p2pnet news | Music:- “According to a new report by Digital Music News, 36.4% of the world’s computers have LimeWire installed,” says Slashdot, among other sites and mainstream media reporting on Limewire’s amazing ascent to popularity.And, “Given their claim that filling an iPod legally would cost about $40,000, they’re pretty sure that most of those computers are infringing upon at least a few imaginary property rights. BitTorrent shouldn’t feel left out, though,” says /. going on:

“BitTorrent actually uses more bandwidth, but the article suggests that this is because it is used to share larger files, like movies.”

And, “Pop quiz,” says Ars Technica, going on, “what music and movie downloading app is installed on over one third of the world’s computers, according to a new report from Digital Music News and media tracking specialist BigChampagne? The answer isn’t iTunes, nor is it any other DRM-encumbered media program that has been blessed by Big Content. The answer is LimeWire …”

But WAIT! - says TorrentFreak’s Ernesto.

All is not what it seems to be.

She might not be sixteen, but, heck, this is Hollywood, the home of the strange and the wierd.  Reportedly, actress Jessica Alba, is pregnant and is engaged to Cash Warren.  Last week, it was announced that Britney Spears little sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, also an actress is pregnant.  So much for role models.

Speaking of role models, Hollywood on Thursday, it was announced that Mischa Barton is the next casualty of getting arrested for DUI.  Barton adds her name to the scores of stars who have been arrested for DUI this year or who have grown an albatross to bear.

Josh Groban’s and Mary J. Blige are actually two stars with good news this Christmas season.  Groban’s “Noel” now heads the pop album charts for a fifth week and Blige’s new CD “Growing Pains,” hit No. 2 with 629,000 copies.

In the land of celebrities, there is even more good news so things are not always so wacky.  Barron Hilton, announced he will donate nearly all of immense fortune to a philanthropic foundation in the family name which does great work for the needy.  Now, if some of our self-absorbed young talents would take advantage of their gifts and share with others, wouldn’t this be a much better place for all? 

MONTREAL — Silicon Valley wisdom holds that a great tech company starts small — by tradition in a garage — and slowly grows as it proves itself.

Google started that way. So did Apple and the social-network darling Facebook. So are thousands of startups worldwide that want to make their fortunes on the Internet.

But what if one starts big from the get-go? What if an entrepreneur commands millions of dollars and throws it all into a company with a hundred employees, rooms full of computers, and very few

Is this a reckless return to the dot-com bubble days? Or is it a bold charge at Internet notoriety?

Capazoo is a new Montreal-based social network that fancies itself the next stage in the evolution of social networking, and it’s betting on the latter. It wants to unseat MySpace and Facebook as the reigning champs of online socializing.

And it has $25 million from pro-athlete investors and a well-known entertainment brand behind it. Its rationale: Social networks are nothing without their users.

It’s individuals who add the funny pictures, videos and blog ramblings that make other users stick around. So shouldn’t users be compensated for the popularity of their content?

To this end, Capazoo’s model offers two significant twists: Users who post popular content can profit from their contribution — but only if they pay a yearly fee.

“There’s this growing backlash that sees corporations making money on the backs of content producers,” said Robert Samuels, general manager of Capazoo, taking a swipe at YouTube and its cohorts that are capitalizing on user-generated media. “People are basically saying: ‘I want to be appreciated, not taken advantage of.’ ”

On the surface, little sets Capazoo apart from others. Users create profiles, share pictures, videos and music, and keep personal blogs.

Its grand idea is to foster a micro-economy in which users “tip” each another with a fictional currency called the Zoop. New users are given an allowance of Zoops they can give away at will. They can then buy more Zoops at a penny each.

This, founders claim, will encourage users to post interesting content that others will want to tip. Good content will attract more users. Professionals will want to promote their videos and music there.

That’s the theory.

Capazoo gives users the option to convert their accumulated Zoops into real cash. But to do that, you have to be a paying member, at $25 to $35 a year, depending on the package.

These VIP members receive a debit card carrying their Zoop balance, which they can use at most bank machines.

This melding of virtual and physical worlds will be Capazoo’s greatest test.

If its big bet succeeds, Capazoo will surprise a lot of skeptical observers in the tech world.

“Starting small is definitely the way you start these days, especially if you don’t have an edge in the marketplace,” said Barry Parr, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

“I’m not saying it’s impossible to beat these guys [MySpace and Facebook], but there are few historical precedents to show it can be done. Once a leader is established, it’s very hard if not impossible to do it.”

Samuels dismisses the criticism.

“We’re not your average startup,” he said. “Our growth plan is significant, we have to have the infrastructure.”

Capazoo’s spending spree includes $5 million for Web hosting services, an amount deemed absurd by startup standards. “In a few years, someone else will come up behind us, so we have to prepare for that, too,” Samuels explains

To its critics, Capazoo’s biggest red flag is that it’s funded almost entirely by private individuals. The company’s co-founder and president is Grant Carter, a former defensive end for the Alouettes who married a CBC reporter and moved to a suburb of Atlanta to become a banker.

Major investors include NFL, NHL and NBA personalities.

National Lampoon, the satirical magazine popular among the college set, last week took a minor stake in the firm.

Blogging might be a leisure activity for many famous personalities but it has brought fame to people like India-born Om Malik who has been named as one of the global web celebrities by American magazine Forbes.

Ranked at the 12th position for technology blogging on the list of “Web Celeb 25″, he shares the limelight not just with fellow bloggers but also with video hosts and gadget gurus.

A chemistry graduate from St. Stephen’s College in India’s capital New Delhi, Malik is the brain behind the website ‘gigaom.com’ and has also served as a technology journalist for various publications.

“Om Malik has a long history as a tech journalist, writing for outlets including Business 2.0, Red Herring and The Wall Street Journal (he was also one of the founding staffers of Forbes.com). But true web celebrity status didn’t come for the Indian-born writer until 2001, when he started his own technology blog, GigaOm,” Forbes said.

On the other hand, twenty nine-year-old Perez Hilton alias Mario Lavandeira, who runs the website ‘perezhilton.com’, is at the top of the heap.

“Hollywood stars fear the wrath of Perez Hilton, a controversial gossip blogger with a poison pen… His blog is hugely popular, despite recent missteps, including erroneously reporting the death of Fidel Castro,” the magazine said.

Pointing out that Malik frequently appears in the media on television as a technology expert, Forbes added that his popular website has received funding from sources including San Francisco-based venture firm True Ventures.

Meanwhile, according to forty one-year-old Malik’s website, he has also been a venture capitalist for a brief period.

“… Few months in the VC (venture capitalism) business made me realise how much I missed the world of writing and reportage, and I went to work for Red Herring where (at least I thought) I could apply my extensive knowledge and insight into the world of venture capitalism and cutting-edge technologies,” Malik said on his website.

Interestingly, one of the web celebrities is Dan Lyons - none other than the editor of Forbes itself. However, he is ranked at the 17th position in the name ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ (fakesteve.blogspot.com).

Dan Lyons started a pseudonymous blog, posing as the alter ego of Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “For a year, the satirical site attracted fans, growing in popularity - and the tech and media worlds boiled over trying to figure out who was behind it.”

In August 2007, The New York Times outed Lyons as the author; in October, he released a book, Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody, under the pseudonym “Fake Steve Jobs.” the report said about its own editor.

Other names on the Forbes list include Michael Arrington (2nd rank), Mark Frauenfelder (3rd), Seth Godin (4th), Cory Doctorow (5th), Matt Drudge (6th), Gina Trapani (7th), Mark Zuckerberg (8th), Harry Knowles (9th), Robert Scoble (10th), Frank Warren (11th), Will Leitch (13th), Jeff Jarvis (14th), Kevin Rose (15th), Kathy Sierra (16th), Markos Moulitsas (18th), Xeni Jardin (19th), Ryan Block (20th), Glenn Reynolds (21st), Pete Cashmore (22nd), Steve Rubel (23rd), Heather Armstrong (24th) and Darren Rowse (25th).

The magazine collected data on 200 internet personalities and ranked their popularity. “The final list of 25 names shows how the web has levelled the playing field - so that now, even the unlikeliest character can become a star,” Forbes said in an accompanying report.

By Rachana Rathi Globe Staff / December 27, 2007

University of Massachusetts at Amherst freshman Andrew Leavitt has something in common with software creators and advertising professionals - a growing recognition of the marketing power of social networking websites such as Facebook.

“Everyone is on Facebook 24-seven,” Leavitt, 18, of Concord said of his peers. “It is the easiest way to get the word out there.”

A fund-raising veteran of sorts, Leavitt discovered last year that Facebook is a far more effective marketing tool for his charitable events than fliers and word of mouth. And his experience is quickly being affirmed by other local youth with social causes.

Lincoln-Sudbury High School juniors Rebekah Glickman-Simon and Alexandria Giacalone of Sudbury saw Leavitt’s success and used Facebook to help put out the word about their dance at the Concord Armory last month to raise money for victims of the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region. And at Brandeis University in Waltham, students have been using Facebook to organize and sustain protests over the student-activity fees they are being charged by the university.

The website, facebook.com, is where many high school and college students spend hours checking out who’s in a relationship and who’s not, sending faux cocktails and gifts to each other, and playing games like Scrabulous. With some 58 million active users, it can also be a powerful tool for them to promote events, parties, and causes to people far beyond the community of any one school.

The website not only provides broader audience reach, Glickman-Simon, Giacalone, Leavitt, and others say, but also has features that make organizing, promoting, and hosting events easier. Facebook event “invites” allow promoters to provide details about an event as well as deliver special instructions. For example, Leavitt’s invites say no alcohol allowed and provide a map with directions. Facebook also sends out reminders about the event, lets attendees provide feedback after an event, and gives organizers an updated guest list at their fingertips.

“It’s the easiest way, really, to ask people if they’re coming and get responses quickly,” Glickman-Simon, 16, said. Giacalone said they posted pictures of suffering Sudanese children on the invite to get people to “think about the cause more.”

Leavitt sent out an invite earlier this month for a Jan. 12 event to raise money for an annual scholarship offered to a Concord-Carlisle Regional High School student in memory of his mother, who died of breast cancer in 2004.

As of last Wednesday afternoon, 490 people had confirmed that they were attending, 403 people were maybes, 347 people said they could not make it, and 212 had not replied. Two years ago, Leavitt could not have even dreamt of those numbers.

Leavitt, who began organizing charitable events when he was 10, used to spread the word by passing out fliers at lunch. Now he forwards an invite to his growing friends list on Facebook, which his friends promptly forward to their friends, and so on.

His last two events, promoted primarily through Facebook, had a higher turnout than the previous six events combined. In April, he raised about $3,000 for the scholarship through an event in which he says at least 90 percent of the guests attended because of Facebook.

“Facebook really allowed young people to be able to reach other towns,” Leavitt said. “It’s given us the power to bring people together.”

Glickman-Simon and Giacalone attended Leavitt’s dance in April and quickly saw the potential to raise money for a cause close to their hearts.

Both girls had family members perish in the Holocaust, so when they learned that hundreds of thousands of civilians have died since 2002 in the conflict in Darfur, they became determined to help. Glickman-Simon and Giacalone attended a rally in New York City to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis last September, and in August began planning a fund-raiser to benefit the Genocide Intervention Network of Washington, D.C.

Glickman-Simon and Giacalone saw the potential in Leavitt’s marketing model - they didn’t pay for advertising and spread the word primarily through Facebook.

More than 850 people from communities including Concord, Carlisle, Acton, Boxborough, Framingham, Maynard, and Wayland attended the Nov. 17 dance at the Concord Armory, helping the teenagers raise about $12,500. Three-hundred more were turned away because the hall was at capacity.

Leavitt said he hopes to have the same problem next month at his Jan. 12 scholarship dance in the Concord-Carlisle Regional High School cafeteria, where capacity is 650 people. The dance begins at 7 p.m., and tickets are $10.

Rachana Rathi can be reached at rrathi@globe.com