Before jumping to it, it may be smart to remind yourself of the legal issues currently facing both the Pirate Bay founders and perhaps more importantly, the non-commercial cases of Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas-Rasset.

Most recently, the Department of Justice upheld the award of 1.92 million dollars to the RIAA from single mom Jammie Thomas-Rasset. Minnesota woman Thomas-Rasset is expected to pay $80,000 per song for 24 KaZaA files she'd downloaded in 2004. The RIAA has gone after more than 20,000 people for music piracy, but has more recently chosen to focus on internet service providers rather than on non-commercial infringers. Depending on your country of residence, getting caught using the Pirate Bay archive file could be devastating.

If you're still curious, or you simply want to read the comments, the download page is available here.

On the blog, the group hopes to alleviate concerns by saying:
"If the new owners screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want it to. And - you can now not only share files, but shares, with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat off us."

Judging by blog comments, it's obvious that users are extremely concerned. Global Gaming Factory will be taking over operation of the site in August 2009. As part of this acquisition, GGF can now incorporate the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SICS, Swedish Institute of Computer Science's new data distribution technology - Peerialism. Presumably the service will increase torrent speeds.

Additionally, says GGF CEO, Hans Pandeya, "We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site."

It will be interesting to see if fans will stick with the service and how the company's revenue program will differ from predecessors like Grooveshark's compensation service for file uploaders.

Thanks to Steven for the tip!

UPDATE: According to TorrentFreak, The Pirate Bay will be using a 3rd party tracker and host for torrents. We'll just have to wait and see if this has to do with GGF's move with Peerialism.

Qtask Overview

Like SharePoint, Qtask offers a number of features for team collaboration including discussion boards, wikis, file sharing, form creation tools, RSS, calendaring, and full contextual search. With its comprehensive tool set, projects can be created, managed, maintained, and tracked. Because all the information relating to various tasks is online, new team members can get up-to-date quickly on the status of various projects just by signing into Qtask.

Getting Started

When you first sign into Qtask, you're presented with a global dashboard from which you can see an overview of all the most important items, including tasks and their status, meetings you've been invited to and those you're scheduled to attend, recently updated wikis and files, your schedule, team members and other important top-level items. The layout of these items is similar to that of iGoogle and its widgets, which makes it easy to see at a glance everything that you need to focus on.

Global Dashboard

At the top of this dashboard is navigation that can take you deeper into the site - to discussion boards, team calendars, project homepages, and more. Like the global dashboard, each project's homepage focuses on just the key items (meetings, tasks, files, etc.) for that specific project.

It's All In The Details

Although there are many portals for team collaboration like this available today, it's the little details in Qtask that make it worth a look. For example, in the discussion threads, discussions can be set to public or private, unread items appear in a different color, and you can flag items as "hot" to draw attention to them. Team calendars feature thumbnails of the members faces and discussion areas where members can work out details, discuss agendas, etc.

Editing the Meeting Deatails

Other great features include version control for uploaded files and syndication (via RSS) of file shares and wikis - and both of which can even be shared with those outside the company. A site-wide search box lets you perform searches and also offers a number of advanced options to help you find just what you need:

Other Features

Built-in tools for form creation are also included with Qtask as is a mail feature which can be used for internal communications. Outside email like that from Gmail or Yahoo can be integrated with Qtask via IMAP support.

However, one of the most useful features in Qtask is its ability to track changes. File history can be tracked as to who uploaded, downloaded, or accessed a file and when. Tasks, meetings, wikis, and discussions can be tracked as well. This feature has made Qtask so popular with lawyers, that the company will soon be releasing a customized version just for them. (Out of Qtask's initial crop of 2000 users, many are lawyers).

Keeping Track of Changes

Finally, Qtask is available via a mobile browser - a must have for today's on-the-go workforce and remote workers. Whether you use a Blackberry, iPhone, or a standard mobile of some sort, you have access to everything on the site.

On The Horizon

In addition to the upcoming version of Qtask customized for lawyers offices, the company also hopes to create more customized versions for several different types of companies, including perhaps doctors or real estate offices, as those are other popular users of their program.

They also plan to release an enterprise version later on which can be implemented on a company's own servers as an alternative to the SaaS solution they have today.

Affordable And Feature-Rich

Qtask offers plenty of features which will appeal to the SMB market looking for a project-focused web-based tool for team collaboration. The service is very affordable, too: free for 5 users for the first year and comes with 5 hours of free training. Additional users are $50/each per month. Prices include the ability to create unlimited projects, access to online training and online technical support.

At launch time, Qtask is offering a special: charter accounts will only be charged $25/year for additional users.

You can learn more about Qtask from visiting their web site, available at www.qtask.com.

But the competition here is not Microsoft. For the business user, the competition is Blackberry; and Blackberry is not Microsoft. I am a long time Blackberry user and it is seldom annoying. It just gets the job done. So unlike when I switched back from Windows to Mac, which I did with a big sigh of relief, I am in no hurry to switch based on anything wrong with what I have.

And a few reviews are making me think that iPhone could be a high maintenance date. Sure, high maintenance dates can be fun, but I am judging this on boring utility criteria. For example:

1. Keyboard. I am ready to be convinced by touch-screen keyboards. But I am not sure I want to spend the time adjusting. Outside the USA, where SMS is the major use of a mobile phone, I think this is a big deal. Flipping to horizontal is neat, but does this work for email?

2. Battery. Any mobile device that cannot do a full day's work and play without re-charge is a pain. You don't want to be in "don't leave home without it" mode regarding your charger unless you are going for more than a day. On a normal day, it's plug it in before you go to sleep and pick it up in the morning.

3. It's a bit big as a phone. OK, so is the Blackberry. But, as they say, size matters when you are holding it to your ear. Some people express almost comical amusement at the idea of using the iPhone as a phone - "you still call people, how quaint". Then don't call it a Phone, because it does set that expectation.

I know that resistance is futile. I will get an iPhone eventually. Or Blackberry will give me a better browser, which is really what I love about iPhone.

The killer app for me? Skype to Skype calls over WiFi. I believe that requires an unlocked iPhone. It would dramatically change the economics of mobile phones. Which AT&T certainly knows and will be resisting for as long as possible.

Plus a really slim but full function collapsible keyboard, so I can write full length stuff as easily as on my laptop. And then a simple way to plug into any screen that's around, so I can edit docs stored in the cloud. So that I can stop lugging around my laptop; that's a big win for people who spend a lot of time away from their desk.

My guess is that the iPhone ecosystem will bring all these things to market fairly soon. The iPhone is the first real new platform since Windows (sorry, Facebook).

Image: After the iPhone Keynote, Jan 2007; pic by mac steve