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Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean”  —  “So Sambo beat the bitch!”  —  This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama's win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days …

Om reported today that Joost is getting ready to abandon its client and replace it with a web-based product that’s powered by a P2P plug-in. This step certainly makes sense for Joost. The service has been struggling to remain relevant ever since its launch, and the idea of web-based solution has been floating around for what seems like forever.

But Joost in a browser is also hardly revolutionary. In fact, there have been plenty of attempts to merge the world of Web 2.0 with distributed data delivery in recent months, and there are other promising efforts on the horizon. To this crowd, Joost is like the odd, new kid that shows up in school weeks after summer break. So please, be nice, give it a place at the table, and let’s start with a quick round of introductions.

Here are a few companies that have been trying browser-based P2P longer than Joost: 

Octoshape started with P2P audio streaming, but has been offering browser-based video streaming since 2006. It recently streamed the Olympic games live for a Korean broadcaster. Octoshape is using a hybrid approach that combines P2P with CDN solutions from CDNetworks. Unlike Joost, its browser plug-in is also available for PowerPC Macs and PCs running Linux.

PPLive, the Chinese P2P TV service that keeps impressing us with its huge user base, launched a browser plug-in just in time for the Beijing Olympics.

RedSwoosh , which was recently acquired by Akamai, not only has its own browser-based BitTorrent client in place, but also a streaming/progressive downloading solution for web-hosted videos.

Mediamelon is another plug-in based P2P video offering that actually launched at Newteevee Live last year.

UK-based Rawflow is not only offering its P2P plug-in to major broadcasters, it’s also running a Ustream-like site at Selfcast.com. Oddly enough, it looks like Rawflow stopped using its own P2P technology for Selfcast a while back. The site just streams Flash without requiring any plug-in installations. Rawflow’s P2P technology is now marketed by Velocix.

Neokast also offers a Ustream-like site with P2P-powered live streams. Neokast is Windows-only. The company recently started to offer a commercial stream server application for P2P-loving lifecasters.

BitTorrent Inc. is using its DNA plug-in to offer P2P streaming in the browser. The company is collaborating with Brightcove to make the technology available for broadcasters. DNA is only available for Windows so far, and it’s not yet compatible with the existing BitTorrent/uTorrent install base.

Songs from Grammy-winning progressive metal band Tool will be part of Guitar Hero World Tour's growing roster of rock tunes, Activision announced Friday.

"Parabola" and "Schism," both from the 2001 album Lateralus, will be included in the game, along with "Vicarious" from the 2006 album 10,000 Days.

Activision also said Police frontman Sting will have music featured in the game. The singer/bassist is offering his voice and likeness for the title as an in-game character.

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The study aim was to determine the risk of cataract among radiologic technologists with respect to occupational and nonoccupational exposures to ionizing radiation and to personal characteristics. A prospective cohort of 35,705 cataract-free US radiologic technologists aged 24–44 years was followed for nearly 20 years (1983–2004) by using two follow-up questionnaires. During the study period, 2,382 cataracts and 647 cataract extractions were reported. Cigarette smoking for ≥5 pack-years; body mass index of ≥25 kg/m2; and history of diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, or arthritis at baseline were significantly (p ≤ 0.05) associated with increased risk of cataract. In multivariate models, self-report of ≥3 x-rays to the face/neck was associated with a hazard ratio of cataract of 1.25 (95% confidence interval: 1.06, 1.47). For workers in the highest category (mean, 60 mGy) versus lowest category (mean, 5 mGy) of occupational dose to the lens of the eye, the adjusted hazard ratio of cataract was 1.18 (95% confidence interval: 0.99, 1.40). Findings challenge the National Council on Radiation Protection and International Commission on Radiological Protection assumptions that the lowest cumulative ionizing radiation dose to the lens of the eye that can produce a progressive cataract is approximately 2 Gy, and they support the hypothesis that the lowest cataractogenic dose in humans is substantially less than previously thought.

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Google Chrome has been grabbing the tech world’s attention for a few days now, and its impact on the market is showing to be significant. Massively significant. Permanently significant. That goes for everything from conceptual execution to the download count. According to Hitslink Market Share, it’s already grabbed north of 1% of the browser market. And Hitwise shows Google’s Chrome page to be nearing the top 10 of sites offering software downloads of any kind.

Big news? Yes indeed. And the reason for this is entirely evident. The blog world has been frenzied for the last 72 hours over this, and it’s been channeled through all the big media outlets, including print, television, Web. That’s on a global scale. So of course the number of downloads will be high. And the barrel of fodder is far from empty, so I imagine this boomer of a browser is going to climb a good bit higher still. The trend says so.

The question to ask, though, is just how high will it go? Is it going grow so large as to eat others’ shares of the market? Is it going to be a Red Alert phase at Mozilla for the foreseeable future? Will IE decline further? What about the bottom feeders, Opera, Safari, et al.?

In short, the answers are: pretty high; yes; yes; yes; those’ll budge a little. Indeed, Chrome is that big. It will be, anyway.

Let’s look sensibly at the situation here. Chrome was released to a resounding applause. Everyone’s voiced pros and cons, more the first than the second. And it hasn’t even had time to make itself feel briefly at home on the Mac OS X. Not to say that Mac adoption will draw enormous oohs and aahs, but OS X users tend to be a more tech savvy bunch. More in tune with the ways of this progressive chaos we show such love for. I count myself part of that club. And they’ll download in great numbers as well, and you can bet that those numbers to come will bump Chrome up even further. The biggest loser in that case will presumably be Safari, which, despite its conveniences, is hardly the force that Firefox has become.

Now, in Firefox’s case, it’s a far more complex picture. I dare say Mozilla isn’t very happy with Chrome’s release, because it can only slow the rate of Firefox 3 downloads. And Mozilla is very much about growth at this point. It has been for some time. It saw that, given the right amount of noise at the grassroots, it could yoink some pie from MSFT. And more and more. The record set for browser downloads in June only furthered its advantage. And now Google comes along, promising something open source as well, with some core aspects that surely make folks at the Foundation envious, if not a bit sour. Mozilla will continue, no doubt. But it sees that it isn’t the only slick magician in town, and having to compete while watching its own tail isn’t something it’s really very used to. Sure, Mozilla thinks the IE team has moved forward a bit with its feature set, but it can’t seriously think that what Microsoft offers is really so cool. Mozilla is the bad-ass benchmark. Now Google has stolen some of that hard-earned thunder. Even though Google has done so completely legitimately.

It’s true, Google says it’s not out to conquer. It’s lending a helping hand. So everyone is better off. But as with anything it’s done as good or better than other big-name Internet companies, once it tastes success, it cannot help but add fuel to the fire. And add fuel it will. Enough Web users will be happy to try something “better,” “more convenient,” “more reliable,” “safer,” even though the gauges for such metrics are hugely subjective and vary case-by-case, that the company will see that 1% climb to 2%. And well beyond, I think. No, not to the point of surpassing IE. But a low double-digit it will be. Give it 12-24 months, and see how the field looks then.

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