News Bytes: Classes #9 and #10

3 March 08: The Chicago Tribune’s Jon Van reported that the FCC Auction for the analog TV spectrum could yield $20 billion, way more than anticipated. The 214 bidders included Verizon, AT&T and Google. No doubt that these airwaves formerly used for free over-the-air television will be recycled for wireless broadband Internet access that will compete with WiMax, EVDO and even Qualcomm’s Media Flow for wireless streaming video. Widely available wireless broadband will expand the market for mobile devices and mobile content services.

Dateline 15 March 08, Wall Street Journal superstar tech Journalist Walter Mossberg took a look at HULU with a balanced critique. He liked the UI and feature set and pointed out that the selection of videos was, of course, limited to NBC-UNI and Newscorp Content. Essentially Hulu clones YouTubes most popular features: fast search, embedding, emailing, fullscreen viewing. The networks finally get that the Internet is simply an extension of every other form of TV distribution and will rapidly equal or even dominate consumption. The networks are grasping that consumers have a limited tolerance for advertising. The reduced ad load in HULU’s delivered programming reflects this. I still believe that in the long run HULU will NOT become the mass destination its architects desire. The Internet is too fungible, and endless choice via endless search will dominate.

www.aimeestreet.com got a big PR boost from the Spitzer scandal when it was instantly discovered that his service provider, Ashley Alexandra Dupre, aka Kristen, had two tracks on the site. The site prices tracks based on popularity and her two offerings quickly rose to the max of 98 cents.

On the ad front as reported in the NYT 14 March 08, PepsiCo opted to go the event, experiential marketing route for its Tava brand. Aside from the soup of synthetic compounds that go into these “natural” beverages, including “vitamins”, I admire the www.tava.com website as an exercise in branded media. Top level navigation of Events, Music, and Art reveal the strateg of pairing the beverage experience with emerging artistic experiences. Combine with strategic sampling in the offices of influencers at MTV, Google and others, Tribal DDB ( a unit of Omnicom) seeks to mirror the bottom up success of the likes of Red Bull. Free music downloads sweeten the tea.

Any contributed a link RE Intel’s WiMax chipset:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143577-c,tabletpcs/article.html# The article supports the imminent coming of ubiquitous, cheap wireless broadband.
And Facebook’s new privacy options:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143579-c,webservices/article.html

Joyce pointed out this WSJ article discussing the challenge imposed by exponential increases in Internet traffic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/technology/13net.html?ex=1363233600&en=37c92cf02bd0601f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Massive amounts of P2P, video and music uploading and downloading is going to strain the system. Improvements in compression, and expansion in bandwidth will probably keep apace. Some ISPs and their customers who may not have adequate infrastructure may suffer. I see a tiered structure imminent whereby bandwidth limits are imposed with tariffs to begin balancing usage.

Flora sent a link to a Reporter summary of Disney CEO Robert Iger discussing its billion dollar online revenue outlook at Digital Hollywood. 4 million movie and 50 million TV episode downloads on iTunes are impressive stats. He claimed this was incremental revenue an no cannibalization of DVD sales, although I doubt that. Sphere: Related Content

Class#8 One-Wilshire, CRG West

The trip to One Wilshire provided excellent and unique insight into how the Internet works and how a major access point operates. Thanks to Mr. Sam Proudy for his excellent briefing and tour.

One 664,000 square-foot One Wilshire building was the first building to scrape the downtown LA Skyline in 1966. It became an alternative for the closed AT&T network shortly thereafter.

By touring Wilshire One we got to see first hand what a major global Internet Exchange (IX) looks like and get a sense of how it operates. We also got some rare insights into the operation of a major carrier hotel and data center.

The heart of CRG West’s One Wilshire is the Meet-Me room and its Any2 Exchange. This is the essence of the Internet. The Internet is, and was originally designed to be a network of networks. A priori, to achieve this, the networks must exchange data freely or “Peer”. Carrier neutral peering is what makes the Internet work. Seeing the Meet-Me room is a rare glimpse of Peering. Just beneath the visible, vast runs of copper and fiber interconnects, lay the switches and invisible software that manage an average of over 17 Gbps of traffic interconnecting about 120 users. This makes One Wilshire one of the busiest places on the global net.

Some of the interesting facts we learned on the tour:

• The limiting factors in data center operations are power and cooling. The data center is designed for about 150 Watts/Sq Ft. Paradoxically, smaller “blades” simply create much more density and more difficult cooling requirements. Therefore we saw some cages with a lot empty space since the max number of servers can fit in many fewer racks. This is also why Google and Microsoft are building super sized data centers where power is cheap.
• I was surprised to learn about the enormous price differences in power from 2 cents in Oregon where hydroelectric power is cheap, to 9 cents in LA to 13 cents in San Jose.
• Wilshire One sucks up a whopping 25 Megawatts per month. The City of Santa Monica uses about 15.
• Redundancy including failover power and cooling backup is essential. The blackout in Florida on Wednesday is a case in point. The 4 submarine trans-pacific fiber cables that were interrupted a couple of weeks highlighted some of the vulnerabilities and why CRG has separate facilities that back each other up.
• The US is one of the few places where major carriers from around the world can “peer” without government interference. That makes the One Wilshire Any2 Exchange extremely important in the global grid.
• CDNs or Content Delivery Networks such as Akamai and Limelight play an important role in optimizing data distribution.

Sphere: Related Content

UCLA 405.23 Class #7, 20 Feb 2008

News
Will provided an NYT article heralding a major change in Google’s tactics (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/technology/21google.html?ex=1361336400&en=71c9da34cdbfcedd&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink ). Christian Oestlien, a Google product manager announced the launch of Google’s Ad Sense for video with a network of 20 partners including Revver and Blip.tv. The latter is a site I had not previously explored. Blip.tv has some interesting syndication and ad serving features. The NYT article goes on to mention that Google has chosen to use lower thirds overlays that will be contextually served. You need a million video’s served per month to get in on the action. I assume that Google is looking at metadata to decide which ads to serve where and and when.

Will also referred me to digitalmedialaw.blogspot.com which published the link to the summary of the WGA agreement at http://www.wga.org/contract_07/wga_tent_summary.pdf .
Elizabeth sent me a Variety article about NBC’s decision to stream full eps of over a dozen TV classics. Part of their Hulu strategy no doubt.

Alana put me on to www.artstechnica.com and its’ summary of the state of the music biz (http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/state-of-digital-music-2007.ars )

John gave me a Forbes article about Adblock Plus which is a threat to the 20 Billion Internet Ad biz since it makes it devilishly easy to block banners and even Google sponsored text ads.

Mark mentioned the increase in Global Click Fraud and read parts of an article detailing stats on Internet Video usage including the stat that 80 million Americans or 43% of the population have watched a favorite TV show online and 20% do it regularly. There are also impressive stats on the increase in time-shifted viewing and commercial skipping via DVRs.

Lecture Notes
My lecture was on the importance of metrics in the media and entertainment industry. It’s hard to sell what you can’t measure. The Internet has an advantage over traditional forms of advertising because you can accurately measure every click, therefore you can sell advertising by cost-per-click or cost-per-action. Nielsen is the juggernaut in media metrics. The $70 billion broadcast TV economy depends on Nielsen numbers for its valuations. VOD, time shifting, mobile and Internet viewing require new metrics. Branded media also requires new metrics. Nielsen is beginning to measure all of the former and its new “Place Views” product strives to measure the latter.

Straight from Nielsen, here are the two most important definitions:
Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.

Share: The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time. (See also, Rating, which represents tuning or viewing as a percent of the entire population being measured.)

Mark covered network topology and concept of “switching fabric” and Network Access Points where packets are exchanged between tier one carriers. We will see this first-hand at Wilshire One, one of the world’s busiest NAPs. We mentioned how important trans-oceanic fiber is to the worlds Internet infrastructure. Mark explained what Content Distribution Networks like Akamai, Limelight, Mirror Image, Level 3 and Edgecast.

Network topology is a complex topic that will provide a deeper understanding of the Internet actually works.

It is interesting to note that Google is building gigantic server centers near cheap power and high-speed fiber landings. Its largest cost is power for cooling. Sphere: Related Content

UCLA 405.23 Class #6, 13 Feb 2008

NEWS
Rebekah brought up the legislative machinations around Net Neutrality and Telecom "wiretapping". She summarized a WSJ article about the move to legislate Net Neutrality so that the carriers can not play favorites with bits. My opinion is that their will be tiering and eventually premiums will be paid for high volume users and bandwidth hogs. Emre mentioned that it works like that in Turkey now. Rebekah also shared that Bush's bill to grant retroactive immunity to Verizon and AT&T for allowing digital wiretapping has not yet been passed. This could still leave them open to liability for breaking all kinds of privacy laws.

We discussed the IAB Video Ad Overview contributed by Will and the WSJ article on the Chinese Music battle between Baidu and Google brought in by Andrew.

I mentioned the Economist article predicting the eventual success of MSFT takeover of Yahoo and Kahraman showed me the other Economist Article likening MSFT and Yahoo to two large clouds colliding and how it highlights dramatic changes in the balance if IT power towards media and search.

LECTURE
I covered ATSC and digital TV including interfaces, standards, and HDTV specs. Mark compressed his talk on compression and compared compression for text, music, still images and video. He explained MPEG 4, AVC, H.264, Flash, and Quicktime.

KORY KLEM
The VP of Content for REVVER discussed the Revver's history, business model and demonstrated many of its functions including ease of publishing, search, syndication, embedding and ad serving. We also had fun seeing some prime example of online video success stories. He compared Revver to Veoh, YouTube and others and speculated on the future. Thank you Kory! Sphere: Related Content

UCLA 405.23 Class #5, 6 Feb 2008

NEWS DISCUSSIONS
Alana bought to our attention an article claiming that 1//3 of the TV audience have changed their media consumption habits because of the writers strike. Benefiting from the change has been gaming and DVD watching. I suspect that there is also more Internet video usage. It was also mentioned that the last writers strike might have caused a permanent decrease in TV consumption. Might this facilitate a further decline in Network audience share?

Several people including Joyce and Stefan discussed the possible purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft for $44.6 billion, and what it might mean for the industry and if it would be considered monopolistic. At this price even mighty MSFT would have to go into debt to finance the deal. Would Microsoft destroy the uniqueness of Yahoo? Interestingly it was reported that Google has offered to help Yahoo stay independent. (Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch plays down speculation that he is interested in launching a rival bid for Yahoo.
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The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the Sun-Times News Group, of which it is a part, was up for sale, citing declining revenues attributed to Internet competition. They have slashed costs to make themselves a more attractive target. This is consistent with a general trend of declining print ad sales, both classified and display. How can you beat Craig’s List and Google Ad Words?

USA Today ran two articles last week on “Social” ad-supported Music. 27 year old Dalton Caldwell founded Imeem in 2003. USA Today reported it now has 20 million users and attracts about 65,000 new people per day (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/music/2008-02-05-social-networking-imeem_N.htm). In another article USA Today discussed recent ad supported music ventures including Qtrax, which was launched last week at MIDEM and just as quickly lost its alleged support from the majors ( http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/music/2008-02-05-tech-social-music_N.htm ).

Sylvia brought to our attention another “Web” series being brought to TV called Sanctuary from Sci-Fi Network. This is similar to the situation with Quarterlife, which was an Internet MySpace TV exclusive and has been picked up for broadcast by NBC. Is this a trend?

LECTURE
I covered more trends including worldwide increasing Internet usage, always-on/wireless broadband, and exponential improvements in computing power, storage, and ultra-miniaturization. We then moved on to Internet Video and Youtube, paying particular attention to the new advertising methods being experimented with. According to ALEXA, Youtube is the 4th most visited URL in the world, an amazing meteoric success that has made Internet delivered video commonplace. Dozens of new ventures are experimenting with competing business models in both distribution and original content delivered online in competition with more traditional TV formats and delivery platforms. The opportunity now exists to create successful niche “channels” such as www.airshowbuzz.com and www.macexperience.com . Sphere: Related Content

Privacy, Not

Privacy has been an ongoing theme of discussion in several class sessions. Students have expressed concern about agreeing to the onerous terms-of-service form the likes of Google. Google, Tivo, AOL, Amazon, Facebook, and just about any Internet service you register for, collects mountains of data on its users. Clickstream data is collected on just about any site you visit, with cookies used for identification. What the corporate overseers do with this data has often been called into question. Allegedly registered user data is applied “anonymously” for targeting ads, metrics and “personalization” features, however monumental breaches in security have been well publicized.

In spite of egregious errors and some corporate misconduct, usually due to incompetence rather than malfesciance, I feel that allowing Google and the like to spy on me is the least of my computer privacy worries. Malware, SpyWare, phishing, and other forms of criminal computer identity theft are much more worrisome.

But computer identity theft can be mitigated by firewalls, antivirus/anti-malware software, email filters, and just plain being careful.

Of much greater worry is data collected by financial and credit organizations on every credit card and financial transaction of every kind. Data is collected and stored every time you use your social security number, drivers license, mobile phone, home address bank account, every time you check in or out of a hotel, get a prescription filled, change addresses or get a car. The real trouble is with data aggregators that can “match” data from an assortment of databases and assemble a dossier on millions of us. What is even worse is the existence of organizations that sell personal data online and continue using methods like “pretexting”, impersonating a legitimate authority, to obtain personal information. It’s bad enough that the laughably named US Patriot Act removes any illusion of protection from big brother, we also have to watch our backs form the likes of Intelius, bestpeoplesearch, searchpublicinfo and docusearch. I haven’t even begun to scare myself about what the major credit beaureas like Experian and TRW are doing with my data. I know from experience the lingering nightmare of ID theft, having seen a friend loose her passport to a burglar. It just as easily could have been myself as the Apartment we shared was ransacked.

If you really want to worry, look no further than the mile wide breaches in computer security that have led to the loss of millions of SS#s and credit card numbers, many of which are inside jobs resulting for the theft of data or simply stupidity.

Digital conveniences such as WiFi and multi-gigabyte SD Flash drives are also a feast for thieves and a constant threat. A few gigs is plenty of room for millions of credit card numbers and credit histories, let alone a terabyte drive that fits in a small pocket or purse.

The future looks bright for security and ID theft countermeasures. Keep fraud alerts on everything, check your credit reports, lock up your files. Resist allowing RFID tags on Passports and being surgically implanted upon birth. I support National, Photo, biometric ID cards. At least identity theft will be more difficult, the bad guys will have a harder time with aliases and slipping past borders, and when your being spied on they will know its really you using your debit card at Starbucks and holding up the line. Sphere: Related Content

More History of Content: THUNDERSTRUCK

After my Co-Instructor Mark’s presentation on the history of content and subsequent discussions, my interest was piqued about a History book I had heard about by Erik Larson; THUNDERSTRUCK. Mr. Larson authored another great read on the history of my home city, Chicago, entitled DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY.

To the point, THUNDERSTRUCK details the history of “wireless” AKA radio from the discovery of “Hertzian” waves and the intrigue and high drama around Marconi’s invention of the wireless in turn of the 19th Century London. Amazing how history repeats itself. In the 1890s the scientific establishment was intrigued with discoveries about the electromagnetic spectrum but did not recognize its practical value until Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) invented the first devices usable for wireless telegraphy. Six months after his company was established in 1897 at the age of 23 Marconi’s stock was worth about $20 million in today’s dollars. Forthwith he began establishing a “standard” and imposing exclusivity conditions on his contracts including the condition that his shipboard installations were only allowed to communicate with other Marconi stations and that no other wireless vendors could be used for 14 years. Marconi demonstrated the first transatlantic communication in 1901 defying the widely held belief that “electrical” waves could only travel in straight lines. It wasn’t until 1907 that the “Wireless” was in widespread use paving the way for Radio. Similarly the Internet and was an academic and quasi military technical feat until the invention of HTML, the World Wide Web and the IPO of Netscape.

A noteworthy mention in the book was from one of Marconi’s competitors who was fast on his heels with wireless inventions but had a greater vision. In the June 1890 edition of The Century Magazine, Nikola Tesla wrote, “We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly irrespective of distance,” “Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.” There you go, the first historical mention of Television.

An aside: Marconi’s fellow countryman Allesandro Volta (1745-1827) demonstrated the first electrochemical battery in 1800. The first rechargeable lead-acid battery came in 1859. Battery technology lags far behind electronics.

The parallels to today strike me. As Rebekha from class has pointed out to Mark and I, The world divided into competing Television standards, namely NTSC, PAL and SECAM which have created barriers to global broadcasting. Consumer DVD players are region specific so that international territorial distribution boundaries can be respected. The list of digital media standards and variants is formidable: MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264 (a variation of MPEG 4), MP3, AAC, AIFF, WMC, AVI, AVC, Quicktime, Real etc. Telecom and IP related standards are even more numerous and the distant cousins to Marconi’s wireless standards are even more prolific including a variety of competing system for broadband wireless (AKA 3G) and mobile TV. Competing Mobile TV schemes include South Korea’s DMB-T (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting – Terrestrial which can also work via DMB – S for satellite), Qualcomm’s Media Flo, and Panasonics Mobile Handheld offering. What works for 1:1 Internet connectivity is ill suited for the 1 to many nature of Television broadcasting.

The saving grace of digital files is that they are easily compressed, converted, transcoded or otherwise manipulated using software with the caveat that any conversion can result in some loss of data so that a digital “master” must be maintained. The master is immune to the analog foibles of degradation, noise and other forms of degeneration and remains pristine provided the digital recording medium remains intact, which certainly should not be taken for granted whether optical or magnetic. Sphere: Related Content