One of the big site sof 2007, Joost (pronounced “Juiced”) uses peer to peer technology (like Napster, BitTorrent etc) to stream video content just like a TV station to your PC. Not the kind of thing you can run at work!
This isn’t just another take on Youtube but with licensed content from the likes of Viacom (including MTV Networks, BET Networks and Paramount Pictures) and others there are currently 15,000 shows on there.
I find it slightly awesome and a little depressing that just as there are so many websites in existence that I will never ever see more than a tiny fraction of them. Likewise there are so many TV shows on Joost and videos on Youtube. No person will ever be able to say they’ve seen everything!
Joost lets you mix and match content so as to create your own channel and you can even blog (it includes support for main blog software) while watching content. Ummm, maybe…
It’s a clever idea using P2P to share content. Course that means your internet connection may get used a bit so just hope your ISP’s unlimited traffic limit is really that! Plus it’s another legitimate use of P2P so calls to ban that technology have less chance of ever succeeding.
Link
Popularity: 10% [?]
Newsmap is a news headline aggregator written in Flash. It’s pretty slick and shows headlines according to how popular the story is- judged by how many sources carry it. You can display them in a square look ( as shown) or an almost bookshelf type look.
Particularly clever is the way you can filter by major countries. If you click on a section, it shows you how many sites have this story and you can click through to one- though I’m not sure how it chooses.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Peer to Peer (P2P) technology is what drives the internet. There are many who say that downloading is evil and theft and in some cases it is true, but not only does it have many legitimate uses (e.g. Linux Distributions- distros are often provided in this way) because by its very nature, it takes a significant load off servers, but the Jury is out as to whether it deprives producers of money (from not selling their content) or helps them sell more because it makes it easier for people to try it out.
It’s said that between 1/3rd and 2/3rds of all internet traffic is P2P, specifically BitTorrent. Some people find it a bit hard to use and to provide download information you have to create a torrent seed. There has been a bit of a campaign by organisations like the MPAA against sites which host seeds. They won’t I imagine like Tribler!
Tribler is a software package fom Harvard University’s school of Engineering and Applied Sciences that simplifies using Bittorrent and lets you find other Tribler users without having a central server. The name Tribler (according to Wikipedia) stems from the word Tribe, refering to the usage of social networks in this P2P client.
Tribler’s purpose is a step in bringing internet TV closer to being an everyday occurrence, not only making it easier to find content but also quicker to download. There are versions for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Popularity: 9% [?]