Yossi Vardi is the investor who was behind ICQ. He’s also a nice guy and just sent me a note that said that one of his new companies is seeing extraordinary growth very quickly. A million downloads in 49 days. What does it do? Accelerates videos on YouTube and other video streaming sites.
The word-of-mouth network is getting more efficient. In the first six weeks of ICQ they only saw about 65,000 downloads (that was back in 1996).
UPDATE: I made a mistake that I corrected above. Yossi was the investor behind ICQ. Not sure where I got DoubleClick from. I think I have DoubleClick on my brain.
Scobleizer 
It would be nice if the application worked on Vista.. 😦
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It would be nice if the application worked on Vista.. 😦
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I wouldn’t install this app. I opted out of installing the Ask.com toolbar and it still installed it. The toolbar remained even after I uninstalled the app.
Umm, thanks Robert 😀
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I wouldn’t install this app. I opted out of installing the Ask.com toolbar and it still installed it. The toolbar remained even after I uninstalled the app.
Umm, thanks Robert 😀
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Hmm, I don’t think YouTube needs any acceleration. Besides, if it does accelerate downloads, it may be breaching some copyrights by caching or P2Ping content.
Looks like this isn’t going to be a success, nothing like ICQ at least 🙂
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Hmm, I don’t think YouTube needs any acceleration. Besides, if it does accelerate downloads, it may be breaching some copyrights by caching or P2Ping content.
Looks like this isn’t going to be a success, nothing like ICQ at least 🙂
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Heck did Doubleclick even exist back then? I seem to remember pages loading a lot faster then… (on dial-up!) than they do now on DSL.
I’m not a bit fan of Youtube, and it getting stuck all the time is one reason. Google Video behaves much better and they more frequently (not all the time) give you the option of just downloading the video and watching in a native format rather than Flash. You would THINK though that these companies could somehow detect that they were not downloading the file as fast as they would need to to be played properly and DO something about it (like increasing the buffer size) themselves. How embarrassing that they need a third party app to do that for them. Things never change do they?
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Heck did Doubleclick even exist back then? I seem to remember pages loading a lot faster then… (on dial-up!) than they do now on DSL.
I’m not a bit fan of Youtube, and it getting stuck all the time is one reason. Google Video behaves much better and they more frequently (not all the time) give you the option of just downloading the video and watching in a native format rather than Flash. You would THINK though that these companies could somehow detect that they were not downloading the file as fast as they would need to to be played properly and DO something about it (like increasing the buffer size) themselves. How embarrassing that they need a third party app to do that for them. Things never change do they?
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Nice find, but the attempts to force the Ask toolbar on me were not a nice touch, seems to install without it though (the text in the install is confusing).
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Nice find, but the attempts to force the Ask toolbar on me were not a nice touch, seems to install without it though (the text in the install is confusing).
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50 days for a million downloads isn’t that impressive though, is it?
It’s just tagging on-to something that’s all the rage right now.
It’s YouTube: a billion+ users. A portion of them find out about it, they’re guarenteed to at least download it to try it out.
Now if it was a real, stand-alone app that wasn’t tying into an already-present and well-marketed sector of the market, I’d be impressed.
I’m saying this out of experience – as the Director of NeoSmart Technologies I’ve been keeping an eye on our download count for EasyBCD and we just recently passed the 1MM download mark ourselves.
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50 days for a million downloads isn’t that impressive though, is it?
It’s just tagging on-to something that’s all the rage right now.
It’s YouTube: a billion+ users. A portion of them find out about it, they’re guarenteed to at least download it to try it out.
Now if it was a real, stand-alone app that wasn’t tying into an already-present and well-marketed sector of the market, I’d be impressed.
I’m saying this out of experience – as the Director of NeoSmart Technologies I’ve been keeping an eye on our download count for EasyBCD and we just recently passed the 1MM download mark ourselves.
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@MacBeach:
I don’t think it’s a buffer thing. Judging by SpeedBit’s other projects, it’s a multi-threaded downloader – i.e. abusing the tubes….
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@MacBeach:
I don’t think it’s a buffer thing. Judging by SpeedBit’s other projects, it’s a multi-threaded downloader – i.e. abusing the tubes….
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Well you just got me to download it, but I probably won’t install it.
On another note, there’s something to be said about knowing how many people download something. Look at YouTube – it openly publishes stats about each video and channel, it’s fantastic. iTunes is the complete opposite – secret numbers for downloads, podcast subscribers, secret algorithms for top daily shows, etc. I think iTunes is actually holding back podcasts, which deserve an atmosphere like YouTube instead of Billboard.
Sorry for going off on a tangent there 🙂
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Well you just got me to download it, but I probably won’t install it.
On another note, there’s something to be said about knowing how many people download something. Look at YouTube – it openly publishes stats about each video and channel, it’s fantastic. iTunes is the complete opposite – secret numbers for downloads, podcast subscribers, secret algorithms for top daily shows, etc. I think iTunes is actually holding back podcasts, which deserve an atmosphere like YouTube instead of Billboard.
Sorry for going off on a tangent there 🙂
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Accelerate your bandwidth/throughput by purchasing a more reliable broadband service. I have zero problems viewing videos from YouTube or anywhere else.
This software sounds like complete garbage.
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Accelerate your bandwidth/throughput by purchasing a more reliable broadband service. I have zero problems viewing videos from YouTube or anywhere else.
This software sounds like complete garbage.
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I use it and Youtube no longer stutters on my 4MB DSL connection but then again I am a zillion miles away from New York or London.
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I use it and Youtube no longer stutters on my 4MB DSL connection but then again I am a zillion miles away from New York or London.
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it seems like it is really only helping you to use your existing bandwidth more aggressively. the pipes are still clogged and the files are still large. this works fine if the stream of the video is lower bitrate than your internet connection. but it still won’t let you stream 15mbps HD content over a 6mbps connection….
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it seems like it is really only helping you to use your existing bandwidth more aggressively. the pipes are still clogged and the files are still large. this works fine if the stream of the video is lower bitrate than your internet connection. but it still won’t let you stream 15mbps HD content over a 6mbps connection….
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Seems like there’s a bit of cunfusion here… I’ve been using it since reading about it here in May, didnt comment then cause wanted ot test it… the new beta, which runs on Vista and now supports over 50 sites (including FaceBook, which is painfully slow to watch), and I can wholeheartedly say it does the job… I never have to pause videos anymore before I watch them, and that’s all I wanted really.
oh and I had no problems with the ask toolbar – unchecked the offer and it didnt download! the offer screen is a bit confusing though, but I actually wrote their support and got an answer they’re changing it…
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Seems like there’s a bit of cunfusion here… I’ve been using it since reading about it here in May, didnt comment then cause wanted ot test it… the new beta, which runs on Vista and now supports over 50 sites (including FaceBook, which is painfully slow to watch), and I can wholeheartedly say it does the job… I never have to pause videos anymore before I watch them, and that’s all I wanted really.
oh and I had no problems with the ask toolbar – unchecked the offer and it didnt download! the offer screen is a bit confusing though, but I actually wrote their support and got an answer they’re changing it…
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I agree with Jamie L.
I’ve been using vide accalerator for a while now and it’s made video watching an absolute pleasure, so thanks speedbit! I’m using Vista with the beta and have encountered no problems.
If any of you haven’t seen their site lately, they now support videos from 5min, myspace and veoh, and a load more – enjoy!
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I agree with Jamie L.
I’ve been using vide accalerator for a while now and it’s made video watching an absolute pleasure, so thanks speedbit! I’m using Vista with the beta and have encountered no problems.
If any of you haven’t seen their site lately, they now support videos from 5min, myspace and veoh, and a load more – enjoy!
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I made a mistake that I corrected above. Yossi was the investor behind ICQ. Not sure where I got DoubleClick from. I think I have DoubleClick on my brain.http://www.thebootcd.com
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I made a mistake that I corrected above. Yossi was the investor behind ICQ. Not sure where I got DoubleClick from. I think I have DoubleClick on my brain.http://www.thebootcd.com
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