InventorSpot

Peer to peer coming to a cell phone near you!

Back in 1999, an eighteen year old college dropout changed the world forever by creating the first peer to peer (p2p) network called Napster. He quickly became the music industries' boogie monster for creating a place where people could trade music online but music fans loved the idea. One of their main opponents then was the group Metallica who filled a lawsuit against Napster back in 2000.

Earlier this month, Metallica finally realized that p2p isn’t such a bad thing after all and they are allowing Itunes to offer their music to the world at 99 cents a song. Oh the irony of it!

Here in 2006 p2p networks are all over the internet offering not just mp3 files but also videos, audio books, e-books, movies, videogames and more. If it can be put on a computer, it can be shared. There are still many legal issues to be worked out and not everyone is happy with it. Just last month, Sharman Industries, the company behind the popular p2p network Kazaa, just settled with the music industry for a reported $115 million dollars for the distribution of illegal copyrighted files. That averages out to about a penny per virus you find on Kazaa.

P2P on cell phones?

Many of the cell phones Jule (one of our guest bloggers) featured in her piece Cellphones- What progress has in store will now be able to download and share files by using Nareo’s PeerBox Mobile. You can now download songs, software, games, pictures and videos directly from Nareo servers, but in the not so distant future software updates will include using other popular p2p’s out there such as Gnutella.

Audio fingerprinting?

Nareo has teamed up with m2any to offer audio fingerprinting using PeerBox Mobile. This is amazing technology that can recognize a song simply by placing your phone near the source! Let’s say you hear a song on a commercial that you like, but you don’t know the name or artist. All you would have to do is place your cell phone near your TV while recording a few seconds, then select Identify. The song will then be identified and give you the song title and artist. How cool is that? If the song is available to download you can do so instantly.

This is new technology on the market, but you can expect to hear more and see similar applications pop-up soon. PeerBox Mobile is at the forefront and some features may not be available in the beta release. I will keep you updated on their progress in a future article. In the meantime check out their site at Peer Box Mobile

Featured Blogger-Imani Peterson
www.americaninventorspot.com

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