Archive for August, 2007

This is all well and good, but what about the royalty fees? Putting a cap on the “per channel” fees won’t mean squat if they are still going to gouge the webcasters with high royalty fees.

A music industry group Thursday said it would cap “per channel” fees for major Internet radio companies streaming music on multiple channels.

SoundExchange, which collects royalties from Webcasters and distributes them to artists and record labels, said it would limit fees — at $50,000 a year — for online radio station companies that offer more than 100 channels to customers.

A panel of three copyright judges earlier this year mandated that Webcasters had to pay higher royalty fees and a $500 fee “per station or channel” streamed, regardless of the total number of channels.

I agree with Tim Westergren, it’s a step in the right direction. I also think, however, that it’s a very long path with many more steps to be taken.

Lately, I have been losing track of time. It seems no matter how much I try to focus on the time and complete projects before a certain time, I fail. I don’t know if it’s something in my head, or the fact that most of the watches I own, really suck.

Maybe Luminox watches would change all that I would be able to keep my focus once again?

– Powered By Stuffr! –

I just installed this on my computer. I am loving it.

The heavens are only a few mouse clicks away with Google Inc.’s latest free tool. A new feature in Google Earth, the company’s satellite imagery-based mapping software, allows users to view the sky from their computers.

The tool provides information about various celestial bodies, from stars to planets, and includes imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope and other sources. It also allows users to take virtual tours through galaxies, including the Milky Way, from any point on Earth they choose.

[Source: AP via Yahoo! News]

I would prefer no ads, but I understand they need to make money somehow, and anything but pre-rolls is a great idea in my book.

Video advertising is coming to YouTube, but it won’t be the type common at sites elsewhere. Starting Wednesday, the popular video-sharing site plans to feature semitransparent “overlay” ads at the bottom of selected video clips.

The ad disappears after about 10 seconds if the viewer does nothing; the featured clip automatically pauses if the viewer clicks on the overlay to launch the full pitch.

YouTube said it was trying to avoid pre-rolls that precede the main feature at sites like Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, which partners with The Associated Press on a video news service.

My only question is, given Googles track record with ads, are the Youtube ads going to be content specific to the video?

I need a new monitor. I am using an old 19 inch CRT that I am sure, now that I am posting this, will die within weeks, if not days. I am thinking of buying a viewsonic monitor. I have had a preference for ViewSonic products ever since I won a monitor at a Comdex convention many, many, years ago.

Headline Of The Day:

Skype Users Don’t Buy Outage Explanation

Of course we don’t buy their explanation. They can sit there with their modern office furniture at their awesome campus and say what they want, but they honestly can’t expect us to believe that a great number of people “rebooting” their computers and restarting the Skype application would have that great of an impact on their server.

Surely, a great number of people log in to Skype every minute, of every hour, of every day…

Why don’t we all get together and set a date and time where we can all reboot our computers at the exact same moment in time? This way, we can test their so-called fix for them. What do you say?

Skype is back up, but the reason why they went down sounds bogus to me.

On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.

Normally Skype’s peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days.

What? Are they actually trying to claim that “everyone rebooting” at the same time broke Skype?

I think the key words to remember from the statement from Skype are:

• lack of peer-to-peer network resources
• a previously unseen software bug
• no malicious activities were attributed or that our users’ security was not, at any point, at risk

They say that they have identified and introduced a number of improvements to their software.

I wonder though, should we all reboot at the same time again and test their “fix”?

Woohoo! Skype is back.

Skype said its Internet phone service has returned to normal after a software bug left many users unable to log on for two days.

The company, a division of online auction company eBay Inc., said it would explain what caused the problem in more detail Monday.

“Until then, wed like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order,” the company told its customers in a posting on its Heartbeat blog Saturday. “We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in.”

I still can’t seem to connect, but then I have no idea if it’s related to the “big outage” or just one of the many other Skype issues I face on a weekly basis. Maybe they need to feed Skype some nutritional supplements or something, make it more healthy?

Glad it’s coming back though, I’m sure we’ll talk about it on Friday’s Information Salad.

Thirty-six hours is a long time to be down. It will be interesting to find out exactly why it was out so long.

Almost 36 hours after a software problem caused widespread outages in eBay Inc.’s Skype service, engineers continue to work to fully restore this extremely popular Internet telephony and instant messaging service, while many business users deal with work disruptions.

Although steady progress was made throughout the day Friday, the problem, which has affected millions of Skype users, hasn’t been fully fixed,

At midnight GMT Friday, an official provided the latest update on Skype’s Heartbeat blog, saying that the sign-on problems have been resolved, but that the instant messaging presence and chat may take a few more hours to be fully operational for all.

“If you are one of the minority who may still be experiencing problems, please be patient. You do not need to adjust or restart your computer. Skype will start working for you very soon,” wrote Villu Arak [cq]. “We will issue a further update when we know that Skype is functioning normally, or if there is further material news.”

Needless to say, we were unable to do the podcast tonight, so we are aiming for tomorrow.

It appears Skype is slowly limping back to life.

Users of Skype in Asia and parts of Europe were able to log on and use the free phone service Friday, nearly 24 hours after a software bug hit the popular program.

The company, a division of online auction company eBay Inc., said that while some of its estimated 220 million users had reported successfully connecting, others still were unable to do so.

“We’re on the road to recovery,” the company said on its Heartbeat blog Friday morning. “Skype is stabilizing, but this process may continue throughout the day. An encouraging number of users can now use Skype once again. We know were not out of the woods yet, but we are in better shape now than we were yesterday.”

I wonder if it will make it before tonight’s scheduled podcast?