What.cd is an exclusive, invite-only music BitTorrent tracker and community. If you’re trying to get an invite to What.cd you have two options: score an invite from an existing user or go through an interview process via IRC and get invited by a What.cd staff member. Here we’ll focus on the latter of the two methods.
Duh: Fox Delays Hulu Shows 8 Days,Shows Get Pirated Over 100% More
When will these media companies learn? It’s 2000-freaking-11 and consumers demand easy, fast, content when THEY want it… not when you want.
TorrentFreak decided to track downloads of two Fox shows after the network decided to put an eight day wait on the shows being available on Fox.com and Hulu. Guess what happened? Piracy of those shows went through the roof. TorrentFreak describes Fox’s thinking, “The TV-studio took this drastic step in the hope of getting more people to watch their shows live and thus make more revenue.” As it turns out this completely backfired as viewers turned to “alternative channels” to get their shows.
During the first 5 days, the number of downloads from the U.S. for the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen increased by 114% compared to the previous 3 episodes. For MasterChef the upturn was even higher with 189% more downloads from the U.S. For MasterChef; the extra high demand may in part have been facilitated by the fact that it was the season finale.
The music industry was brought to it’s knees when the MP3 became available everywhere, and only started to recover once Apple proved to them that making purchased digitally online could work. The other media industries need to take note. Their old model of controlling distribution is dying… instead of fighting for control they should lower prices, provide easy ways to consume media, and provide the user with choice of how to consume the content.
Get the full scoop at TorrentFreak.
PortableApps.com Suite 1.5 with new menus and customization
The PortableApps.com Suite, a full-featured app package that runs from a USB drive, has upgraded with a crisper-looking and more customizable menu, the latest versions of a ton of great freeware, and other improvements.
A new theme brings some transparency, mouse-over effects, and display improvements to the PortableApps menu, but the release notes bury the big news—you’ll be able to theme the suite yourself in the next release, due out in less than two weeks. The app icons on the pop-up menu can be renamed or hidden, applications can be launched as an administrator, and the menu can hide all the icons and switch wallpapers on whatever PC you’re on.
A PortableApp thumb drive loaded with a customized Firefox browser, office suites, IM clients, KeePass, and other portable offerings is a great way to get things done when you’re at a computer that’s not your own—or testing out stuff on your system you don’t quite want to install and muck around with.
The PortableApps.com suite comes in three flavors (basic, lite, and standard), is a free download, and launches on Windows systems only. Got a killer PortableApp setup on your thumb drive? Share the app list in the comments.
Charter Implements Bandwidth Caps
A source familiar with the plans says Charter will be imposing a 100GB cap upon any Charter connection of 15Mbps or less, and a 250GB usage cap for broadband tiers “over 15 Mbps up to 25 Mbps.”
Cable carriers are concerned about being transparent in the way they handle congestion on their networks, given that in 2008, the FCC sanctioned Comcast for lying to consumers about their network management policies. With a new (and potentially more network neutrality focused) FCC boss in Julius Genochowski, cable carriers are making sure that whatever they’re doing — they’re informing customers about it first.
Charter’s new, $140 60Mbps tier will not have any limitations. Speeds of 15Mbps or slower will have a 100GB monthly cap, while 15-25Mbps speeds will have a 250GB monthly cap. “In order to continue providing the best possible experience for our Internet customers, later this month we will be updating our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to establish monthly residential bandwidth consumption thresholds,” Ketzer confirms. “More than 99% of our customers will not be affected by our updated policy, as they consume far less bandwidth than the threshold allows,” he says.
Charters Acceptable Use Policy can be found here.
Windows 7 Beta Available as Free Download
Microsoft is so eager to make Windows 7 available to people (probably because despite ~300 million copies of Vista in use it has a negative perception) that it’s going to give away the Windows 7 beta for free.
According to Ballmer, Windows 7 will be available to developers immediately, and to the general public on Friday, January 9. It will be a free download from Microsoft’s site. Windows 7 Beta has been out in the wild (i.e., BitTorrent) since December, but if you’ve been waiting fora legit copy before you tried it out, you won’t have to wait much longer (FYI… I’ve tried it and while the task bar is a bit disorienting at first it runs very fast in a virtual machine and looks generally to be solid for a beta release).
What’s new in Windows 7? Under the covers it’s very similar to Windows Vista. However, aside from performancing tweaking the what is at the core of Vista, modifying the task bar and giving us virtual folders there are some new additions: Digital Living Room Network Alliance (DLNA) compliance in Windows Media Player (WMP) for easier media sharing, Bitlocker to Go for encrypting USB storage devices, Direct Access for network access without VPN, and new support for sensors and devices that will enable location-aware laptops.