Who's building Babelgum?
Babelgum is software developed by Babel Networks, a venture of Silvio Scaglia (one of the founders of FASTWEB) started in 2005 with the aim to develop interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the internet using peer-to-peer TV technology. Babelgum has raised $13.2 million, that entire sum has come directly from its founder and Chairman, Silvio Scaglia.
Erik Lumer - Founder
Mallku Caballero - CTO
Michael O’Callaghan - COO
Silvio Scaglia - Founder and Chairman of the Board
Valerio Zingarelli - CEO
Whats Babelgum
Babelgum is a new way of conceiving television, a free on-demand TV over the Internet that lets you watch whatever you want, whenever you want as often as you want.
Technology
As the platform uses peer-to-peer technology, the quality and reliability of the streaming remains consistent regardless of how many users are currently watching, each serving as a node, simultaneously uploading and downloading content to peers in the network.
Goal
Is it possible to build a web based application that does not require any downloads, that is comparable to the downloadable executable Babelgum application. This mashup has been done with 1 flash file as compared to Babelgum which requires 100's of files. The following are screens of Babelgum vs. my Flash version. As compared to Joost taking one month to develop, this application was completed in one week, is 40% the size of Joost and more functionality.
Browser support overview
Babelgum does not support browser based viewing, to use the application it must be downloaded and installed and only works on Windows. The flash based version works in all browsers on all operating systems and plays immediately. All enhancements and upgrades are transparent to the user and the application continues to retain the user preferences since the application is hosted on a server.
