Streaming Media

Web 2.0, SM West, Fierce 15, oh my!

Pete Wylie — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:02:19 -0400

Here at FierceOnlineVideo, we're getting excited about the next few weeks of coverage. Editor-in-Chief Doug Mohney will be in San Jose at Streaming Media West next week, so be sure to let him know if you're planning on announcing something interesting there.

Stay tuned for the upcoming FierceOnlineVideo Fierce 15. On Oct. 1, we'll start rolling out this year's list of the 15 biggest movers and shakers in the rapidly growing online video space. We'll give you five a day Wednesday through Friday, so be sure to check the site for updates. Originally, we had planned to roll out the list last week, but some of the arguments over which companies should make the list became quite heated.

We're also moving to get more online-only content on the site, so thanks to those who pushed for it in our reader survey.

This week, I visited Interop 2008 and the Web 2.0 show in New York City and saw some cool exhibits that may make a splash in the online video world.

Though it may be incredibly impractical for both enterprise and home use, and it will set you back several thousand dollars, the Microsoft Surface is pretty freakin' cool.

I watched a demo of its capabilities, and I was impressed by its speed, ease of use, and functionality. The tabletop display unit is really impressive, and opens up all sorts of new computing options, as users can open several windows concurrently and move them around the interface via the touch screen.

I had dreams of watching NBC and Adobe's streaming video feeds of NFL games on Sundays with my fantasy football stat tracker opened up, as well as windows where I could search for player bios and team statistics and read expert live blogs about the games. Gamers could really get a kick out of playing their friends literally across the table...Ok, you get the picture: Lots of computing power, cool interface, really impractical, but if you have the money, Surface would be a cool addition to your living room.

I spent a while with the KickApps people, and I was also impressed by their video widget offering. I walked through the process with one of their staff, who showed me how simple and cost-effective their offering is. KickApps offers several interesting display options, such as a 3-D video carousel and customizable video landing pages.

What's more impressive, is the ease at which you can drop the content into your site and place your own ads over it. KickApps had 0 customers just 18 months ago, but the representative I spoke to showed me a selection of the more than 300 neat community-driven sites they'd built for organizations ranging from the San Francisco 49ers to CW's "Gossip Girl" television series. The selected sites showed off KickApps versatility and customable interface.

- Pete

Amazon to launch CDN

Pete Wylie — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:13:50 -0400

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels announced a serious entry by the online retail giant into the content delivery network space early Thursday morning. The service, currently in private beta testing, does not yet have a formal name. Vogels said it will use localized edge points on three continents to give app developers and businesses the lowest possible latency for content delivery to users and customers. He expects the service to be offered publicly before the end of 2008.

Vogels said customers can make one call to an API, then "store the data in an Amazon S3 bucket" that can be used to register the content with the CDN. The stored data will be tucked away under a new domain name that customers can use in links to provide the content to end-users.

Another intriguing part of the Amazon CDN model is no minimum requirements or registration fees; Vogels insists the service will be pay-as-you-use, rather than pay-before-you-play. Keep an eye out for findings from Amazon's private beta to see if Amazon Web Service's CDN model can compete with existing (and successful) ones offered by Akamai, Level 3 and Limelight.

There are more than 50 companies with CDN offerings currently, according to Streaming Media. It may be tough to wrest market share from entrenched offerings that have had significant lead time and development investment without a clearly superior offering. But if anyone has the established infrastructure and cash flow to fund a major expansion into this fast growing space, it certainly is Amazon.

For more:
- read Vogel's bold pronouncement of Amazon's beta CDN. Blog post.

P2P: Friend of Carriers, Savior of Online Video?

Doug Mohney — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:35:57 -0400

Streaming Media East, NYC--Over the past two months, peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has gone from the source of all evil to being a miracle cure for distributing video if a panel of speakers at Streaming Media East are to be believed. It won't be IPTV, but P2PTV, if service providers and P2P companies can cooperate together.

Currently, "closed" P2P networks account for at least three-fourths of upstream bandwidth on the Internet and at least half the downstream bandwidth of service providers, said Marty Lafferty, CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry Association. The problems have resulted from closed P2P schemes working to evade ISP monitoring and network optimization efforts.

Lafferty says the sea change has occurred by combining openness to P2P networking, allowing carriers to see what sort of traffic is going on and enabling them to fine tune network transfers to reduce router hop count--how far you have to move traffic--and keep copying local rather than crossing service provider boundaries.

P4P--Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P--technology has already demonstrated drastic improvements in bandwidth and network utilization. Verizon testing with Pando Networks earlier this year demonstrated bandwidth usage decreasing more than 50 percent. Other benefits included faster download speeds for users and much shorter router hops to move data (from an average of five hops to less than one). Verizon is a believer and says P4P technology can help scale their network and help deliver more video.

Comcast will be triaing Pando's technology later this year and has also invested in Seattle-based GridNetworks, a startup that delivers high-definition video using P2P technology.

For more:
- Lafferty's P2P presentation slides from Streaming Media East

Related articles:
500 GB of Free Content Delivery; Video Local
Service providers embrace P2P solutions
Comcast, Pando work on P2P 'Bill of Rights'

AT&T Pumps CDN at SME

Doug Mohney — Thu, 22 May 2008 21:57:34 -0400

This week, AT&T was busy courting customers of all sizes at Streaming Media East to use their streaming content delivery network. Forbes.com showed up to deliver a customer testimonial; the heavily trafficked site uses AT&T's hosting and streaming service in NYC.

Forbes.com publishes more than 2,500 stories a day and creates video from studios in New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong. The web site gets more traffic on its people-ranking lists than the Super Bowl site on Super Bowl Sunday, according to Forbes.com VP and GM Michael Smith.

When pressed, AT&T representatives wouldn't talk about the number of customers the company has signed up for its streaming service; AT&T has launched streaming on several occasions.

However, AT&T's reluctance to speak this week hasn't stopped Goldman Sachs from dropping the company's entry into the CDN market. AT&T has a "vast captive" customer base and adding CDN services to the company's existing network infrastructure should be of "relative little" marginal cost. Goldman notes there are close to 40 CDN service providers, many of whom have started services in the past year (Ed.--Many of whom will likely end up closing their doors or merging with other players in the next three years)

For more:
- Streaming Media reports on AT&T's streaming CDN push.

Related articles:
CDXL service exploits Level 3 CDN assets
Tata joins CDN race with BitGravity deal
AT&T plans CDN gear deployments
CDN sector draws more investment interest