Swedish grannies are connecting to the net at 40 gigabits per second life; 100 megabit per seconds are becoming common place in Japan and Korea; and even French are dreaming of an ultra-fast fiber future. And yet, in the US we are all stuck in the slow lane, settling for speeds between 768 kbps to 8 megabits per second. I have often wondered what it would be like to have a 100 megabits per second, and what I would do with that much bandwidth.
So last month when Verizon (VZ) folks got in touch and talked about their 100 megabits per second experiments (over FiOS fiber) I was intrigued. (Of course that doesn’t mean that your FiOS connection is going to be getting an upgrade anytime soon.)
They said I could do an e-interview with Richard S. Guziewicz, one of the two Verizon employees testing this testing this experimental set-up. I just couldn’t resist asking him about the 100 Mbps-life, and if that much speed had really changed his online life. (His connection is 100 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up.) I took out some relevant bits from the email interview (sanitized by Verizon PR) for this post.
Since for the most part the Internet and most services that use the Internet don’t run that fast, it would be tough to say it’s a life-changing experience right now. The up-front answer is it works well. I use my 100 Mbps FiOS connection for typical web access (e-mail, news, etc), some online video, as well as for work (VPN access).
The applications of today are clearly optimized for our 3-to-6 megabits per second connections. From Facebook to MySpace to YouTube – they all work well on what passes for broadband in the US and Europe. Guziewicz pointed out that despite higher speeds, the usage behavior hadn’t really changed.
Nothing that new yet. I’ve found that all the things I did on my PC with 15Mbps service, I can do with 100Mbps. If I visited web sites that were optimized to allow true 100 Mbps downloads, then I might be able to say it makes a difference.
Video, rather online video would have been one obvious application where the excess bandwidth should help right away, though from Guziewicz’s comments it doesn’t seem so. (Of course no one would talk-out loud about torrentastic life on the record .)
I visit streaming sites such as YouTube, Metacafe, and CNN but they don’t require super high speeds. Some video download sites might benefit but generally they don’t support very high speeds either. For instance, I have a 100 Mbps pipe to my home, but if I try to download a file from a certain HD video site, I find I may get only 3 Mbps of download speed, which I believe is a limitation of the site and its servers.
Guziewicz’s comments dovetail with my post from last week about Internet Infrastructure. It wasn’t an “Internet is broken” dooms day post. Instead it was an attempt to point out that we need to prepare for a network that can support more immersive and interactive applications to bloom. My biggest lament was that there weren’t many next generation infrastructure companies getting off the ground.
Anyway, what would you do with 100 megabits/second connection if you had one!
Babelgum (the “other” peer-to-peer Internet TV startup), will host an online film festival to “reward the very best in international independent short filmmaking.” They even got Spike Lee to be an “honorary” judge (read: he’ll only watch a handful of of flicks). It’s great that Babelgum is creating a program to recognize the short film format, but there are some problems with this festival. Continue reading to find out.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Greg Gibson, one of the founders of BetaHouse, a CoWorking group here in Boston. The premise of BetaHouse is pretty simple: For $400 a month, you get a desk, WiFi, access to a fully stocked (beer, caffeinated beverages and fatty snacks) refrigerator, a barbecue every Friday, music, and — most importantly — a group of other geeks with which to network, socialize and bounce around ideas.
The idea is to provide a creative environment in which techies and entrepreneurs can develop their ideas and bring them to market — and of course, get funding.
One idea that Gibson himself has developed in the BetaHouse office is PrayAbout, a social networking site based around support and prayer. Once you join the site, you can put in prayer requests that other people will answer, effectively creating a support group community to help you deal with your challenges.
The site appears to perform a useful social function and attracts people from around the world. One thing that Greg noted was that a number of people who have received support (such as a suicidal man in South Africa) have in turn become more involved with the site, providing support to others.
PrayAbout is quite different from other social networking sites in that it’s not ad-supported — all revenue is derived through subscriptions. It currently has some 14,000 subscribers, and that number is growing.
As for BetaHouse, time will tell how well this works. One issue I see is turnover. Once an idea is funded, the developers behind it will likely move to new offices in order to accommodate an expanding team, continually leaving BetaHouse with empty desks that need to be filled.
It’s somewhat ironic that I’m reading a Sunday newspaper while also reading online about Google’s agreement to enter into a wholesale agreement with four news wires - Associated Presss, Agence France-Presse, Press Association of Britain and Canadian Press.
Mathew Ingram provides a succinct take on what the deal means but the bottom line is many newspapers could start to see far less traffic from Google News. This is because Google will highlight stories provided by the news wires, which could see Google News users visit AP’s Web site, for example, rather than newspapers that publish (and pay for) AP’s stories.
Google may claim nothing much will change but this agreement is another punch below the belt for newspaper industry, which has not been waging a fight to remain viable as the Web becomes the way more people consume news. If you thought newspapers (and Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell) were having issues with Google News and how it was “aggregating” their content before, you can now expect some major fireworks to happen.
Do not be surprised, for example, if newspapers start to demand to have their content pulled from Google News. A big obstacle, however, is Google News accounts for a huge chunk of traffic for many newspapers so leaving it would be a major decision.
Still, maybe it’s time for some of the major newspapers (e.g The Guardian, New York Times, L.A. Times) to create their own online news portal to compete with Google News. Or perhaps it’s time for the newspaper industry to get behind Topix, whose investors include Gannett Co, The McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co.
The bottom line is there is a major war brewing between Google News and the newspaper industry. Unless Google starts strikes more deals soon, things could get ugly.
More: If the Google News agreement was bad enough the Newspaper Association of America said ad revenue in second-quarter fell 8.6% to $11.3-billion from the same period last year. This is the fourth straight quarterly decline in ad revenue.
Go to sleep, wake up; another person claims to have invented Facebook.
Step right up, Aaron Greenberg. So let’s hear your claim, young man. So you started a service called houseSYSTEM at Harvard four months before the precocious Mark Zuckerberg started The Facebook. Other than liking your idea and starting his own social networking thing, Mr. Greenberg, what else did Zuckerberg do to support your claim? They did teach you about competition at Harvard, and how it’s okay to start rival business down the street focused on the same market.
Not to belittle Greenberg’s claim but it does demonstrate how difficult it can be to invent something.
Who really invented the airplane? Was it Clement Ader, Samuel Langley, Albert Santos-Dumont, or the Wright brothers? Who invented the telephone? Alexander Graham Bell, Philip Reis or Antonio Meucci? Truth be told, Bell Co. successfully battled 13 lawsuits over whether it invented the telephone, including five that went to the Supreme Court.
In all, the Bell Company fought out thirteen lawsuits that were of national interest, and five that were carried to the Supreme Court in Washington. It fought out five hundred and eighty-seven other lawsuits of various natures; and with the exception of two trivial contract suits, IT NEVER LOST A CASE.”
Often, invention is simply taking a nugget of a good idea, making it better through changes and improvements, and finding a market for it. A classic example is what Bill Gates did with BASIC software.
My hunch is that Greenberg’s claim has more to do with envy than IP, and that any legal efforts will fail. The people behind UConnect, which also made a claim to have invented Facebook, may stand a better chance given Zuckerberg did some programming for them while at Harvard.
(Note: I do give Greenberg credit for something getting the NYT to write up his tale of entrepreneurial woe but that may say more about the fascination with all things Facebook than anything else.)
Of course, we all know really invented Facebook: Pete Cashmore.
Update: Dana Jasper of Sonic.Net left a comment saying that this is their own initiative and the equipment is coming from Meraki.
We’re doing this independently, using equipment from Meraki. Meraki and Google have an ad partnership, and any revenues that flow from that will be split with our customers.
Dana says that if the program works well in SF, then it would be expanded to other Bay Area regions where the ISP currently offers the service. (Original post below the fold.)
Despite the best efforts of Earthlink (ENLK), Google (GOOG) and Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco MuniFi project is still stuck in neutral and going nowhere fast. For San Francisco residents, a new option has emerged: a tag team of Sonic.net, a Santa Rosa, CA-based independent ISP and that is using gear from Meraki Networks, a wireless hardware company based in Mountain View, Calif., and is trying to promote an ad-supported MuniFi model. (Its actually more like community wifi, and you can call it ComMuniFi.)
Sonic.net today notified its customers via email that they can get a Meraki wireless mesh router at a subsidized cost, which will allow them to connect it to their DSL line. The wireless router will share up to 500 kilobits per second of the bandwidth available on the DSL line.
Network users will see a Google ad bar at the top of the browser. In the future the ad revenues generated by this ad bar will be split between those who choose to opt and place a wireless router on their connection, and will be credited against their broadband bill.
It could be a rather small credit, so don’t get your hopes too high at this stage; this is still experimental and we are still working out many of the details.
This is a good model for Google to imitate in other regions as well. Google’s had to have known all along that their San Francisco grand plan was going to run ran into political trouble. The big question is why didn’t they roll out A similar service with Earthlink, a much larger ISP with many more broadband customers, would have been a better option for all concerned. I have become a fan of this community-based WiFi plan, which doesn’t need a lot of government dollars, and instead bets on citizen’s desire to share. Independent ISPs such as Sonic.Net are more likely to embrace this model.
Meraki backed by Google and Sequoia Capital, is one of the companies which has been championing a more community approach to free wifi. It recently announced plans to expand their experimental Meraki network to all across San Francisco.
Meraki has been selling its wireless 802.11b/g access point and mesh repeater, the Meraki Mini, for $49 and claims its products are already being used by 2,000 networks in 40 countries. The company also lists an outdoor ruggedized version of its Meraki Mini for $99. Meraki’s business is being built off hardware and software based on MIT’s Roofnet project. The Roofnet Project was previously funded by MIT’s Project Oxygen and NTT DoCoMo.
We’ve gotten hold of an internal email showing that Roper is planning to undo some of the expansion moves initiated by Sclavos and instead focus the company on profitability and growth. Sclavos’ regime had been all about growing revenues; to that end VeriSign diversified into many different areas — including mobile gaming, via their acquisition of Jamster.
On August 7, we submitted our 2008 Business Strategy to the Board of Directors for review, and it was approved. This strategy, the development of which began earlier this year as part of Project ONE, will among other things enable us to focus on our core strengths in DNS and SSL, as well as three select areas of growth opportunity: VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP), Messaging, and our Content Delivery Network (CDN). As I’ve said before, focus requires that we concentrate on doing a few things exceptionally well — and that’s exactly what we intend to do.
After talking to some well-placed sources, we have learned that the DNS and SSL businesses are cash cows that don’t need much of a sales team effort and continue to be highly profitable. They provide a stable foundation for VeriSign, which is why the company continues to keep them around.
In addition, VeriSign is experiencing rapid growth in its SMS-based services — it’s the SMS polling infrastructure provider, for some of the hit reality shows.
Roper Jr. has been telling Wall Street lately that he’s ready to get rid of VeriSign’s telecom operations, especially the businesses related to billing and payment. The company’s also exiting the managed security service business and its RFID-related operations. And it’s shedding businesses including Moreover Technologies and Weblogs.com, both of which it acquired in 2005. It is not clear who the buyers will be, but they are up for grabs our sources say.
The new episode of The GigaOM Show is up. In addition to our hitlines, we talk with executives from web analytics companies, Quantcast and Hitwise, and try to understand the complexities of web analytics and why it is hard to get a handle on who is the top site. We discuss, how the new distributed web impacts the web measurement business.
In what has to be the worst PR moves of all time, General Atlantic, a New York-based hedge fund, announced that it was backing a new buyout fund started by Jon Miller, former CEO of AOL and Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive.
No details on the size of the fund were offered. TechCrunch says that some reporters might have been sniffing around the story and GA decided to rush the release in order to control the message.
Reporters from Wall Street Journal perhaps? The Journal says the new company is called Velocity Investment Group and will be looking to roll up at consumer Internet and media companies, including advertising networks. WSJ says that they already have signed up letter of intent with some companies.
How long before we see more of these roll-up vehicles show up and start buying up high-traffic properties, a strategy that was pioneered by IAC’s Barry “Get Me A Bargain” Diller?
A company called Jaxtr announced Tuesday that it's raised $10 million. The company, which hopes to emulate the success of eBay's Skype, actually attracted some of the same investors as Skype. Draper ...
Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. Apple’s agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.
It didn’t seem that long ago that municipal Wi-Fi was all the rage as cities across North America scramble to roll out free or low-cost networks as an alternative to high-speed service offered by carriers and cablecos.
Today, the municipal Wi-Fi market appears to be, at best, a major disappointment. Chicago, for example, just decided to retreat from offering Wi-Fi service after failing to strike a deal with EarthLink or AT&T. In San Francisco, the city’s dream of a free Wi-Fi network has evaporated after EarthLink backed away from a plan. And here in Toronto, Toronto Hydro’s One Zone service has struggled to attract subscribers due to spotty coverage and a small network footprint.
So what’s gone wrong? In theory, a municipal Wi-Fi network should thrive given people want to be connected at any/all times. If done properly, Wi-Fi can become an important element of a city’s competitive plan to attract business while providing local citizens with an essential new economy tool.
The problem may be unrealistic expectations. It was assumed that municipal Wi-Fi was going to be a lot like broadband service with the same kind of reliability and speed. For the most part, this hasn’t happened so people have been disappointed and, as a result, municipal Wi-Fi has failed to gain much marketing momentum.
Maybe the issue is price. If Wi-Fi was free or super-cheat perhaps people would be happier with it. Of course, revenue - or the lack thereof - is one of the reasons why EarthLink has lost its enthusiasm for Wi-Fi.
Another issue may be that Wi-Fi technology just isn’t good enough, which I’m sure will rub a bunch of equipment makers the wrong way. Look at this way; offering wireless service in a major city is a huge challenge. To provide proper and reliable coverage, you need to have an awful lot of base stations, and even then you’ll probably have issues with buildings and line of site.
This is why there’s growing interest in Wi-Max as a way to effectively offer municipal wireless service. It may be that Wi-Max is the right technology, and that Wi-Fi’s best use is within the home and places such as hotels and cafes to serve the needs of customers.
In any event, I’m going to be speaking with Toronto Hydro Telecom president Dave Dobbin soon so look for another post on the future of municipal Wi-Fi. I’m sure Dobbin will provide an effective counter-argument.
For more thoughts, check out Ars Technica, which suggest cities would do themselves a favour by starting small as opposed to trying to provide city-wide coverage out of the gate. In summing up municipal Wi-Fi’s troubles, IP Democracy’s Cynthia Brumfield puts a nice (and smart) spin on things: “So, Wi-Fi, while very cool at Starbucks and around airport gates, just doesn’t pass the laugh test for a major metropolitan communications system.”
Christopher Knight, a former candidate for the Rockingham, North Carolina Board of Education, has incurred the wrath of Viacom and YouTube by posting a segment from Viacom’s VH1 show Web Junk 2.0 from a video Knight had created.
Knight, an avowed Star Wars fan, alleges that Viacom used the clip (which contains some obvious [...]
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about the economies of Facebook - not whether it’s worth $100-billion or whether the company will do an IPO rather than accept a zillionaire dollar takeover offer.
In particular, I’m talking about the thriving Facebook application landscape that a growing number of companies are enthusiastically jumping on. If a Web-based company doesn’t have a Facebook application already, they’ve got a team of developers pumped up with Red Bull and Skittles trying to create as soon as possible. According to Inside Facebook, there were 3,261 applications created in the first three months after Facebook opened up its API.
Some applications such as Top Friends, Video, iLike and Graffiti already have millions of users. Meanwhile, an investment community has quickly formed around the
Facebook platform with Bay Partners launching a Facebook-only fund that will invest $25,000 to $250,000 in Facebook start-ups. Then, you’ve got entrepreneurs getting involved hoping to be the next Where I’ve Been, which was reported acquired by TripAdvisor for $3-million.
In thinking about it, the landscape looks like like the Yukon gold rush of 1897 with a small number of lucky miners (Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Greylock Partners, Meritech and Accel Partners) scoring the biggest and best claim while thousands of miners scramble to get in while the going is good.
Much like the suppliers during the gold rush made out like bandits by supplying all these miners with equipment, there is a growing number of development firms and consultants emerging to help build and market anything you want…for a fee, of course. It’s all about supply and demand, and right now the demand to get involved is clearly stripping demand.
The big question is monetization, and how these applications can turn users into dollars. CNNMoney has a terrific story looking at the different ways to cash in so there’s little need to elaborate much other than it looks like the most successful entrepreneurs will be the ones who got in early and were able to build a large user base before things got crazy.
Some of these people may be able to make money by selling their large user bases to companies that want to sell to a captive audience. TripAdvisor’s deal for Where I’ve Been a Perfect example. Others may be able to make money by selling things to their users, while others will simply be happy with any marketing zing they get.
For the vast majority, however, Facebook will be a process with no or little rewards. As much as everyone hopes to develop something that resonate with Facebook users, the competitive landscape is way too crowded already. Sure, there will be an exception to the rule but if an entrepreneur thinks there’s a big score to be made by jumping into Facebook now, he and his money will soon be separated.
Is Facebook the New Gold Rush?
More:Mike Garrity offers up five Facebook predictions, including the fact it will launch a search tool and roll out out its own ad network.
ELSUR= Electronic Surveillance.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just published a motherlode of technology-related national security documents it has obtained via a series of Freedom of Information Act requests.
I’ve been poring over these documents. One especially caught my eye. It bears the title of “Interim Solutions for Telecommunications Intercepts,” and has been issued by the [...]
After complaints, Google now says it will remove videos depicting Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda from its YouTube site in Germany.
Already illegal in Germany, the videos of such wretched content as pro-Nazi films, clips of Nazi-era rallies and (thankfully much smaller) current-era expressions, have drawn takedown demands from the Central Council of Jews in Germany [...]
Citing a study of nearly 600 IT professionals by network management vendor Network General, SearchVoIP.com news editor Andrew Hickey notes that as companies converge communications apps onto their IP networks, VoIP and unified communications applications are causing performance issues.
The study found that nearly 40% of responding companies have suffered what Andrew terms “application performance problems” [...]
Advertising Age’s Abbey Klaassen notes that while Google’s advertising model for YouTube will encompass 3,000 professional content partners and 70 independent partner channels, “curiously absent were the flushing felines and lip-syncing college kids popularized by the poster child for user-generated video.”
There’s an obvious conclusion from this. Abbey states:
Considering that giant Google spent $1.6 billion [...]
Colleague Larry Dignan is the first on our block to run with the story that ISP EarthLink is laying off 900 people, closing several offices, and so forth.
After running excerpts of an EarthLink corporate statement citing reasons and intent for the downshift, Larry casts doubts on EarthLink’s long-term outlook:
But the overarching question for EarthLink [...]
WebEx PCNow, a tool that enables remote access to PCs from mobile devices, is now iPhone-compliant.
Prior to the official release of this service today, I spoke with Jack Chawla, senior director of product management at Cisco-owned WebEx. He explained a win-win situation for iPhone users that should be obvious.
“We’ve been noticing that consumers are [...]
First, the good news: I got a Blackberry 8800 yesterday - slick design, GPS-enabled…very cool, although it is odd that the 8800 doesn’t come with a camera, while the Curve doesn’t come with GPS.
Getting the Blackberry, however, was a painful experience. Perhaps the first mistake was actually going to a Rogers store, which seemed like a good idea given you will get, in theory, good customer service. And the salesman was very helpful and diligent; going over our corporate plan, explaining the different service options, etc. All in all, it was top-notch customer service that you would expect when shelling out several hundred dollars.
Unfortunately, the process took about 45 minutes as the sales guy gathered a bunch of information, punched it into the computer, etc. All this while, we had to stand at the sales counter because there’s no chairs or tables in the store. Maybe not having tables and chairs lets the store maximize its expensive downtown real estate, or maybe it stops people from just hanging out (although why anyone would want to hang out at a Rogers store is beyond me!).
When everything was completed, I’m not sure whether I was happier about getting the Blackberry or finally being able to get back to the office so I could sit down. :)
That’s a view of the iPhone menu on an unlocked device configured to run on T-Mobile.
I said T-Mobile, y’all, not AT&T, which iPhone has an exclusive U.S. deal with up until 2012.
Engadget’s reporting that some “mystery buyer” has stepped forward with a $100,000 offer for the right to freely distribute iPhoneSIM Free iPhone unlocking software [...]
Via an interview with Akamai Chief Technology Officer Mike Afergan, Om’s all over Akamai Technologies’ announcement yesterday that via enhancements to its Content Delivery Network, it now feels more than up to the task of delivering high-def video over the Web.
“While broadband service providers like Verizon are putting fiber-based broadband connections in place, there [...]
Given Mark Cuban credit, he knows how to create a hornet’s nest of controversy - the latest being his contention the Internet is “boring” because it has evolved into a utility and there’s nothing “explosively exciting” on the horizon - mostly because the “last mile” into the home is still a trickle rather than a fast-flowing river.
Before getting into Cuban’s thesis, there are a couple of things that should be pointed out. Cuban is an agent provocateur. It’s his modus operandi, and something he clearly revels in using his high-profile blog as a vehicle for controversy. That said, Cuban’s also a very smart guy who calls a spade a spade. With Broadcast.com and his current HD initiatives, Cuban has always been big on bandwidth so it’s not surprising he’s disappointed given broadband in the U.S. leaves much to be desired.
Maybe Cuban is right; maybe the Internet has become a utility simply because it has become part of everyday lives. Today, no one marvels at connecting to the Web whereas a decade ago it was a thrill to hear the static associated with getting online with a dial-up connection.
If there’s a hole in Cuban’s thesis, it’s that he’s sitting too close to the fire to realize the Internet is still a marvelous thing for a lot of people how are thrilled about being able to pay their bills online, apply for jobs, surf the Web, watch YouTube videos, etc. For Cuban, this is meat and potatoes kind of stuff but for many people, high-def isn’t even in the picture so they’re more than happy with 5Mbps service (at least for the time being.)
Personally, the Internet and what’s available never ceases to amaze. I spent a good hour last weekend using StumbleUpon, and discovered a whack of great Web sites that immediately went on my del.ici.us account. I also spent some time watching videos, including a bunch of Wordpress tutorials - something that was difficult to easily do a couple of years ago.
Cuban may be bored because he’s looking for the next big thing online but the Internet is still a pretty amazing place for the rest of us. Of course, he does make a good point that more bandwidth will change everything but that’s another story for another day.
More:Fred Wilson has some thoughts on Cuban’s thesis - poking holes at Cuban’s belief the Internet is no different than it was five years ago, and that bandwidth is a critical factor in innovation. Not surprisingly, Loren Feldman has his own unique take on the Cuban vs. Wilson thing.
First, let me set the scene.
Last Thursday, I was walking down Third Street in downtown San Francisco. Crossing busy Mission Street (above, v ia Google Maps’ StreetView) the green light was on a 30-second timer.
For most of us, the 30-second duration gave us more than enough time to cross Mission from the north to the [...]
It’s good to see that Fred Wilson is so excited that Twitter has introduced some new tools to invite friends into the fold - good news for anyone who has been patiently waiting for a Twitter invitation or terribly anxious for a way to easily invite friends.
Putting aside why you’d ever want to use Twitter in the first place, maybe Twitter should be focusing some of its attention on creating a business model. Yes, it’s wonderful to have a large user base but if you can’t figure out a way to make money from them or advertisers looking to reach them, what does it matter?
Clearly, Twitter’s investors, which include Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures and Marc Andreessen, were thinking big picture when they put some venture capital (reportedly $5-million) into the company last month. Maybe I’m missing something that but I thought the idea of creating a business was to generate sales and profits. Then again, maybe this is a build it (a service) and they (revenue) will come situation but so far, I’m firmly in the show-me camp.
For a chorus of “I’m so happy Twitter is now more user-friendly views”, check out Techmeme. At least, blognation mentions the unclear business model.
Although I’ve used Wordpress for more than a year, I’m just starting to get beyond just writing and inserting images. Given I seem to learn better from seeing rather reading, I’ve been happy to find a bunch of really good Wordpress videos recently. In thinking about it, short, well-produced tutorials may be a sweet spot in terms of trying to monetize online video. For a good Wordpress video tutorial program, I’d happily pay $10 or $20.
Here’s one on how to embed YouTube videos in a blog post:
Here’s one on making your blog more search engine-friendly:
My Google Reader is chock-a-block with tech blogs - the obvious ones such as TechCrunch, Mashable, A VC, GigaOm; those written by friends such as Mathew Ingram, Rob Hyndman and Aiden Henry; and a bunch of Apple blogs such as The Unofficial Apple Weblog and A New Mac Tip Every Day.
But as the past few weeks, I’ve started to diversify my feeds into other areas - some related to specifics interests, and some just because they’re really interesting. Here’s a mini-list of some recent finds:
1. Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, which covers a variety of cools things such as books, gadgets, software, videos, maps, hardware or Web sites.
2. Wisebread, which is devoted to “personal finance and frugal living”.
3. Commute by Bike, a new favourite since I’ve started to bike to work again every day.
4. Four Reasons Why, a recently launched blog devoted to providing four reasons for a variety of things (e.g. Why James Bond Will Never Die; Why You Shouldn’t Drink Bottled Water)
5. Spacing Wire, an excellent city blog about Toronto.
6. PlanetEye, which launched last week. Note: I work for PlanetEye so it’s a must-read. :)
Meanwhile, I’ve also been pruning back the number of feeds in my reader. While Scoble can go through 622 feeds a day, I can realistically check out 20 to 30. (Speaking of Google Reader, just wondering why hasn’t the official Google Reader Blog been updated since June 22?)
1. Why has Sony insisted on maintaining its proprietary Memory Stick? When I was looking at digital cameras, Sony wasn’t even in the running because of the memory issue.
2. Mary Meeker. Even after being embarrassed during the dot-com boom as more of a promoter than an equity analyst, she’s still alive, well and bumbling along. In the meantime, Henry Blodget, who was forced to leave the analyst business, has proven he’s a pretty smart cookie.
3. The high cost of Apple accessories. Yesterday, I spent $25 on a mini-DVI to VGA connector that was probably made for $1. And while there were tons of oh-I-need-that products in the Apple store, it’s hard not to get a bad case of sticker shock when you see how much they cost. Speaking of Apple, it’s good to see someone cracked the iPhone/AT&T relationship.
4. Twitter. Can anyone explain to me why it’s useful other than as a tool to broadcast your thoughts or activities that only a small group of people (e.g. your family. close friends) would be interested in? Loren Feldman thinks Twitter will “be huge”.
5. Why it’s so difficult to find someone on Facebook. Sure, it has an advanced search tool but if you have a friend with a regular kind of name, good luck.
6. Why bloggers and blog readers love lists. Write a list (e.g. Five Things That Could Kill Facebook) and the world comes to your doorstep. Speaking of lists, check out Four Reasons Why - a entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking blog devoted to lists on a variety of topics.
7. Why RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is still RSS. If you want to push RSS into the mainstream, it need something catchier like Your Content Now or The Web’s Paperboy…or something like that. Maybe Dave Winer, who pioneered the creation of RSS, can step into the branding fray although I think he’d suggest RSS is just fine.
8. How Dell has fallen so far so fast while Hewlett-Packard has bounced back so strongly? Dell’s cache as a super-efficient computer maker has evaporated.
9. Why high-tech IPOs are all the rage again (e.g. VMWare, Classmates.com) amid a troubling credit crunch. Keith Benjamin, a venture capitalists, suggests the credit crunch will boost the high-tech IPO market because it will drive investors away from hedge funds and buy-out funds.
10. The fascination with people such as Justin.TV and Steve Mann who put cameras on themselves so other people can exactly what they are doing every second of the day. Today’s on-body camera episode features a guy driving to Los Angeles.
FoundRead: A good company name can contribute more than you think. Three rules for naming your startup.
NewTeeVee: HealthiNation chronicles an SUV-driving, red meat-eating, cigarette-smoking blogger as he spends thirty days living the carbon-neutral, healthy life.
WebWorkerDaily: Whether you’re an online video newbie or an established publisher, these video capture and conversion utilities can be had for free — or, almost free.
Earth2Tech: Startup Ahwahnee Technology is using nano-scale material 10,000 times thinner than a human hair to make energy-efficient lighting.
Today at VoiceCon, Microsoft Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group, has just announced a new Quality of Experience Monitoring Server. There are 35 data fields, including the average length of Office Communications Server phone calls for each user, device-specific performance metrics and problems, as well as packet and other analytical [...]
Several readers blasted me for my blog post last week about the Skype outage. I assumed that many of the people using Skype's messaging and voice over IP service didn't rely on the service for their primary form of communication. But several people pointed out that many small ...
I’m here in San Francisco attending the enterprise telephony-oriented VoiceCon 2007 conference.
This morning’s keynote you may be most interested in is being delivered right now by Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group. They’re the folks responsible for MSFT’s recently shipped, VoIP-enabled Office Communications Server 2007.
Number of companies who tested OCS prior [...]
Craig at now Google-owned GrandCentral posts an explanation of why more than 400 GC accounts were unable to keep their “lifetime” numbers, and thus had to be reassigned new numbers.
The issue, it seems, is being caught by surprise by a pre-Google supplier who had cold-kicked GrandCentral by sending them a 30-day notice that they were exiting [...]
When it comes to DRM free music — that is, music not encumbered by copyright restrictions — the pitchers are still throwing their warm-up pitches. Nevertheless, there is a lot of excitement leading up to the game.
So far two major music labels — EMI Music and Universal Music Group — have decided to offer DRM free music. Others are still sitting on the fence for now. That hasn’t stopped new entrants from entering what is beginning to look like a very crowded market. Real Networks (RNWK), Amazon.com (AMZN) are among several companies that have already made DRM free music sales a priority.
New players, such as Cupertino, Calif.-based Navio Systems’ spinoff gBox, are launching music-download stores. gBox is planning on launching a content download site, starting off with DRM free music. More traditional retailers are getting in on the act as well; Walmart.com is making a renewed push and will start selling DRM free music.
The decision of record labels to sell DRM free music is indeed a blessing for music lovers, who until now have been forced to make choices based on their hardware and have subsequently been locked into using proprietary music formats.
Apple and its iTunes store have the biggest market share, and as a result have many consumers locked into Apple’s DRM. “DRM free music is going to help digital music expand from the iPod generation to the mainstream market,” says John McFarlane, CEO of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Sonos Inc.
However, now you will be able to buy their music from any store, and play it back on a device of their choice. The jury is still out on where consumers will buy their music.
It would seem that this copyright-free music movement would threaten Apple and its iTunes monopoly. But it won’t and here’s why: First of all, a crowded market has always helped Apple, and there is no reason why it won’t be the case this time around. Two years ago I wrote Digital Music Services, Dot Bombs of Today. This is a repeat of that very same situation, except this time around there’s no DRM and so the music is more portable — any store, any device.
Except most of the devices that folks are buying are iPods.
Apple makes most of its money selling hardware, not music. Its hardware rivals have so far failed to come up with a device that rivals the iPod and hence it remains a preferred device of choice, at least in the Americas.
As long as iPod keeps selling well (no reason why it won’t), Apple also doesn’t have to worry about its music sales as long as it starts offering more DRM free music at a price that is similar to its DRM-protected tracks.
The iPod buyers end up installing iTunes software, and are taken to the store, where they are exposed to a relatively simple interface and a cleaner buying experience. It is still unmatched by other services, and I have tried them all: Napster, Real’s Rhapsody and, my favorite, eMusic.
The non-Apple players face a unique challenge: They are fighting over a business where profits are marginal at best. Of the 99 cents for which a song is sold, nearly 70 cents goes back to the record label. Music sellers are left with 30 cents or so and have to use that to build and operate their music stores. That would include costs for storage, CDNs and bandwidth.
If you factor in that the music sellers would have to market their services, and perhaps have to discount heavily to gain market share (Real is saying its customers will pay 89 cents per DRM track), profits are going to be hard to come by. And what happens when broadband service providers start offering access to music libraries for a monthly flat fee?
It is already happening in France, where competitive telecom and broadband provider neuf Cegetel has unveiled plans that let its subscribers pay an additional EUR 4.99 a month for access to the entire catalog of Universal Music Group’s 150,000 songs and 3,000 video clips. How long before others jump into the business?
eBay (EBAY) has released its eBay Marketplace on Facebook Application. The new application allows you to link your eBay and Facebook accounts and then share them with your network. It would be a cool way to sell your eBay items to your network. You can also push eBay items to your friends’ eBay Watch Lists. Do you think this has an impact on how other distributed listings companies start to think about their future?
Update#2: The digital music joint venture aimed at Apple (AAPL) and unveiled earlier today by RealNetworks (RNWK) and Viacom’s (VIA) MTV is 51-percent-owned by the digital media company, notes paidContent.org’s Rafat Ali, who dug up Rhapsody’s related 8-K filing. MTV’s stake will be 49 percent.
Update: It is official! Real Networks, MTV and Verizon Wireless are teaming up to form Rhapsody America, a joint venture that will be headed up by Michael Bloom, former general manager of MTV Urge. The company will have offices in San Francisco, New York, and Seattle. On-air integration for the new service will begin next week and Rhapsody will also be integrated into the fabric of MTV’s marquee event, the Video Music Awards airing live from Las Vegas on September 9th, 2007. Verizon will push Rhapsody via its stores.
Van Toffler, President of MTV Networks Music said: “The new Rhapsody will have the marketing power of MTV, VH1 and CMT behind it.”
John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Verizon, added, “Together, our three companies will provide a new, unbeatable digital music experience that will give every consumer a way to get music quickly and easily – whether sitting in front of a computer screen or on-the-go with a mobile device.”
Older post, below the fold:
MTV Networks, a division of Viacom (VIA) is merging its Urge music service with Rhapsody, a music service offered by Real Networks (RNWK), the Seattle-based software and media company, according to The Wall Street Journal. The two companies were set to make the announcement tomorrow, but WSJ broke the story. It is not clear what the final entity would look like, but it is clearly a joint venture of sorts.
Verizon and Vodafone have has signed on to be mobile distributors of this new effort, which is going to be led by Michael Bloom, currently CEO of MTV Urge. An MTV-branded, Real-powered service on Verizon and Vodafone could act as a counterweight to Apple’s iPhone-Cingular juggernaut, but I wouldn’t count on it, for MTV has a history of blown chances. Meanwhile, there has been some talk of Vodafone getting the rights for Apple’s iPhone in Europe.
MTV had established Urge in partnership with Microsoft Corp., but let it whither away mostly because Microsoft launched its own Zune device and service. (It got Zun.k.ed!) In recent years, MTV has started airing reality television shows and sitcoms, and has lost some of its all-music-all-the-time cachet and audience.
The music loving audience has moved on to newer online communities such as Last.fm, which is now owned by CBS, a company that was spun out of Viacom. Last.fm could provide a big boost to this “mega-attempt” to take on Apple and its iTunes service.
Nevertheless, thus far any such attempts have not really had any material impact on Apple. Still, the deal could prove to be a boost for Real, which can finally get some airtime for its Rhapsody service. Real has been pushing a “Real-everywhere” strategy, and has already embedded its service into devices such as Nokia’s N95 and Sonos’ media player.
Skype’s Villu Arak has just posted further clarifications on an earlier statement citing the cause of the recent, two-day Skype service interruption some understood as being precipitated by a surge of Skype re-connects after PCs worldwide automatically rebooted after a monthly Microsoft patch upgrade and install:
We don’t blame anyone but ourselves. The Microsoft Update patches [...]
In previous instances where a large number of supernodes in the P2P network were rebooted, other factors of a “perfect storm” had not been present. That is, there had not been such a combination of high usage load during supernode rebooting.
They still don’t answer two basic questions: Why did the breakdown happen on Thursday, and not on Tuesday when typically Microsoft patches are released? Second, will it happen again?
Yes, the bug has been squashed. The fix means that we’ve tuned Skype’s P2P core so that it can cope with simultaneous P2P network load and core size changes similar to those that occurred on August 16.
Right now, I have the following “communication accounts”: ISP-based e-mail, Yahoo, GMail (2), PlanetEye, Skype, Facebook
All these accounts mean it’s a challenge making sure I check every one on a regular basis, although GMail is a very good tool for receiving all your e-mail messages and being able to send messages using different e-mail addresses. But what about Skype and Facebook, which are becoming increasingly popular communications tools? In the past couple of weeks, for example, the number of Facebook messages has really grown - mostly because people say it’s a convenient and easy way to keep in touch.
Given this communication challenge, I started looking around for a single service/application that could handle all my accounts. After a healthy search, I found Fuser, which bills itself as “the coolest way to unify your mail from multiple accounts. View your mail and social networking messages in one convenient location.”
After spending a bit of time configuring several accounts (Facebook, GMail, PlanetEye), Fuser started to download all my messages. Of course, this took awhile given I have about 2,800 GMail messages given serves as a way to backup everything.
Finally, I was able to see Fuser in action. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised - nice, clean interface and, as promised, it delivered every account (other than Skype). So far, so good until I logged into my Gmail account only to discover that I had been cut off for 24 hours for breach of terms. To their credit, Fuser provided a quick explanation. Apparently, Google is “sensitive to how you access your account” so there have been a few situations where it locks people out for a short people of time - mostly when you’re logged into both services.
That’s a fair enough explanation but it was, nevertheless, disappointing. Still, Fuser has a lot of potential for people looking for an all-in-one communications solutions. The only fear is that Google will enhance GMail to include Facebook messages.
More:Facebook just announced its has improved its messaging service so you can now use normal e-mail addresses, which means more people will likely use Facebook as the places to read/send messages/email. Larry Borsato describes the move as “dumb” while AllFacebook - the blog for all Facebook, all the time - said once Facebook adds search functionality, he’ll start to use its messaging system even more.
Some security experts are not entirely buying into Skype’s explanations of what caused the nearly two-day sign-in outage.
Writing on the SANS Internet Storm Center site, John Bambanek initially commented in part:
Skype is apparently fully functional and has released an explanation of the problem that attributes the failure to Patch Tuesday. Specifically, the peer-to-peer network failed [...]
If you go online to the Apple Store you’ll see that they are now selling”refurbished” iPhones for $100 less than new models.
Makes you wonder what type of refurbishing has been done. Were these ever-so-slightly flawed models off the assembly line, like the discounted shirts you see in these outlet malls?
Anyway, who is complaining? Prices cut from $599 [...]
Most of us will agree that these days trying to do anything other than making plain vanilla phone calls and sending short messages on a regular 12-keypad mobile phone is an ordeal. The triple tapping gives the thumb muscles a complete workout. No wonder it needs a new interface.
Vlingo Corp., a Cambridge, Mass-based start-up thinks it has the answer – voice-based interface – and has introducing an eponymously named application to showcase its technology. The application allows mobile phone users to speak and look-up information such as local restaurant listings to film schedules.
The company is the brainchild of speech recognition technology veterans Mike Phillips and John Nguyen. Phillips started Speech Works that was acquired by Scan Soft, which acquired Nuance and then renamed itself, Nuance. It has raised $6.5 million in venture financing from Charles River Ventures.
Here is how it works:
Vlingo’s voice-powered interface lets users speak or type into any vlingo-enabled text box on their mobile phones. Once the application is installed and started, you can say, sushi restaurants in San Francisco, the app sends your voice clip over the mobile data channel to a datacenter, where the voice is put through speech recognition software running on a server.
Server converts voice to text, and the results are sent back to the phone. Voice-turned-into-text then populates the search text box, and you can hit search and find local listings. The application can work with other applications such as music stores preloaded on the phones.
I was fully expecting some seriously latency, and was surprised by how quickly the results came back over an EVDO enabled Sprint phone. The system also learns your voice patterns, and you can fix any errors by using the keypad, and system learns those as well.
Vlingo is a J2ME App and as a result it can work with other applications on the phone and populate their text boxes as well. We saw it working with the Sprint Music store, in a demo we go from
Dave Grannan, chief executive officer of the company.
While Vlingo, the application is a showcase, the company is hoping to sign-up mobile carriers and handset makers. He said that company’s technology is going to be particularly attractive for carriers.
Mobile phone companies have spent billions of dollars developing fast networks, and cobbling up services such as music stores, only to be stymied by the challenge of entering complex information through a limited a 12-keypad system, which we can use to enter the data. Vlingo is going to have some carrier-related announcements later this year.
Vlingo faces quite a few challenges, none bigger than Microsoft, which thanks to its $800 million-plus acquisition of Tell Me Networks, has made its intentions clear that it wants to dominate the voice-mobile interface business.
Most importantly, mobile phone users have to feel compelled to buy into this offering, which is going to result in some extra spending on data services.
NewTeeVee: SeenON! Shopisodes, a custom Web video player, scours TV shows, movies, and the like for products and helpfully tells us how we can buy them.
WebWorkerDaily: How to control a computer, remotely, for free.
Earth2Tech: Tilera Corp. is shipping a more efficient, though not entirely green, Linux-capable 64-core processor.
No, not there, but not all that far away, either.
Rather than leave his iPhone in his car, 53-year-old Irwin Koss of DeWitt, New York decided to place the device in his pocket.
As iPhoneCentral’s Dan Moren notes, that decision could have saved Koss’ life. Or at least a great deal of pain.
Here’s how this all went [...]
Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Microsoft (MSFT) had been increasingly butting heads lately over “enterprise communication” infrastructure, with each company hawking their own version of VoIP products, from directory servers to clients to handsets. This was making the folks who actually spend money — large corporations — mad.
Their bickering, which even managed to rope in the likes of Nortel (NT) and Avaya, was getting out of hand. We had predicted a no-holds barred battle, but instead it turned out to be little more than a small skirmish that’s ending with a whimper. Today John Chambers and Steve Ballmer, chief executives of Cisco Systems and Microsoft respectively, got on stage and declared a truce. (Watch webcast at Microsoft’s site and Cisco’s Web site.)
“But to use the red team-blue team political analogy, most companies want moderates these days,” Mr. Chambers said. “And I say that as a Republican.” (via NYTimes’ Bits.)
The two companies are going to make their products interoperate, in turn giving large corporations the chance to pick and choose what they want to buy.
“They’re saying, ‘Give me the choice. Don’t give me the all-or-nothing choice,’” Ballmer said of the customers, adding that he was seeking “respectful competition” with Cisco. (Reuters)
I guess both Cisco and Microsoft were feeling a little bit of heat from some of the more open-source options that have started to come to the market. Asterisk-based solutions, in particular, have been gaining in popularity as office phone systems.
Lost amid all the speculation about Google’s (GOOG) involvement in the forthcoming 700 MHz auction and whether or not the search giant would manage to impose its will on an incumbent-loving Federal Communications Commission was a decision by the agency that may prove to be the most significant one it’s made over the past 10 years.
The FCC on July 31 issued a statement in which it noted that the 700 MHz C Block spectrum winner would be required to have open-device access on their network. This Carterfone for wireless was one of the things Google had asked for and was, depending on your viewpoint, either a small victory for the company or a meaningless token meant to impress the unwashed masses but do nothing to change the status quo.
Far more interesting, however, was the FCC’s revelation that the 700 MHz public safety band was being rechannelized to support broadband and that the 700 MHz D Block license would be devoted to a national public/private partnership to deliver both public safety and commercial broadband.
This decision to enable a public/private wireless broadband partnership is extremely important because it represents the best hope yet for both a modern public safety wireless network and offers a realistic solution to the digital divide.
On Aug.10, the FCC issued a 312-page report in which it laid out rules governing wireless licenses in the 700 MHz spectrum. In short, the winner of the D Block will have to enter into a deal with the Department of Homeland Security to determine how both the D Block and the broadband portion of the public safety spectrum will be administered. The winner gets the only franchise (with one exciting exception) to build and maintain networks using the combined spectrum. The D Block and broadband public safety spectrum are adjacent 10 MHz (5 X 5 MHz) bands that can be operated as a single 20 MHz (10 X 10 MHz) allocation. This spectrum has some very important build-out criteria. While public safety users are only primary in half of it, they must be able to preempt commercial users (at the decree of Homeland Security) over both bands. The D Block itself must be 75 percent (by covered population) built-out in four years, 95 percent in seven years, and 99.3 percent in 10 years. Most commercial licenses, by comparison, only have to be 25 percent or 33 percent built-out in five years.
The exciting exception to the D Block winners franchise is that local public safety agencies can preemptively build-out their networks if they don’t like where they sit in the license winner’s schedule (I have personally dealt with several municipalities that would have loved to do this with the 2.6 GHz spectrum owned by Sprint (FON) and Clearwire).
So, what’s the big deal? Well, the idea that’s been floating around for years (long before 9/11) — that of building out a dedicated national first responder network — is never going to happen. It’s just so inefficient. Ten billion dollars in capital costs, plus relying on some yet-to-be-created arm of the bureaucracy for operations and maintenance, would be a hard pill to swallow come appropriations time. The multiuse network idea being presented here, on the other hand, is a huge win all around. Not only is there now a tenfold increase in potential user base through which to recoup costs, but thanks to the need for ubiquitous public safety coverage, there will finally be a wireless network with better than laughable coverage in rural areas.
In the meantime, access to a reasonable amount of spectrum-building penetrating 700 MHz frequencies, national network economies of scale, and public safety anchor tenants all combine to form a business case that might actually support low-cost Internet access and bridge the digital divide. And even if nobody actually builds their own network, at least a little more leverage gets put back on the side of the customer — where it belongs.
Of course, all my excitement might be for nothing. There are some serious hurdles to overcome here. Even though the FCC is pricing the minimum bid for D Block at a mere $1.33 billion (about a third of what they consider market value for access to 20 MHz of spectrum), it will cost at least another $5 billion to get that 75 percent build-out in four years. Spending $6 billion over the course of four years is not for dilettantes, and if the incumbents get a hold of this spectrum it might be more in their interest to try and break even on the public safety stuff rather than risk the profit margins of their existing broadband networks (at least they will have prevented the formation of new competition, and that is certainly worth $1.33 billion to the likes of AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ)).
Perhaps the bigger hurdle is having to negotiate all of the technology and deployment decisions with the Department of Homeland Security. By the time everything is agreed to, budgets and deadlines will be blown and the network itself runs a good risk of being obsolete before it is ever deployed. The license winner will have to be well-versed in dealing with government contracts, and that, sadly, once again points to an incumbent or, worse yet, Halliburton Wireless (Dick Cheney will need a new job by the time this network launches).
Whether the FCC’s move results in a progressive, multiuse network or just another half-measure by some incumbent, I applaud the agency for making a decision that at least carries some rational expectation of positive results. This idea of trading upfront cash for stringent build-out requirements with an eye to the public good is huge break from the past 15 or so years of spectrum policy. It is also a change wholly for the better. Going forward, this is exactly what we need from the FCC.
Skype’s Heartbeat Blog has an explanation for the 30-hour outage that plagued the eBay-owned (EBAY) voice company last week. A quick overview:
Microsoft issued Windows updates on Thursday, Aug. 16th.
Millions installed those patches, rebooted, and tried to log into the Skype network — pretty much all at the same time.
Combined with a lack of P2P resources, the flood of log-in requests put the Skype network under extreme stress.
This, in turn, exposed an unseen software bug “within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly.”
OK, it sounds credible — but do you buy it? Skype Journal has some questions, namely if the bug’s fix has been propagated. What, they ask, is preventing this from happening again? After all, Microsoft (MSFT) routinely issues patches. Borough Turner, chief technology officer of NSM Communications, alludes to this in his most recent post.
Experts have pointed out that Skype generates a lot of traffic between log-in servers and supernodes. Maybe the supernodes went down during the “patches” as well. Someone who seems to be familiar with the Skype network architecture left a comment earlier that explains this relationship between 50-odd authentication servers and supernodes and also a weak link.” (Full explanation is here.)
Swedish grannies are connecting to the net at 40 gigabits per second life; 100 megabit per seconds are becoming common place in Japan and Korea; and even French are dreaming of an ultra-fast fiber future. And yet, in the US we are all stuck in the slow lane, settling for speeds between 768 kbps to 8 megabits per second. I have often wondered what it would be like to have a 100 megabits per second, and what I would do with that much bandwidth.
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