October 17, 2011
Volume XXXVI, Issue 12
Video App Use Soars on Net-Connected TVs
Excerpted from Media Daily News Report by Wayne Friedman
Most consumers use video apps via their Internet-connected televisions anywhere from two to five hours a week. According to a new study from the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM) and The Nielsen Company, 54% of all users of video apps on Internet-connected TVs are using those sites for longer periods than on other devices.
This is in contrast to the 75% of consumers who use video apps on their mobile devices anywhere from a total of 30 minutes to two hours a week. But that video watching on mobile devices isn't necessarily in use on the road, at work, or places away from home. Some of this has to do with users connecting their tablets to TVs.
"Regardless of mobile device, roughly 75% of video app users are most commonly accessing video apps while in the home," said Char Beales, President/chief Executive Officer of CTAM.
Still, it is not surprising that, overall, mobile devices such as smart-phones and iPod Touches account for higher video app viewing levels during the daytime. During evening hours - prime-time, 8 PM to 11 PM - users turn to the larger screens of in-home devices such as gaming consoles, Internet-connected video devices and TVs, and tablets for video app viewing.
Hollywood's Cloud
Excerpted from Technology Review Report by Kate Greene
Remote rendering lets big-budget animators add more effects and opens doors to smaller studios.
For years, the dominant animation studios like Pixar and DreamWorks Animation made their cinematic magic via expensive computers that ran in data centers at the studios. Now the rise of cloud computing, which enables anyone to buy computer power on demand, is allowing smaller, independent animation firms to produce very slick work.
One such firm is Afterglow Studios, based in Minneapolis. Its owner, Luke Ployhar, is currently finishing "Space Junk 3D," a 40-minute stereoscopic film about the 6,000 tons of garbage circling the planet; it is scheduled be released in February.
It's a big project for a small firm, which has required more than 16,000 hours of computing time to animate, or render, the scenes of orbiting debris. Ployhar estimates that if he'd bought computers to do the job, he would have spent at least $50,000 on equipment.
"It wouldn't have been economical for me to buy all these machines," says Ployhar. "I knew off the bat that rendering would be the biggest problem."
Instead, Ployhar leased time on a cloud service run by a New Mexico company called Cerelink. It shares time on a supercomputer with the University of New Mexico, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Santa Fe Institute. Such a setup "opens up a lot of doors for a studio like mine," he says.
Services like Cerelink's are also helping established players like Sony and DreamWorks Animation juggle their big-budget productions, which are becoming ever more computationally intensive as audiences come to expect more realistic-looking imagery and 3-D effects.
DreamWorks Animation releases two or three movies a year, and each film takes about five years to produce. It does much of the work in house: it owns tens of thousands of computer processors, which it has used to render the graphics in its feature-length films such as "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda," and the forthcoming "Puss 'n Boots."
Four seconds of animation - 96 still frames - takes about eight to 10 hours of computation to make sure the light appears to fall in a precise, lifelike way on animated panda or cat fur. Each night, 10,000 to 15,000 processing cores in DreamWorks servers in computers in California work in parallel to stitch together still frames from the previous day's work, says Derek Chan, head of digital operations at DreamWorks Animation.
But with roughly 10 projects going at any given time, the California studio has peak periods when it needs to tap the resources of cloud-computing providers, including Cerelink and Hewlett-Packard, which for several years has sold DreamWorks its high-end hardware. Last year, about 5 percent of DreamWorks Animation's rendering was done in the cloud, but the company plans to increase that to 50 percent by the end of 2012, Chan says, rather than spend many millions of dollars to expand its existing data center.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Congratulations to Victor Harwood and the entire Digital Hollywood team on mounting the especially vibrant Digital Hollywood Fall (DHF) now ongoing at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, CA.
This year's "Digital Hollywood Content Summit" is being sponsored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) and features a truly amazing line-up of speakers.
Jon Favreau - actor, screenwriter, film director and comedian - is the keynote at this year's Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit (VETS), one of the co-located events being held on the opening day of DHF.
VETS sessions include "What is Success in a Digital Media Campaign," "What's Hot in Social Entertainment - Understanding Hollywood Partnering," "Original Web Content Grows Up," and "Trendsetters in Entertainment Distribution."
Among this year's other DHF innovations is the Mark Burnett Dinner at Digital Hollywood, featuring the "The Multi-Screen Universe - Developing Compelling Content for Brands," which offers strategies for local, national, and global storytelling.
Mark Burnett's guest speakers at this dinner include David Eilenberg, Head of Development & Current Programming; Saddoux Kim, Head of Branded Entertainment; and Scot Cru, Senior Vice President, International Distribution & Production; as well as VIMBY's Dean Waters, CEO; and David Goffin, Chief Creative Officer.
Mark Burnett and VIMBY have forged a unique partnership to provide locally produced content for brands seeking to reach multi-screens on a national level. Mark Burnett, his executive team, and VIMBY are hosting a very lively panel to discuss brand extensions beyond the 30-second spot - and the risks for brands not telling an authentic story in a multi-screen universe.
Also new this year is the Urban Media Summit (UMS), billed as an expansive conference in its own right within DHF "on television, music, film, Internet, social media, and advertising - an event for creatives and executives."
The UMS Board of Advisors includes Quincy Jones; Russell Simmons (artist, philanthropist and business innovator); Ice Cube (rapper, actor, screenwriter, director, and producer); Tony Thomas, General Partner, Syncom Venture Partners; Quincy D. Jones III (composer, music & film producer, and author); Kyambo Hip Hop Joshua (manager of Kanye, Lil Wayne, and Drake); Tyrese Gibson (singer, rapper, actor, and author); Matt Johnson, Esq., Managing Partner. Ziffren Brittenham (representing Tyler Perry, Tyra Banks. Antoine Fuqua, Ice Cube, and Forest Whitaker); and Jesse Terrero (music video director for 50 Cent, Ludacris, Mary J. Blige, Enrique Iglesias, Jill Scott, and Snoop).
UMS includes a Welcome Dinner; Day One - Executive and Creative Roundtables; and Day Two - Investment and Start-up Tutorials, Seminars, and Community Outreach, which cover the urban media landscape from idea to implementation.
The Executive and Creative Roundtables features an Urban Media Leadership Roundtable; Urban Media - Cross Platform Strategies - TV - Movies - Digital - Radio - Advertising; Urban Media Visionaries - Crossing the Digital Divide - Content and Infrastructure; Urban Talent in the New Entertainment Economy - The New Working Partnerships - Producer - Musician - Actor - Writer - Director and the Corporate Economy; Urban Star Power & Technology, Social Media and Celebrity - Communications and Commerce; The Global Power of Urban - Branded Media and Branded Entertainment - Developing a Global Strategies and Partnerships; and Talking Urban - The Labels, The Studios, The Networks, The Indies - Executives Respond to Consumer Trends.
The Creativity Workshops, with opportunities for strategic brainstorming and held in briefing rooms, feature Producer and Musician - Influences, Dreams & Futures; Directors and Writers - Going Transmedia - Film, TV, Broadband, Game - Drilling Down; and Live Shows, War Stories and Nightmares - Living on the Road.
Investment and Start-up Tutorials, Seminars and Community Outreach feature Investing in Urban Media - VCs, Funds and Private Equity - Structuring the Big Picture; Urban Start-ups - Seeding the Future - The Pitchfest - 10 Start-ups in One Hour; Minority Representation in the Media, Tech and Entertainment Industries; Technology and Entertainment Outreach into the Urban Communities - Building Bridges and Making Education and Investment Work; Identifying Talent: New Faces in Music, Film, TV, and Broadband; Spotting Brilliance - Discovering Next Generation of Techies - Web, Social Media and Programming - Listening to the Tech Artist at Work; and Exposing School Kids to Hollywood - Dreaming Big Dreams - Tutorial on What Your Future Can Look Like (DHF buses in school-kids for this).
Other special co-located events at this year's DHF include, in addition to VETS, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Digital 25 Awards Dinner. "DIGITAL 25: Leaders in Emerging Entertainment - 2011" honors individuals and teams who have made the greatest impact on digital entertainment and storytelling. This year's recipients will be honored at an exclusive reception hosted by producer, actress, and writer, Illeana Douglas.
There is also a Social Media Primer, all day, focused on using Twitter. And as a special event in the Screening Tent, DHF presents "Cross Entertainment Platforms - New Business Models to Reach Consumers and Drive Revenues Across All Entertainment Platforms" hosted by Mobile Monday.
The New Video Ecosystem Breakfast, open to all attendees, will feature "The Launch of UltraViolet - Advancing Digital Home Entertainment." This is very timely. And the Global Content & Commerce Dinner is being hosted by China's Technologies Co. Ltd, another historic first. Hope to see you at DHF. Share wisely, and take care.
TV Isn't What It Used To Be
Excerpted from MediaPost Blog Report by Melanie Shreffler
It's no secret that Millennials are watching streaming video online, whether via YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Facebook, or any number of other sites (legal and illegal). And some are streaming online video via a box connected to their TV, like Roku, Boxee, and even some video game consoles. This generation is tech-savvy and poised to revolutionize the TV industry, particularly cable, just as it did the music industry.
Before I go any further, I should mention that I'm a cord cutter. I got tired of paying a massive cable bill every month and decided to see how I'd handle going without. I still get a few broadcast channels, but I've been without cable for more than two years (though I kept my cable Internet service), and I've barely even noticed a difference from when I used to have cable TV.
Some students and graduates are deciding the same is true for them. They've grown up streaming video, for example, watching online when their parents had commandeered the TV or when they couldn't find anything they wanted to watch. They're comfortable with the concept, which has the potential to be devastating to the traditional TV industry. As students strike out on their own and no longer have mom and dad paying their bills, they realize how expensive cable is. And they think about cutting the cord, or downgrading to basic service.
According to a recent Ypulse report, only 28% of students say they can't live without TV (referring to traditional viewing), compared to 83% who can't imagine life without music. Some students even prefer streaming video to traditional TV viewing; after all, it gives them what they want when they want it.
What's a TV company to do? Not what the music industry did. Fighting the digital revolution didn't go well in that case, and neither would it with TV. A case in point, Fox recently decided to delay the availability of shows on Hulu, making users wait eight days (instead of just a day) to stream shows. The result was a huge spike in people finding the shows via infringing websites.
The biggest challenge the traditional TV industry is facing is the number of quality alternatives. YouTube is making deals to get professionally produced content for its streaming service. There are rumors Netflix is bringing back "Arrested Development" and "Reno 911!" Microsoft's Xbox Live service has upped its offering to nearly 40 channels of streaming content, including HBO, Sony's Crackle, Disney, Verizon, and more.
Yet, the fate of the traditional TV industry is far from decided. Hulu is up for sale - or maybe not. Netflix is still finding its place with different audiences, splitting its streaming and DVD delivery services, and now pulling them back into one. And students are still making up their minds if they can do without TV or not. What is certain is that streaming is not going away and, as online services continue to bolster their offerings, traditional TV is going to have to find a way to compete.
Time Warner Cable created an iPad app allowing subscribers to get mobile video on the device. It's a step in the right direction, but misses the mark in that students still think a cable subscription is too expensive. Similarly, Comcast is partnering with Xbox Live, but again the service is only for cable subscribers. Millennials want an a la carte option to get the shows they want, without paying extra for channels they don't use.
Broadcast TV's argument against streaming is that it clips their revenue from advertising (they can't charge as much for online ads), so they are attempting to force audiences to watch on their terms, when the show is aired live. But when that doesn't fit in Millennials' busy schedules, it's just not going to happen. Both the TV and advertising industries need to get on board with streaming, or they both risk losing the Millennial audience.
Global Online TV, Video Revenues to Hit $22 Billion in 2016
Excerpted from Media Daily News Report by Wayne Friedman
Big business awaits as TV content owners worldwide increasingly move online during the next five years.
Global online TV and video revenues will grow five times their current size to reach $21.52 billion in 2016 from $3.48 billion in 2010, according to London-based media research company Digital TV Research.
One big mover will be so-called "Over-The-Top" (OTT) alternative TV/video providers that use the Internet to act like terrestrial cable operators and/or satellite programming services.
The report says: "The OTT television and video sector is on the brink of a huge take-off as the key players expand internationally, companies consolidating and as new partnerships are announced on a daily basis."
Skyrocketing growth will also result as more global homes watch TV and video via the Internet. By 2016, 415 million homes in 40 countries will watch online television and video, up from 177 million in 2010.
The report says the US will continue to have the dominant share of the market - now 54%, but dropping to 36%. But online TV/video revenues will grow four times their current size to $7.7 billion in five years, from $1.9 billion in 2010.
China will have even more rapid growth - leaping to $1.4 billion in 2016 from $50 million in 2010. In five years, worldwide online advertising sales for TV/video programming will grow to $9.8 billion from $2.2 billion.
But subscription fees will climb at a faster pace, rising to $5.6 billion from $626 million in 2010. Advertising share of the online business for TV/video is projected to drop to 46% from 63%.
Telefonica Tries its Hand at Skype-Like VoIP Calls
Excerpted from PaidContent Report by Ingird Lunden
T-Mobile has Bobsled in the US, and now O2 in the UK is jumping into the Internet-calling waters with a new service called O2 Connect.
O2 Connect, which is first being launched as a limited trial in the UK, is the first product to come out of Telefonica Digital. This is the new unit set up by O2's parent company Telefonica to drive more innovative digital services centrally that can be implemented across the whole of Telefonica's footprint, which spans from mobile and fixed operations in Latin America through to Europe.
Both Bobsled-a free fixed and mobile Internet calling service that T-Mobile is using as a way to reach out to consumers that are not already on its network-and O2 Connect are drawing on inspiration from Skype, the Internet-based calling service that has make big inroads into wireless services through its multiple mobile apps. Skype is currently leading the pack of similar services, and is in the process of getting acquired by Microsoft.
While Skype was once seen as a threat to the mobile operators-many of whom went so far as to block the service outright-today's approach from O2 underscores the change that has taken place as networks have become faster, consumers have become more price-conscious and tech-savvy, and operators have decided to follow the old saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Unlike Bobsled, it looks like O2 Connect is a product intended specifically for O2's existing customers, and it will only work over WiFi networks. That could mean whatever usage O2 gets from this service will not necessarily affect the revenues it gets from its subscribers for other services such as voice or data.
In its initial form, it will offer users a mobile app, for either iOS or Android platforms, which will work over WiFi networks to give the user free calls and texts to any other UK mobile or fixed line. According to the FT, a customer can use the app on any supported device, and it will still appear as if the call is coming from that person's own mobile number. This technology was originally developed by Jajah, an Internet telephony company that O2 acquired in 2007 for $206 million.
Support for more platforms is apparently in the works, and the intention is to take the service into Telefonica's other markets.
This is not the first VoIP experiment that has come out of O2 Labs, which is now part of Telefonica Digital. Social Call is an app, also for O2 users, that lets users call their Facebook friends from their mobiles, as long as they are logged into Facebook's Chat service. That's very similar to what T-Mobile's Bobsled offers, except that O2 charges the price of a normal call for each connection a user makes.
See also: Telefonica's Gamble: Will Putting Its Digital Assets Into One Unit Work?
BitTorrent Tests Live-Streaming With DJ Janaka Selekta
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
At 5 PM PT October 14th, BitTorrent, the makers of uTorrent, conducted a beta test of their live streaming technology.
"If you're hanging out and want to be a part of something very cool tomorrow, well then we might have your Friday night ticket," the BitTorrent team announced in advance of the trial.
"We're suiting up for an early R&D technology test, which is open to anyone interested in helping us move our Live Streaming technology forward."
BitTorrent streamed an online show featuring San Francisco's popular DJ/Producer Janaka Selekta on live.bittorrent.com
Previously BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen told TorrentFreak that his technology will outperform all competition.
Ten Social Media Sites to Keep an Eye on
Excerpted from Media Life Magazine Report by Toni Fitzgerald
The early days of social media were dominated by general-interest sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter where anyone could sign up, and everyone did.
Today the growth in social media is in sites that complement the general-interest giants. These sites aim to reach a niche audience who already belong to the huge social networking sites but are looking for something more, such as geo-based services or information about a specific topic.
These more narrowly targeted sites attract smaller but often dedicated audiences who log hours instead of minutes on the sites.
That's a good thing for advertisers, and in a number of ways. While Facebook remains by far the most popular social network, these smaller sites offer unique targeting opportunities by virtue of their very specialized membership bases. They're often more flexible in their advertising opportunities.
Here, then, are the 10 most-buzzed-about, up-and-coming social media sites:
Votizen
With next year's presidential election approaching, political-based social networks could see a big bump. Votizen, which launched last year, allows people not only to share their political views and leanings but also to interact with the people who are running for office.
mqVibe
Years ago, "Mapquest" was used as a verb in the same way we now use "Facebook" and "Google." But the AOL-owned site lost marketshare to Google Maps over the years and now is relaunching as a geo-based social network called mqVibe. This mashup of Foursquare and Facebook has the potential to appeal to young people who rely on their smartphones almost exclusively for web access.
Pinterest
Pinterest is, simply put, an online billboard where users can post their hopes and dreams. Think of it as a virtual Christmas list that you can share with your friends and family. The site, which launched last year, allows users to lift images from elsewhere on the net and "pin" them on their board. The majority of users are female.
Klout
This site is geared toward heavy social media users dying to know how much social media clout they have compared to, say, Justin Bieber, the most powerful man on the web. Depending on how much influence you have, you can earn prizes like gift cards or DVDs.
Hotlist
If Foursquare tells people where you've been, Hotlist tells people where you're going to be in the future. The site, which launched last year, is aimed at young people who want to plan get-togethers with friends. Hotlist is meant to serve as an alternative to texting back and forth all night about their plans.
Quora
Question-and-answer sites were on the web long before Facebook popped up, but the thing that sets this site apart is that people answer each others' most obscure questions in surprisingly informative detail. It's a wiki site where members build on the answers that are already on the site.
Friend.ly
While Facebook can be a good place for connecting you to people you already know, the aim of Friend.ly is to help you make new friends based on your interests. You answer a series of questions and get hooked up with people chosen for you based on your answers. Facebook evidently thinks the two-year-old site is a good idea: It acquired Friend.ly earlier this week for an undisclosed sum.
StumbleUpon
This 10-year-old site, where people share the web links they find most amusing and most helpful, has only 12 million users to Facebook's 750 million, but SU's users are unusually dedicated. A study by Statcounter earlier this year found that SU generates more traffic to other sites than any other social media network.
Plurk
Hugely popular in Taiwan, this three-year-old micro-blogging site is best described as an amplified Twitter. People can post their thoughts in the familiar 140-character format, but they can also share instant and text messages, while building a timeline of their social networking activities visible to other users.
Empire Avenue
Imagine if you had to pay for each of your connections on Facebook with virtual currency and in turn made money from people you are connected to and you get the gist of this two-year-old site. Empire Avenue calls itself a social stock market. The aim is to connect with people of high worth and build your virtual fortune by doing so.
Kontiki Partners with World Television to Enable Network-Friendly Enterprise TV
Kontiki, a leading provider of enterprise video solutions, has announced a partnership with top European video communications agency World Television. Instead of investing in costly hardware to optimize the delivery of high-quality enterprise video, World Television customers will now be able to use the Kontiki Enterprise Video Platform to make the most of their existing IT infrastructure in order to deliver high quality video content without negatively impacting business-critical network traffic.
With no hardware required and minimal set-up, Kontiki delivers video to all employees across a company's existing corporate network in a way that is network-efficient, low-cost, secure, highly scalable and quick-to-implement. World Television will offer the Kontiki solution as part of the enterprise video creation service it offers to its 450 global customers, providing them with the following benefits: automatic delivery of video to a user's desktop, ready-to-play without impacting bandwidth; easy and efficient access to libraries of pre-recorded material, such as training videos or financial results that can be quickly cached to a user's desktop; and corporate YouTube-style private streaming services.
Used by the BBC in its original iPlayer service, and delivering video to more than one million employees in over 180 countries, the patented technology in Kontiki's Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN), a core component of the Kontiki Enterprise Video Platform, only requires one 'copy' of a video stream or file to cross each wide area network (WAN). The combination of Kontiki's software agent and cloud-based server infrastructure will provide World Television customers with the ability to stream live and on-demand video to all employees, regardless of their location or device.
World Television's emphasis on superior production values calls for a CDN partner with the expertise to manage high-quality content delivery for end users. "Kontiki was a logical choice when selecting a partner to help us enhance our already-comprehensive portfolio of enterprise video solutions", remarked Steve Garvey, CEO and Chairman of World Television. "There would be no point in our clients paying for high-quality video if the content was unplayable when delivered to end users. Kontiki's cloud solution is the only one that allows us to deliver videos at their original quality while simultaneously keeping bandwidth impact to a minimum."
"Using Kontiki, businesses can fully embrace the power of enterprise video content to communicate and educate their workforces without being forced to make expensive and time-consuming changes to their existing infrastructure," said Dan Vetras, President and CEO of Kontiki. "World Television can focus on producing top quality video content that enables its customers to efficiently and cost-effectively share throughout their entire business."
Cybersky-TV Realizes Success with Cloud Recorder
Cybersky-TV has realized success within another project - the cloud recorder www.onlinetvrecorder.com, which is a market leader in Germany (the German Hulu) and also records US TV.
Here is the live P2PTV offering: www.schoener-fernsehen.com (which means "Better TV" in German). Another GUI is www.streamtivi.com.
Its free, no software needed, completely in Flash (10.2 required), and you can watch all channels simultaneously if you want. Included is an EPG, Chat, recorder. Timeshift will follow soon and even a commercial-free mode.
Maybe some people will add US channels soon.
Box.net Raises Another $81 Million
Excerpted from SYS-CON Media Report by Maureen O'Gara
Cloud storage and content-sharing start-up Box.net, which reportedly turned down a $600 million takeover offer from Citrix, confirmed Tuesday that it's gotten the anticipated second half of a D round that amounts to $81 million.
That means the company, started a few years ago in its co-founder's dorm room and supposedly a reflection of the consumerization trend, has raised a total of $162 million.
It'll need it; its main competitor is supposed to be Microsoft's hysterically popular SharePoint. Box' basic service is free, with $15-a-month fee for added storage and password protection. It also considers Oracle and IBM rivals. Heady company.
The latest tranche comes from strategic investors Salesforce.com and SAP Ventures along with Bessemer Venture Partners and NEA, and prior investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth. The Wall Street Journal says the valuation was under $1 billion; Forbes says it was close to $600 million.
The unprofitable start-up claims to be "one of the fastest-growing enterprise applications of all time," with seven million individuals and 100,000 businesses accessing 150 million files a month, and 250,000 new users joining a month. It's got what are described as large deployments with AAA, Amylin Pharmaceuticals and McAfee, as well as an 18,000-seat deal with Procter & Gamble.
Content on Box is accessed online and through iPad, iPhone, Android and PlayBook applications.
The money is earmarked for expanding the firm's international presence and adding a third US data center next year. The start-up has recruited around 300 people so far including folks from Cisco, EMC, Microsoft, NetSuite, and Oracle.
It's also weeks away from launching /bin or Box Innovation Network, which it calls a major initiative designed to support and grow an ecosystem of next-generation information-sharing, heavily mobile enterprise applications. It will provide funding, consulting and other resources to /bin developers.
Box currently integrates with 120 applications, including Salesforce, SAP StreamWork, Google Apps, and NetSuite.
Obviously Box is bound to go public eventually.
Cloudmark Integrates E-Mail Services with IPv6
Excerpted from Network World Report by Carolyn Marsan
Cloudmark is among the first messaging vendors to tackle the vexing issues related to integrating large-scale e-mail services with the next-generation Internet Protocol called IPv6.
Cloudmark offers several IPv6-related features in its e-mail security suite for carriers, government agencies and large multinationals. The suite includes: Cloudmark Gateway, a mail transfer agent; Cloudmark Authority, a message filtering system; and Cloudmark Sender Intelligence, an anti-spam system that uses real-time data from the Cloudmark Global Threat Network to create profiles of good, bad and suspect senders.
The Cloudmark Gateway allows network operators in native IPv6 or dual-stack IPv4 and IPv6 environments to transit messages through the messaging server and out to the Internet, which overwhelmingly runs IPv4, the original version of the Internet Protocol.
Cloudmark also is developing new techniques that will allow carriers to track e-mail sender reputation in IPv6. These include the ability to track messages by IPv6 network address prefix, instead of individual IP address, which will make it easier to identify spammers in IPv6 environments.
Among Cloudmark's customers is Comcast, which has thousands of IPv6 customers across the United States.
"We have a number of carrier customers in Japan, North America, and Europe that are in the process of deploying IPv6," says Kevin San Diego, Vice President of Product Management at Cloudmark. "These folks are starting to look at new customers as IPv6 connected and bringing them through translation and transition technologies to get out to the general Internet. They are interested in being able to accept IPv6 email traffic from network customers over IPv6 and IPv4 today, which allows them continued growth."
Carriers like Comcast are migrating to IPv6 because the Internet is running out of addresses using IPv4. The free pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses expired in February, and in April the Asia Pacific region ran out of all but a few IPv4 addresses being held in reserve for startups. The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), which doles out IP addresses to network operators in North America, is projected to deplete its supply of IPv4 addresses within the next 18 months.
IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet, but IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and can connect up a virtually unlimited number of devices: 2 to the 128th power. IPv6 offers the promise of faster, less-costly Internet services than the alternative, which is to extend the life of IPv4 using network address translation (NAT) devices
IPv6 introduces several difficult issues related to managing e-mail on large networks. For example, IPv4 has 4.3 billion IP addresses that can be tracked by tools such as Cloudmark Sender Intelligence to isolate spammers. Because the supply of IPv4 is scarce, each residential customer gets one IPv4 address. This means companies like Cloudmark can identify spammers by the IPv4 address they use.
SoundCloud Shows It's More than Music
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Chris Marlowe
SoundCloud, has gathered together ten of its most intriguing users for a video project in which they share their perspectives and memories to explore why sound is so important to our lives. It's also a subtle way to reinforce that SoundCloud, the social sound creation and sharing platform, is not limited to obvious things like songs.
Two of the video's contributors are acclaimed recording artists. One is Moby, the musician, producer, remixer and composer with multiple Grammy nominations, and whose release "Play" was an international hit. The other is Imogen Heap, the eclectic Grammy-nominated musician and composer whose recent work explores crowdsourcing inspiration, sound samples and performances.
Another voice heard from is Martyn Ware, who in what must seem like a previous life was a member of Heaven 17 and the Human League. He is much better known as a producer (Tina Turner, Erasure), soundscape composer and founder of The Illustrious Company.
The other contributors have careers that use sound in equally important but less familiar ways: Ben Rubin, multi-media artist, sound researcher and founder of EAR Studio; Bruce Odland, sonic thinker, composer and sound artist; Jad Abumrad, radio host and producer, 2011 MacArthur Fellow; Dr. John Levack Drever, head of Sound Practice Research at Goldsmiths University; Julian Treasure, author of Sound Business, chairman of The Sound Agency; Salvatore Principato, vocalist, percussionist and sound collaborator; and Tim Exile, electronic producer and performer, pioneer of crowd jamming.
"This video demonstrates SoundCloud's commitment to collaboration, participation and passion around sound and provides a thought-provoking piece for everyone to enjoy," the company said.
iCloud Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think: It's the Future of Computing
Excerpted from GIZMODO Report by Mat Honan
Remember life before cell-phones? It's hard, because they are so ubiquitous and essential. iCloud marks a similar turning point, a transition from an old way of doing things. It makes computers easy for everyone, by making computing disappear.
Of everything Apple is rolling out today-and its rolling out a lot of stuff - there is no bigger deal than iCloud. Forget Siri or Find my Phone or Notifications or any of the other numerous updates and enhancements that iOS 5 brings to the party. None of it matters compared to iCloud. For some of us, iCloud means we're never buying another computer, and for the rest of us, iCloud will be the end of computing as we have always known it.
For many decades, computers were something that only engineers used. In the 1980s, they became available to anyone who could afford one, but still required a lot of specialized knowledge. By the 90s, they were to the point where you didn't have to know much to achieve common tasks-but doing anything even remotely unexpected could mean a call to tech support for most people. In the past ten years, they've lept forward again and become easier than ever, but have still remained folder and hierarchy based. You have to have at least some basic understanding of how information is organized on them. iCloud ends all that.
There are no more file systems and folders to manage. It doesn't matter where you save something, you just start an app and there's your data. Here are your pictures, your music, your documents and movies. Here are your apps and maps and all the things you care about. You don't need to look for them, or move them from place to place. There's no more manual syncing. No more worrying about backups. No more dragging and dropping one thing from one place to another. All you have to do now is hit the power button. That's it.
iCloud transforms our machines into little more than a variety of screens we'll use to peek at data, in much the same way we use screens to peek in at TV shows. There's nothing to learn, and nothing to manage. iCloud makes your computer and its file system completely unnecessary. Sure, you can still use one if you want to. And everything will just show up there-your music, your photos, your documents. Or you can ditch it, and just go iPhone or iPad only. And all your files will still have a home, a secure home in the cloud, and will still sync automatically to your devices.
In 2001, Steve Jobs announced Apple's digital hub strategy. The Mac would be the centerpiece tool to connect and control all of your digital devices. It sounds obvious in retrospect, but it was that strategy that took Apple from nearly dead to being the biggest goddamn company in the world.
And as it grew, it changed. It went from being Apple Computer, to Apple Inc.-the company dropped the computer, but you still needed one. The hub remained essential, and the hub remained a computer in your home that that managed the flow of your data and gadgets via wires and cables and ports. You had to have a computer, and some knowledge of how to use it, to keep track of all the electronic things you produced and consumed.
But now the hub is gone. Or rather, it's moved offsite, so you don't have to think about ever again. Now it's somewhere in a climate-controlled building in North Carolina, under fluorescent lights and acoustic ceiling tiles, humming and clicking and sounding a bit like Kid A. It's a series of redundant servers that connect to your phone, your tablet, your computer, and even your television via radio waves and antennas: things you'll never see or care about.
Those servers move the documents from your desktop onto your iPad, the pictures you snap with your phone onto your Apple TV, and make sure the music you buy on the go is waiting for you in iTunes when you get home. You don't need a desktop, or a mouse, or any knowledge of where things are. That's what's so great about the cloud, not that you can store things remotely, but that you don't have to worry about where those things are. At all.
Of course, Google has been working towards this same end goal for some time now, and has in some ways gone even deeper into the cloud. When you get a new Android device or a Chromebook you can simply log into your Google account and all your emails, contacts, music, documents voicemails and photos are there waiting for you. But Google requires some setup and knowledge about how to use its services, and it still makes you push and pull. To take full advantage of Google's cloud services, you have to be something of a power user. You have to know what you want to accomplish in advance. And if you want to use them offline, well, sorry.
What iCloud is doing is making these highly advanced functions available to anyone. You don't have to know you can sync everything, it just happens. Updating your phone? Done. Downloading mobile photos? Done. Backing up your files? Done.
Sure, a lot of people were doing this stuff before with Dropbox and other third-party software. But your dad probably isn't going to do that. At best he may look for a "make all my stuff work together" button-if he even knows that his stuff CAN work together. Apple upends the process by taking over the hub completely and making all that syncing and organizing both invisible and, more importantly, automatic. Everything is action-focused. Just do your tasks, and it takes care of the rest.
Once you've got an iPhone, it says, just take a picture, and we'll make it show up everywhere. Just plug your phone into the power outlet at night, like you always do, and we'll back it up for you. We'll make sure your documents are never lost and your calendar is always up to date. We will organize your digital clutter for you. We will end fragmentation, and make sure that each and every bit you care about is always exactly where you need it-which is to say directly in front of you.
And it's able to do this because, somewhat counter-intuitively, iCloud doesn't live purely online. Unlike Google's cloud services, iCloud is also local. It gets that you want stuff with you, now. And so instead of forcing you to call it up, it pushes it to you in the background. It is the interim step between purely device-based apps and purely Internet-based services. iTunes Match, for example, is designed to transition us away from the downloading model while still giving us downloads. Again, it knows how to do this stuff so average people don't have to.
Buy into Apple's ecosystem, and it's all just done. Seamlessly. On every screen. Your phone, your tablet, your computer, your television. iCloud merges them all and pushes content to each of them. It obliterates distinctions between screens. One data set; many devices. Change something on one, and it flows to all the rest.
And because Apple is giving developers access to iCloud services, you can expect ever-more applications to take advantage of it. To sync up your life and spread it around from device to device. To make it easier to get things done. To make using a computer faster, more efficient, more productive.
The logical end goal of iCloud is, of course, replacing the operating system itself. No more iOS, no more OS X, no more Windows. There are just the devices you turn on or off, and the data they store. iCloud is computing without the computing. And all of it, simply working, for everyone. Even your parents. Even your grandparents. Even your children. Thanks to iCloud, we are all power users now.
Adobe's Building a Cloud
Excerpted from SYSCON Media Report by Maureen O'Gara
In the fashion of the times Adobe is building a cloud and in the fashion of Adobe it's called the Creative Cloud.
Adobe calls it a major "transformative" new initiative. It's meant to sell classic Adobe desktop and newfangled tablet applications.
Adobe's got a half-dozen cross-platform Touch Apps for content creation on tablets, Android to start in mid-November, Apple next year despite Apple's rejection of Adobe's Flash widgetry.
In response to Apple's disdain Adobe seems to be moving increasingly to the more acceptable HTML 5. For instance, it's buying Vancouver-based Nitobi Software, which makes PhoneGap, an open source platform for building cross-platform HTML5- and JavaScript-based mobile apps and donating its code to the Apache Software Foundation.
Of course never say die - developers can still use Adobe Flash with AIR. Adobe has introduced Flash 11, which is supposed to be more mobile, powerful and open than it used to be and had Adobe saying that Flash doesn't compete with HTML5 (really?) and can do content creation-y things like video games that HTML5 can't and combined with the new AIR3, that content can be packaged in applications for smartphones and tablets like iPhone and iPad. Adobe's got in its mind a single development platform for desktop and mobile apps that offers the user the same experience.
Anyway, PhoneGap currently works on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and other operating systems and has reportedly been downloaded 600,000 times. It's integrated with Dreamweaver CS5.5.
Adobe imagines dabblers, artists, photographers and web developers using its hosted cloud-based services to share files and transferring their work into its Creative Suite software for further refinement. Creative Suite will remain a desktop app.
The cloud itself won't be available until next year and its exact features aren't clear yet. Monthly subscription fees or "membership" - which won't be priced until November - include 20GB of cloud storage.
Apparently the Touch Apps will cost 10 bucks each and will be sold on the Android Market and the Apple App Store. They will come as a bundle or individually.
Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite technologies are supposed to deliver interactive publications on tablets. Its Business Catalyst software is supposed to build and manage web sites and new design services. And Adobe's bought Typekit for its cloud-based fonts for web site design.
The Touch Apps will include Photoshop Touch, Carousel for managing photos, Kuler for color selection and matching, Collage for assembling images on a virtual board, Debut for viewing Creative Suite files and marking them up with comments, Ideas for vector-based drawing, and Proto for sketching out wireframe prototypes of web sites and mobile apps.
Tablets using these apps will have to have at least an 8.9-inch display and 1280-by-800 resolution.
At the end of November Adobe expects to make a $395 Single Edition for iPad, a new piece of its Digital Publishing Suite, available for individual designers and small publishing houses to write a one-off application and deliver tablet-based brochures, catalogs, portfolios, training materials, and books through Apple's App Store. Additional platforms will be out later.
Terms of the Typekit and Nitobi acquisitions weren't disclosed.
IBM Makes Bet on Distributed Computing with Platform Buy
Excerpted from HPC Wire Report by Michael Feldman
Platform Computing will soon be under new management. IBM announced on Tuesday that it intends to buy the Toronto-based company and fold it into its Systems and Technology Group. If all goes according to plan, the deal will close in Q4, ending Platform's 19-year reign as an independent, privately held company. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
As a premier vendor of cluster, grid, and cloud management software for the technical computing market, Platform fills an interesting niche in IBM's offerings, which mostly lacks this type of system software in its HPC stack. Except for IBM's xCAT, which offers similar management and provisioning functionality to Platform Cluster Manager, the rest of the portfolio including, including Platform Symphony, Platform LSF, Platform HPC, plus newer products like Platform ISF and Platform MapReduce, should fill some empty slots at IBM.
The acquisition also fits in with IBM's "Smarter Planet" strategy, although to be honest, what computer technology would actually fall outside of that mom-and-apple-pie vision of IT? Nevertheless, Platform's ability to address clusters, grids, and clouds does play into Big Blue's focus on "big data" types of applications, which tend to rely on distributed infrastructure to handle their computational workloads.
From a financial perspective, IBM is expecting to grow an already profitable business. Platform took in $71.6 million in revenue in 2010, up from about $60 million the previous year. That's not huge by IBM standards, but the growth rate is certainly attractive. But according to a 451 Group report, Platform's business is limited by its confinement to what the authors referred to as "the HPC ghetto," a weakness IBM thinks it can rectify.
During a press briefing on Tuesday, Brian Connors, VP of IBM's HPC Business Line, emphasized his company's plans to expand Platform's business. Citing IDC's projected 8 percent increase for total technical computing revenue over the next few years, Connors said he thinks IBM's go-to-market strategy for Platform portfolio will "extend the reach of high performance computing into the high growth segment of technical computing."
In this context, he has pigeon-holed HPC to mean mostly high-end government and academic supercomputing for scientists, whereas technical computing here covers a wider range of simulation, modeling and analytics codes on clusters and other scaled-out infrastructure. Specifically, IBM is looking to broaden Platform's footprint in the commercial space -- areas like product development, financial services, manufacturing, digital media, life science, and so on.
Platform is fairly well positioned in many of those sectors already, but IBM, with its considerable marketing and sales heft, plus its deep customer base, should be able to leverage those advantage for Platform's business. IBM is in about 170 countries today, compare to Platform's 20-country footprint. And even though Platform has built up a nice collection of value added resellers (VARs), OEM and software partners, not to mention about 2,000 clients, those are dwarfed by IBM's vast network of partners and customers.
Although not much was said about leveraging IBM's server portfolio, the Platform offerings are a nice fit for IBM's hardware platforms that the company sells into the technical computing space, namely the System X line, the BladeCenter servers, the Power-based systems, and System Storage hardware. Bundling technical management software with their hardware dovetails nicely with IBM's strategy of selling higher margin, integrated systems. This is yet another way for Big Blue to distance itself from white box vendors at the bottom of the server food chain.
While all of this has the makings for a happy marriage, keep in mind that not all of Platform software is running on IBM servers today. Current strategic partners (besides IBM) include HP, Dell and Cray, which bundle Platform's management tools and libraries with many of their HPC system deployments. It's reasonable to wonder what is to become of these relationships.
According to IBM's Connors, they plan is to keep those partnerships intact. "It's our intent to preserve as many of those relationships, if not all, going forward," he said, adding "coopetition is just the nature of business now." Platform CEO Songnian Zhou, reiterated that line of thinking, saying, "There's a clear recognition that the world is now very open and we need to make absolutely sure we escalate our efforts in supporting those platforms, including competitors' platforms to IBM, so that we continue to do the best job in serving enterprise customers."
Whether Platform's partner OEMs will be comforted by that sentiment is questionable.
CEO Addison Snell notes that HPC system vendors have a lot more choice in cluster and grid management vendors than even just a few years ago. "Today there are a number of other companies, such as Adaptive Computing, Bright Computing, and Univa, whose products compete with Platform's in specific markets," he explained, adding that the IBM-Platform deal could spur other acquisitions of said companies.
Certainly we've seen similar domino effects in other areas, most recently in the storage arena. With a landmark acquisition like this in cluster, grid and cloud management, it certainly wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities to see other OEMs start choosing sides.
Coming Events of Interest
Digital Hollywood Fall - October 17th-20th in Marina del Rey, CA. Digital Hollywood (DH), the premier entertainment and technology conference in the country, once again welcomes the Variety Summit, which has been co-located with its past three DH events.
Future of Film Summit - November 7th-8th in Los Angeles, CA. An exclusive group of industry thought-leaders discuss the current state of the industry, and how film and transmedia deals will be struck in the coming years. This is a unique opportunity for creatives, producers, buyers, and film financiers.
Streaming Media West - November 8th-9th in Los Angeles, CA. Attended by more than 2,500 executives last year, SMW covers the entire online video ecosystem from content creation and management, to monetization and distribution. The number-one place to come see, learn, and discuss what is taking place with all forms of online video business models and technology.
World Telecom Summit 2011 - November 9th-11th in Singapore. The 2011 program will focus on topics that demonstrate innovation across the telecommunications industry, both on a commercial and technical level, to improve profitability and quality of next generation technologies and customer experiences.
Future of Television - November 17th-18th in New York, NY. Top television and digital media industry executives discuss the increasing importance digital media for the future of the television industry. Topics include viewer trends; programming for non-traditional platforms including online video, VoD, HD, IPTV, broadband and mobile.
2012 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) - January 10th-13th in Las Vegas, NV. With more than four decades of success, the International CES reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. This is the world's largest consumer technology tradeshow.
CONTENT IN THE CLOUD at CES - January 11th in Las Vegas, NV. Gain a deeper understanding of the impact of cloud-delivered content on specific segments and industries, including consumers, telecom, media, and CE manufacturers.
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