By John Furrier
I did a podcast for Infoblox’s DNS guru Cricket Lui two weeks ago to talk about the DNS problems and security issues.
Infoblox was actively involved in the discussion around the Kaminsky findings. Greg Ness who contributes here posts on his blog about the big picture in security. He also refers to my podcast with Cricket Lui.
Here is the link to the blog post by Greg Ness.
If you’re interested in adding to Greg’s conversation visit his blog and chime in.
By John Furrier
Over at ZAYNE HUMPHREY’S BLOG he posts that Verizon is saying that they need the freedom to delay p2p packets in favor of VoIP?
Layne is sourcing an ArsTechnica story.
Finding a balance of cost, performance, and service quality depends on an optimized traffic flow, and to Lynch, this means dividing traffic into two classes: time-sensitive and everything else. Such a management technique amounts to protocol discrimination, though Verizon commits not to deal in content discrimination—all VoIP calls, from all services, will receive the same treatment. Under heavy loads, the network would prioritize the time-sensitive protocols and delay the others until capacity is available. Lynch believes that few customers would even notice the “22ms delay” in other services.
Why not look at the critical service of video delivery? Why just voice?
By John Furrier
Over at Venturebeat they have a report coming out of CTIA that the Android puzzle is coming together.
As mobile software becomes increasingly accessible to software companies, carriers are worried that they’ll be relegated to being “dumb pipes” for data services. But the carriers are changing their stance as new figures came in, as we heard during today’s keynote debate on “Open Networks” at the CTIA conference happening in San Francisco this week.
The OHA intends to give carriers control over some aspects of mobile data and web services, while giving third party developers access to carrier subscribers. Android, while sometimes compared to Apple’s iPhone software developer kit, is a lot more than that. It is a platform that encompasses every software layer component required to create mobile operating systems and applications — and also software on other types of devices, like television set-top boxes.
The most prominent layer is the Android operating system, that will be featured on a number of phone handsets slated for release this fall, including HTC’s phone that T-Mobile will offer in the US — and the United Kingdom and Germany, we hear. In sum, as far as carriers are concerned, Android is helping them accommodate third party developers while letting them control the software interface for their subscribers. (More here.)
T-Mobile is the first carrier to really buy into the Android vision. Among other efforts, it plans to launch an “app store,” a pre-installed feature on T-Mobile phones where subscribers can browse and download third-party applications. T-Mobile may not long be the only carrier offering a store. We also hear that Telelefonica, a leading carrier in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking parts of the world, will be the next to launch one.
T-Mobile’s move, to some degree, is a counterattack against Apple’s success with the iPhone. Apple owns its apps store — not AT&T and the other carriers that offer the phone. Some carrier representatives we talked to told us that many carriers are displeased about the Apple app store. Carriers have been leery of Google, because Google is potentially the dominant mobile advertiser for hundreds of millions around the world who have mobile phones. Google is still in the middle of negotiating terms with other companies that have already signed on to OHA.
Meanwhile, Android itself has been coming along — although maybe not as fast as some in the media would have liked. It has recently released a stable version of its platform.
Android’s many pieces are not just for phones
Android and its OHA partners will be pushing development in both mobile and web technologies. To do this, Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the form of large, top-talent engineering teams that have been working on components for the last four years. This hard work is now paying off in the form of Google using core Android code for multiple products. From speaking with developers, example we’ve learned that over 60 percent of the code for Google’s new browser, Chrome, is shared with Android’s browser.
By John Furrier
I ran into this blog called Hmmconvenient. The unknown blogger is direct and very accurate in his analysis. This blog is worth reading if you’re into online video and media. I just added it to my list of reads. Whoever you are keep blogging. Good stuff
Here is the post on Barries to Video consumption.
The root of a successful digital video platform play is embracing an event where there is a known, well visible, barrier to consumption. With MLB, it is time of games and the frequency with which games occur. Olympics, while not a large success, many of the live feeds that were available were not being broadcast on television (however, it is worth noting that online got the “less desirable” events). Contrast this to the NBC/NFL Sunday Night Football player, where there is relatively no barrier to viewing the game as it is available via. the local NBC Affiliate. Based on these examples a barrier to consumption can include:
- Time of day that an event occurs
- Lack of availability within the traditional channel
- Notion of “premium” value
- Concurrency (e.g, multiple events within a genre taking place at or near the same time)
- Exclusivity
Each of these is an area where a well defined business can solve a problem for the consumer. Another way to look at this dilemma is Joost. Joost ultimately failed in their “1.0″ download based model not because of a bad user experience, but due to lack of content and an understanding by consumers of what total value the product offered them. As Joost recasts itself on the web, they are still ignoring the fundamentals that lead to failure on their first try… instead they felt it was a “platform” or “download” issue (which other success stories would negate). P2P as a buzzword for delivery does not solve a single problem for the consumer, in other words, Joost fails to address or overcome any barriers to consumption. Hulu on the other hand, continues to push to overcome exclusivity, quality, and other barriers that directly impact the consumer.
Fox Interactive also seems to understand their consumer; NewTeeVee reports that their SVP of Mobile says Live has been a success on mobile. Not really a surprising result; based on our definitions above Live content allows a user to have access to the content, in real time, when they want it. This is a quantifiable value add to a viewer and therefore has a high propensity to be succesful. Fox Interactive gets additional credit for realizing it is not enough just to put a live stream online, it must be in the channel where it solves a problem for the consumer (especially since, much like NBC, Fox Broadcast content has low barriers to consumption).
By John Casaretto
Loved Mike Gotta’s post on the matter of Presence - Thanks for the tip John…
Mike throws out a lot to think about. But what really got my attention was the following:
“Larger vendors such as IBM would have to break from its UC-centric thinking around presence as would Microsoft. For Microsoft however this type of move is almost unimaginable given the centricity of OCS around SIP/SIMPLE and Microsoft’s reluctance to integrate and interoperate with other vendors on a level playing field when it comes to presence.”
Is this something the major vendors can really grasp? Every time we hear about major alliances or acquisitions it makes me wonder if this is the breakout we know will happen. Where’s the game changer?
The large players need to look at those models that have that kind of background. Look at Facebook, Twitter and so on. Embrace it, Open it up, I think Mike got it right on his post. The field is wide open and that breakthrough can come from anywhere at this point and there’s a good chance it may come from somewhere we don’t even recognize.
By Alex Lewis
In browsing the GoogleBlog today I noticed a cool new project. It’s not all that flashy but I think it might be one of the most useful projects Google has ever undertaken. With all the hoopla lately about newspapers being dead in their current form, this flows perfectly to updating the way the world gets its news. Google is said to be starting with only old newspapers, likely to avoid any copyright issues. With how stubborn traditional print media companies have been Google probably views this as a neat proof of concept.
Personally, I haven’t bought a hard-copy newspaper in nearly 10 years! I get all my news from the web in print, audio or video. While there’s something satisfying about the tangible nature of a newspaper I just don’t see it outweighing the benefit of instant access, portability and time to print of online. That’s not to mention the green issues around not killing millions of trees for newspapers.
Back in school I often used newspaper articles as reference material. Going to the library and requesting a few dozen newspapers was tedious and often they were “missing” some that I needed. I LOVE the idea of being able to access this information anywhere, anytime. It’s good to see Google getting back to doing something good for society. Even if they update old news with new ads, the balance still tips in their favor.
Go GOOG!
By John Furrier
I ran into Mike Gotta’s post about presence. Mike nails it here. While presence will remain a core element within platforms for unified communications, the social dynamics around presence require all of us to look beyond how presence is defined, packaged and delivered by UC vendors (e.g., Cisco, IBM, Microsoft). The benefits of “presence” span far beyond the boundaries of unified communications. In fact, presence is on its own convergence path with social networking trends.
I’ve blogged about it a few months ago here and here and here about presence changing. Even Blair Pleasant who tracks the space agreed. Now Mike has a great analysis.
Web 2.0 seems to be dying but the reality is that UC is Web 2.0 or Web 2.0 is UC.
Check out Mike Gotta’s jentire article if your interesed in reading the tea leaves on Unified Communications.
By John Furrier
More than 140 million mobile subscribers worldwide will use social networks on their phones by 2013, generating over $410 million in subscription revenues, according to ABI Research’s September 2008 “Mobile Social Networking” study.
ABI said it was intentionally very conservative in its predictions.
“Subscriber numbers for mobile social networking will climb at a relatively modest rate for the next three or four years, but will then start to accelerate sharply,” said Michael Wolf, research director at ABI, in a statement. “That uptick is based on assumed acceptance levels in the giant emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.”
The company’s latest forecast is lower than its previous estimates. In December 2006, ABI Research published one of the first mobile social networking reports, forecasting that mobile social communities would reach 174 million users by 2011.
Juniper Research estimated in August 2007 that the number of mobile social networking users would rise to around 600 million worldwide by 2012. At the high end of the spectrum, Pyramid Research projected in February 2008 that there would be 950 million mobile social networking users by 2012.
Based on multiple sources and its own analysis, eMarketer predicts more than 800 million registered site members will use their mobile phones to access social networks by 2012.
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