In what is likely to be a major shift in the company’s strategy, peer-to-peer startup Joost is going to stop making its desktop client.

The decision to suspend the client is likely to be announced soon. The company is going to a browser-only strategy, in which much of its content is going to be available through a browser-based player. Joost, will release a small plug-in that would embed itself in the browser and allow you to grab files using the P2P technologies. The web client is likely to have better quality than average video sites.

People have been avidly feeding music CDs into their computers for years, ripping digital copies of albums and transferring the files to their other computers and mobile devices.

This has not happened nearly as much with DVDs, for both practical and legal reasons. But that may soon change.

On Monday, RealNetworks, the digital media company in Seattle, will introduce RealDVD, a $30 software program for Windows computers that allows users to easily make a digital copy of an entire DVD — down to the extras and artwork from the box.

The software, which will go on sale on Real.com and Amazon.com this month, will allow buyers to make one copy of a DVD, playable only on the computer where it was made. The user can transfer that copy to up to five other Windows computers, but only by buying additional copies of the software for $20 each. The software does not work on high-definition Blu-ray discs, which the movie industry has even more aggressively sought to protect from illicit copying.

Now if you ask me, RealNetworks did not learn anything about the bad feeling people have with regards to DRM. Who on earth would want to buy a software to rip DVDs that limits the user on how to use the copy, when they can get a perfectly good and easy programs free or comercial that do not impose such restrictions.

Apple has finally admitted that a British man who left school at 15 is the inventor behind the iPod.

Kane Kramer, 52, came up with the technology that drives the digital music player nearly 30 years ago but has still not seen a penny from his invention.

And the father of three is so hard up he had to sell his home last year and move his family to rented accommodation.
Kramer

Good idea: Apple admitted Kane Kramer invented the technology behind the iPod

Now documents filed by Apple in a court case show the US firm acknowledges him as the father of the iPod.

The computer giant even flew Mr Kramer to its Californian headquarters to give evidence in its defence during a legal wrangle with another firm, Burst.com, which claimed it held patents to technology in the iPod and deserved a cut of Apple’s £89billion profits.

Two years ago, Mr Kramer told this newspaper how he had invented the device in 1979 – when he was just 23.

His invention, called the IXI, stored only 3.5 minutes of music on to a chip – but Mr Kramer rightly believed its capacity would improve.

His sketches at the time showed a credit-card-sized player with a rectangular screen and a central menu button to scroll through a selection of music tracks – very similar to the iPod.

He took out a worldwide patent and set up a company to develop the idea.

But in 1988, after a boardroom split, he was unable to raise the £60,000 needed to renew patents across 120 countries and the technology became public property.