Finished up attending Supernova today. It was a different mix then some of the other more blogging focused ones that I've been to-- definitely older and more suitish. But definitely a good experience. Enjoyed the second day more than the first though I spent most of the time on irc in order to take part in the discussion (i see why people harp on the unconference thing). In fact the backchannel was worthwhile after all, debunking one panel member's assertion that lemonade stands are not to be found in San Francisco-- the collaborative #supernova effort hooked up an SD card reader to the camera with said picture on it in order to get it on flickr and shown to the room before the talk was done. Oh yeah, and there was some collaborative Mac-only concurrent note taking system that some were using together that was interesting. It allows people to take notes together at the same time, though is, as mentioned, just mac only. Worse, the name of it alludes me completely with no luck from google either. But an app whose time has come for sure.

Also had an interesting conversation about improving the UI in Prodigem. When I suggested that I was thinking about including a one-form wizard to add a more streamlined way to make a torrent, Kevin Marks from Technorati gave me the comparison that was sure to stop me in my tracks-- "thats the way Microsoft would solve the problem". Dead on. Why make a complex interface and then be forced to make a 2nd interface?

So a bit of brainstorming and the idea that I'm really starting to like is to make it so that uploaded files automatically create and get placed in a folder which is named the same as the file (perhaps I'll lop off the file extension for the folder name though). So for the first time user there's no folder creation, just an upload and the torrent form where they select the folder that was auto-created. This default behavior will be initially set on all accounts, but I'll add a setting switch to turn it off to get the traditional behavior. Thus an experienced user can just enable the more powerful behavior when they've got the hang of things. This is good. Hopefully I'll get to this soon.

By Gary Lerhaupt, 12:11 AM in prodigem | Comments (0)  

Prodigem is now open to the public. Anyone can now obtain a Prodigem account with access to distribute *and* sell content for a one-time $1 fee. We also have introduced "Value" and "Deluxe" (yes boring marketing names) accounts which provide more bandwidth and storage for a monthly fee just like a more traditional hosting service (but of course Prodigem has its marketplace built in). See the descriptions of our hosting packages or just sign up.
 

	Limited	Starter	Value	Deluxe
Price	FREE	$1.00/one-time (or FREE with any content purchase)	$6.95/month	$14.95/month
Disk Space	0	100 MB	500 MB	1500 MB
Monthly Bandwidth	0	3 GB	15 GB	45 GB
Post Comments	yes	yes	yes	yes
Distribute Content	no	yes	yes	yes
Sell Content	no	yes	yes	yes
	Try It	Order Now	Order Now	Order Now

 
By Gary Lerhaupt, 11:25 AM in prodigem | Comments (0)  

The last week and the next have been (and will be) filled with end-of-quarter hell, but the good news is that the summer is on the horizon. Over in a couple places today, I saw the mostly verbatim article about Sony's new DRM tech that allows one copy per CD. It was surprising to see just this directed message with little to no commentary by the news outlets.

Under the new solution, tracks ripped and burned from a copy-protected disc are copied to a blank CD in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The DRM embedded on the discs bars the burned CD from being copied.

My, what consumer wouldn't want this? Gee, better yet I get my only copy in a Windows only format. This great line then followed:

Secure burning means that iPod users do not have any means of transferring tracks to their device, because Apple Computer has yet to license its FairPlay DRM for use on copy-protected discs.

So not only is the new DRM not compatible with old DRM, but Sony gets to get in a nice dig into Apple, Apple's licensing and their inability to play "fair". The irony is quite thick. If consumers weren't getting such a short end of this stick, it might actually be comical to watch these two MegaMediaCorps battle it out for who gets to tell you what to do with your stuff.

Meanwhile, today, I also had the pleasure of seeing a talk by Paul Kocher as the final lecture for my computer security class. It was a fast moving and engaging fly-through of the need to approach security problems by looking at entire systems instead of relying on layers of abstractions. One of the most interesting parts was where he characterized the emergent stalemate behavior of many computer security issues-- the back and forth of virus writers and anti-virus solutions, of crypto makers and crypto breakers, of spammers and spam filters that happen again and again.

This reminded me of an earlier lecture in the class where we learned that an impossibility result had been proven wherein it is simply not possible to write a virus detector that can detect all viruses. Seeing as how this was the first of the stalement examples above, it left we wondering if such a similar result can be proven for DRM systems. If music and video must at some point be decrypted so that we can enjoy it, how will any perfectly uncopyable system ever be created?

And of course, the goal of DRM is just to make it a nuisance for copiers to do their thing, but seeing the spin of these articles trying to sell their version of reality ("the sensible way forward") can make you cough a bit. If every computer stalemate has a good guy and a bad guy, who is who on this one?

By Gary Lerhaupt, 01:57 AM in general | Comments (0)