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Viodi View – 12/17/08 Issue

For awhile, I have been concerned that my morning ritual of reading the newspaper while eating a bowl of cereal will be torpedoed by the shifting of advertising dollars from print to online. Those fears are getting closer to realization, as evidenced by reports that the Detroit newspapers cutting their deliveries to only 3 days per week. This news was somewhat overlooked given all of the other disruptions in the economy, but it definitely points to the changes brought about by the proliferation of low-cost information through wired and wireless Internet connections.


Art Brodsky of Public KnowledgeNet Neutrality

The topic of Net Neutrality is in the news again thanks to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge, a group favoring net neutrality, made it clear a few years ago that it was OK with carriers hosting servers for third parties in their central offices or data centers.   This seems to be consistent with what Google and Lawrence Lessig have indicated their positions have always been.   Click here to watch this video interview with Brodsky on the topic of Net Neutrality.


Click here to view this informative video on videoBrightcove 3 and Contextual Publishing by Roger Bindl

The aforementioned video was hosted on Brightcove up until about two weeks ago. Brightcove recently changed their model, which caused us to move about 70 videos from Brightcove. Brightcove’s new model is geared towards the larger content owner, although they do have packages for smaller and medium-size content producers. You can learn all about Brightcove’s changes in this very informative video edited and produced by Roger Bindl.

Side Note by Roger… Brightcove was one of many service applications we’ve demonstrated, experimented with, and applied over the past few years in VioidTV. Others include BlipTV, Google, Revver,YouTube, etc.. We’ve learned valuable lessons over this time and one of those was to be prepared for the transition from one service to another. We move the videos from Brightcove for now, but that’s not to say we might not go back again one day. For now there are other services that fit our immediate needs. Contextual publishing with ad insertion has great potential for things we’d like to do with Viodi – the video post summarizes the concept and potentials.


Click here to learn more about scoring music for video in a relatively inexpensive mannerScoring Royalty-Free Music by Roger Bindl

Good music is a key to compelling video. A popular song will evoke emotions from virtually any set of moving images, no matter how lackluster. Getting rights to popular music is a challenge and expensive. Roger Bindl provides some good tips on how to use a program that creates custom, royalty-free soundtrack that matches the timing of the video. Click here to watch and listen to his insight.


TIE Wireless SIG Panel: Mobility 2009: Setting the Stage for a New Order? by Alan Weissberger

The TIE Wireless Special Interest Group (SIG) held their annual review and outlook meeting on December 11th in Santa Clara. This article highlights key points, observations and takeaways from the panel session.

2008 marked a milestone year for the mobile industry worldwide, with the launch of the Apple Appstore, Google’s Android, the mainstreaming of consumer smartphones, and a global recession. The key trends and shifts observed in 2008 were reviewed, and several predictions were made for what might be hot in 2009.  Click here to read Weissberger’s analysis of this panel.


Verizon CTO on their LTE Rollout and Use of Femtocells in the Home by Alan Weissberger

Contrary to what you’ve might have read elsewhere, Verizon CTO Dick Lynch did not make a surprise LTE deployment announcement on 12/8/08 at Cisco’s C-Scape conference. What he did say was: “We expect to have LTE in service somewhere in the U.S. around this time next year. We’ll follow that up almost immediately with LTE to the home using femto-cells, which probably will have WiFi in them.” There was no definite LTE committment from Verizon and no mention of locations or scale for their LTE deployments.  Click here to read the rest of Weissberger’s exclusive report from this virtual conference.


click here to view this enligtening videoLight Networking – Plastic Optical Fiber Networking at TelcoTV

In this brief video, filmed at TelcoTV, Ken Eben of Mitsubishi International discusses the use of Plastic Optical Fiber as a low-cost way of extending Ethernet to the TV. Eben demonstrates how easy it is to terminate and place this extremely flexible fiber under the carpet. The testing methodology reminds me of how I once used as an incandescent light to confirm a fiber link and was surprised to see a red light when I got to the other end of the link (the fiber filtered the rest of the white light). Check out this brief video to get an idea of some of the benefits to a POF approach to home networking.


Sharing Content over Coax – MoCA and DLNA

On the topic of home networking, MoCA announced today that the, “Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) has approved the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) technology standard for incorporation into the next version of its Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines, scheduled for release in early 2009.” At this point, WiFi, Ethernet and MoCA are the only DLNA approved LAN standards. The objective of DLNA is to create consumer electronics that allow consumers to acquire, share and view content easily and conveniently from any device and any location.  DLNA has an entertaining video on their web site that does a much better job of painting a picture of its objective.


2008 – Year in Review from  Parks Associates

Not certain what happened this year in terms of broadband, the connected home, digital health initiatives, mobile devices, and digital entertainment? Check out the December 18th (tomorrow) Parks Associates’ webinar.


A Nice Christmas Gift

Annie Lindstrom sent along a very heartwarming article about an unexpected Christmas gift in a place that, may share characteristics with, but definitively isn’t the mall. Click here to read this article by Mike Spinney and his unexpected Christmas gift.


The Korner – The Drum Set of this Millennium

Presents start flowing to my eldest son 10 days before Christmas, as he was born on December 15. He informed a few days before his big event that this, his 10th birthday, was special as it represented his graduation from kid to tween status.

By the way they were smirking and chortling, I had an inkling that I was going to receive payback from my sister and brother-in-law for giving my nephew a drum set sometime during the 1990s. The package they gave my son for his birthday this week was too small to be a loud musical instrument. I was stumped.

Then he ripped open the package revealing a pre-paid cell phone; the drum set of this millennium (both can be very annoying to parents). Cell phones, portable game players and MP3 players are the types of devices I have been keeping away from my kids. My fear is that these devices, while connecting him to his friends and the outside world, will hasten his disconnection with his immediate family.

Still, I realize the world my son grows up in is going to be a different one than I and that, someday, he will probably need a broadband connected, electronic reader to get the news of the day, while he eats his morning cereal.

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