loss of the data over the wire. A novel solution with commendable features.