Tracy Swedlow and the folks at InteractiveTV always put on a terrific event, and I'll be speaking on a panel at this year's TV of Tomorrow show on March 11th @ 11:30 am (San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center). The topic of our panel is "New Developments in Broadband Video: Can the Internet Keep Up?" It is sure to be a lively discussion - my co-panelists are from BitTorrent, Level3, Brightcove, Thompson, Narrowstep and Tandberg.
]]>Head over to Wired and read the article. It'll make you think.
]]>The DCIA P4P perspective is notable because it represents the interests of technology providers, P2P providers, and ISP's. It's stated mission, which appears below, is to work with each of these interest groups to deliver the best ultimate experience for end user consumers.
2/14/08 ADDITION: Click here to go to the letter as posted on the FCC web site
]]> The DCIA P4P Mission Statement:"To work jointly and cooperatively with leading Internet service providers (ISPs), peer-to-peer (P2P) software distributors, and technology researchers to ascertain appropriate and voluntary best practices for the use of "P4P*" mechanisms to accelerate distribution of content and optimize utilization of ISP network resources in order to provide the best possible performance to end-user customers."
The letter sent to the FCC on February 13th, 2008:
1) The ongoing dialogue, and any legislation tied to this subject, will have an impact on the ability of carriers, cable providers, Internet and media companies to compete for your dollars and mindshare, especially as it relates to rich media (music, video, movies, etc.).
2) The outcome will have a significant impact on what the Internet looks like in 5-10 years time. As the Internet becomes more important to your daily life, you should care about this. Kind of simple statement, but it's a pretty basic concept.
For more on Net Neutrality, here are a few links (and different perspectives):
]]>Parks Associates new forecast for "new media" advertising is $12.2B by 2012
AlwaysOn takes a look back at 2007 financings, sales and M&A activity among the OnMedia 100
Media and Information Investment Bank The Jordan Edmiston Group has a great presentation available on the firm's website which outlines "M&A Outlook and Valuations" in the new media sector
Ben Mezrich's book Rigged is a fast, moderately entertaining read from the same author who wrote Bringing Down the House - the story of the MIT Blackjack team (a great read). This is my second attempt to read a Mezrich book and get the same entertainment value I got out of House (the other was Busting Vegas). Unfortunately, neither Rigged nor Busting Vegas were as good as House. In short - read Bringing Down the House again and skip Rigged. For more, see below.
]]> Rigged is the story of a young guy out of Harvard who gets a job working at the Merc Exchange, the Manhattan-based oil exchange. To summarize the next 42 chapters, the main character then struggles with his new role, tries to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend while working long hours, partners with royalty in Dubai to set up an oil exchange in the booming country, and avoids getting beaten up by people who don't want to see the Dubai exchange succeed. There you go - I've saved you 288 pages of reading.It's a light, entertaining read. I picked it up in an airport, where I seem to be a sucker, for light, entertaining reads. This didn't feel like a total waste of time, but I'd go read Bringing Down the House again before I'd recommend Rigged.
]]>138 million Americans watched 9.5 billion videos online in November '07 (31% of them on Google sites like YouTube).]]>
Given Kontiki's role in digital media, and our role as the download platform for BBC's iPlayer, I'm frequently asked "how's it going?" The short answer: very well. Ashley Highfield, Director Future Media and Technology at the BBC, put up a blog post last week called "iPlayer Launch: First Indications" that provides some insight into the success of the iPlayer since it moved from beta to official launch on Christmas day. To quote Highfield:
"Demand for long-form video content over the web may be much higher than iTunes has witnessed before; It's too early to say, but I think we may be at the start of rewriting the rule book."
For more on this topic, see another good article on iPlayer by the Guardian's Mark Lawson from January 3rd.
]]>
The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer - I never actually finished The Last Tycoons by William Cohen. The author's 750 page account of the history of investment bank Lazard Freres is a reasonably good read - but no human should be forced to read 750 pages about an investment bank. As a friend who works at Lazard put it to me: "Why would anyone want to read a 700 page book on Lazard?" Putting that basic question aside, it is an interesting read - if you've got the time to work through 750 pages. For more comments, see below.
]]> I really enjoyed the early parts of the book, which focus on the early founding families of the bank, their struggles to keep it afloat, escape from Paris during Hitler's reign, and other interesting historical elements. However, the last 75% of the book focuses primarily on Felix Rohatyn and the internal politics of the firm (battles with Wasserstein, etc.). Interesting stories and an incredible level of detail (the author uses actual emails to walk through some accounts), but there's a bit too much rumor and gossip for my taste.If you want to read a more interesting (shorter) book with tales of Wall Street, read Goldman Sachs, The Accidental Investment Banker, or some of the classics like Liars Poker or Den of Thieves.
]]>
Coming out of the Holidays, I've got two new favorite toys. They're new to my arsenal, but not new on the market (in both cases, I'm not exactly an early adopter). #1 is a Toyota Prius, and #2 is my new Jawbone bluetooth headset.
]]>
The first: a Toyota Prius. I bought mine to start saving on gas, as well as to start driving in the carpool lane. For California residents who don't know, if you have a Prius (or other certified hybrid or electric vehicle), and you applied for and received the special stickers before they ran out (in early '07), you can drive in the carpool lane with only one passenger. California's effort to reduce gas consumption has done two things: 1) drive up sales of the cars in CA (estimates I saw peg about 50% of US Prius sales to California buyers), and 2) drive up the price of pre-owned cars that have the stickers (mine is an '04 with about 50K miles on it, and I paid about what it costs to buy a brand new one - without the stickers). Even at a premium price, getting 45 MPG and driving in the carpool lane are worth it - and it's actually entertaining to watch the little meter that tells you how much energy is being recycled through the battery.
The second is my new Jawbone bluetooth headset from Aliph. Santa brought them for my wife and myself for Christmas. I've used a million headsets over time, and never been happy with any of them - too much background noise, and the person on the other end can always tell I'm on a headset. The Jawbone uses a set of new technologies to both enhance the sound quality and virtually eliminate background noise. Even if you don't buy one, you have to check out the demo video on the Jawbone site - a guy using a Jawbone while standing next to a leaf blower - with near-pristine sound quality.
]]>I'd agree with a lot of Nick's points, but I think the groundswell of demand is perhaps higher than you might take away from the article. One data point from the article - NBC alone streamed more than 50 million shows from its web site in October.
At the end of the day, a significant percentage of consumers just don't - and won't - move quickly on new technologies. Witness the adoption of DVR's. I don't know anyone who doesn't have one, but I live in the Bay Area, and DVR penetration across the US still stands at around 17%.
]]>
On Wednesday I was at the NewTeeVee event in San Francisco. I have to say it was one of the better digital media conferences of the year. I can't really pinpoint why (it still seemed to focus on the same subjects we've heard at conferences throughout the year: a) "advertising will be big," b) "social networking is really important for video," c) "consumers want HD, and d) "let's hear from YouTube or MySpace..."), but quite a few people I talked to thought it was a great event.
For two anecdotes from the event, click to the rest of the post.
]]> I had a lot of fun on Wednesday night at a dinner hosted by Om Malik and Accenture. I randomly sat next to Mark Trout of Accenture (Mark runs the West Coast Tech practice) and Kent Nichols of AskANinja.com. You couldn't get two more opposite ends of the spectrum - Accenture is a $20B global corporation, while AskANinja is "two guys and a ninja."I do think what the Ninja guys are doing is pretty interesting, though, as we look forward for the future of digital media. Kent and his partner created and run the site on a shoestring, but get more than 700,000 monthly visitors and are making real money (sounded like it was in the hundreds of thousands of $) through advertising. There are weak shows on broadcast tv that don't reach those numbers. I'm not the first to ponder this, but with the writers' strike, don't you think more of the creative types in LA will look to the Internet as a low-cost way to distribute their ideas - and get paid directly, without studios and others taking a giant cut? If nothing else, go to Kent's site and watch a few videos - they're hilarious.
One of the more poignant insights at the conference was made by Quincy Smith of CBS, who said "Old media executives have made more of an effort to learn new media than new media has bothered to learn old media." There's some strong advice in there for technology vendors...
]]>