“Too many choices create inefficiencies in the market”.

Hooman A. Bamdad
Wambo Virtuoso

Quick post to highlight a few of the new features for the week:
- Buddy list view, with easy collapse/expand button that lets you switch to full view
- Quick Add to a group, on right click, as well as View AIM profile
- Shortcut to send media with Speed Booster, on contact right click

That’s all for now! More to come.

-arnaud

That’s Guillaume’s plant. It’s been there for about a year - he got it early 2006 when we moved into our Sunnyvale offices.

The last few days have been dedicated to debugging activities, as well as user interviews for Wambo. We are trying to learn as much as possible from “real users” - as our eyes are getting tired and somewhat used to the great Wambo benefits.

One thing that amazes me is the speed at which we have been making changes - upgrading shooter to Wambo was a big deal, but that only took a month and a half to complete. Yet, speed of innovation seems even higher these days - we’re on almost daily releases and bringing in new people for critique as often as possible.

Feels strange to be just a few days away from Christmas, time has gone by very fast.

-arnaud

Otherwise we’re still having lots of fun!!

Today’s release is ready - check it out!

(See download section to the right).

Ahhhh, Starbucks coffee — hmmmmmm — the smell, the taste, the baristas…

Until recently, we were grabbing coffee every morning on our way to work - “we” meaning the coffee junkies here at Wambo (Arnaud, Guillaume and I). Problem is… Starbucks + chocolate croissant = $3.50 every morning, and 300 grams of saturated fat.

Now we have our new coffee mugs, coffee maker. We buy still brew Starbucks - tastes the same. Just missing the atmosphere but it’s fun here at Wambo… so get your Wam’bucks!

The new setup’s ready - get it at wambo.com/team/download/. Fixed a few things, added a few UI tweaks.

1) To install from scratch (no previous shooter or Wambo version): Simply doubleclick on the setup file. When you get to the InstallShield, slow down and makes sure you change shooterserver.shooter7.net to smdev.perenety.com.

2) To upgrade: Go to task manager, and manually kill the Wambo.exe process (this is a known issue). Then run the setup file.

We have a new version available, that’s easier to install. Get it here.

As always, feedback’s much appreciated!

NOTE: don’t forget to follow instructions from the post here below (put in smdev.perenety.com in the server step).

It’s a beautiful day here in the bay area, not what you’d expect on Thanksgiving. Later today, all of us are taking some time off and spending the evening with family and friends.

So far, the day’s been different. This morning on the way to work the highway was totally empty, shortening my morning drive to a mere 10 minutes. Oddly enough, coffee line at Starbucks was longer than usual. And strange (but expected), the parking lot was empty when I arrived at work.

But as usual, by 9:30 it was full deck here at wambo, on a day off. Everyone’s here emailing, debugging, calling people or tweaking servers. How do you tell people to stop working? Totally clueless on this one. Thanks to everyone who’s made this possible. Thanks for the dedication. Thanks for the energy. Thanks again again and again. Now let’s conquer new heights.

-xavier

Wambo is best known for its product, Swapper, which lets users compress and share their media publicly (via a profile page) or privately. Swapper (and early messaging prototypes Wambo has developed in the past) leverages the Wambo File System (WFS), a unique technology that enables large file transfers with virtually no infrastructure cost. Without the WFS, it would be impossible to deliver Swapper’s great benefits without running and maintaining hundreds, if not thousands of servers. So what’s the WFS and how does it work?

The WFS is the first hybrid P2P network to cleverly combine the latest compression, error correction and peer-swarming technologies to massively reduce bandwidth and infrastructure costs. Whether deployed as a peer-assisted CDN, or as the pending-pending infrastructure-less peer CDN, the Wambo File System provides unbeatable performance and cost efficiency in all content delivery scenarios.

In the first deployment model, called peer-assisted CDN, bandwidth and storage costs are balanced between centrally hosted servers and client peers. When transferring files via the Wambo File System (“WFS”), such as video files, the content is initially pre-processed, uploaded and stored to a hosted server. When the receiving-end triggers a download event, the fragments needed to rebuild the file are retrieved from the hosted storage servers, and other peer clients that have a local copy of the same file. Here are the steps in greater detail:

1. Pre-processing. The upload preparation is a critical phase where content is transformed in order to minimize bandwidth consumption and efficiently organize how the file fragments will be transmitted and stored.

Files are initially compressed and resized in the case of media content (optional), which can reduce their size by up to 95%. Immediately thereafter, the compressed content is fragmented into smaller pieces, and error corrected for redundancy purposes (using the low-density parity check code implementation of Forward Error Correction). A tracker for each of the files is also generated.

2. Upload. Prior to initiating the file transfer process, the client software will automatically verify that the files have not been uploaded already using a secure and anonymous signature check. If one of the files already has been uploaded by any user of software, then it does not need to be re-uploaded again (results in bandwidth savings and performance improvements).

3. Storage. Content is stored on hosted servers controlled by Wambo. These storage servers are commodity machines running the WFS, and acting individual storage units. Each of the fragments is saved to a pre-determined server, according to the instructions contained in the file tracker. Further, since each of the files has been error corrected, it doesn’t matter if one of the servers goes offline: files can be reconstructed from a fraction of the original fragments.

4. Download. When the receiving client requests a download for the file, or if pre-fetching has started, the file tracker is used to locate the fragments needed on the storage servers, or additional peer computers which may have downloaded a copy of the same file already.

5. Swarming. A fraction of the content will be downloaded from peer computers that are online and have a copy of the file that’s been downloaded. Swarming enables additional bandwidth savings since it offloads the central servers. It also allows large popular files to be delivered at a near-zero cost and excellent performance.

6. Reconstruction. As the file is downloaded from its fragments, and since all files are error corrected, regular checks are made until enough fragments have been retrieved to rebuild the original file. When the download is considered complete, the content is decompressed, de-encrypted and presented to the receiving end.

In the second deployment model, called Peer CDN, the entire download and storage burden is taken by peer clients, leaving the central servers virtually idle (with the exception of file tracker transactions). In this type of deployment, which does not require central hosted storage, fragments are uploaded directly to a set of available peer computers.

To download the file, the receiver will use the file tracker to locate where each of the fragments are located, and initiate concurrent download operations until enough fragments have been retrieved to rebuild the file.

Since the WFS uses error correction (FEC), the file can be rapidly reconstructed even if some of the fragments are missing.

Media delivery costs. Compared to centralized delivery techniques, the Wambo’s peer-assisted delivery method lowers the bandwidth and storage costs for popular files. The peer CDN outperforms any other delivery techniques from the very first delivery, keeping the marginal cost per download constant for any audience scale.

It’s the event everyone’s been waiting for… the return of the rain here in northern California. This Monday morning, clouds were gathering above our heads and for the first time in 5 or 6 months, we considered having our daily Starbucks coffee inside, not outside. One last time, said Guillaume. OK, OK.

But at about 1PM, it started to pour down pretty hard - drenching the entire Bay Area. It’s not cold, it’s just raining. Yet, it feels different somehow. Maybe it’s the sounds - you hear sirens a lot more often (roads are incredibly slippery right after the first rain), and it feels less active (more quiet) when you’re outside. Maybe it’s that grayish cloud layer. Or it could be Starbucks’ colorful change for Christmas.

Ski season is about to start too. Tahoe gets lots of snow in the winter and it’s relatively easy and fast to get there from the Bay Area. Can’t wait for the (true) cold!