David Berlind: Raw Data

MPEG nation aims to democratize TV and video distribution

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:39:32 GMT

From the below press release: "a one to sixty minute video uploaded to MPEG NATION, encoded into Microsoft(R) Window's Media(R) Format (150k, 300k & 700k), costs just $4.95 including unlimited streaming (viewing) bandwidth and storage for six months."

Long term, given the efficiency and convenience of time-shifted consumption of text, audio, and video (and a fourth medium like Flash that I call i-media... the "i" is for "interactive" and implies a form of audio or video that the end user can interact with), and the fact that portable hard drive space simply isn't an issue, I wonder whether streaming will finally give way to downloading for all but the most incredibly time sensitive news and information. About 99.99 perecent of the content we consume doesn't have to be consumed live or while connected to some network.

MPEG NATION Launches Powerful Broadband Streaming Video Service for the Masses Stream your video world-wide to millions of people for less than $1 per month!

CHICAGO, March 30 /PRNewswire/ -- MPEG NATION, a division of Digital Silo, Inc., a global provider of integrated content delivery and streaming media services, today announced a new, first ever, low-cost service to encode and stream consumer and commercial video content via its worldwide content delivery network, within minutes, via a simple upload. MPEG NATION enables individuals and companies to inexpensively begin streaming video across a high-performance, reliable content delivery network without having to spend hours encoding and transcoding formats, negotiating rates, or worrying about ongoing storage and bandwidth costs. MPEG NATION is the first-ever "one-price-fits-all solution" for placing video in blogs, auctions, personal and corporate websites. "We are working towards a world where television and video distribution are much more democratized and where a creative spark, a camera, and a computer are all it takes to put video content before the eyes of thousands of people. MPEG NATION is excited to announce the first affordable streaming video service for delivering streaming solutions to meet market demand for Microsoft(R) Windows Media(R), RealNetwork's RealPlayer and Apple's QuickTime video formats," said Scott Wolf, president and chief technology officer of Digital Silo's MPEG NATION division. (more)

Has this guy turned the internet into a global cable TV network?

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:00:10 GMT

This sounds to be true. But even if it isn't, it suggests that entrepreneurs are out there thinking about interesting ways to move broadcast media onto the internet. So, the theme is convergence and broadcast media execs (radio and TV) have to be thinking about what entrepreneurs like this mean to the their business. Whether this really does what it says it does doesn't matter. Sooner or later, someone will figure out how to do this and the international nature of the Internet could will affect the legal options that are available to broadcast media outlets.

From: Jonathan Rodriguez [mailto:JonathanR@bitmar.com]
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 1:33 PM
To: David Berlind

I am the creator of WebBrowserTV and WebBrowserRADIO; two new, revolutionary, upcoming computer softwares. Basically, by inserting these CD-ROM softwares into a computer, any user can watch live worldwide television and/or radio, right from their computer. An Internet connection is used as the receiving via (no antennas and/or cable box needed).

Please take under consideration that most people are now, more than ever before, going online for everything. Television networks and radio stations are now realizing that the computer business is taking over the world, including their own industries (TV and radio industries). As a result of our constantly-changing competitive world, new technological products are always arising, re-shaping each of the industries they fall under. I feel that I may have a product line (these two products) with a great possibility of becoming a major deal in the market, especially if large chains (like Wal-Mart, Staples, Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc.) decide to add these products to their catalogs. That could mean a tremendous amount of long-term business. The other good thing about these products, in particular, is that they are both hybrids of very stable industries: The Internet, TV, and Radio... (more)

Windows Media ecosystem spreads its wings

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:46:34 GMT

I received the following email on March 30, 2005. I'm not sure how many people realize how vast the Windows Media empire is. In the traditional ecosystem sense, where more developers begets more content and more content begets more users and more users attracts more developers (all to the benefit of the underlying platform), is there any digital media ecosystem (the choices are quicktime, real and flash) that matches the depth and breadth of the Windows Media ecoystem? The e-mail does a great job of describing the reach of the Windows Media empire. Don't forget that media platform pervasiveness begets digital rights management platform pervasiveness.

(ps: I normally don't publish emails without the permission of the sender but this e-mail is obviously a boilerplate with nothing specific to me or other recipients. I redacted the sender's contact information)

==Email Begins Here=

Microsoft Corp. today will announce the launch of MSN Video Downloads, which provides daily television programming, including content from MSNBC.com, Food Network, FOX Sports and IFILM Corp, for download to Windows Mobile(tm)-based devices, such as Portable Media Centers and select Smartphones and Pocket PCs.

Since launching the Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Center last fall, more than 20 new partners, including CinemaNow Inc., MLB.com, MSNBC.com, MTV Networks Music, Napster Inc., SnapStream Media Inc and TiVo Inc., have agreed to make video available online specifically formatted for Windows Mobile-based multimedia devices.

In addition to MSN Video Downloads announced today, there are a number of ways to obtain legal content that can be transferred to Windows Mobile-based devices:

* People can transfer recorded television to Windows Mobile devices from any Windows XP-based PC, either with Media Center Edition PCs or PCs with built-in TV-tuner cards from companies such as ATI and NVIDIA and third-party PVR software such as SnapStream Beyond TV 3. Soon, via the TiVoToGo service, people can take their TiVo Series 2 content from the PC and transfer it to a Portable Media Center.

* The recently launched Napster-to-Go service allows people with a monthly subscription to have unlimited access to hundreds of thousands of songs that can be transferred to Windows Mobile devices. In addition, online movie provider CinemaNow will have hundreds of movie titles formatted specifically for viewing on Portable Media Centers.

* On March 16, CinemaNow and MediaPass announced it will make music videos available specifically for Windows Mobile devices.

Following is a summary of today's announcement. The full press release is below.

* The MSN Video Downloads service is one of the first online video download services dedicated to portable entertainment and is designed to keep people better entertained and informed, wherever and whenever they want. MSN Video Downloads debuted in a preview of the service at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2005.

* New in the launch of the service is the ability to select the specific content downloaded to the subscriber's Windows XP-based PC each day. Also people will be able to activate a new "automatic deleting feature," which specifies how long video from the MSN Video Downloads directory remain on the PC, avoiding a large backlog of clips.

* Along with our CinemaNow and MediaPass partnerships announced last week, content from MSN Video Downloads is for use with PlaysForSure compliant devices that play video, enabling people to download to their Windows(r) XP-based PC and transfer to any Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Center, or Smartphones and Pocket PCs equipped with Windows Media(r) Player 10 Mobile.

The Following Companies Have Announced Support for Windows Mobile-based Devices : (more...)

The Media Guerilla's recurring nightmare

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:23:43 GMT

I've been at LinuxWorld this week hammering out podcasts one after another. By the time I'm done with the show, I think I will have published a total of ten podcasts. For transparency's sake, not ALL of them were done at the show. To get my coverage off to a headstart, three of them were pre-recorded. One of those pre-recorded interviews was with Emic Networks vice president of product management and marketing Donna Jeker.

Although it doesn't happen often, this was the second time in a week where my interviewee didn't have the answers to some obvious questions. I don't want to turn this transparency channel into a bitching and moaning session about poorly executed PR. While this again is an example of how a the practice of media transparency can be embarrassing to interviewees, the companies they work for, and their public relations representatives, there's an upside. Transparency should make all three of those parties much better at what they do because they know that there's more on the line than just the story itself. And why shouldn't that be the case. Everytime a journalist writes a story, their ass is totally on the line. Why shouldn't the demand for that excellence be pervasive throughout the entire food chain of a story. If this was the case, then the final outcomes (the stories) would consistently be better throughout all of journalism. So, transparency raises the bar for everyone, as well it should which is why I think examples like this are worthy of discussion. Again, the purpose of this channel isn't Public Relations 101. But if this it what it takes to raise the bar and make journalism better, then, then it needs to be done.

As I said in my tranparency notes on the first case, I believe the responsibility for such gaffs are shared by both the interviewee and his or her press relations counsel. But not equally. Unfortuantely, Ms. Jeker was not prepared for some of my technical questions nor did she have specific pricing information regarding the product her company was announcing (the reason Emic originally pitched me on the story, and I took the bait). I'm not even sure what to say about not having pricing information. That mistake speaks for itself. But regarding the technical question problem, I believe from my observations of PR people in action is that one of their jobs is to prepare the interview for the type of questions they're going to get from a journalist and figuring that out isn't hard to do. Except for brand new reporters just coming onto the scene, it's not all that difficult to research a journalist's body of work to get an idea (in the case of tech journalism) of how technical the questions might get.

So, the following clips are from the raw unedited audio of the interview. It's perhaps another example of Mike Manuel's recurring nightmare (time codes indicated where exactly in the MP3 file you can listen to that part of the conversation. The announcement was about a product for people who run open source-based J2EE application servers.

[8:10 Me] When you say restarted, do the transactions restart themselves, or does the user have to physically recognize that the transaction needs to be restarted an take action.

[8:25 Answer] That may depend on the exact scenario and maybe for the purposes of this conversation those details might be too fine grained. Is that a fair answer?

[9:33 Me] We're describing the type of failure that happens for example when you're on a Web site and you've started an ecommerce transaction. What about with J2ee -- what your announcing today -- with J2ee, a lot of the transactions and workflow take place behind the scenes. When there's a failure there. How does the system respond. How does it get back to the point that a transaction must be restarted? How does it take the same action that let's say an end user might have to take if they're sitting in front of their browser and they realize they have to restart?

[10:12 Answer] That question is actually not something I can answer right at this moment. Not because I don't want to but because I'm not a J2EE expert. If you're users would like that answer, I can get that for you and it can be posted at a later date.

[16:59 Me:] [just after gettin a rundown on the pricing of previously announced (existing products) I ask about the one being announced] And for J2EE?

[17:03 Answer] Basically we have some bundled pricing -- one for the LAMP cluster and one for the LAMJ cluster [DB's note, the latter is the one with J2EE as signified by the "J"] and that pricing I don't have memorized but its a combination of the products and an effective discount applied.

[17:39 Answer] [DB's note: at this point in the interview, the interviewee makes a mistake that all potential interviewees and PR people should learn from: comparing apples and oranges in a way that paints the solution in a better light than a competing alternative.] We're providing Oracle RAC like capability at MySQL prices.

[18:19 Me] [DB's note: At this point in the interviw, my thinking was, OK, if you want to go there, we can go there and I do.] With [Oracle's] 9iRAC or 10g, my understanding is that they use a shared everything approach ....is your solution the same sort of thing? My understanding is that the engineering that goes into that sort of approach is extraordinary and its sort of unusual to find that.

[18:59 Answer] I probably don't want to get into the pros and cons of the different approaches...

The dialog speaks for itself. If you're not prepared to back up a claim, then making the claim in the first place probably isn't a good idea. Any decent journalist will grab hold and the outcome will not be good. In this case, here is the resulting coverage from my story:

"At the end of the interview, Jeker initiated a comparison of Emic's technology to that of Oracle's and made it seem as though you get the benefits of Oracle's clustering solutions for a fraction of the cost. Ultimately, yes, both solutions deliver a degree of fault tolerance, scalability, and manageability. But the approaches to providing those services and the degree to which the solutions can power massive, mission-critical applications are so different that I can't help but wonder if that's like saying that a Kia offers equal protection to that of a Hummer because both have airbags. While Emic's solutions may very well be worth the investment for what you get (as are many low-to-midrange clustering solutions), just remember you get what you pay for. I'm not sure making the comparison to Oracle is a good idea."

Almost finally: Sometimes, the interviewees get straight A's. If you're looking for an example of this, check out my audio interview with AMD's vice president of commercial servers and workstations Ben Williams. This is a shining example of how well-prepared an interviewee can and should be for an interview. What was the role of William's PR counsel in getting him to that state of preparedness? I have no idea. Nor should I, right?

Finally, I'm going to make this my last post on the effects of media transaparency from the PR/interviewee angle. This is an experiment for now and I think two real-world observations are enough to conclude that the impact of media transparancy goes well beyond the issue of media credibility. This was a surprise result of the ongoing experiment, but a result nonetheless and when Jay Rosen said I should write about how the experiment is going as it's taking place, it was precisely these sorts of unforseen results that he knew I'd encounter and that need to be noted.

Raw Data: Copies of e-mails for RIM vs. Good blog entry

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:37:52 GMT

After noticing that my wireless Good G100 wasn't getting copies of my e-mail, I found out that Good's datacenter was down yesterday morning (Jan 24 2005). Good and RIM have done their fair share of trash talkin' each other in the past (most of it off the record). So, I thought I'd ping each of them for comment now that the lights went out at Good. I have two e-mail threads, one from Good's PR and the other from RIM's. Here's the resulting blog entry. As you can see, the comments that I received were 100 percent cut and paste.

Raw Data: VMWare responds to blog entry on Intel

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 13:14:14 GMT

In response to a blog entry that I wrote about Intel's Vanderpool and Silvervale virtualization technologies, Jessica Beyers, who does public relations for VMWare has pitched me on a possible update on the company and its products. The company probably wants to respond to this comment that I made:

"What all this means for companies that have staked their future on software-based virtualization like VMWare (now a division of EMC) remains to be seen. Perhaps people will end up using solutions from VMWare to further divide each hardware-based partition in to multiple software-based partitions thereby turning individual systems into grid super-nodes, or better yet, self-contained grids."

Here's a copy of the original pitch.

Initial outreach to The Planet's PR re: ISNA Takedown

Sat, 22 Jan 2005 17:32:40 GMT

There's a report in the blogosphere that provides an interpretation of this report by BBC Persian that indicates the Planet (a US-based ISP) may be revoking hosting services from an the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA). The report has no response from The Planet so I've sent an e-mail (click through above link) to media contact Kristin Herring who is listed on a press release by the ISP. More to come (hopefully)

Raw Data: IBM invitation for LinuxWorld Pre-Briefing

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 03:57:53 GMT

IBM has some announcements at LinuxWorld and is lining up the press. I received an invitation today (click thru the above link) and accepted. Over on ZDNet, I ask readers if they have any questions for Big Blue's Linux execs.

Raw Data: E-mail request for extension on Radio eval period

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 21:21:02 GMT

Copy of my request for extension on Userland Radio's 30 day trial period for the purposes of covering it on ZDNet. In his response, Userland CEO Scott Young approves. At the time, I didn't realize that using this as my transparency channel would be the perfect test.

Raw Data: Transcripts of discussion with Userland Tech Support

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 20:22:22 GMT

See the comments to view the exchange between me and Userland Tech Support in the process of me reviewing the product

Raw Data: Full thread on Scott Young's feedback re: transparency experiment

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:48:40 GMT

Here's a copy of the e-mail thread between Userland Scott Young and me regarding his involvement as an interviewee in my experiment on media transparency. Says Young in this thread:

"I would be much more comfortable under all circumstances in providing interviews if this was the general practice. I have little doubt this kind of transparency would have a positive (drive towards honesty) effect for all concerned."