Torrents are hot these days. A lot of people enjoy them so much. But big companies are flexing their company muscles nowadays. The Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent tracker located in Sweden has literally been slapped by tons and tons of legal documentation seeking to stop it from operating.
According Ars Technica, the Pirate Bay has received more than 4000 pages worth of the documentation related to the legal case. Overkill. One of the worst murder cases in Sweden only had 1,500 pages. It seems that the big companies are in for the big kill to stop people from using torrents to download materials from the Internet.
The Pirate Bay, however, plans to weather this assault on their operations. Peter Sunde, an admin of Pirate Bay said that conviction is unlikely. If it happens though, they will surely take the case up to the European Union Court. The process can last anywhere between four to six years.
People using torrents all over the world are hoping that the big guys won’t succeed in toppling down The Pirate Bay. The problem, however, is that the big companies usually win in this kinds of cases. Let’s wait and see how the case will turn out.
Web 2.0 rules. We’ve said this over and over again and it still does. Just take a look at the recent events in the world of Internet Finance reporting. AOL Money has introduced an innovation in their site. Their doing away with the mind-boggling graphs, which only finance whiz kids from Planet Dollars can understand.
CNN Money overhauled its site recently. They now prefer, guess what… videos and news contents. Business television in the future will no longer be very popular in televisions, ironic as they may sound, but it will be more popular online. Hence, CNN Money will broadcast two original videos online everyday. Their plan is to increase this number of broadcasts to 15 videos a day, if not more, in the future.
As it turned out, the audience of business television has switched to the Internet. Even while they’re working on their desks, they can easily go online and watch videos from CNN Money. In addition to this, the news content and articles featured at the site will be related to what Fortune, and Money magazines publish.
Another boon for Web 2.0! Probably in the next few years, more and more Old media people will turn to the new.
Good news for people who find it difficult to keep track of their finances, Spendview, an online personal finance tool has recently received two million dollars for its operations. Meakem Becker Venture Capital is the one funding the said finance tool. Finance tools should be more than just be functional. That is how Spendview looks at it. As such, they also pay attention to the nitty-gritty details such as layout, design, together with the organization of information.
Through these tools, Spendview provides you a direct way to track your spending. The graphs featured in the website can easily make you see where you are spending and where you are overspending.
This web-based personal finance tool also has Targets, enabling the user to categorize different items in the budget, as well as sub-budgets. Through this, a user can easily track if there has been an overshooting of the budget or if there are savings, which can be diverted for other purposes.
Together with other personal finance tools such as Geezeo and Mint can definitely help you keep track of your finance. But the bottom line is, you would still have to rely on your self-discipline in order to keep to the budget
Open Source tracking tool Ohloh is set to become an open source. That’s open sourcing twice over!
Ohloh is now opening its tracking and ranking tools and making it available for developers to use it and develop similar tools. The open source directory being tracked and maintained by Ohloh is already available for a large number of people in the Internet. By taking another step further in the open source world, Ohloh enables others to track other open source coder teams.
Through this move, the similarity between Ohloh and Slife has been noted by some. After all, both tools can track work done related in team settings. Ohloh is also set to launch another tool, Ohcount, which monitors lines of source code and analyzes them. Ohcount then will become a command line tool and library. What Ohcount does in the longer term is to track the code lines contributed by developers. Through this, the level of output of a web developer can be tracked more effectively.
An astounding 35 languages can be supported by Ohcount. This includes Java, C and C++, HTML, and XML among others. Developers can now readily look at the level of their outputs and check with each other their progress in completing a project.
Wouldn’t it be great to track time online and compare the number of hours done with your peers? Timeexchange.net has the solution for this. It allows team members who are in different locations to track their time and the amount of work done for project management, implementation, and monitoring.
Timeexchange simplifies the time reporting process and management of the time spent by employees, colleagues, and even telecommuters working on a project. This Web 2.0 tool works best for home-based jobs as well as for freelancers all over the world. In addition, virtual assistants who are located in the other side of the world will be able to report their time spent for work more effectively to their virtual bosses.
Signing up for the website is free and its timesheet is pretty straightforward and simple enough to be followed by a newbie. For small and medium businesses conducting operations online and offline, the website can collect reports for human resource management and accounting in the office.
As the world embraces a new workflow and work dynamics, the nature of the management tools also have to change. Timeexchange is helping HR processes be integrated with Web 2.0, making it easier for netizens to capture time online.
Some time ago, Comcast has started blocking peer-to-peer sites such as BitTorrent. But it wasn’t the only one. Several ISPs were also doing the same. The FCC has set its eyes on Comcast for such an act. Although some ISPs may argue that they are protecting intellectual rights, yet the big issue is neutrality in the Internet. If they can block certain sites, what guarantee is there for ISPs not to block any site that they may consider dangerous or nuisance? Who sets the rules anyway?
The US is electing a new President this year. Naturally, the issue of the Internet, services and other related matters can be dragged into the issue. Furthermore, FCC has rules in the management of Internet traffic. Investigations are underway to check whether Comcast has committed a violation.
ISPs are entitled to manage Internet traffic. However, when can the public say that they are overstepping the bounds of what is acceptable? Another interesting twist to this story is the non-disclosure of Comcast’s move to block these sites. By doing so, the company did not give broadband providers the power to block or monitor which online content is lawful or not.
The rules of the FCC appear to be adequate for now. What is in question is the degree of power that ISPs have in terms of regulating access to certain sites.
A decade or two ago, kids could only play the simplest home computer from Nintendo and they would still have time to play outside their homes and chase each other down their front yards.
As technology takes center stage in the lives of children, the only muscles they flex may be the fingers they use for game console control pads and the fingers they use to type on the keyboard and click on the mouse.
The fact is that tots and toddlers are now learning their ABCs online, they also play on virtual games and even establish their own social networking accounts on Facebook or MySpace. When these kids grow up, they know the Internet as intimately as their own rooms. Even at school, laptops and computers are now a big part of their learning process.
In fact, companies, advertisers, and even Disney have recognized the power of kids’ purchasing power and their penchant for online communities and environments. Problem is, kids nowadays tend to be unfamiliar with household items and other skills such as cursive handwriting and identifying traditional printed maps.
The digital world of kids is enhanced by Web 2.0. Kids can connect with other kids through online social networking. Not only that, they can have access to a lot of information through Web 2.0 sites. As technology develops further, kids will definitely catch up and parents will need effective strategies to guide them.
VBP, acronym for Video, Blogs and Podcasting, are important part of Web 2.0. and they are on a rampage worldwide in the Internet. Web 2.0 is more than just a trend or a fad. Rather, its usage is spreading to different professions and sectors that use the Internet.
Take the example of doctors and medical practitioners—they too are now taking the best that Web 2.0 has to offer in order to revitalize and enhance the medical services that they provide. Their patients and clients therefore would have another way of being updated regarding the medical practitioners that they consult.
According to Manhattan Research’s Taking the Pulse[1], more than half a million physicians nowadays are using videos while around 300,000 are using blogs. This is an interesting development and a proof of the growing acceptance of Web 2.0 into the lives of professionals and people from all walks of life.
Physicians use these Web 2.0 tools to get updated about recent research and scientific updates, and post anything of interest to the medical world. These medical practitioners can also participate in online forums and discussions that can help them in understanding current issues in medicine. Both patients and physicians will definitely benefit from this.
[1] Manhattan Research. (2007) Retrieved 20 Dec 2007 from http://www.manhattanresearch.com/files/PRESS/Physicians_and_Web_2.0_from_Manhattan_Research.pdf
Web 2.0 and Youth with Cancer
There’s something for everyone in the webosphere of Web 2.0. Online social networking has done a great job in connecting people with the same interests and the same struggles so that they could have a sense of belonging and camaraderie in the Web.
One of the recurring issues besetting Web 2.0 is the piracy of ideas and content. This is not about fake DVDs being sold on the streets of developing countries, but it is as much a reality in the Web as much as in different countries.
Intellectual property rights is a big issue that users of Web 2.0 has to deal with. In the
On the other hand, where do you draw the line between responsible and fair use and prosecuting people who download from P2P? Is this merely a matter of protecting the interests of the artists or do law enforcers have a tendency to favor big companies?
A lot of Web 2.0 users and consumers are aware of the need to compensate authors and artists for the creative work that they do. This has been demonstrated in the case of iTunes. In fact, consumers sometimes feel that the big recording companies are not giving enough to the artists and that is one reason why they try to get copies for free.
As Web 2.0 further develops, we may see artists being able to promote their stuff more directly to audiences and consumers worldwide