Why do we need a gatekeeper when the content providers can sell direct to consumers without paying the carriers a fee?
Or, to be more precise, just paying for the bandwidth they consume?
What happens when the content providers figure this out or when new entrants realize they no longer need to pay for access to customers by paying equity to the carriers?
What happens if people realize that they don't need to pay high fees for services they can create themselves or buy in a competitive marketplace?
Word Processing went through this long ago and we now accept email. VoIP is coming to the force. Video is just another format -- not at all special.
The price of IPTV will be the price of producing a video or paying the copyrights for it and the bandwidth condumed to broadcast it.
That is the main difference with the classical TV, but it is not little.
I you do not have to pay a fequencty, all the expensive hardware to broadcast,
The governments are seeking money to pay for old expensive technologies, but it won't be for long (I honestly DO NOT PITY THEM).
The DRM issue is no different whether you send the bits broadcasting them in the air or IP (as it is increasing the norm within the networks). The decoding is still done by a device at the edge be it a Set Top Box or another device.
It looks like a few understood the power of the new way of transmission.
And the few who understood are strangely quiet, as if they didn't want the news spread...
So, broadcasters of the future, this is your present!
Friday, November 9, 2007
The personalisation of TV
Personalisation and interactivity will be the key drivers of IPTV and will have a big impact on the broadcasting and advertising industries.
The introduction and adoption of IPTV will ultimately give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional broadcast TV, with big implications for users, content providers and advertisers. Users will be able to receive content anytime, anywhere, choose what is most relevant to them, and even create and upload their own television content, while content providers and advertisers will be able to tailor their offerings more specifically to the user.
IPTV will become a multimedia experience with an emphasis on personalisation, interactivity and user-generated content.
The introduction and adoption of IPTV will ultimately give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional broadcast TV, with big implications for users, content providers and advertisers. Users will be able to receive content anytime, anywhere, choose what is most relevant to them, and even create and upload their own television content, while content providers and advertisers will be able to tailor their offerings more specifically to the user.
IPTV will become a multimedia experience with an emphasis on personalisation, interactivity and user-generated content.
IPTV: a copy of the actual TV
What's all the hoo-hah over hulu.com about?Kate Bevan The Guardian Thursday November 1 2007
Streaming video of top telly shows, free on the interweb: it sounds worth making a hoo-hah about. NBC announced the launch of the site after its agreement with Apple to distribute TV shows via iTunes fell apart back in August.
According to NBC, it accounted for 40% of video downloads on iTunes, so clearly that online content - and revenue - had to go somewhere. The result was hulu.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.
Hulu.com will offer embedded streaming videos on the website, supported by advertising - which, it says, will be less annoying than adverts on broadcast television: they will be in the form of banners alongside the video, text along the bottom of the picture or clips that are interspersed with the stuff you actually want to see.
What is different from the actual TV?
The result is a copy of it with a huge amount of bandwidth wasted.
Ip at its best use means users' made content.
The Internet was born as an opposite model of the actual media.
Not as something broadcasted from one and downloaded from the others.
It is a Network, where every connected end adds a piece of content.
THIS and only THIS is the real winning model of IPTV.
All the rest is just a good or bad copy...
Streaming video of top telly shows, free on the interweb: it sounds worth making a hoo-hah about. NBC announced the launch of the site after its agreement with Apple to distribute TV shows via iTunes fell apart back in August.
According to NBC, it accounted for 40% of video downloads on iTunes, so clearly that online content - and revenue - had to go somewhere. The result was hulu.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.
Hulu.com will offer embedded streaming videos on the website, supported by advertising - which, it says, will be less annoying than adverts on broadcast television: they will be in the form of banners alongside the video, text along the bottom of the picture or clips that are interspersed with the stuff you actually want to see.
What is different from the actual TV?
The result is a copy of it with a huge amount of bandwidth wasted.
Ip at its best use means users' made content.
The Internet was born as an opposite model of the actual media.
Not as something broadcasted from one and downloaded from the others.
It is a Network, where every connected end adds a piece of content.
THIS and only THIS is the real winning model of IPTV.
All the rest is just a good or bad copy...
Thursday, November 8, 2007
The future of IPTV is also music videos
A long time ago, in a land far removed from modern times, there existed a truly new idea to put music on TV 24 hours a day. Thus was born the MTV generation. Sadly many members of todays youth do not remember the likes of Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J. J. Jackson and Martha Quinn. Those same youths hear the name Adam Curry and they think, “isn’t he that guy who invented podcasting and edited his own wikipedia entry?”
MTV has not been a 24 hour music video station for a long time. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find music video content on MTV because they have become something else. Even their sister station VH1 (where MTV fans over the age of 12 go) as stopped being a music video network.
This is where IPTVcomes in. The online music television network hearkens back to the days when MTV was good and worth watching. Drawing from independent artists, IPTV puts the viewer back in the heyday of music video television.
MTV has not been a 24 hour music video station for a long time. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find music video content on MTV because they have become something else. Even their sister station VH1 (where MTV fans over the age of 12 go) as stopped being a music video network.
This is where IPTVcomes in. The online music television network hearkens back to the days when MTV was good and worth watching. Drawing from independent artists, IPTV puts the viewer back in the heyday of music video television.
Run Internet Explorer on Linux
Most Linux users would be appalled by the idea of attempting to contaminate a Linux installation with any Microsoft product, especially Internet Explorer. However, many Web sites don't render properly using regular Linux browsers, such as Firefox or Konqueror. Other sites either require ActiveX controls or are designed to work only with Internet Explorer. Also, how can you test your new Web design and JavaScript for IE if you're an Apache and Linux maven?
For those who may have the need for Internet Explorer without the need to move to another machine or reboot, there is a solution for you: an extremely useful project aptly named IEs4Linux. In this article, we describe how to install and begin using multiple versions of Internet Explorer using Wine and IEs4Linux.
What's IEs4Linux?
IEs4Linux is a small shell script that can be run via a console on any Linux machine with Wine installed. As the title suggests, it allows you to quickly and easily install that most infamous of Microsoft products: Internet Explorer.
The creator of IEs4Linux is Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior, a 21 year old Brazilian student and self-proclaimed lover of Linux and OpenSource. Naturally, being open source, IEs4Linux is free. However, as with many people working on open source projects, Sérgio's funding comes from the community; if you found IEs4Linux helpful, you can PayPal him a few dollars to continue development of the project.
IEs4Linux relies on the Wine project to supply an implementation of the Microsoft Windows API. The IEs4Linux script actually downloads the required CAB files directly from the Microsoft site; then, using cabextract, copies the files to a new Wine profile. This way, your existing Wine profiles are not affected, and any other software you have running will be just fine. In addition to installing Internet Explorer versions 5, 5.5, and 6, IEs4Linux also can install Flash 9 for you from Adobe.
IEs4Linux is a GPL product; however, Internet Explorer is a copyrighted product of Microsoft. This means that you will need to be in possession of a valid Windows licence version greater than 95, although it will not be asked for during the installation process.
Author's note
For the purposes of this article, I'll assume you're running the latest version of Ubuntu as your Linux distribution. IEs4Linux will work with almost every distribution, but the installation routine varies. This article assumes that you already have Ubuntu Desktop installed and operational.
Depending on how you like to install your software, I have included two sets of instructions, first the graphical (GUI) method and lastly the console (CLI) method.
Installing the required packages
To install all the applications required to enable IEs4Linux to run properly, ensure that you have the Universe repositories enabled. Open the Software Sources configuration screen, which can be found under Toolbar | System | Administration | Software Sources.
More... Brian Smith, TechRepublic
For those who may have the need for Internet Explorer without the need to move to another machine or reboot, there is a solution for you: an extremely useful project aptly named IEs4Linux. In this article, we describe how to install and begin using multiple versions of Internet Explorer using Wine and IEs4Linux.
What's IEs4Linux?
IEs4Linux is a small shell script that can be run via a console on any Linux machine with Wine installed. As the title suggests, it allows you to quickly and easily install that most infamous of Microsoft products: Internet Explorer.
The creator of IEs4Linux is Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior, a 21 year old Brazilian student and self-proclaimed lover of Linux and OpenSource. Naturally, being open source, IEs4Linux is free. However, as with many people working on open source projects, Sérgio's funding comes from the community; if you found IEs4Linux helpful, you can PayPal him a few dollars to continue development of the project.
IEs4Linux relies on the Wine project to supply an implementation of the Microsoft Windows API. The IEs4Linux script actually downloads the required CAB files directly from the Microsoft site; then, using cabextract, copies the files to a new Wine profile. This way, your existing Wine profiles are not affected, and any other software you have running will be just fine. In addition to installing Internet Explorer versions 5, 5.5, and 6, IEs4Linux also can install Flash 9 for you from Adobe.
IEs4Linux is a GPL product; however, Internet Explorer is a copyrighted product of Microsoft. This means that you will need to be in possession of a valid Windows licence version greater than 95, although it will not be asked for during the installation process.
Author's note
For the purposes of this article, I'll assume you're running the latest version of Ubuntu as your Linux distribution. IEs4Linux will work with almost every distribution, but the installation routine varies. This article assumes that you already have Ubuntu Desktop installed and operational.
Depending on how you like to install your software, I have included two sets of instructions, first the graphical (GUI) method and lastly the console (CLI) method.
Installing the required packages
To install all the applications required to enable IEs4Linux to run properly, ensure that you have the Universe repositories enabled. Open the Software Sources configuration screen, which can be found under Toolbar | System | Administration | Software Sources.
More... Brian Smith, TechRepublic
Google OpenSocial to launch Thursday
Details emerged today on Google’s broad social networking ambitions, first reported here in late September, with a follow up earlier this week. The new project, called OpenSocial (URL will go live on Thursday), goes well beyond what we’ve previously reported. It is a set of common APIs that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate.
What they haven’t done is launch yet another social network platform. As more and more of these platforms launch, developers have difficult choices to make. There are costs associated with writing and maintaining applications for these social networks. Most developers will choose one or two platforms and ignore the rest, based on a simple cost/benefit analysis.
Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.
What They’re Launching
OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:
Profile Information (user data)
Friends Information (social graph)
Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)
Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.
Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have its own markup language (Facebook requires use of FBML for security reasons, but it also makes code unusable outside of Facebook). Instead, developers use normal javascript and html (and can embed Flash elements). The benefit of the Google approach is that developers can use much of their existing front end code and simply tailor it slightly for OpenSocial, so creating applications is even easier than on Facebook.
Applications can have full functionality on profile and/or canvas pages, subject to the specific rules of each host. Facebook, by contrast, limits most functionality to the canvas page, allowing a widget on the profile page with limited features.
OpenSocial is silent when it comes to specific rules and policies of the hosts, like whether or not advertising is accepted or whether any developer can get in without applying first (the Facebook approach). Hosts set and enforce their own policies. The APIs are created with maximum flexibility.
Launch Partners
Partners are in two categories: hosts and developers. Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.
Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.
What This Means
The timing of OpenSocial couldn’t be better. Developers have been complaining non stop about the costs of learning yet another markup launguage for every new social network platform, and taking developer time in creating and maintaining the code. Someone had to build a system to streamline this (as we said in the last few sentences in this post). And Facebook-fear has clearly driven good partners to side with Google. Developers will immediately start building on these APIs to get distribution across the impressive list of hosts above.
And they’ll do it soon, too. It’s clear that the developers who arrived early to the Facebook Platform party won easy customers. Those that came later had to fight much harder. Developers found their new gold strike, and they will soon all be there, mining away.
TechCrunch
What they haven’t done is launch yet another social network platform. As more and more of these platforms launch, developers have difficult choices to make. There are costs associated with writing and maintaining applications for these social networks. Most developers will choose one or two platforms and ignore the rest, based on a simple cost/benefit analysis.
Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. And if they pull it off, they’ll be in the center, controlling the network.
What They’re Launching
OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:
Profile Information (user data)
Friends Information (social graph)
Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)
Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.
Unlike Facebook, OpenSocial does not have its own markup language (Facebook requires use of FBML for security reasons, but it also makes code unusable outside of Facebook). Instead, developers use normal javascript and html (and can embed Flash elements). The benefit of the Google approach is that developers can use much of their existing front end code and simply tailor it slightly for OpenSocial, so creating applications is even easier than on Facebook.
Applications can have full functionality on profile and/or canvas pages, subject to the specific rules of each host. Facebook, by contrast, limits most functionality to the canvas page, allowing a widget on the profile page with limited features.
OpenSocial is silent when it comes to specific rules and policies of the hosts, like whether or not advertising is accepted or whether any developer can get in without applying first (the Facebook approach). Hosts set and enforce their own policies. The APIs are created with maximum flexibility.
Launch Partners
Partners are in two categories: hosts and developers. Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.
Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.
What This Means
The timing of OpenSocial couldn’t be better. Developers have been complaining non stop about the costs of learning yet another markup launguage for every new social network platform, and taking developer time in creating and maintaining the code. Someone had to build a system to streamline this (as we said in the last few sentences in this post). And Facebook-fear has clearly driven good partners to side with Google. Developers will immediately start building on these APIs to get distribution across the impressive list of hosts above.
And they’ll do it soon, too. It’s clear that the developers who arrived early to the Facebook Platform party won easy customers. Those that came later had to fight much harder. Developers found their new gold strike, and they will soon all be there, mining away.
TechCrunch
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Friendfarming
Friendfarming: The act of playing a Social Networking Site (SNS) solely for the purpose of harvesting and selling relationships, accumulating friends and then selling that user account for real money in online marketplaces such as eBay or Craigslist. (See relevant eBay auctions)
On eBay, MySpace accounts with 8500+ friends are being sold for around US$75, 7000+ friends for US$65, 4000+ for US$35, and the list goes on. Given this trend, I wonder if it makes sense to sell Facebook accounts as well.
In a recent study, IT security firm Sophos created a fake Facebook user account under the name ‘Freddi Staur‘, and randomly requested 200 members to be friends with ‘Freddi.’ Out of those 200, 87 accepted the friend request and 82 of those gave ‘Freddi’ access to “personal information” such as e-mail addresses, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, and school or work data (Thanks Derek!).
Both cases break the magic circle. Both also involve some form of labor, although it is often partly automated through the use of bot programs.
While this might not be ethical, it remains to be seen if the harvesting of user profiles might still be cheaper than Facebook’s new targeted advertising system. After all, being “cheaper” is what drives email spam till today.
Theory.isthereason.com
On eBay, MySpace accounts with 8500+ friends are being sold for around US$75, 7000+ friends for US$65, 4000+ for US$35, and the list goes on. Given this trend, I wonder if it makes sense to sell Facebook accounts as well.
In a recent study, IT security firm Sophos created a fake Facebook user account under the name ‘Freddi Staur‘, and randomly requested 200 members to be friends with ‘Freddi.’ Out of those 200, 87 accepted the friend request and 82 of those gave ‘Freddi’ access to “personal information” such as e-mail addresses, dates of birth, addresses and phone numbers, and school or work data (Thanks Derek!).
Both cases break the magic circle. Both also involve some form of labor, although it is often partly automated through the use of bot programs.
While this might not be ethical, it remains to be seen if the harvesting of user profiles might still be cheaper than Facebook’s new targeted advertising system. After all, being “cheaper” is what drives email spam till today.
Theory.isthereason.com
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