A goal of the Viodi View is to be a proxy for independent telephone companies at conferences by reporting on those events. For various reasons, it is difficult to provide a detailed report when I am participating in the conference, as I was yesterday at the Georgia Telephone Association’s Annual Convention. So, a few high-level take-aways from the GTA:
- Madeleine Forrer of NRTC advised telcos to look at how they can become, “Full Service Technology Service Providers”, and offer as much value-add to their broadband offering as possible.
- Bob Saunders of Skitter.TV recommended the importance of segmenting the market and identifying video offerings that appeal to the different segments.
- GTA impressed me as an organization that focuses on its members and their needs as the priority and, similarly, I was impressed with the number of attendees and how engaged the members were in our panel discussion.
Cloud Leadership Forum: IT Executives Share Experiences and Articulate What's Needed for Cloud Computing Success by Alan Weissberger
In this first of a three part series on the state of cloud computing, Alan Weissberger summarizes the key messages from the Cloud Leadership Forum, held June 14-15th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Future articles will look at the network infrastructure side of clouds and the ITU-T Cloud Focus Group activities (including a report of their June 14-16th meeting in Geneva). Note that this is the third cloud computing conference this author has attended in as many months. The differentiator this time was the number of high level IT and computing vendor executives present. The basic theme was how to view cloud computing a part of a company's business portfolio strategy, with emphasis on migration of applications from in house servers to the cloud. Technology gaps and critical issues were also identified and discussed. Click here to read the rest of this article.
Broadband for Smart TV – CDN, Adaptive Bit Rate and 10 Mb/s
Wilfred Martis, GM Retail CE of Intel, explains the minimum requirements to enable, so-called Smart TV for consumers. The benefits of Smart TV extend beyond entertainment and include educational, telemedicine and even telecommuting opportunities. He suggests the U.S. is behind other countries in being able to implement Smart TV features, particularly in what he terms, “Geographically dispersed regions.” Click here to read why he believes the broadband pipe to the home needs to be at least 10 Mb/s.
Connecting CE and Service Providers
Kurt Scherf provides an overview of some of the key points from the 2010 Connections Conference. From the GoogleTV initiative to Verizon’s FiOS, Scherf raises some interesting questions and provides keen insight as to where the market is going. His prediction that we will see a closer relationship between service providers and CE manufacturers points to the importance of these kinds of conferences in bringing together once disparate disciplines. Click here to watch the interview.
Two Take-Aways from Connections
Jeff Vinson provides a summary of some of the significant take-aways from the 2010 Connections Conference. He cites the significance of the Google TV announcement regarding connected solutions. He indicates that the market for the connected home is still confused as to how the models will work. Vinson has a good post on his interview with Wilfred Martis of Intel. To see a previous interview with Jeff, please go to, Hybrid IP/RF Set-Top Boxes. Click here to watch the interview.
Even Higher Data SpeedsRob Gelphman of the MoCA Alliance provides ViodiTV with an exclusive interview regarding the latest announcement from the MoCA Alliance, which promises even higher data speeds over home coaxial cable. Click here to watch the video.
Sarah K. Noonan Didn't Exist by Roger Bindl
Sarah, as described in her Facebook account was 27, attractive, a Democrat, and in a complicated relationship. She had more than 480 friends, yet no one really knew here. Sarah K. Noonan was a fake. She did not exist. This phony Facebook account was created by an advertising agency as a test. The agency was wondering… Is Facebook an effective tool for advertising, or is it mostly smoke and mirrors? Click here to read Roger's post and the resulting comments.
Online Content Producers' Bill of Rights
Roger’s article inspired me to publish this post, which talks about the importance of trust in social media. Finally, after 3 years in draft mode, I decided to publish the following post. The recently drafted "Social Network Users' Bill of Rights" reminded me of my post written so long ago, except that it is obviously more well thought out than what I scratched out one morning. Click here to read the rest of the post.
Some Short Thoughts and Tweets
- NTCA Board announces Shirley Bloomfield as new CEO. This is great news for NTCA and its members. Congratulations to all!
- More dis-intermediation – "Are Sportswriters Really Necessary?" – This computer generated algorithm for creating prose does seems like a natural fit for youth sports.
- 802.11n WallPlate Access Point – This is the original Tut Systems group with some cool applications for the enterprise and hotel markets.
The Korner – A Devolved World
Feedback regarding the Viodi View and ViodiTV is always fun, especially when it is feedback on articles and videos that may appear to be somewhat lightweight. In the previous issue, our interview with actress/producer Illeana Douglas elicited interesting feedback from Dick Jones. Jones, who led content acquisition efforts for GTE and launched Verizon’s FiOS content acquisition efforts in 2004, has that rare perspective earned by working both in the creation and distribution part of the content business.
Jones is now in LA and is exploring his artistic side by writing books and acting. He explained to me in an email that he just participated in a pilot of a new web series, Book Club, which features name actors from familiar TV shows. He emphasized the point made in the Ileana Douglas interview that sponsorship and an interactive relationship with the audience will be critical to the success for this web-distributed series.
He cites Devo (yes, that band from the 70s) as another example of the evolution of content creation. He recently acted in a Devo music video (look for the dancing guy) for Devo newly launched album, Something for Everyone. My initial glance at the Devo web site made me think that they were satirizing focus groups and the corporate nature of the music business, but Jones indicates that Devo involved their fans in determining which songs to include on the album.
Jones says that the important message for the Viodi View readers is that, “Content has always been the key and the richer it gets, the more motivation customers will have to buy broadband from the distributors.”
Stay tuned to see more from Jones in a future post.
