LOST Finale Breaks BitTorrent Records

LOST has come to an end, and the final episodes are now clogging up the BitTorrent pipelines.

Sunday night ABC aired the final episode of LOST in North America. It was also shown in 59 countries either on the same night, or within 48 hours. It's speculated that ABC chose this schedule to reduce the amount of pirating so that fans could get the full impact of the ending without torrent-based spoilers hitting the Internet. Apparently that didn't work.

It seems that despite ABC's efforts, the final two episodes of LOST have shattered all previous BitTorrent records with close to a million downloads in the first 20 hours. In fact, at peak, more than 100,000 people were sharing a single torrent at the same time. Typically a single episode of LOST is downloaded just under 1.5 million times in its first appearance on BitTorrent. However the two final episodes--What They Died For and The End--are expected to reach four or five million downloads by the end of the week.

A large percentage of the downloads come from outside the United States, with 15-percent linked to Australian fans who couldn't wait for the season finale to air on Wednesday night. Anxious fans in other countries experiencing ABC's 48-hour delay also jumped on BitTorrent. Although some of us haven't seen the series conclusion, the controversy surrounding LOST's final hours is also a contributing factor to the record number of downloads on a global scale. There's no doubt that fans who missed the original ABC airings will flock to BitTorrent rather than wait for reruns of the episodes this summer.

Of course, for those who just can't bring themselves to load up BitTorrent, What They Died For and the first half of The End can be seen (with limited commercial interruptions) onlinehere.

Future of Facebook in Pakistan after May 31st

As per orders, PTA will update Lahore High Court regarding the situation on May 31^st, 2010 after which it will decide to lift the ban or otherwise to continue with it.

Both the polls show that majority of internet users in the country are fine with the ban and they don’t have same kind of love for Facebook like before.

However, it is apparent that there are people who don’t support the ban – in fact they are against it as they translate it as internet censorship.

High ups are PTA foresee that ban will be lifted on May 31^st, 2010. However, at the same time they fear large scale protests from the public after the ban will be lifted.

They said that Facebook has removed the page for now but there is no guarantee that it will remain offline as Facebook hasn’t said anything officially – so LHC’s mood on May 31^stcan’t be determined as of today.

They said that if page remains offline for another week then there are good chances that LHC will offload the ban.

High ups at PTA said that even if Facebook is unbanned, authority may not lift the ban from Youtube. They said Youtube was contacted number of times in the past, but they are too careless to comply with blasphemy act of the country.

Political corners opine that few elements may use the situation. They said that Government may keep Facebook banned until it will lift it at right time. They say government can use Facebook for political purposes as a tool to divert the attention of masses from NRO cases in Supreme Court.

If unbanned, majority of internet users in Pakistan won’t love the Facebook like they used to before this incident. A question mark on Facebook’s ability to manage religious matters is leaving many minds confused to either use it again or not.

Some bloggers and webmasters have already taken down Facebook widgets from their websites and may never use them again.

Emergence of local social network will be on the rise, for some time, until they will vanish away due to lack of technical and online marketing expertise.

However there is no doubt that this is best time for enterprises to invest in social networking solutions, but only if their applications are solid, robust, feature rich and competitive.

AT&T Offers Unlock Codes for Almost All Devices

A class action lawsuit against AT&T has resulted in settlement that is likely to please many: AT&T will provide unlock codes for almost all pre-paid and post-paid devices sold after March 12 1999.

However, the customers crying loudest for this kind of arrangement are probably iPhone customers and unfortunately, they're not covered by the policy. According to the Consumerist, the policy requires post-paid customers to have completed a minimum of 90 days of active service. Pre-paid customers must provide a detailed receipt or other proof of purchase of the handset. Further, customers who own handsets for which AT&T has an exclusive sales arrangement with a manufacturer of less than 10 months will have to wait until the 10-month period expires before they can receive an unlocking code.

That sounds very reasonable, but because the AT&T/Apple sales agreement is more than 10 months (we may not know when it ends but it's been nearly three years to date), iPhone users are still pretty much stuck with AT&T.

Nayatel Offers New Packages, Upto 5 Mbps

Nayatel is offering new packages for home users with very catchy price tags.

Real attraction is unlimited downloads at 5 MB speed from 8:00 PM to 8:00 AM with 1 MB link during the day at Rs. 1,699. All this comes on Nayatel’s fiber, meaning that no dependency on copper wire resulting smooth speed without fulmination.

Please note that this service is available for Islamabad and Rawalpindi only.

Traiffs:

Upfront Charges:

Installation Charges: For Corporate Customers Installation: Rs. 6, 000 – For Home Customers Installation charges Rs.3, 000

Alcatel Optical Network Terminal (ONT): Rs. 24,000 to Rs. 25,0000 (Can be paid in monthly installments if agreed)

Online Retailer Makes Million-Dollar Pricing Mistake

A pricing error has forced an online retailer to honor weekend sales and lose more than $1 million.

Ever wondered what would happen if you accidentally marked almost all of your online products with the same pricetag no matter the original cost? That's what happened with 6pm.com, and the mistake has now cost the online retailer a huge wad of money. Apparently someone in the merchandising team set most of the prices at $49.99. The problem is that many products originally retailed for $1,000.

"When we figured out the mistake was happening, we had to shut down the site for a bit until we got the pricing problem fixed," said Aaron Magness, director of brand marketing and business development for parent company Zappos Development. "While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss selling so many items so far under cost."

Ultimately the company lost over $1.6 million from the pricing mistake, and 6pm.com has vowed to honor all purchases that took place within the time frame of the erroneous pricing. "We apologize to anyone that was confused and/or frustrated during out little hiccup, and thank you all for being such great customers," Magness added. There was no indication that the one responsible for the pricing error still had a job.

"Shop. Save. Smile," reads the company's logo. No doubt plenty of customers were smiling over the weekend.