LIBOX

LIBOX
Developer(s)	Erez Pilosof
Initial release	June 22, 2010
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Website	http://www.libox.com/

Last updated October 06, 2019

LIBOX was a free platform that allowed users to access and share their high definition media collections, including video, photos and music, across various devices and with friends. LIBOX offered this service for free thanks to a patent pending combination of peer-to-peer, grid and distributed computing technologies. LIBOX consisted of a downloadable desktop application that works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and a web-based interface. The service was accessed by any Web browser and placed no limitations on the amount of media that can be added or the number of people with which it can be shared.^[1]

Free software software licensed to preserve user freedoms

Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price: users—individually or in cooperation with computer programmers—are free to do what they want with their copies of a free software regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program. Computer programs are deemed free if they give users ultimate control over the software and, subsequently, over their devices.

A user is a person who utilizes a computer or network service. Users of computer systems and software products generally lack the technical expertise required to fully understand how they work. Power users use advanced features of programs, though they are not necessarily capable of computer programming and system administration.

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, documents or electronic books. File sharing may be achieved in a number of ways. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include manual sharing utilizing removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, World Wide Web-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking.

History

LIBOX was founded in 2008 by Erez Pilosof, who previously founded Walla!, the first major web portal in Israel. Pilosof created LIBOX to allow users to manage and share media across all devices and keep its original high quality. He saw that as a consumer, trying to store your media on several different devices and in many different partial areas online was becoming an annoyance; it "seemed very limited and tedious and problematic”^[2] Pilosof created LIBOX as a way to provide a smooth and dependable way for people to enjoy his/her media anywhere.

Walla! Communications Ltd. is an Israeli internet company headquartered in Tel Aviv and is fully owned by Bezeq. Walla!'s web portal provides news, search and e-mail, among other things. It is also one of the first Israeli internet portals, and is considered as one of the most popular web sites in the country. As of October 2016, Alexa rankings put it in the top 9 sites by traffic originating in Israel.

A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information ; often, the user can configure which ones to display. Variants of portals include mashups and intranet "dashboards" for executives and managers. The extent to which content is displayed in a "uniform way" may depend on the intended user and the intended purpose, as well as the diversity of the content. Very often design emphasis is on a certain "metaphor" for configuring and customizing the presentation of the content and the chosen implementation framework or code libraries. In addition, the role of the user in an organization may determine which content can be added to the portal or deleted from the portal configuration.

Israel, also known as the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia, located on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west, respectively, and Egypt to the southwest. The country contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel's economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state's sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition.

The company started working on the patent-pending technology to power LIBOX in the Fall of 2008, released an Alpha version in October 2009 and launched a Beta version on June 22, 2010. The company has received funding from investors such as Evergreen Venture Partners and Rhodium to help grow the platform.^[3]

A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software: ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help improve software or fix software bugs still present in the software.

LIBOX closed down in 2011.

Technology

The distributed LIBOX platform effectively creates private clouds that communicate between devices and Web browsers through a combination of algorithms, grids and peer-to-peer networking technologies. Files are not uploaded to an external server but streamed straight from the computer of the user that holds the file.^[4] The mixture of technologies allows LIBOX to never limit how much media can be added to the platform, while keeping the service free for users. The LIBOX platform uses a single interface rendered in HTML across desktop, web and mobile applications. The LIBOX mobile applications are expected to be made available in Summer 2010.

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet. Large clouds, predominant today, often have functions distributed over multiple locations from central servers. If the connection to the user is relatively close, it may be designated an edge server.

A web browser is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. When a user opens a particular website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server then displays the resulting web page on the user's device.

In computing, a server is a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called "clients". This architecture is called the client–server model, and a single overall computation is distributed across multiple processes or devices. Servers can provide various functionalities, often called "services", such as sharing data or resources among multiple clients, or performing computation for a client. A single server can serve multiple clients, and a single client can use multiple servers. A client process may run on the same device or may connect over a network to a server on a different device. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers.

Functionality

The platform allows users to “simply add a song to the Libox desktop application” making it “instantly available on a user’s smartphone and any other computer through a web browser.” ^[5] When it introduces native mobile applications, LIBOX will allow you to take a photo or record a song on a mobile device and automatically add it to your LIBOX library, accessible across your devices. Ultimately, it syncs all of media regardless of “file formats, folders, settings” and allows users to not worry about "file quality loss or cloud storage capacity."^[5]

Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or in time. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronous or in sync—and those that are not are asynchronous.

LIBOX also allows users to share their media collection with other LIBOX users. The platform lets users create contact lists and instantly invite friends to enjoy their media. LIBOX uses the same technology to sync as it does to share it with friends.

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References

↑ "LIBOX Lets You Enjoy Your Entire Digital Media Collection on Any Device". marketwire.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.
↑ "A Way to Share Music and Movies from Any Device | MIT Technology Review". technologyreview.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.
↑ "Libox Enables Personal Media Streaming On the Go". newteevee.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.
↑ "Libox lets you access media files from anywhere, easily share files with no limits | VentureBeat | Media | by Devindra Hardawar". media.venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.
1 2 "Courtney Boyd Myers: Libox: Your "Library Inbox" Launches". huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[marketwire-1] "LIBOX Lets You Enjoy Your Entire Digital Media Collection on Any Device". marketwire.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.

[technologyreview-2] "A Way to Share Music and Movies from Any Device | MIT Technology Review". technologyreview.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.

[newteevee-3] "Libox Enables Personal Media Streaming On the Go". newteevee.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.

[venturebeat-4] "Libox lets you access media files from anywhere, easily share files with no limits | VentureBeat | Media | by Devindra Hardawar". media.venturebeat.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.

[huffpo-5] 1 2 "Courtney Boyd Myers: Libox: Your "Library Inbox" Launches". huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.