Speeding up iTunes downloads, the Israeli way

Yossi Vardi, the guy who helped bring instant messaging to the world, is now trying to speed up video downloads.

Vardi is an investor in Haifa-based SpeedBit, which sells an application for speeding up downloads of games, videos and music. He claimed that by using the application, the download of a movie decreases from more than an hour to 22 minutes.

Downloading movies, of course, will get worse as high definition spreads. Some of these download services have received their share of customer complaints.

"It's the fastest growing application ever," he said, during a hallway conversation at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit taking place this week. "We're growing faster than Skype."

I haven't had time to verify that, but they do have a lot of downloads. They released their first product in 1999, and now claim that 142 million people have downloaded SpeedBit Download Accelerator Plus.

Sales of videos on iTunes have helped business, he added.

Vardi, along with Yair Goldfinger and others, were behind Mirabilis, which created the instant-messaging client ICQ. AOL bought the company in 1998 for around $287 million. It also helped Israel get into the Internet business.

[tomtomt]

Download Accelerator NOT GOOD for all

Too bad the folks at DAP can't join the 21st Century. They have their product for those few who use M$ Windoz and MAC's but how about us who use Linux? They are just a bunch of lazy bums.

[DraconumPB]

...Get over it

If people want to run off and make their own OS, great, but don't **** and whine when people don't write apps for it.<br /><br />So, enjoy your OS, but nobody's making you use it. It doesn't entirely help that commercial software is somewhat discouraged, hrm? (I mean, how many non-business consumers would buy software for their Linux PC? At least, I've not heard of it.)

[ethana2]

I look forward to the day

when the entire internet is served via p2p.<br /><br />Of course, those who still use copyright, well, they're going to still have to pay through the ____ for bandwidth, aren't they?<br /><br />Do your part. Encrypt everything. And don't use port 80. (HTTPS doesn't count- it's to easy for ISP's to detect and block- which pisses me off)<br /><br />All I want is to use the bandwidth that I have to host my own social networking profile. What I'm paying, it's my right. Remember- that's my money here. And that is a right I will fight tooth and nail to claim.

[ethana2]

by the way

my email is [e-mail]<br /><br />...in case you want to help- I don't know any good languages with which to realize my goals.<br />Classic, right? I'm not asking for help coding it. I'm asking for a mentor in C, Python, GTK, and/or QT.<br /><br />Once I have that, I will be finally be able to change the world I live in. Not having that power ...isn't good for my health... or, in my opinion, for the aforementioned world.

[Carey Hill]

I get crazy when I try out a program that is rated so high and recommended by several program I completely trust that will not uninstall when you figure out that it is not what you want on your computer. I have e-mailed SpeedBit Video Accelerator and followed their instructions on how to get it off my system but their instruction do not work and I have even tried uninstalling by going through the files but when doing so I get a message that the program is write protected blah-blah-blah and am not allowed to delete them even though I own and instruct this system in which direction I wish to go (I thought!!!). Even the program (decrapifier) can't mess with it. If I could get some feedback on a program like this and others that refuse to uninstall it would be much appreciated. Recently I had an anti-virus program installed that was uninstallable and finally got so fed up I reprogrammed my system with a reinstall disc but then comes the near days hours lost resetting everything you lose by doing this! Frustrating!!!

[9869886]

why