Youtube under fire!!!

Youtube has been one of the most popular video sharing sites available over the internet, and much more dearer than its rivals like Google videos, metcafe etc. But Google to noticed this very early and bought Youtube for a mammoth price of 1.65$ billion. Since then, many software giants(did I mean Microsoft?) have had sleepless nights and are fearing Google getting closer to invading the cyberworld. I am sure if this had anything to do with Youtube, maybe it is because Google did make Youtube a lot better and popular, attracting jealousy. But since the time Google took over Youtube, it is having a really hard time. You will find why.
A lot of criticism had been raised over Youtube's unconditional hosting of videos and many issues like no restriction on explicit content, copyright infringement etc were accused against Youtube's policy of free hosting of videos. Some even went to the extent by saying Youtube is the next napster. Here are the latest woes.

Viacom gets into the picture
Latest to run riot into Youtube is Viacom, they have sued Youtube ( and Google, of course) over a 1$ billion lawsuit for Massive International Copyright Infringement and have asked for compensation, and also has asked to stop the infringement. In fact, Google had agreed to add filters and checking of videos for any infringement, but has not moved a toe in the direction.
This fight is seen as the act of desperation by Viacom after Google turned down their offer to pay for the alleged 160,000 videos (100,000 owned by Viacom) that violate copyright. Now, Google has reverted their stand and say they are not doing anything illegal and are going by shielding themselves from liability on a 1998 law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Anyway Google has negotiated with many entertainment companies, including Warner Music Group, CBS and most recently, the BBC.

"YouTube appropriates the value of creative content on a massive scale for YouTube's benefit without payment or license..."
"YouTube's brazen disregard of the intellectual-property laws fundamentally threatens not just plaintiffs but the economic underpinnings of one of the most important sectors of the United States economy."
"YouTube has deliberately withheld the application of available copyright protection measures in order to coerce rights holders to grant it licenses on favorable terms,"

Viacom said in its complaint.

Viacom isn't the only entertainment conglomerate yet to partner with the Google division. Some executives have been very critical of YouTube's practices, includeing Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC. He though, refused to comment on the new lawsuit.

TV networks out with "Youtube Killer"
Adding fuel to the issue, now the Television networks are coming with another Video sharing site, which will be promoted by MSN, Yahoo, AOL, MySpace to name a few. This seems to be a collective war to end the Google's smooth voyage. Not surprising, Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC along with Mike Arrington, Peter Chernin (COO News Corp.) have announced the idea, which would be backed by two major film studios and over a dozen TV networks, branding it as the largest video distribution network ever assembled.
This seems to be impressive, they are trying to knock out Google from many angles. But they have left lot of details missing, about this new venture. But will they be able to get the fan support and community that Youtube has? Only time will tell. In the meantime here is a part from the press release.

At launch, full episodes and clips from current hit shows, including Heroes, 24, House, My Name Is Earl, Saturday Night Live, Friday Night Lights, The Riches, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Prison Break, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader and Top Chef, plus hits from the studios’ vast television libraries, will be available free, on an ad-supported basis, within a rich consumer experience featuring personalized video playlists, mashups, online communities and video search. Plus, the extensive programming lineup will include fan favorite films like Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Devil Wears Prada, The Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy with bonus materials and movie trailers.
Courtsey: zdnet.com, news.com.com

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Fusion, the AMD way...

The ATI merger by AMD in the second half of 2006 was seen as a very strategic move by AMD. And the analysts got it right when AMD did not take much time and in late 2006 revealed its plan for the unique processor codenamed Fusion. Intel got back their prime spot with the release of Core series of processors, while AMD was caught napping over the 64-bit success. So, maybe this is the act of AMD to get closer to Intel once again.

What is Fusion?
The innovative plan of AMD is to integrate the GPU and CPU into a single die as two heterogeneous cores and hence improve the performance-per-watt-per dollar, a new yardstick posed by AMD. AMD already has the Hypertransport advantage. Now, in Fusion you have two cores, one for processor with its own cache, and another, GPU with its own buffers. Both of these are joined by the crossbar and integrated memory controller. Obviously everything is connected through the high speed hypertransport technology. But, it is not too clear whether the GPU will have a frame buffer for itself.

Is it good for me?
It is a hard question to answer, though AMD claims this compound processor will provide a reasonable graphics performance, it is not quite clear what do they mean by reasonable here. Anyway this is not for those hardcore gamers and AMD will continue to churn out graphics card under the ATI brand, as they agree graphics cards are necessary for high end users and physics processing. This fusion might be best suited for Laptops and notebooks.

When would the egg hatch?
Anywhere around 2008 Q4 or 2009 Q1 if everything goes well. But I still believe that is a far fetched call. They should get it by at least Q1 2008 if they need to pose any competition to Intel. As Intel is already getting ready for 45nm fabrication and even 30nm chips.

Anyway I feel this might well turn out to be a trump card for AMD to once again do the impossible, beat Intel. They have done it once, with 64-bit processors. But can they repeat itself and prove to the critics that it was not a fluke? Only time can tell.

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MyLot: e-arn for your thoughts

myLot is fast earning reputation over internet. myLot is an online discussion forum like portal, where you get paid for your contributions in the form of new posts, responses, images etc. It is a very lively forum more than anything while the money earned is a bonus. But, if you are looking to buy the state of the art mobile phone by myLotting, you may have to post for a few years. You could earn around 20-25$ a month, if you spend around 1-2 hours a day.
Once you sign up for myLot, you get your home URL something like http://www.mylot.com/cultoffury, which shows your profile, and you can choose your interests, which are basically the categories which you would love to post. Though it is not necessary, to choose interests, it helps you find posts easier. You can add friends and keep an eye discussions they start. Now you get points for every discussion you take part in, whether you start one, or respond to. You also get rated by others and this is reflected in your star rating, you can get upto 10 stars, showing your reputation.

Earning
Earning in mylot is proportional to your points and you can get anything from 0.05$ to 0.20$ or even more for every point you score, this depends upon the "quality" of your posts, which depends on the content, the language and length of your posts, though the exact algorithm used to find the quality is known only to myLot creators. Also you get points for each image you upload. Your earning will be updated everyday and you get paid every 15th of the month for the previous month's earning. Your payments are sent to your paypal account or e-gold account. One thing is that myLot though pays modestly, it DOES pay. I earned my first payment last month, a shade less than 20$. So, you can guess the amount you could earn, in fact I was not posting too often, and not as a way to earn as well, but to share my ideas and thought with others and get ideas for blogging. If you work harder, you could earn around 50$ a month. You also have a referral scheme where you get 25% of your referral earnings.
Those who own an orkut account and do regular scrapping, myLot will surely interest you. Think how it would be if you get paid a dollar for every 5 scraps you make!! It is very much like that. With over 82,000 members and even more tons of discussions and interests, this really induces you into it. myLot other than helping you with some pocket money, helps you improve your English and general knowledge, I can assure you it is not another of those internet marketing frauds, as I have already got my first payment, as I mentioned. It is worth a try.

myLot home
my profile
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product review: Picasa

Picasa is the digital photo management software from Google Inc. This product is available for free download from the Google's website. Picasa is one the best products in the market which can be used to manage digital pictures, videos, organize them, sort them and what not.
Google acquired Picasa from Idealabs in mid 2004, and applied the Google's magic onto it,now it is the part of the Google's goodies package. It has a sleek and glossy interface with graceful transition effects and fade downs, on loading and other refreshes. Picasa is available for the various platforms such as Windows XP, Vista, and beta versions for Linux flavours and Mac OSX. The latest version out in market is Picasa 2.5.

FEATURES
Simplicity is the main standout of this product. It is very easy to use. You can import images virtually from any device, you digital camera, mobile phone, or remote PC and Picasa will add it to the image library. Image library is very well organized and can be viewed as folders or tree stucture. You can also sort the library the way you like. The light weight process Picasa Media detector adds every new picture that enters your hard disk directly onto the library. The process does not eat up CPU time. Other features includes the Slideshow and Gift CD creator. You can also search pictures easily, and add tags to each image, or even rate them with "stars".
The timeline feature is a really creative idea by Google. It creates a three dimensional spiral of folders in your library chronologically sorted. You can select your "era" you want to explore. It turns you photo viewing into an amazing experience. Other such features include Geotag which lets you tag your pictures geographically with Google Earth. You can also find and remove duplicate copies of same pictures. You can create a collage, poster, slideshow, or video from the albums, or even publish a web album or blog from it. You can even e-mail or send the pictures to hello.

IMAGE EDITING
Image editing in Picasa yet again impressed me to say the least. It has excellent features right from red eye removal, adding light to dark pictures, adjusting shadows and highlights, auto adjust contrast or brightness etc. You can also tune the color temperature and add effects like sepia, tint, glow, film grain etc. The best part of the editing is that the original picture is always backed up and even if something goes awry you can get back the original. You can even forget saving the changes to the actual image file. Each time you open Picasa you can see the touched up picture while on disk the picture is still raw. I could easily touch up pictures I took from my digital camera within minutes, which otherwise would have taken me hours with Photoshop. But to my surprise the quality of edit is very much high and comparable to that of Photoshop edits.

before editing after editing

That is not a joke, that is how effective the filters in Picasa are.

PULL DOWNS
To be frank, I could find anything serious which is really annoying with Picasa. Even though I don't like unwanted programs residing in my system tray, Picasa Media detector still found its place there, as I never felt any system load because of it. The only thing which I can argue of being a bit annoying is that, for each folder that Picasa scans and adds to its library, Picasa creates an .ini file in that folder. My system has a several hundreds of them. But otherwise Picasa consumes very less disk space, so this can be tolerated.
To sum up, Picasa is one of the better softwares I have come across in recent past. More amazingly it is offered free of cost. This is a must have for every home PC user.

SNEAK PEEK
In late 2006, Google acquired another technology from Neven Vision which can be used to recognize faces and search them from the pictures. Google has promised to add this feature to Picasa soon. As a matter of fact, Neven Vision has won several awards for its face recognition technology. So it is going to be even more exciting in the near future.

Rating

Website http://picasa.google.com
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