Independent telcos are the target audience of the Viodi View and they are the inspiration behind our on-going publishing efforts. The Viodi View audience is much broader than just independent telcos, however, as the independent telcos’ stories are mostly about creating better communities, whether through telecom, economic development or building a play structure in the local park.
I was honored, then, to spend time folks from Grand River Mutual, a Northern Missouri/Southern Iowa-based independent telco a few weeks ago and learn about how they are helping local law enforcement officials leverage their limited resources. In this brief video, Ron Hinds, Director of Marketing and Member Relations for Grand River Mutual, explains how they developed a wireless system that allows local law enforcement officials to remotely monitor remote communities via a combination of video cameras and lap-tops in their cars.
Good HD Video on a Still Camera? by Roger Bindl
Yes it is possible to get fairly good quality HD video on a still camera. My quest to find one started with a Flip. Ken Pyle was using Pure Digital’s Flip Camcorder, and it showed interesting potential, so I looked around for something more. I thought there had to be a still camera with better video functions. I found several that did okay, but two stood out. The video above is from one the two that stood out. The camera does 720p (1280×720) at 30fps, wide angle, 10x zoom, 4:3 and 16:9, 9.1 Megapixel photos, records to SD card, and fits in your pocket for a little over $300. Learn more about these cameras and others by attending future Viodi Local Content Workshops.
Golf and Local Content (advertisement)
Register to attend the Oct 20, 2008 Viodi Local Content Workshop in Edina, MN. Oct 20th is the afternoon before OPASTCO’s Technical and Marketing Symposium, and the workshop is just a few miles east.
The Workshop is a half day event that will cover topics including:
- Production methods – video editing, camera, lighting, audio, etc.
- Production hardware – camera, light, microphones
- What other telco’s are doing, and
- Inspire Marketing on Marketing.
It is being held in the Harry Cooper Room at the Braemar Golf Course in Edina, Minnesota. Come early if the weather is good; The course should be open. Margaret Hines will be a special guest at the workshop, to speak on marketing, and it sounds like she is up for golf.
Will Wireless Really Be Open? What Does This Mean? by Alan J. Weissberger
This year’s CTIA show occurred just one month before the 25th anniversary of the first commercial cellular call. At the opening keynote session, Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA, made a few opening remarks and then moderated a panel of several wireless executives. Steve, a former All Pro NFL receiver, glibly rifled off the following statistics from CTIA’s Wireless Industry Survey: $15B wireless data revenues in the US during the last six months (20% of carrier revenues vs only 10% two years ago), US has overtaken Europe in 3G subscribers, 75M text messages sent each month (a 160% year over year growth rate as of June). Steve also noted that the mobile content business is robust and growing rapidly. It’s likely that user-generated mobile content (text, photos, videos and audio) will far surpass user-generated content on PCs……Click here to read the rest of this article.
IPTV Middleware – A New Player in Town
In the last few weeks, there were many announcements and press releases surrounding the IBC tradeshow. The announcement of Ericsson moving into the middleware space caught my eye; maybe because it seemed to be almost a back to the future moment from what they did a decade ago with Raynet-Ericsson (a successor to a former employer of mine). Their solution supports Internet Multimedia Subsystem and is from a player that is big enough to make a difference in this space, especially as it relates to delivering video across multiple devices. This approach promises increased blurring between applications (e.g. caller ID on TV, control of TV via mobile devices, etc.). This offering may have the big carriers rethinking their previous IPTV strategies. Click here to read Lightreading’s take.
ViodiTV @ WSTA (advertisement)
The Wisconsin State Telephone Association is providing ViodiTV Sponsorship Opportunities at the Oct 13-14, 2008 Fall Conference in Stevens Point. The sponsorships includes:
- Pre-roll sponsor ad in a ViodiTV posted highlights video of the Fall Conference,
- A sponsor highlight video from the conference to be posted on ViodiTV, AND
- Weblink note in the post show WSTA Bulletin.
Click here to register, or contact Chris Nachreiner at the WSTA office 608-256-8866 ext 21 for more information.
The Korner – Corrections and Additions
The beginning and end of each issue of the Viodi View are supposed tie together in some way and relate in some way to something of interest for the independent telco. Once in awhile it works, while most of the time it probably falls flat. I racked my brain to come up with a theme for the previous issue and so I was very excited to be able tie-in my hoax candidacy in the Korner with the opening paragraph that mentioned TelcoTV. Unfortunately, my excitement got in the way of fact checking and I mistakenly gave the wrong date for the upcoming Presidential election s (November 4th, not 11th).
As follow up to the video of my hoax Presidential candidacy , Joel Smernoff, President and COO of Paltalk reports that, as of September 3rd, the video campaign they produced (the hoax video) had 7+ million views in 8+ weeks.
Another article from the previous issue which has been refined with additional input is what we wrote about BroadQ’s software product that turns a Sony Play Station 2 into a set-top box. As you can read here, BroadQ has plans to add Digital Rights Management, which is necessary in order to obtain major studio content in the pay windows.