Digital Technology for Digital Living.
December 31, 2004
eXeem, Proprietary, Adware, Windows Only Sell Out.
So, after all the hype, it turns out that eXeem is actually Sloncek from SuprNova selling out to a company, producing a proprietary network, full of adware, on a Windows only platform. Colour me cynical, but it doesn’t sound like the peer-to-peer panacea that we were all hoping for. OK, some people have to make money, but with the MPAA’s run of lawsuits, we hoped for something a little more community oriented.
It is important to seperate the differences between eXeem and SuprNova. These two entities are completely different and are unrelated (other than Sloncek’s association.) A company named Swarm Systems Inc., the registered owners of eXeem.com, is the presumed developer of eXeem. Sloncek was approached by this company to be the spokesman of this new software and network.
Q: Where will people be able to get it from?
A: From eXeem.com
Q: Will they have to pay for it?
A: Its gonna be ad supported… A lot of adware in it is gonna be optional… Only the ones that really dont bother you at all and are unharmful (cydoor) are gonna be a must for it to work.
Q: Is SuprNova.org team working on eXeem? How do you fit in to this picture?
A: The company that is developing eXeem asked me to help them with it. So they employed me as their representative… I cannot give the name of the company out yet.
Q: What specs do I need to run it?
A: Right now i got 10 downloads running and its taking 10 MB of ram.
Q: Will it work with linux or mac?
A: No and there are no plans for it yet.
The rest of the Q and A is available at Slyck News.
For those more community minded, have a look at Lokitorrent’s legal defence fund and the interview at Neowin.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General, Music, Video, Digital TV, Software
December 30, 2004
eXeem Beta In The Wild.
eXeem Beta 0.16 has surfaced on the internet, at what appears to be SuprNova’s site. Currently it still needs a serial number to activate, and it’s only for Windows. Perhaps tonight’s announcement will provide an unlocked version.
Link thanks to the Peer-to-Peer Weblog.
If you’re late to the story, check our eXeem Review and Screenshots and the annoucement posts.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General, Broadband, Music, Video, Digital TV, Software
December 29, 2004
Is Exeem Due For Announcement.
Last week we reported the news that SuprNova closes and we speculated that the plan was simply to release their Exeem network to fill the void. Well PacketFour points to the new message on SuprNova.org and suggests we’ll hear about it on New Years Eve Aussie time.
Greetings everybody
It has been more then a week since SuprNova.org went down. We are sorry that we have not updated the site with more recent news, but we have been very busy.
Anyway, we will soon be making an announcement. Announcement will be made on NovaStream.org radio on 30th December around 10 PM CET (9 PM GMT, 4 PM EST).
Also, everybody is still welcome to join us on irc (irc://irc.suprnova.org/suprnova.org) or on forums (www.suprnovaforums.net), but please remember, we are no longer offering torrents. You will not find any on IRC or on our forums.
Thanks,
Sloncek & the rest of the SuprNova team.
Happy New Year from The Suprnova Team!
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | General, Broadband, Music, Video, Digital TV, Software
December 28, 2004
Speed Up Web Surfing In Firefox.
If you have broadband, and you use the Firefox browser, there’s an interesting couple of tips to try. If you don’t use Firefox, you’re so 2004.
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.
From Free Republic and Firefox Help : Tips & Tricks.
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | Broadband, Software
More iTMS Rumours Start.
Speculation has started again, and we’re not even into a new year, that Australia is about to get its own iTunes Music Store. All because there is a Macworld event in Sydney, on January 12, shortly after Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld in San Francisco. More at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, and Les Posen’s CyberPsych Blog.
Dale Gillard takes a more cynical stand-point and comments on Posen’s blog.
I agree it’s unusual that we Aussies get a special presentation following a Keynote. But I’m not convinced this is gonna be an iTunes announcement.
Why? Well Steve likes to be at these events, and it’s a long flight from the US to Australia in his Gulfstream. The event is being held only 6 hours after the Keynote. Not that this was the case with the last lot of store openings… Canada was a non-event in this respect.
And why would Apple announce an Australian iTunes store at the same time as they’ll have other big product announcements? That’s diluting the marketing message.
And iTunes store openings usually involve special invitations to a “special musical event”. This is just being marketed as a Macworld event.
Gadget Lounge is going to reserve judgment on this one until we hear more substantial news. After all, it’s only fifteen days to Macworld. If you’re in Sydney on the 12th though, it might be worth registering.
Gadgetman | Comments (2) | Music
Lifeblog 1.5 Available.
We mentioned at the beginning of November that Nokia was soon to release version 1.5 of Lifeblog. Well it’s available for trial or purchase now.
As we mentioned back then.
Additions on the PC include, “a full-screen view of items, and a menu of the most commonly used commands that pop up with a right click of the mouse. We’ve even made it easy for you to do an item count so you can brag about how many items you have in your Lifeblog.”
Changes on the phone mean you “can also now add notes on the phone, reply and forward to messages you read in Lifeblog, and forward items via email, SMS, MMS, or Bluetooth wireless technology.”
Most importantly this version will include the work they are doing with Six Apart to enable users to post to a weblog. “We’ve so far tested Lifeblog with Six Apart’s TypePad service. We’ll announce others later.”
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Mobile Phone, Digital Camera, Software
December 23, 2004
True Aussie Esky.
Here is an innovative use of an Australian Esky. That’s right, add wheels and it can be a car as well!
Gadgetman | Comments (4) | Motorised
Digital Radio Moratorium.
Adoption of digital radio could go the same way as digital TV has in Australia, very slowly, if industry body Commercial Radio Australia has its way. They’re happy to have it, just nothing that means they need to innovate to be competitive. We understand that most people are adverse to change, but the CRA wants the Government to wait 10 years before they allow the competition to enter the digital radio market. That should be enough to stifle adoption while they take their merry time introducing new features. Gladly the Government is pushing back.
If they had their finger on the pulse, they might realise they have a couple of new contenders.
More at The Australian.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Digital Radio
December 22, 2004
Pesce Points Something Out To The MPAA.
As an extension to Monday’s SuprNova closing report and yesterday’s eXeem review and screenshots, we now bring you a brilliant monologue by Mark Pesce, widely renowned for bringing Virtual Reality to the net, who eloquently sums up the situation. The piece also acts as a great primer for those that aren’t completely across this what the whole BitTorrent craze is really about, but most of all, it’s a great open letter to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and any other organisation that decides they need to take on a global community.
Pointing up the single greatest weakness of BitTorrent take down the tracker and the torrent dies - has only served to energize, inspire and mobilize the resources of an entire global ecology of software developers, network engineers and hackers-at-large who want nothing so much, at this moment, as to make the MPAA pay for their insolence. Imagine a parent reaching into a child’s room and ripping a TV set out of the wall while the child is watching it. That child would feel anger and begin plotting his revenge. And that scene has been multiplied at least hundred thousand times today, all around the world. It is quite likely that, as I type these words, somewhere in the world a roomful of college CS students, fueled by coke and pizza and righteous indignation, are banging out some code which will fix the inherent weakness of BitTorrent - removing the need for a single tracker. If they’re smart enough, they’ll work out a system of dynamic trackers, which could quickly pass control back and forth among a cloud of peers, so that no one peer holds the hot potato long enough to be noticed. They’ll take the best of Gnutella and cross-breed it with the best of BitTorrent. And that will be the MPAA’s worst nightmare.
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.
Read the whole Mark Pesce on BitTorrent piece at Susan Mernit’s Blog.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General, Broadband, Music, Video, Digital TV, Software
SMS Hoax Or Joke?
Who in the world, or Australia at least, would fall for the latest SMS hoax. Who in their right mind is going to believe that Telstra is giving away money. Perhaps the hoax is spreading, not because people believe it, but because they find it so funny.
The message, which purports to be a Telstra announcement, promises a $200 credit to customers that forward the text on to 10 more people.
Telstra consumer marketing head Jenny Young said that the promise of $200 from Telstra was untrue. “We want to dispel this myth before it spreads widely,” she said.
From Australian IT.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Mobile Phone
Online Music Spat.
Not surprisingly Australia’s online music retailers have attacked a criticism made by music analyst Phil Tripp. In fact Gadget Lounge would like to agree with him.
On the subject of downloading, what didn’t happen this year was the sort of blue sky results that were projected by the three major download retailers-BigPond, ninemsn and Destra. The WMA way of downloading, PC only, with no real marketing, a poor selection of music, not enough of a compelling reason to try & buy plus everyone buying that incompatible iPod made the dawn of downloading a travesty at best.
All very true and leads to a very lackluster online music industry in Australia. All Apple has to do is launch the iTunes Music Store in Australia in the next few months and the three major’s business will be decimated.
Their response is nothing more than reactionary. They can have as many tracks available as they want, which seems to be their main defense, but if the format is as limiting, their sites difficult to navigate, and advertising as thin as it is, it won’t take off.
“It is quite disingenuous to claim that because Apple chooses to make the iPod incompatible with other music download services, that it is somehow the fault of the Windows-based music stores. We would love to sell our music to iPod owners, but Apple won’t let us,” Middleton said.
Middleton, BigPond’s Corporate Affairs Manager, must be joking with that comment, or he’s incredibly naive. Hasn’t he heard of MP3, an open format, that not only works on the iPod, but every other portable digital music player available. So Apple’s just fine with them selling music for their player.
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | Music
December 21, 2004
Broadband Over Power Lines Trial In Newcastle.
Broadband Over Powerlines (BPL) moves a step closer to reality in Australia with what sounds like a successful trial in Newcastle by Energy Australia. Chalk this up with the Aurora Energy trial we mentioned last month.
However, telco industry analyst Paul Budde, CEO of Budde.com, was optimistic. Budde had been invited by the utility to see the Newcastle trial.
He said several large apartment/commercial buildings in a city block in Newcastle East had been BPL-enabled with the 200Mbps equipment, with ISP services provided by Ipera.
In a research note on the topic Budde said Ipera runs a fibre optic ring in Newcastle, while Energy Australia uses this network and “takes over with BPL where those fibre cables end in substations around the city”.
“The general plan is to drive fibre optic as deeply as possible into the network and use BPL as a ‘first mile’ technology to connect to the users. Once in the building any power point can be used to connect the BPL modem.”
More on the story at PC World.
Gadgetman | Comments (2) | Broadband
eXeem Review And Screenshots.
An anonymous Gadget Lounge reader has kindly posted a comment and pointed to Suprnova’s eXeem beta review and screenshots. Nothing mind-blowing, but provided others aren’t just propagating a hoax, it’s nice to see some working shots.
What’s needed is a program that decentralizes the way we find and distribute torrent and tracker data. The idea is to remove the single point of failure by having each person running the application share torrent and tracker data with each other in almost the same way file data from a torrent download is shared with all users.
Suprnova.org’s vision of the future is called eXeem. It’s an application that promises to change the face of p2p file distribution by encorporating bittorrent technology in a way that solves the problems listed above. The beta version of eXeem is running at version .15 and is only accessible to 5,000 beta testers. There is currently no date set for a public release. Thanks to one of our own Mitosis members (to remain unnamed) I had the ability to try eXeem tonight. Below is my review and some screenshots
Gadgetman | Comments (8) | General, Broadband, Music, Video, Digital TV, Software
All I Want For Christmas Is Not One Of These.
U.S. P.C. Magazine has an interesting article, Ten to Avoid—The Worst Products of the Year. Reversing the usual recommended products for the Christmas sock, this one lists the gadgets they don’t suggest. It’s state side news, but many of the products float down this way, like the HP iPAQ rz1715, Apple’s eMac and Dell’s 1600n printer.
From Slashdot.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General
December 20, 2004
A Running Honda ASIMO Robot.
I’m sure if we were engineers at Honda working on the ASIMO robot project we’d be really spooked out by this guy running. Surely you’d have conversations with one. That or try and flip up the face plate to see who was in the suit.
Check out the video of one running at 3 km/h.
The combination of newly developed high-response hardware and the new Posture Control technology enables ASIMO to proactively bend or twist its torso to maintain its balance and prevent the problems of foot slippage and spinning in the air, which accompany movement at higher speeds. ASIMO is now capable of running at a speed of 3km/hour. In addition, walking speed has been increased from the previous 1.6 km/hour to 2.5 km/hour.
Thanks to Scoble for the link.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Motorised
Game School.
Frag the newbies!
Australian IT has help for all those wanna-be gods of the online world.
THE rise of broadband internet at home means more folks are having a crack at online gaming - but the learning curve can be steep.
If newbies don’t happen to have a mate to show them the ropes, online gaming can be intimidating, frustrating and confusing.
Recognising this, local broadband internet service provider Netspace has come up with Gameschool, a free service designed to attract more people to online gaming.
The service aims to support people who are new to online gaming, and seeks to provide an environment where they can learn what to do and what to avoid, “techniques and the general etiquette of online gaming in a structured, secure and heavily moderated environment”.
Newcomers can play online against other learners on closed servers, and as a byproduct, gain gradual access to a thriving, online gaming community.
Check out the Game School web site for all the details.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Broadband, Console, Toys, Software
SuprNova And TVTorrents.org Close, Or At Least As We Know Them.
We mentioned a few weeks ago the issues that some of the bittorrent sharing sites on the web had with supposed denial of service attacks. Whether true or not, two of the major torrent sharing sites have now closed, but this time it seems from the threat of legal action by the MPAA.
Addict3d quotes the Suprnova announcement.
Greetings everybody,
As you have probably noticed, we have often had downtimes. This was because it was so hard to keep this site up!
But now we are sorry to inform you all, that SuprNova is closing down for good in the way that we all know it.
We do not know if SuprNova is going to return, but it is certainly not going to be hosting any more torrent links.
We are very sorry for this, but there was no other way, we have tried everything.Thank you all that helped us, by donating mirrors or something else, by uploading and seeding files, by helping people out on IRC and on forum, by spreading the word about SuprNova.org.
It is a sad day for all of us!
Please visit SuprNova.org every once in a while to get the latest news on what is happening and if there is anything new to report on.
As we wish to maintain the nice comunity that we created, we are keppig forums and irc servers open.
Thank you all and Goodbye!
sloncek & the rest of the SuprNova Team
Reading between the lines, SuprNova’s message might just be saying to be patient and wait for their new eXeem network technology. The concept is to marry the best of bittorrent with features from other networks like Kazaa, allowing everyone to be a tracker, and relinquish the need for a central website posting torrent details.
ExtremeTech has the unconfirmed report.
The existence of the new client, called “Exeem”, could not be confirmed at press time. According to an individual who called himself a beta tester, the software is in beta, with 5,000 users signed on to evaluate it.
Regardless of its authenticity, the technology is possible, and is only a matter of time. As John Gilmore, co-founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Update : (December 20, 2004) Loki Torrent is running their own legal defence fund.
Update : (December 20, 2004) SilentDragz has made The Unofficial SuprNova.org Closure FAQ available. It has some useful alternative sites.
Update : (December 21, 2004) TVTorrents isn’t down, merely moved to tvtorrents.tv.
Gadgetman | Comments (4) | General, Broadband, Music, Video, Digital TV
December 19, 2004
ADSL2+ Draft Published.
Great news for Broadband freaks. Whirlpool has the scoop on the draft standards for the approval of ADSL2/2+ in Australia. Provided that there are no delays and the standard is approved, we’ll see broadband speed increases in the early part of next year.
The Australian Communication Industry Forum (ACIF) is now seeking public comment for 30 days on the document relating to the deployment of ADSL2+ in the network, and 60 days for the document relating to ADSL2+ modems.
The documents don’t make very interesting reading, with page upon page of technical jargon, but their very release is an important milestone towards the availability of ADSL services that run at up to 28Mbit/s on Australian phone lines.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | Broadband
December 18, 2004
Freebord.
This one’s for those totally sick freak geeks who venture outside once in a while. A skateboard that acts like a snowboard. Big deal you say. Well, until you see the video, reserve judgment. At the very least it’s worth watching just to see these nerds pummel down a road at over 60 km ignoring the stop signs.
The Freebord adds two extra wheels that can swivel 360 degrees, much like those on a shopping trolly. When you’re on the edge of the board this little wheel takes over allowing the board to slide. Come to think of it, it’d be fun to see ones of these guys surf a shopping trolly down one of the same hills.
Aussies wanting their own on road snowboard experience can order one, and related apparel, from their online store and have it shipped down under. Before shipping the blighter will cost about $AU260. Alternatively, just pop down to Coles and borrow a trolly.
Gadgetman | Comments (0) | General, Toys
December 17, 2004
PTT On CDMA.
Push-To-Talk (PTT) is a neat feature of some new mobile phones that turns your mobile phone into a long distance walkie-talkie. Fantastic for staying in touch with the family. Telstra has just announced that the function is available on its CDMA network, extending the reach of the technology, because CDMA has a greater coverage of our country.
In an Australian first, Telstra has launched Push To Talk (PTT) on CDMA - using the resources of the country’s largest wireless network to help customers stay connected in more places.
Push to Talk allows callers to use their mobile phone like a walkie-talkie. At the push of a button the caller can communicate with individuals or large groups of people at the same time.
The GSM phones have an advantage when it comes to pricing of the service, where they are given two payment choices. A flat $AU50 fee or a pay as you go option, charged at 1 cent a second. CDMA users can only buy the flat $50 a month option. Get in before October 21 2005 and you’ll get 500 minutes free in the first month.
Telstra has the Nokia 5140 for GSM and Motorola T300P for CDMA listed as the two PTT handsets.
Gadgetman | Comments (1) | Mobile Phone
