Due to a problem with one of our servers the administration frontends of both my.afterdawn.com and MP3Lizard.com had problems with file uploads.
The problems were caused by a failed hard-disk drive, and have now been temporarily solved. There will be a short downtime when the failed drive is replaced within the next couple of days.
We're sorry about any inconvenience caused by the problem. If you tried to upload files within the past 24 hours, and the uploads have failed, please try again.
UPDATE - It seems that we also had problems with about 10 or more software items that were uploaded on July 28th on both AfterDawn.com and Filepedia.com. Attempting to download the software ultimately lead you to a 404 error page. All downloads should work now.
UPDATE 2 - The failed disk has been replaced, and everything is back to normal. There was no need to bring down the server for maintenance, so no services were interrupted.
Again, sorry for any inconvenience caused, and be sure to report any further problems you might find.
Tomorrow marks the day that console manufacturer, Sony will go live with over 300 Wi-Fi hotspots for the PSP, dubbed Playstation Spot around Europe and Australia. Only 11 hotspots have been confirmed in the UK area, however Sony states that when they go live, their plan to cover all the PAL regions. The 300 total hotspots will offer PSP users the ability to access a wireless network in which they can update their PSP, download content or play multiplayer games.
While Sony has stated that there will not be a fee to access the wireless networks, there has been on confirmation on what users can expect to pay for downloadable content. They have offered up that some content will be free.
File sharing giant, Kazaa recently agreed to pay the sum of $100 million for damages to the music industry, to avoid further legal actions that have plagued Kazaa for some time now. This follows in conjunction with a report released saying that some 20 billion music tracks had been downloaded illegally through their service in just the last year.
"We have won another battle in an ongoing war, said John Kennedy, chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI). "We move forward with a spring in our step."
Kazaa has now announced that it will follow suit like the once big media giant Napster and offer only legal downloads in which users must pay for in order to download.
Last November, software developer Shawn Hogan received a call from a lawyer representing Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) notifying him that they were suing him for downloading "Meet the Fockers" over the BitTorrent network.
Hogan strongly denies the MPAA's accusation, adding that he even owns the movie on DVD. The attorney said they would settle for $2,500, however, Hogan declined.
Now he's locked in a legal fight with the MPAA. The MPAA, along with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who represent the music industry, have filed thousands of similar lawsuits between them, but due to the legal costs involved, few have been challenged & none have gone to trial. This has left several controversies unresolved, including the lawfulness of the methods associations use access ISP records and whether it's possible to definitively link a person to an IP address in the age of Wi-Fi.
Hogan, who has amassed millions as the CEO of Digital Point Solutions, is determined to alter that trend. Although he expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he believes it is worth it to challenge the MPAA’s tactics. "They’re completely abusing the system," Hogan says. "I would spend well into the millions on this."
Microsoft has confirmed that it is developing a "Zune" digital music player to rival Apple's dominant iPod device.
After weeks of rumours of an potential "iPod killer" in the works, Microsoft on Friday said it will launch music software and players under the Zune brand, though the software maker left plenty unsaid in its confirmation.
"Today we confirmed a new music and entertainment project called Zune,"Chris Stephenson, a general manager of marketing for the software maker, said in a statement. "Under the Zune brand, we will deliver a family of hardware and software products, the first of which will be available this year."
The initial device will include Wi-Fi capability and will use a hard drive to store the music, Microsoft said. Stephenson's statement also shed some light regarding rumours that the device will use wireless connectivity to share music with other Zune devices.
"We see a great opportunity to bring together technology and community to allow consumers to explore and discover music together," Stephenson said. A Microsoft representative declined to offer further details, although Stephenson told Billboard Magazine that other Zune devices, including a video player, are in the works.
The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (or HDMI for short) is more likely to appear on consumer electronics devices after the licensing fee was cut by 30 percent. HDMI Licensing, LLC, the agent responsible for licensing the HDMI specification, announced it has reduced the annual administration fee for HDMI adopters from $15,000 to $10,000.
According to HDMI Licensing the fee reduction was made possible by HDMI’s growing success in the marketplace, but more likely the cuts were made to get more Chinese consumer electronics manufacturers to implement HDMI on their devices. Chinese and Taiwanese have actively adapted their own, competing specifications to western standards, whose licensing costs they feel are too steep.
"The reduction of the annual fee, which was already minimal, will make it easier for smaller manufacturers to license the HDMI specification and will help ensure that all companies, large or small, can implement cutting EDGE HDMI technology into their products," said Leslie Chard, president of HDMI Licensing, LLC.
The China Video Industry Association (CVIA) announced it would promote and support the use of HDMI by the consumer electronics industry in China.
Yahoo! Music is offering a "personalized" version of a song called A Public Affair by Jessica Simpson in DRM free MP3 format. The song costs $1.99, double the prize of regular DRM crippled songs bought from online music stores, and will be personalized to the buyer by including his or her in the lyrics.
More important than the personalization of the track is the fact that the song is available in MP3 format, and can thus be freely copied on any type of portable music player or other MP3 capable device, burned on a CD etc. Yahoo! is actively trying to persuade record labels to sell music in MP3 format with little success.
"Our position is simple: DRM doesn't add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day — the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform," says Ian C. Rogers of Yahoo! Music, and continues "We've also been saying that DRM has a cost. It's very expensive for companies like Yahoo! to implement. We'd much rather have our engineers building better personalization, recommendations, playlisting applications, community apps, etc, instead of complex provisioning systems which at the end of the day allow you to burn a CD and take the DRM back off, anyway!"
Analysts at the DFC Intelligence shocked quite a few eyepairs when it reported last month that the upcoming war of next generation consoles is half over before it even started. The San Diego-based company stated that Sony would end up last because of the high price of PlayStation 3 and leave Microsoft and Nintendo fighting for the gold.
Now DFC has released an industry briefing which continued their theme. In the briefing the company said Sony is giving up one of consoles' strengths if they'll stick with the plan of providing upgrades to the PS3. DFC was refering to Sony CEO Ken Kutaragi who implied that their next-gen console would be more like a computer than a traditional gaming console. "We believe that under Kutaragi's techno-elite PlayStation 3 strategy, the PlayStation 3 could end up with a market share more resembling Apple products as opposed to the dominant PlayStation 2 market share," stated DFC.
Further into the war, DFC will expect Xbox 360 take the hardcore video game markets and even though the start in Japan has been somewhat sticky, it might be the future market share leader aswell, while Nintendo's Wii could be taking the win with the advantage of the lowest price.
Popular video streaming service YouTube was dealt a lawsuit on Friday in federal court for allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage onto its website which included the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 riots.
The owner and operator of Los Angeles News Service, Robert Tur, states in the lawsuit that within one week, one version of the Denny beating was viewed & downloaded 1,000 times via the site, which on Friday announced that its users are now viewing more than 100 million videos per day.
"The scope of the infringements is akin to a murky moving target, in that videos uploaded are not identified by copyright owner or registration number but rather by the uploader's idiosyncratic choice of descriptive terms to describe the content of the video — tags — making it extremely impractical to identify plaintiff's copyrighted works," Tur alleges in the lawsuit filed by attorney Francis Pizzulli of Santa Monica.
Tur is an award-winning journalist and helicopter pilot who has registered numerous copyrights for newsworthy footage. He also believes that YouTube is violating the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 landmark decision in MGM v. Grokster.
Sharman Networks, owner of the Kazaa file sharing service has backed out of a libel lawsuit filed against p2pnet.net editor Jon Newton, his ISP Interserver and four p2pnet users who posted comments anonymously. However, Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming is still marching ahead in her action against Mr. Newton, his ISP and just one of the anonymous posters.
This is indeed a strange case. When it first became public, the obvious question was "What is Sharman Networks, the owner of Kazaa, thinking about that would lead it to sue a pro-P2P technology site?". Well, the company and Ms. Hemming were concerned with the P2Pnet story titled "Nikki Hemming's Money Mansion." To add to the confusion, that particular article extensively uses quotes from an Associated Press article.
The AP reported the following...
The chief executive of the company that owns the Kazaa file-sharing network on Friday denied hastily selling her multimillion dollar Sydney mansion and sending the proceeds to the tax haven of Vanuatu to make sure record company lawyers could not get their hands on it.
Apparently, the anonymous comments referred to Hemming as a "dupe" and a "disgrace". "The Defendants Newton, Interserver, and Richard Roe and each of them published, or caused to be published, and/or continued to publish, the defamatory expression . . . with knowledge of its falsity or alternatively, with reckless indifference whether it was true or false," Hemming's lawsuit states. "Further, or in the alternative, the said Defendant Richard Roe maliciously published his aforesaid defamatory publications for an improper purpose, and/or with the predominant purpose of causing injury to the Plaintiff."
As previously reported by Afterdawn, HD-DVD pioneer Toshiba was supposed to have released their HD-DVD recorder on July 14th of this year. Unfortunately for Toshiba Corp., their launch doesn't seem to be going as smoothly as planned.
Toshiba has announced that it will delay the world's first HD-DVD recorder until at least the end of July. Reasons are sited as there isn't enough inventory to keep up with their launch quota.
There were no plans to bring the Toshiba RD-A1 oversees, even though it boasts impressive features such as 1 Terrabyte of storage space, thus enabling up to 130 hours of pure HD format recordings. At a price tag of 398,000 yen ($3,453), it may be prudent to say that their inventory speculation may be a bit high in the first place.
Mozilla Foundation has released the much-anticipated new version of FireFox web browser.
The new version, FireFox v2.0 beta 1 is the first public beta of the "next generation" FireFox browser and provides massive amounts of changes over the 1.x version.
The most visible new features for end users include:
Inline spell checking for text areas
Microsummaries provide a way to create bookmarks that display information pulled from the site they refer to, updated automatically.
Tabbed browsing enhancements include adding close buttons to each tab, adjustments to how Firefox decides which tab to bring you to when you close the current tab, and simplified preferences for tabs.
Search engine manager lets you rearrange and remove search engines shown in the search bar.
Tabbed browsing enhancements include adding close buttons to each tab, adjustments to how Firefox decides which tab to bring you to when you close the current tab, and simplified preferences for tabs.
Autodetection of search engines allows search engines that offer plugins for the Firefox search bar to offer to install their plugins for you.
Search suggestions allow search engines to offer suggested search terms based on what you've typed so far in the search bar.
You can download the latest version of FireFox from here:
On Monday, the BPI sent official letters to both Tiscali and Cable And Wireless, and requested that they suspend some 59 accounts, (17 of which were Tiscali customers), which they claimed were being used for for "illegal filesharing".
A spokeswoman for Tiscali described the actions of the BPI as a 'media ambush'. She said the BPI had "[sent] their letter to the media before we even had a chance to read it and the information they went to press with was not strictly correct".
In a legal response to the BPI yesterday, Tiscali said it was concerned the way in which the issue was raised, what it feels was a lack of supporting evidence on 16 of the 17 customers indicated.
Jody Haskayne, the head of PR at Tiscali, said the ISP regularly cooperates with investigations and in no way condones illegal file-sharing, but feels it has a duty of care to its customers and must adhere strictly to the Data Protection Act.
Japanese electronics giant Ricoh has developed a component that could bring the prospect of HD DVD and Blu-Ray compatible hardware being developed by manufacturers to life. The component in question is a diffraction plate. The component sits between the laser and the lens and adjusts the light beam so it focuses on the proper potion of the disc. The company claims it will allow both reading and writing to the disc formats.
The data layer on a Blu-ray disc resides 0.1 mm from the surface, whereas HD DVD's data layer is 0.6-mm deep. "This diffraction device is the first one that is ready for four formats, including BD and HD-DVD," claimed a Ricoh spokesman. "It will make it possible to build players and recorders ready for all formats, which will benefit consumers,"
Indeed it would benefit consumers, as the format war has put most consumers off the idea of investing in either HD DVD or Blu-ray due to fears the hardware will be obsolete in the near future. The war could be much worse than the VHS-Betamax situation, as with HD DVD and Blu-ray, you don't just keep movies in mind, you have to consider the issue even when buying a PC.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has given an official letter to both Tiscali and Cable & Wireless requesting that they suspend some 59 accounts for "illegal filesharing".
The BPI was once focused on handling individual file sharers, but now seems to have switched its strategy to individual firms allowing these practices to take place. The BPI is claiming that this move will make it easier for them to stop the copyright infringements suffered at the hands of the Internet.
BPI has indentified 17 IP addresses which belong to Tiscali and 42 IP addresses under Cable & Wireless control which were used to upload "significant quantities of music owned by BPI members".
BPI chairman Peter Jamieson said "It was unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement. We are providing unequivocal evidence of copyright infringement via their services. It is now up to them to put their house in order and pull the plug on these people.".
Tiscali has responded stating that it does not normally freeze accounts automatically, but will entertain an investigation. Cable & Wireless merely stated, "This would normally mean that any accounts used for illegal filesharing are closed. We will take whatever steps are necessary to put the matter right".
Have you ever looked at your 60" HDTV and thought, thats just not big enough? Do you often wish your neighbors at the end of your street could see what's playing on your screen in perfect clarity? Has the urge to watch your television from the comfort of your grocery store ever come to mind? If you've answered yes to any of these questions, Matsushita has the answer for you!
At a recent trade show, Matsushita, maker of television sets for Panasonic announced its largest plasma screen to date. Their new plasma television is 103" in overall design. Measuring an astounding 2.4 metres (7.8 feet) by 1.4 (4.6 feet) meters and weighing in at a scant 215 kg (474 lbs) its clear that this television is not for the faint at heart. Girth is nothing without performance however and this set does not disappoint. With true 1920x1080 resolution and full HDTV compliance.
Panasonic has yet to release a price for this monstrosity, however if the price point for their closest cabinet, the 65" plasma selling at $7500 USD is any measure, expect not to see these popping in living rooms around the globe.
Matsushita has already claimed that this television is geared towards the business market and is set to release 5000 units per year.
Developer of the next generation high definition disks known as Blu-Ray, Sony received some potentially bad news earlier from one of their hardware suppliers. The diode that generates the blue laser capable of compressing high definition data seems to be in short supply. As with most new technology, there is always an infancy stage in which demand often outweighs supply.
Sony, Samsung,BenQ, Plextor, Lite-on, Philips, LG, Panasonic and IO Data all are said to be developing players for the Blu-Ray standard, as well as production of the Playstation 3, leaving the production bar quite high. A Chinese language newspaper Commercial Times has reported that both Sony and Nichia, the only suppliers of these diodes are already plagued with production troubles, and ramping up any new technology production takes time.
No official comment from Sony yet as to whether or not the production of these diodes will affect their promise of adequate launch numbers for the PS3.
In a bid to make iPod usage safer when performing such tasks as driving or cycling, the next generation of iPods will reportedly talk to users. The device will be able to tell users what tracks and artists are coming up next, removing the need to look at the screen when changing songs. Apple will use the latest technology to turn even the most difficult artist and track names into recognizable speech.
The new feature will be crucial as the digital media player market is heating up. Apple's iPod has already slipped lately amid reports of terrible working conditions at an iPod producing factory in China. Also there has been a lot of music industry insider speculation and claims around a new device and iTunes-like software system from Microsoft (even though Microsoft has denied this so far).
Apple has refused to comment on the latest feature but a patent lodged by the company in the United States serves as proof. Users of the music players will still operate the Clickwheel as normal, but hear the names of songs and bands through their headphones. The patent reveals the idea's main purpose is to increase user safety.
"A user will have difficulty navigating the interface in 'eyes-busy' situations. Such activities include, for example, driving an automobile, exercising and crossing the street." it states. Apple has good reason to look into a feature like this as accidents have already been reportedly caused by iPod usage.
According to an article on the Swedish site, The Local, the downfall of The Pirate Bay could lie in advertisement revenue. According to Swedish prosecutors, if the site is earning money from its work, it could face tougher laws. In May, a raid on the site only managed to keep it down for a matter of days and police are still wading through the servers looking for anything they can use against the site.
According to the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, hundreds of thousands of kronor are being made each month from advertisers. Companies are usually unwilling to advertise on BitTorrentTracker sites but when those sites are extremely popular, one of the Internet's most popular sites in fact, that stance tends to change.
"If there is money left over, it will go to us who work at Pirate Bay as salaries," site founder Fredrik Neij said to Svenska Dagbladet on Wednesday. He added that he plans to invest money in the site to prevent police from taking it down again. Police will be looking at the book keeping and payments made with a focus on advertising revenue and taxes.
If there is one thing Sony is most definitely good at, it's causing controversy with their advertisements for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) console. You might remember, for example, how Sony came under fire for running a graffiti ad campaign. Some slammed Sony for "defacing public property". Sony also ran into trouble over advertisements in the UK. Now Sony has run into trouble in the Netherlands.
This time however, it is a little worse as accusations of racism are being thrown at the company over a particular advertisement for a new ceramic white-colored model of the PSP. Most of the ads are fine. They just include a white woman promoting the PSP console in various ways. However, many claim one particular ad shows the woman assaulting a black woman.
Specifically, on the left on the billboard there is a black woman dressed all in black. On the right there is a white woman dressed all in white. The problem people have is the fact the white woman is holding the black woman by the jaw. The ad contains the words "PlayStation Portable White Is Coming".
Gaming Industry insiders and observers are saying they expect Nintendo's next generation Wii console to hit shelves in the U.S. by October, or possibly late September. According to an analyst's note from P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research on June 21st, Nintendo appears to be already manufacturing final retail versions of the console.
Last year, Microsoft only started manufacturing the Xbox 360 console 69 days before it launched on November 22nd. This late start caused a global shortage of the console, meeting nowhere near the consumer demand. If Nintendo were to get the console out in October, it would give it a head start over Sony's PS3 which has yet to begin production.
"October is a reasonable timeframe," wrote McNealy. Even if the console doesn't launch in October, the early start to production will help the company meet consumer demands. New console launches traditionally sell out quickly. Nintendo expects to ship 6 million units by March 2007.
While it lacks the graphics improvements that the Xbox 360 and PS3 tout, the console is aimed at mainstream consumers and ignores many of the traditional improvement expectations of next generation consoles. Nintendo's President Satoru Iwata also promised to keep the price of new games for the system lower than those for PS3 and Xbox 360.
Sources close to Microsoft have told Reuters that the company will offer a digital audio and video player with wireless capabilities as soon as Christmas. One source said that the device will allow users to download music and video content "over the air", giving it at least one advantage over Apple's iPod players.
Microsoft is also apparently showing off new media software. "They're proposing an iTunes model approach," one source said. "They're now interested in controlling the whole vertical stack of technology from the device to the service to the software." He added that record companies are expecting prototypes to test in the coming weeks.
Launching an attempt by Christmas to dethrone Apple's iPod, which currently has over half the MP3 player market in the U.S. (NPD research), is vital according to analysts. Microsoft will need to copy several aspects of Apple's approach to be successful. "The success of Apple is that they've been able to create a very seamless experience", said Mike McGuire, analyst at Gartner Research. "That ability to control the hardware and software has given them an edge."
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has been cleared to sue popular Russian music download site AllofMP3.com in London's High Court.
AllofMP3, which offers music downloads at extremely low costs (as little as £1 / $1.85 for an album), is Britain's second most popular online music download source, trailing only Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store for pole position according to one survey. AllofMP3 has always insisted it is a legal service in compliance with local copyright laws. However, according to the music labels, AllofMP3 doesn't have the required permission to distribute their songs.
"The reason AllofMP3.com downloads are cheap is that neither the artists nor the record companies are being paid," told BPI General Counsel Roz Groome. "We have maintained all along that this site is illegal and that the operator of the site is breaking UK law by making sound recordings available to UK based customers without the permission of the copyright owners."
"Now we will have the opportunity to demonstrate in the UK courts the illegality of this site," he continued.
The High Court has given its approval to serve legal proceedings against AllofMP3 and its owner MediaServices Inc. in Russia ahead of a UK court case, the BPI said in a statement on Monday.
The speculations started off by Toshiba's general manager Mark Whittard, who told the Australian press his personal opinion whether Microsoft will produce a Xbox 360 with an internal HD-DVD drive. Shortly after Whittard had expressed that he thinks it will happen eventually, the Internet was filled with rumors and speculations.
Microsoft quickly corrected, in its statement, that they have "no plans to release the Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD drive" and that they "feel that offering the drive externally is the best way to give consumers the ultimate choice to create their own high definition experiences."
Also Ceaser Mendez, community manager of MS, added his snappy message to his own blog saying, "Saw a few stories online about an Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD drive: not true. We have no plans to release an Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD. What we showcased at E3 was an external HD DVD drive, and we're sticking with that."
As the HD-DVD vs Blu-ray war is closing in, the fact that Xbox 360 users are able to choose HD or not, is a step closer to winning it, or is it? Will the future determine whether gamers have the choice of not choosing high definition?
This seems like a great week indeed for people who choose to use their Sony PSP like it was never intended to be used. After the PSP community rejoiced earlier about the 2.60 exploit that had been found, making it capable of accessing the kernel in updated PSP models, a stable 1.50 downgrader program has been launched.
The recent exploit for 2.60, although functional, has already reported making a few "bricks" in the hands of inexperienced PSP modders. Developed and tested as functional, this downgrade program uses the Grand Theft Auto eLoader program and successfully downgrades 2.50 and 2.60 PSPs to the vaulted 1.50, enabling happy gamers to play a slew of homebrew on their portable gaming devices.
Due to a problem with one of our servers the administration frontends of both my.afterdawn.com and MP3Lizard.com had problems with file uploads.
Tomorrow marks the day that console manufacturer, Sony will go live with over 300 Wi-Fi hotspots for the PSP, dubbed Playstation Spot around Europe and Australia. Only 11 hotspots have been confirmed in the UK area, however Sony states that when they go live, their plan to cover all the PAL regions. The 300 total hotspots will offer PSP users the ability to access a wireless network in which they can update their PSP, download content or play multiplayer games.
File sharing giant, Kazaa recently agreed to pay the sum of $100 million for damages to the music industry, to avoid further legal actions that have plagued Kazaa for some time now. This follows in conjunction with a report released saying that some 20 billion music tracks had been downloaded illegally through their service in just the last year.
