emundoo: our p2p video-streaming system

For over a year our team has developed emundoo, and we are now in "geek mode" which means, we are running a closed alpha to find all the bugs and cracks we need to fix to offer emundoo to the public asap.

What is emundoo

                                                          

emundoo is a Content Distribution System targeted at Video on Demand services. It uses advanced Peer-2-Peer networking technology to distribute the load on the network to all participating machines. The system is still in development. Currently it provides the basic functionality required to deliver video content to users. emundoo is video format agnostic, so that nearly all video formats developed until today can be transported by the system. It is built around open standards to ensure interoperability with third party software.

                                 

How does it work

                                                          

In its current implementation emundoo in essence provides you with a local streaming server that will fetch the data you request on demand from the emundoo network. The emundoo network is comprised of personal computers around the globe running the emundoo client software. Each time a video is requested by a user, the video data is transferred as needed to the user's local machine, where a portion of the data is stored for later redistribution to other participating machines.

If yoou want to participate in emundoo and give it a first glance, please drop me an email at ingmar at motionet.de and I'll send you an invitation...

                                 

Why I like TV under public law

Last saturday night I somehow could not sleep so I watched TV: boxing on ARD, which is the first program in germany. Castillejo (Spain) vs. Sylvester (Vorpommern, Germany). Castillejo (called "The Fox") 40 y old with lots of KO on his winners-list vs the young german guy who knocked Castillejo K.O. in the 12th round - and boy: Castillejo really didn't look that good afterwards. It took him appr. 5 min to get back to his feet again. What I found truely remarkable is that the cameras of the TV went away from him: they didn't show ONE SCENE of him laying on the floor - the reporter told us, he looked like mess, but they didn't show. And I liked that - I liked the way the editors let him his intimacy in this moment of defeat. I am not sure, if a privately held station would have acted like that. Is moral a question of money? Is courtesy a question of Adimpressions?

Couch potatoe

This evening my second beloved football club (just behind Arminia Bielefeld, 1. FC Cologne) played against Borussia Mönchengladbach, which is a traditional derby. I haven't got a TV since 2 years anymore, but my notebook with a DVB-T card, which is fine for all the channels I'm normally watching, Unfortunately the game tonight was on a channel I can't get via the antenna - instead of going to the pub next door I gave zatoo a chance - and was quite impressed. I met their CEO about 3/4 year ago, and they now have all major channels on their program in germany. the quality is quite good - I loved not to have a complicated registration process and sound quality was very good. I noticed, that my upload capacity was quite small -which leads me to the opinion, that they use a mixed p2p and client-server architecture behind their system, with a bigger part for client-server. Being on the couch I had my blackberry in my hand, writing mails with Thomas in the editorial office, had my ipod touch in touch for twittering with friends in the stadium - and guess what - it was great. It was a much cooler experience than watching the game on the couch just together with my potatoe-chips - I love the idea of watching TV interactively with friends. It's much more about the experience than about the content (they played 1:1, but it was a really exciting game). I'm so happy that we at motionet are able to take part in a small part with our technology emundoo - we'll soon start our browser based p2p streaming service i alpha mode - and it'll be great. We won't have these interactive parts from the beginning, but we'll bring you an excellent user-experience in picture- and soundquality and ease of use.

OSX Umlaut svn problem

We found a workaround for the OSX svn problem: You might want to add this small pre-commit script to your svn which checks for umlauts before commit and gives the user a warning:

#!/bin/sh

REPOS="$1"
TXN="$2"

SVNLOOK=/usr/bin/svnlook

## NOTE: This is a quick hack! WILL let many "dangerous" characters pass!

if $SVNLOOK changed -t "$TXN" "$REPOS" | grep '^A.*\\195' >&2
then
echo "Auf diesem Server sind nur ASCII-Zeichen erlaubt!". >&2
exit 1
fi

exit 0

MySQL Enterprise support - not that cool

For quite a large project we booked MySQL Enterprise Support. As always when working with 3rd party companies we needed to set up an NDA with them. Unfortunately MySQL germany is not able today to accept our standard NDA - they have to use the american version which allows MySQL to use everything their consultants do not "write down", but "keep in their minds". I've never seen such an NDA up today - and of course we could not accept that ;)

Crazy days in a startup

motionet is getting a year now, and it's really great to see al these cool apps evolving we have developed and all the great projects we've done with our team. Unfortunately there's always too few time to write about all the details, but yesterday was a really crazy day. It's not always like that, but let me introduce to you my start in the week yesterday:
7:30: Gettin up, driving to Dusseldorf
9:00: Checking Emails, doing some planning/scheduling for the week
10:00: Discard an employee
10:30: Preparing PPT for a presentation on friday
12:00: Business Lunch at the korean restaurant, strategic evolvement of an employee
13:00: Developing mathematical solutions for a project, together with an university
14:00: job interview with a developer from Ukraine (unbelievable guy)
15:30: hiring him ;)
16:00: Email stuff, Projectmanagement in one of our key projects
19:00: Business dinner in one of the finest italian restaurants in dusseldorf, with some Saudi-guys for a huge project in middle-east
24:00: Going to bed, exhausted, but full of excitement

This was not a normal day, but it's just great fun and satisfying, being able to do such a great work ;)

Among the runners again

Since being in hospital in Sep 2007 it's been my first short run again today - just half an hour down the rhine but boy, it felt that great! Especially in my new shoes... ;)

First bits and bites of emundoo

I'm so excited: after appr. 6 month of development I just saw the first live-streamed p2p video in my webbrowser in our office. Not that I would know, but it somehow feels like giving a baby to birth - and it has got a name: emundoo! More to come in the next weeks. I'm not the man of big words, but: Thanks so much to you, guys (especially Thomas, Ronny and Jens) for making this real - it's going to be huuuuuge ;)

Technorati Tags: p2p, motionet, emundoo, streaming

Baidu is eroding

I went into Baidu in mid-November 2007 (300$) and was quite happy to see them rising nearly +80$ (+30%) during December. They now have fallen to 279 $ - not quite sure why. They were on "buy" in the first week of 2008. I've read something about them in one of my feeds - can't find the article again. Was it, that China is opening the internet more and more for Goog and friends? (Nasdaq)

Another stock I'm watching for quite a time is northern rock: after their ruin in Sep 207 they fell like hell: from 1157 p to 101 p for today. this morning I read an article that the billionaire Richard Branson (Virgin Group) is getting serious in paying back 24 billi. GBp to the Bank of England. I Somehow think this is a stock with potential - NR competence was in the emerging private-finance sector. (LSE)

The not working picture twitter

No, I don't have too much time, but sometimes hacking some stuff is more fun in the evening than watching TV. So I've made a crappy twitter for pictures ;) Just Drag'nDrop Upload your pictures to a public timeline. This is not safe, it is not really working, but it shows my idea of having a foolproof and damn easy to use picturetwitter. Do you like to help me? I have many ideas:

• make a nice design
• find a name
• get the timestamp to the photos and sort it on the timeline
• get mms to work
• make it safe
• ...

So if any of you out there has fun to help me, leave me a comment or drop me an email to ingmar.bornholz@gmail.com.
And for the rest - just have fun (and please don't try those scriptkiddieshit)