Category: YouTube
March 5th, 2008
Is proprietary iPhone video player on the way?
In remarks to analysts yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs clarified why the iPhone does not support Flash.
Jobs said a key reason is that Adobe’s Flash Player is optimally built for laptops. Because laptops are larger than the iPhone, the performance of Flash on the iPhone would be too slow.
“There’s this missing product in the middle,” Jobs said.
When I hear someone such as Steve Jobs utter the word “missing,” I don’t take the usage of the word casually.
Even though- as you see at the top of this post- iPhone is YouTube compliant, that’s just a start. I think this means a special video player platform for the iPhone is on the way.
Do you?
February 19th, 2008
They've got the bleats: listen to this first-ever iPhone "concert" on YouTube
BeatPhone is a third-party “beatbox” iPhone app that let’s you use a jailbreaked iPhone to create beeps, blips and beats via the iPhone.
Sound samples can be generated in .wav, .aiff, and many other audio formats.
And here, in a post made on YouTube by HirnW of Australia, some folks with time on their hands have assembled to fashion what likely could be the first-ever BeatPhone, iPhone uh, “concert.”
February 15th, 2008
Jane Fonda just used the unbleeped "C" word on Today Show: what's next?
During the Today show, well, today, guest Jane Fonda talked about “The Vagina Monologues” with host Meredith Viera.
While referring to the play, Jane let a word slip out that rhymes with what U.S. football teams often do on fourth down.
And the bleeper didn’t catch it either.
So why am I writing about it on this blog?
I just know that this remark will be political fodder for more regulation of broadcast television. And with so many broadcast and cable shows available on the Internet and on your mobile device, what legal liability would retransmitters of content with such language incur?
Forget “wardrobe malfunction,” and Janet Jackson’s exposed breast. Now we have Jane Fonda- a controversial figure in her own right, saying a word that, frankly, most of the women I know are more offended by than the gutteral term for incestuous intercourse.
And it’s morning hours, and the kids could have been watching? Can Western civilization stand this “vulgarity?”
Or in conversations that probably are going on as I type this:
“Mommy what’s a …”
Gasp.
February 12th, 2008
A-w-w-w dept: Here's a baby talking with his friend over Skype
Friend Phil Wolff of Skype Journal posts this link to Belgian lukaszcom’s YouTube video of a baby named Bruno talking to his friend over Skype.
We don’t actually see the Skype UI, but we are told that Skype is running on the notebook shown in the video.
Skype. Yea Baby!!!
It does seem, though, that after the Skype “conversation,” our young P2P’er is more than fully content to tap on the keyboard and giggle as stuff appears on the screen.
Of course, I have moments like that as well.
Like now.
February 9th, 2008
Yahoo says no to Microsoft: what's next?
News of this has just come down, less than 1/2 hour ago: that the Yahoo! Board of Directors
(that’s CEO Jerry Yang) has voted to reject Microsoft’s $31 a share bid as inadequate.
Seems as though they would take nothing under $40.
The point now is, how did Yahoo!’s stock get so low that a company takeover could be within the means for Microsoft, News Corp., or even a private equity consortium to pull off?
I have to blame some of this predicament on the same Board of Directors.
Although the Board is not entirely constituted now as it has been, they erringly countenanced the hiring and regime of Terry Semel.
Terry was and is an old-style Hollywood dealmaker. He didn’t seem to understand the critical imperative of pouncing on available, revenue-enhancing Internet properties such as YouTube and Facebook.
People such as Terry are more oriented toward due diligence when these acquisition opportunities come up. That is advisable in the cinematic world, but not in the world we Internet types inhabit.
He never got that, and the Board and founders (Jerry Yang and David Filo) frankly let him waddle around too long.
Meanwhile, the broadband content deals Semel did pursue and pull off were not transformative for a company competing against the freewheeling, risk-taking culture of Google.
So the takeaway here is that a calcified company such as Yahoo! has been losing on so many fronts to a non-calcified, non-bureaucratic company such as Google.
And the circumstances of all this misprioritization, analysis-paralysis and all is that the stock has dipped to a place of takeover vulnerability.
I don’t see MSFT bidding at $40, no. $35 maybe, but no higher.
What do you think will happen?
January 30th, 2008
YouTube view-Ron Paul voting result gap tells me some of his fans are people-phobic
The chart on the left of this canvass represents CNN’s just-about-final results of yesterday’s 2008 Republican Presidential primary results in Florida
On the right is the latest tally of YouTube views from various candidate sites, both Republicans and Democrats. This is from the website Tech President.
So what gives with Rep. Paul’s more thn 12 million YouTube views, but his failure to garner more than 3% or 4% of the cumulative primary vote in just about any state so far?
Some of this guy’s supporters may be complaining the gap is because the “corporate media” won’t cover him. But as a member of the media, I’ll tell you it’s far, far more about YouTube, its effectiveness, and its core audience.
Parsing these two sets of numbers, I have to believe that an echo chamber is in effect here. YT users who are Ron Paul fans are more involved with repeatedly watching these simpatico videos and are far less skilled at say, Sen. Obama is at spreading the word about their hero beyond the online world and to the great mass of actual, physical-world voters who go to the voting booth.
Just like it was postulated last Presidential cycle that Howard Dean’s acolytes were too countercultural looking to register with voters in the real as opposed to virtual world, it could be that Paul’s fans are hindered by some of the same obstacles.
I mean, I have known more than a few Libertarian-oriented techs who would rather code, play cool games in their den while reading Ayn Rand rather than be involved with actual pressing the flesh exercises at events not already full of Paul supporters to begin with.
OK, then, Ron Paul fans. Back to your gamer caves (but of course if your gamer cave is in a home facing foreclosure, Libertarians like Ron won’t help you then, now would they.
December 22nd, 2007
Number 10 most-read post of 2007: a YouTube moment that wasn't
Through December 5 of this year, the number 10 most-read post on this blog was What the bridge collapse videos tell us about YouTube’s audience.
In this post, I noted that although YouTube is a destination for posts abut news with strong visuals, the interest among YouTube users in seeing news about the tragic collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis this summer doesn’t match the interest indicated in page view counts for more fluff stuff.
I haven’t changed my opinion since.
December 3rd, 2007
120 Mbps upstream? Even 30 Mbps? Come on- who really needs it?
Note: I’ve amended this post with corrective information, including this from our networking guru, George Ou. George,an actual engineer, points out:
You cannot claim DOCSIS 3.0 is 160/120 down/up service and compare it to 50/30 down/up FiOS service. That is grossly misleading. 160/120 down/up in DOCSIS 3.0 is a SHARED pipe for up to 400 homes. FiOS “1.0″ operates at 622/155 down/up as a shared fiber between up to 32 homes. The net version of FiOS can easily 2.4 and eventually 10 gbps and beyond. They can even go to 10 gbps/user by using a separate wavelength of light if they so choose.
Furthermore, it’s doubtful they’ll give you a DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem with a Gigabit Ethernet link so realistically the burst speed with be less than 100 mbps IF and only IF you’re the only user in that entire neighborhood.
The most important aspect of FiOS is its massive bandwidth capacity. The current implementation of FiOS uses a technology called BPON (Broadband Passive Optical Networking) which offers 622 mbps of total down-stream and 155 mbps up-stream bandwidth split amongst 32 homes for Internet access and the current premium FiOS Internet service caps users to 50 mbps down-stream for burst speed. FiOS TV broadcasts come over a separate wavelength using a technology called GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Networking) which supports 2.4 gbps down and 1.2 gbps up. Since it’s a broadcast technology, the downstream doesn’t have to be split amongst 32 homes so it can offer a massive number of high-quality video broadcasts to every home.
Video-on-demand on the other hand requires a unicast technology and that’s delivered using IPTV technology over the BPON data channels.Currently, every FiOS home has two high-speed streams on two separate wavelengths over a single fiber delivering BPON and GPON which is more than enough for the near-term. But fiber to the home can just as easily support 10-GPON which is ten times faster than today’s gigabit PON technology and the price of 10-GPON transceivers will inevitably come down in the future.
Because FiOS architecture runs a single-mode optical fiber out to the neighborhood and then uses an optical splitter to connect up to 32 homes, bandwidth is divided up 32 ways.
That’s fine for today’s applications in the near term but it may not be in the future so when more bandwidth to each home is needed, 32 separate wavelengths of light can be used and each home would use its own dedicated wavelength. That means it would be possible to deliver more than 10 gigabits of dedicated bandwidth to each and every FiOS enabled home making fiber to the home the ultimate long-term investment.
Thx, George. I now consider myself both corrected, and additionally educated on these issues.
Now here’s kind of what I originally wrote in this post:
OK, so Comcast announced on Friday it fully itends to deploy a DOCSIS 3.0 infrastructure in 2008, with 20% system-wide availability by EOY 2008.
Such deployment, at least in theory, would provide aggregate neighborhood transfer rates of up to 160Mbps down and 120 Mbps upstream.
Oh, and that would make Verizon FiOS shoots for 50Mbps down/30Mbps up s-l-o-w in comparison.
Time for a reality check here, people.
How many of us really need 160/120 Mbps in our hood? Or even 50/30? in our home?
If we don’t talk about enterprise users/usage, I can only think of two groups who really need all that capacity: especially upstream:
Hard-core gamers.
Hard-core video creators.
When I talk about hard-core video creators, I am not talking about those of you (and occasionally ’tis I) who upload videos to YouTube.
I’m talking about folks that shoot in High-Def, and then send scads of full .avi’s to clients.
But even then. I have a high-def DV cam, and if I was to forward five minutes of HD to a client, the difference between the upstream speeds I am able to get now via C0mcast’s current capabilities vs. what would be enabled via DOCSIS 3.0 would only amount to a couple of minutes at most.
I can spare the two or three minutes (if that). And if you conduct a self-assessment of your own bandwidth capacity needs, betcha you could, as well.
October 26th, 2007
Cal fires: broadband, digicam ubiquity enable these"citizen" videos of tragedy to hit the Web with force
With little room for debate, the most dramatic doemstic U.S. news story this week is the terrible fires raging in much of Southern California.
The loss of thousands of homes and the evacuation of hundreds of thousands pale any technology angle into virtual insignificance. That said, the fires- and the growth of high-res digital video cameras available to consumers and ubiquitous broadband networks available to upload these horrific scences to YouTube as well as to broadcast and cable news is undeniable.
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, CNN senior vice president/editorial Nancy Lane said it had received about 2,000 submissions of personal videos and photos, of which about 300 were approved for use.
I show some of them at the top of this post.
Don’t think this is something new? Guess again.
“While the fires covered a wide area, the numerous submissions might also suggest the escalating rate at which citizen journalism is catching on,” writes the Baltimore Sun’s tv critic Dave Zurawick. “CNN received 619 submissions after the Minnesota bridge collapse in August and 600 in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings in April.”
October 18th, 2007
Why Big Copyright's"User Generated Content Principles" is frontal attack on Internet freedom
I’m deeply troubled over the tone of a new agreement announced today by a cabal of Big Copyright owners.
Entitled User Generated Content Principles- Encourage Creativity-Respect Intellectual Property, the document has been ratified by Disney, CBS, NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment Group, Microsoft, Viacom and a couple of others.
Almost without an exception, Big Copyright.
Reading between the lines, the document calls for stringent technology and policy-based steps to block infringing video content under the aegis of these companies from ever, every seeing the light of day.
In a couple of places, the document refers to “fair use.”
But with fair use’s parameters still a matter of judicial and regulatory debate, it seems to me that the Copyright Cartel would probably take a very restrictive stance toward fair use.Why? It’s in their nature.
This putrid document shows this, I believe. “Fair use” is mentioned briefly, but without definition. It’s almost like the lawyers said, “yea, guess we should put something in there about ‘fair use.’
What Big Copyright also doesn’t understand is the viral and promotional value some infringing video content offers copyrighted content. Reading this document, I don’t see a clear understanding or even an acceptance of this proven principle.
Another thing that troubles me: sometimes video content is perishable. But let’s just say it is 1 a.m., and clips of the jackknifed truck on the interstate aired on the local 11 p.m. news. What would be so wrong about a viewer uploading a video clip of the coverage to YouTube or some other video sharing site?
Instead I see: this is our video content, and you better not use any of it without us- and our anal legal departments- telling you it is OK.
Loading ...September 27th, 2007
In Burma, the revolution is being YouTube-d
Some 33 years ago, author and poet Gil Scott-Heron uttered his famous words, “the revolution will not be televised.”
Well, here we are in 2007 and few if any “revolutions” are being televised.
But as for being streamed and distributed over broadband connections and video sharing sites, you betcha.
Most relevant current example is the growing collection of videos on YouTube showing the brave pro-democracy demonstrators on the streets of Yangun (Rangoon) Myanmar (Burma).
Today, it is said that the military dictatorship’s troops pumped lethal, evil lead into the bodies of several gentle, sacred and defenseless Buddhist monks.
I wonder what incidents like these- not to mention Darfur- says about the human race. As a species, we are so communicative, so social- but too many of the powerful among us prey on our weaker ones.
But in numbers, and thanks to the force-multipliers of modern technologies, the weak can accumulate and use the Internet to let freedom ring.
And that, at least to me, is the overarching social virtue of tech that I write about here- VoIP, messaging, video- and the networks to carry them.
August 30th, 2007
YouTube yanks goofy "Death Star" clip at Viacom's insistence
Christopher Knight, a former candidate for the Rockingham, North Carolina Board of Education, has incurred the wrath of Viacom and YouTube by posting a segment from Viacom’s VH1 show Web Junk 2.0 from a video Knight had created.
Knight, an avowed Star Wars fan, alleges that Viacom used the clip (which contains some obvious “Star Wars” spoof scenes, without his permission.
“Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!,” Christopher writes.
Hey let’s look at another freeze frame from the one minute, one second video:
Hey Chris, take it away:
Last fall, as part of my campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education, I produced three commercials that ran on local television. The first of them – which I simply dubbed “Christopher Knight for School Board TV Commercial #1″ – was hosted on YouTube the same evening that the ad started running on WGSR in Reidsville. You can watch it at http://youtube.com/watch?v=nLi5B0Iefsk.Well, the concept of a candidate for Board of Education pitching himself by using the Death Star to blow up a little red schoolhouse is admittedly unusual. The YouTube clip got around quite a bit: as of this writing it’s received over sixty-six thousand views. I put it and the other two ads on YouTube so that I could post them on this blog (because I was trying to chronicle everything that happened during the course of my campaign). And I’d always intended to keep them up after the election too, in case anyone else might find and enjoy watching them. Heck, I’ve always liked to think that maybe someday, others might see how I was a candidate and feel led to run for office themselves!
Christopher has one word for this action: chutzpah. But more than that, he sees ominous precadent:
I have written to YouTube’s division of copyright enforcement, telling them that the VH1 clip is derived from my own work and that I should be entitled to use it as such. So far I haven’t heard anything back from them. After reading that last part of the initial e-mail that they sent me, I’m wondering how apt they might be to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to wipe out the accounts of anyone who even raises such a fuss about something like this, no matter how well-grounded it is.
What does this mean for independent producers of content, if material they create can be co-opted by a giant corporation without permission or apology or compensation? When in fact, said corporations can take punitive action against you for using material that you created on your own?
I’d agree. I get the idea. Elect Chris and he’ll change things educationally by pulverizing the way things are being done right now. Maybe Chris can execute a Death Star zap and implode the arbitrary “No Child Left Behind?”
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
- VMware Infrastructure: A Guide to Bottom-Line Benefits VMware Frustrated by the costs of maintain ever larger data centers?or building ... Download Now
- The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
Recent Entries
- Russell Shaw, rest in peace
- Sorry, Gizmodo, VoIP over iPhone isn’t going to be “huge”
- Over WiFi at DIA, free speech is DOA
- Exclusive: iPhone DevCamp’s Raven on iPhone SDK and what it means
- Is proprietary iPhone video player on the way?
Blogs From Our Sponsors
Top Rated
Premier Vendor Content Whitepapers, webcasts & resources from our Power Center Sponsors
- The best support in the Linux business
-
If Linux is going to power your mission-critical applications, you'd better have the best support known to business. Novell was rated the top provider of Linux technical support.
- Learn more >>
- The best support in the Linux business
-
If Linux is going to power your mission-critical applications, you'd better have the best support known to business. Novell was rated the top provider of Linux technical support.
- Learn more >>
- Save time with automated shipping solutions
-
The Business Essentials Guide provides you useful tools and templates to help grow your business and save you time with automated shipping solutions.
- Visit the UPS Business Essentials Guide
- Reduce risk. Reduce complexity. Increase reliability.
-
A simplified IT environment isn't just less complex. It's also more reliable. Standardize on a single Linux platform with SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell, and get the world's most interoperable Linux
- Learn more >>
Archives
ZDNet Blogs
- All About Microsoft
- The Apple Core
- Between the Lines
- BriefingsDirect
- Collaboration 2.0
- Dev Connection
- Digital Cameras & Camcorders
- Ed Bott's Microsoft Report
- Emerging Tech
- Enterprise Web 2.0
- Forrester Research
- Googling Google
- GreenTech Pastures
- Hardware 2.0
- Home Theater
- iGeneration
- Irregular Enterprise
- IT Project Failures
- Laptops & Desktops
- Lawgarithms
- Linux and Open Source
- Managing L'unix
- The Mobile Gadgeteer
- On Sustainability
- Rational Rants
- The Semantic Web
- Service Oriented
- Smartphones and Cell Phones
- Social Business
- Social CRM: The Conversation
- Software & Services Safari
- Software as Services
- Storage Bits
- Team Think
- Tech Broiler
- Technology and the Global Supply Chain
- Tom Foremski: IMHO
- The ToyBox
- Virtually Speaking
- The Web Life
- ZDNet Education
- ZDNet Government
- ZDNet Healthcare
- Zero Day
White Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
- Can your business work smarter? IBM Today, productivity is at a premium and IT budgets are at a minimum. Work ... Download Now
- Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
- The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now
-
-
Smart Tech
Expert advice on innovations in healthcare and the green technologies that make it happen.
Find out more
-
Smart Business
Discussion and advice on management issues that revolve around making your world smarter and more useful.
More Smart Advice
-
Smart People
The best and worst moves in the management and strategy trenches.
Learn More
