Broadband Developments

Yeah, Everyone does these.  Top 10 – etc.

I thought about it.  Techmeme did a nice job of the biggest stories.  Thanks end the end-of-year read.   So, I’ll analyze it.

1. The Yahoo-Microsoft Story – Yeah this had to be the story of the year.  Microsoft overbids it turns out for Yahoo.  Yahoo plays hard-to-get.  Yahoo cozies up to Google.  That doesn’t turn out so well.  Yahoo is worth a fraction of what Microsoft bid for it.  This one is not over by a long shot.
2. Apple Announces last year at MacWorld – The fanboys will be onboard anyway and this was their event.  (FYI – I carry an iPhone)  Apple has plenty of press nowadays, this is not much of a big deal.
3. Google Chrome – So far it has been ho-hum.  There was a big splash, some people tried it, but this is not a world changer as it turns out.  (FYI- it’s my second browser and I love it)
4. Apple Developer Connection – The App Store is the single greatest thing about the iPhone.
5. Google Spoken iPhone App – Cool and wow.  I like the sound of that and it sums up that app nicely.  It really does work well.  Now is this a story of the year?  Um.  It could lead to lots of exciting things, but to me, not really a story of the year.
6. Google/Valve buy – an interesting rumor that didn’t come true.  Google with all that money, all that cash and everyone talking about what to buy.  Kinda funny isn’t it?
7. RIAA Music lawsuits – Dropping the lawsuits against Grandma Jones, it means little as I expect the RIAA to increase the pressure on the internet providers.
8. Google>Microsoft> Digg – Once again see Comment for #6
9. Windows 7 – Reports are saying its a glossy version of Vista.  I think the timing of this OS may be unfortunate for Microsoft – with the economy stumbling and tech/personal spending in a crunch.  If Windows 7 is not a game changer, then this baby may thud.
10. iPhone 3G – This was a story that deserved to be way higher on the list.  Apple finally put it all together and delivered again a “game changer”.

Wasn’t there an Olympics or something?  What about LinkedIn?  I’ve been on that for maybe 2/3 years now, but it seems to really have blown up now.  Facebook anyone?  Twitter?  Not really news, but their influence and presence has grown..

Update: Peter over at SAI has a counter point to the NBC coverage. He is referring to how the PGA golf event will be broadcasted. This brings up a good point that I was thinking about this morning. The Olypmics is a known guestimate of size but what about the recent US Open playoff where Tiger Woods and Roco went at it on Monday. From my sources CIOs were screeming bloody murder about the amount of bandwidth being used. What about those kinds of flash crowds - you need fast provisioning of pipe and intelligence. Peter Kafka’s story is worth a read.

The amount of coverage at the Olypmics is significant and all of the video will be in digital. I found this podcast from Cisco that talks about the challenges from a network perspective.

The podcast is here.

I’m trying to get Cisco on the phone to go into detail about the provisioning and systems level design. This could be a benchmark for all live events.

The question that I have is will this be a new model in doing massive live events or just live events. There are many companies out there now doing Live video from Lifecasting to major broadcasters.

The only issue that I have with the Olympics is that the only player is Silverlight which isn’t exactly the standard in desktops. Google is also doing some work on the mobile side and videos on YouTube.

The new broadcasting paradigm needs to connect with a new set of users. This morning I asked my 11 year old if she want to watch the Olympics (either online or on TV) - she said that she’d rather go to the movies. Very telling.

John Earnhardt just put the link in the comments below but here is the embed from YouTube.