Izimi: self-hosted user-generated content

Interesting service — izimi. The blurb claims that

izimi is the future of Internet publishing. izimi enables you to publish and serve files, photos, music and videos, in fact anything, straight from your PC to anyone with a browser.

* Why do you have to upload your content to other people’s servers in order to publish and share it?
* Why must you give up control of your files to a third party?
* Who dictates what files you can upload, how many, and how big they can be? If not you, why not?

izimi places the power right in your hands, where it should be – it’s a truly democratic web. With izimi there’s no need to upload your content to any server: you decide what you’ll publish, there are no limits on quantity or quality (we won’t degrade your videos, photos or music), and you retain ownership and control.

Download the free izimi application to start publishing anything you like, to anyone you like. Use it for photos, videos, music, documents, anything – all it takes is a few clicks. izimi gives you simple URLs that you can use in email, IM, or any website, blog, or forum…

Only available to PC users, though. Wonder how the technology works: it sounds like P2P, but the FAQs say it isn’t.

izimi is made up of two elements: the izimi application and the izimi website.
The izimi application – the izimi application runs in the background on your PC and works a little like a web server. You choose what files to publish, you can add rich descriptions and tags to help other people find them, and you simply click publish. Izimi create a friendly URL for each item published. izimis web services operate a bit like a domain name server (DNS), pointing other users browsers direct to the publishers PC in response to requests for specific URLs. The izimi application on the publishers PC then serves the file to the user. In some circumstances certain firewall or router configurations wont allow a users computer to serve published media directly, and in these situations izimis web services become a sort of traffic controller to direct and stream content from the publishers PC to users.
The izimi website  The izimi website (www.izimi.com) is like an index of all izimi users and their published content. At izimi.com anyone (not just izimi publishers) can search for people and published content, rate, comment, add friends, and do all the community activities commonly associated with social networks.

Hmmm… These guys may be good at software but they know nothing of apostrophes.