NEW EDIG

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mazda
steppenwolf
nasdancer
billy joel :)
biggs
datman
catbhall
y2ok2ok
execgolf

honorable mention: stcknrock, tarheel

barely honorable mention: rcde2

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Akamai: ThinkEquity Ups Rating, Ests; Sees Big Government Contract Win; Focus On March Madness
March 12, 2007, 10:21 am
Posted by Eric Savitz
Akamai (AKAM) shares continue to heat up. The company, which provides Web content and commerce sites a way to distribute their wares around the Net, has been getting more attention on the Street lately, and could get more in the next couple of weeks, given its prominent role in the CBS Sportsline March Madness Webcast of many NCAA basketball tournament games on an advertising supported basis, free to viewers.

This morning, ThinkEquity’s Darren Aftahi upgraded the stock to Buy from Accumulate, and raised his price target to $63 from $61. He also raised his EPS estimates to $1.30 a share from $1.28 for 2007 and to $1.58 a share from $1.52 for 2008.

Aftahi cited three reasons for his upgrade:

Attractive valuation at 31.9x ‘08 EPS relative to 34% projected three-year EPS growth.
Expects content publisher to continue to choose Akamai over other vendors for large scale projects. (LikeMarch Madness.)
“Increased confidence” that Akamai will participate in a major government networking contract called Networx. He says Akamai is part of three of the four bidders on the contract, which he says is worth $20 billion over the next decade. (Not all of that to Akamai, of course.)
Akamai today is up $1.87 to $52.28.

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February 11, 2007
Adobe's Flash Video to Play on Mobile Phones, New Transcoding System to be Unveiled This Week at 3GSM in Barcelona
Bill Joll, On2 Technologies
Click here to view video and read post from Beet.TV

[Start of Audio]

It’s my understanding that about 80 percent of Adobe’s install base is using Flash 8 or 9 and we’re the video codec in that. So now if you translate that into the majority of the social networking sites, user generated sites, I’d extrapolate that 80 percent of these sites are encoding in Flash 8 or 9. And with that much content in Flash 8 or 9, people want to watch those on their mobile phones. We feel that we have the product now to allow content owners, service providers and consumers to be able to get access or deliver that content through the transcoder platform.

So the first thing I do is I go to the browser, fire it up and the video can be played back as low as 20 kilobits per second, which is a very, very low data rate, but yet it gives a good quality performance. And I’m gonna click on that just to show what that video looks like.

Well actually, there’s two pieces to the puzzle, right? There’s, what has Adobe Macromedia achieved? Adobe Macromedia, with their flash authoring tool, has actually made it very easy for people to make compelling video experiences. Then we came along to actually improve the video in the interactive experience and our compression technology actually gives you a video that you want to look at. I mean that’s the bottom line.

As you can see, it’s almost instantaneous.

So it makes it look good and it also makes it smaller so it’s quicker or –

Well, compression is always the idea of how can you keep the quality in low bit rate, low bandwidth. If you want higher frame rates, smoother video, then you may have more bandwidth to do that. Or conversely, we look at it from a compression perspective, which is people want this kind of smoothness, this kind of quality, but we only have this kind of bandwidth environment or this kind of processing environment. And how can we do that? And there’s a lot of science that goes behind that technology. We’ve been at it for 13 plus years.

Now, this video’s playing at about 20 kilobits per second. It’s about five or seven frames per second, which is very, very slow and a very low data rate, but yet the video quality is acceptable.

And now I can show another demo that’s at a higher data rate so this is 128 kilobits per second, about 15 frames per second, which traditionally is considered full motion video. And you’ll see a slight difference in the video quality because it’s at a higher data rate.

The benefit that we are bringing is you have so much content being created every day in Flash, people want access to that and that’s really where the killer app is.

This is Bill Joll of On2 Technologies on Beet.TV.

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On2 Technologies is in the business of empowering developers with video compression technology that exceeds the video quality and compression ratios of H.264, MPEG4, and Windows Media 9.

The developer community has embraced On2 Technologies as a video resource for cutting-edge projects and multimedia products.

On2's VP6 codec is the core video technology in the Macromedia Flash 8 family of products, and we are the exclusive provider of software development kits (SDKs) for Flash 8 video encoding. Our On2 Flix Engine 8 software enables developers to build innovate server-based Flash 8 video encoding applications on Windows or Linux, while our On2 Flash 8 Video SDK makes integrating Flash 8 encoding into Windows applications quick and easy through the DirectShow(R) interface.

Our On2 VP7 technology is our most advanced codec to date. It provides the best quality of any codec on the market today (better than H.264, MPEG4, and Windows Media) at datarates from dial-up to high-definition. It encodes quicker, decodes in fewer cycles, and is less complex than the standards-based codecs used by our competitors. We offer several SDKs for building VP7 into your applications.

We are also taking our video technology into brave new markets. We recently announced plans to develop and deploy our On2 Mobile technology in China, and our On2 Mobile SDK for Nintendo DS enables authorized Nintendo developers and publishers to integrate On2 Mobile video into Ninetndo DS gaming titles. Finally, our On2 Session Initiation Protocol Audio Visual (SIP AV) SDK provides an intuitive programming interface for application developers who want to provide value-added video solutions on top of a comprehensive voice and video infrastructure.

Since most of the people who work at On2 are software and embedded systems engineers, we understand the needs and concerns of the developer community. You can expect us to provide timely and effective technical support for your projects.

(last edited December 14, 2005)
http://toolfarm.com/pluginfinder/index.php?On2%20Technologies

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On2 Technologies is in the business of empowering developers with video compression technology that exceeds the video quality and compression ratios of H.264, MPEG4, and Windows Media 9.

The developer community has embraced On2 Technologies as a video resource for cutting-edge projects and multimedia products.

On2's VP6 codec is the core video technology in the Macromedia Flash 8 family of products, and we are the exclusive provider of software development kits (SDKs) for Flash 8 video encoding. Our On2 Flix Engine 8 software enables developers to build innovate server-based Flash 8 video encoding applications on Windows or Linux, while our On2 Flash 8 Video SDK makes integrating Flash 8 encoding into Windows applications quick and easy through the DirectShow(R) interface.

Our On2 VP7 technology is our most advanced codec to date. It provides the best quality of any codec on the market today (better than H.264, MPEG4, and Windows Media) at datarates from dial-up to high-definition. It encodes quicker, decodes in fewer cycles, and is less complex than the standards-based codecs used by our competitors. We offer several SDKs for building VP7 into your applications.

We are also taking our video technology into brave new markets. We recently announced plans to develop and deploy our On2 Mobile technology in China, and our On2 Mobile SDK for Nintendo DS enables authorized Nintendo developers and publishers to integrate On2 Mobile video into Ninetndo DS gaming titles. Finally, our On2 Session Initiation Protocol Audio Visual (SIP AV) SDK provides an intuitive programming interface for application developers who want to provide value-added video solutions on top of a comprehensive voice and video infrastructure.

Since most of the people who work at On2 are software and embedded systems engineers, we understand the needs and concerns of the developer community. You can expect us to provide timely and effective technical support for your projects.

(last edited December 14, 2005)
http://toolfarm.com/pluginfinder/index.php?On2%20Technologies

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Flash Lite 3
Mo Blog, posted: 19-FEB-2007 10:22

My friend and colleageue Weyert de Boer (co author of Foundation Flash Applications for Mobile Devices (Foundation)pointed this out to me yesterday.

Flash Lite 3, video: Adobe announcement at 3GSM...

"Flash Lite 3, expected to be available in the first half of 2007... Flash Lite will support the same video formats supported by Adobe Flash Player and will directly support video streams delivered by the Adobe Flash Media Server."

Meanwhile, shipped Flash-savvy devices have tripled over the year, topping 200 million, with 70% of them outside Japan, and Flash Cast server trials are now occurring in every region. This sounds similar to the On2 speculation after their announcement last week. The Adobe site hasn't changed yet, but we'll probably have more news on this summer's release of Adobe Flash Lite 3 to manufacturers later in the week.

- original source

Permalink to Flash Lite 3 | Trackback URI: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/blogtrack.asp?postid=2301 | Add a comment | Main Index

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2/11/2007 Flash video coming to mobile devices with Flash Lite 3
Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:49 pm

Categories: Rich Internet Applications, Adobe, Flash, Mobile-Web, Online Video
+1
1 votes
Worthwhile? Some interesting news this week around video on mobile phones. Thanks to John Dowdell, I saw a press release went out that announced a new version of Flash Lite, Adobe's Flash technology for devices, will be supporting Flash video. The details in the press release are kind of sketchy, but if I'm reading them correctly, Flash Lite 3 will support the higher quality Flash 8 video codec that is used today on MySpace and Brightcove. Maybe more importantly, Flash Lite is going to support streaming from Flash Media Server (FMS), which means content providers will be able to leverage the technology in FMS while still reaching mobile users:

Flash Lite will support the same video formats supported by Adobe Flash Player and will directly support video streams delivered by the Adobe Flash Media Server, allowing users to view a broad spectrum of Flash Player compatible content. Videos can be viewed in different forms within the Flash environment, including downloadable video clips, streaming videos, applications with user interfaces based on Flash or personalized content such as wallpapers or screensavers.

I'm not sure how On2 fits into the picture, but Andy Plesser had an interview with On2 CEO Bill Joll about On2 brining Flash Video to mobile devices. On2 also had a press release earlier that announced the availability of Flash Video on devices, but there was no mention of On2 in the Adobe press release, so I'm not sure if these are separate efforts, or if On2 will be providing the technology behind Adobe's Flash Lite 3. Either way, this is going to be a great time for video on mobile devices, and hopefully we can get the experience right so people will use it.

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Adobe Flash
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Macromedia Flash)
Jump to: navigation, search
It has been suggested that FutureSplash Animator be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)Adobe Flash
Developer: Adobe Systems
Latest release: 8 (9) / September 30, 2005 (June 27, 2006)
OS: Windows (no native Windows XP Professional x64 Edition support), Mac OS X and 32-bit Intel compatible GNU/Linux
Use: Multimedia Content Creator
License: Proprietary
Website: adobe.com
Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player, and to the Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program. Adobe Flash Professional is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which acquired Macromedia in 2005 in a merger that was finalized in December 2006), is a client application available in most common web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. There are also versions of the Flash Player for mobile phones and other non-PC devices.

Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash Professional is an integrated development environment (IDE) while Flash Player is a virtual machine used to run, or parse, the Flash files. But in contemporary colloquial terms "Flash" can refer to the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.

Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

The Flash files, traditionally called "Flash movies" or "Flash games", have a .swf file extension and may be an object of a web page, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a Projector, a self-executing Flash movie. Flash Video files have a .FLV file extension and are utilized from within .swf files.

Contents [hide]
1 History
2 Programming language
2.1 Content protection
3 Competition
3.1 Format and plug-in
3.2 Free software alternatives
3.3 Authoring
4 Criticisms
4.1 CPU load
4.2 Usage
4.3 Local Shared Objects
4.4 Application flaws
4.5 Accessibility issues
4.6 Flash Player on various platforms
5 Market share
6 Related file formats and extensions
6.1 Flash-specific file formats
6.2 Generic file formats used by Flash
7 Product history (authoring tool)
8 Future developments
9 See also
10 References
11 External links



[edit] History
This section is currently a list, and needs cleanup.
A good lead should be written for this, and/or the entire section converted to prose. Once this task is complete, please remove this message. (talk, help, how to edit)

The origins of Flash start with the chain of thought that started with some ideas that Jonathan Gay had at school, then college and later working for Silicon Beach Software and its successors.[1] This started in the 1980s. In January of 1993, Charlie Jackson, Jonathan Gay, and Michelle Welsh started a small software company called FutureWave and created their first product SmartSketch. A drawing application, SmartSketch was designed to make creating computer graphics as simple as drawing on paper. Although SmartSketch was an innovative drawing application, it didn't gain enough of a foothold in its market. As the Internet began to thrive, FutureWave began to realize the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might easily challenge Macromedia's often slow-to-download Shockwave technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and PC. By that time, the company had added a second programmer Robert Tatsumi, an artist Adam Grofcsik, and a PR specialist Ralph Mittman. The product was offered to Adobe and used by Microsoft in it's early (MSN) work with the Internet. In December 1996, Macromedia acquired the vector-based animation software and later released it as Flash 1.0.

Macromedia Flash 2 was released in 1997 with features such as support of stereo sound, enhanced bitmap integration, buttons, the Library, and the capability to tween color changes.
Macromedia Flash 3 was released in 1998, which brought improvements to animation, playback, and publishing, as well as the introduction of simple script commands for interactivity. Macromedia ships its 100,000th Flash product this year, as well.
In 1999, Macromedia released Flash 4 and also achieved 100 million installations of the Flash Player, thanks in part to its inclusion with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. Flash 4 saw the introduction of streaming MP3s and the Motion Tween.
Initially, the Flash Player plug-in was not bundled with popular web browsers and users had to visit Macromedia website to download it, but as of year 2000, the Flash Player was already being distributed with all AOL, Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. Two years later it shipped with all releases of Windows XP. The install-base of the Flash Player reached 92% of all Internet users.
Flash 5 was released in 2000 by Macromedia. Flash 5 was a major leap forward in capability, with the evolution of Flash's scripting capabilities as released as ActionScript. Flash 5 also saw the ability to customize the authoring environment's interface.
Macromedia Generator was the first initiative from Macromedia to separate design from content in Flash files. Generator 2.0 was released in April 2000 and featured real-time server-side generation of Flash content in its Enterprise Edition. Generator was discontinued in 2002 in favor of new technologies such as Flash Remoting, which allows for seamless transmission of data between the server and the client, and ColdFusion Server.
In October 2000, usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote a polemic article regarding usability of Flash content entitled "Flash 99% Bad". (Macromedia later hired Nielsen to help them improve Flash usability.)
In 2001, Miniclip was the first to initiate large scale syndication of flash content on the Internet and the first large website to use interactive video in flash.
In September 2001, a survey made for Macromedia by Media Metrix showed that out of the 10 biggest websites in the United States, 7 were making use of Flash content.[citation needed]
On March 15, 2002, Macromedia announced the availability of Macromedia Flash MX and Macromedia Flash Player 6, with support for video, application components, shared libraries, and accessibility.
Flash Communication Server MX, also released in 2002, allowed video to be streamed to Flash Player 6 (otherwise the video could be embedded into the Flash movie).
Flash MX 2004 was released in September 2003, with features such as faster runtime performance up to 8 times with the enhanced compiler and the new Macromedia Flash Player 7, ability to create charts, graphs and additional text effects with the new support for extensions (sold separately), high fidelity import of PDF and Adobe Illustrator 10 files, mobile and device development and a forms-based development environment. ActionScript 2.0 was also introduced, giving developers a formal Object-Oriented approach to ActionScript. V2 Components replaced Flash MX's components, being rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of ActionScript 2.0 and Object-Oriented principles. Flash MX 2004 was the first release of Flash to be segmented into "Basic" and "Professional" versions. The Basic version was targeted at traditional Flash animators while the Professional version brought more advanced capabilities that developers would use, for example the data components.
In 2004, the "Flash Platform" was introducted. This expanded Flash to more than the Flash authoring tool. Flex 1.0 and Breeze 1.0 were released, both of which utilized the Flash Player as a delivery method but relied on tools other than the Flash authoring program to create Flash applications and presentations. Flash Lite 1.1 was also released, enabling mobile phones to play Flash content.
Macromedia released Flash 8 in 2005, touted by Macromedia as the most significant upgrade to Flash since Flash 5. New features included filter effects and blending modes, bitmap caching, a new video codec called On2 VP6, an enhanced type rendering engine called FlashType, an emulator for mobile devices, and several enhancements to the ActionScript 2.0 spec, such as the BitmapData class, several geometric classes, and the ConvolutionFilter and DisplacmentMapFilter classes.
Flash Lite 2 was also released in 2005, which brought its capabilities in line with Flash Player 7.
On December 3, 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia and its product portfolio (including Flash).[1]
Flash Player 9 was released for Windows and Mac OS in 2006, which marked the first time a Flash Player major release occurred without a simultaneous Flash authoring program major release. Flex 2.0 was released in conjunction with Flash Player 9, and the player will be continued when Flash Authoring 9 is released in 2007. For the first time in the history of Flash, the Flash Player will have had an opportunity to become widely installed before the release of the equivalent Flash program.
Flash Player 9 was released for Linux in January 2007.[2]

[edit] Programming language

Creating ActionScript 2.0 in Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 for Mac OS X 10.4. The code creates a simple bouncing ball that can be picked up and released.Main article: ActionScript
Initially focused on animation, early versions of Flash content offered few interactivity features and thus had very limited scripting capability.

More recent versions include ActionScript, a scripting language which has syntax similar to JavaScript and so supporting JSON syntax (a variation on ECMA), but a much different programming framework and set of class libraries. ActionScript is used to create almost all of the interactivity (buttons, text entry fields, pick lists) seen in many Flash applications.

New versions of the Flash Player and authoring tool have strived to improve on scripting capabilities. Flash MX 2004 introduced ActionScript 2.0, a scripting programming language more suited to the development of Flash applications. As seen in the image to the right, it's often possible to save a lot of time by scripting something rather than animating it, which usually also retains a higher level of editability.

Of late, the Flash libraries are being used with the XML capabilities of the browser to render rich content in the browser. Since Flash provides more comprehensive support for vector graphics than the browser and because it provides a scripting language geared towards interactive animations, it is being considered a viable addition to the capabilities of a browser. This technology, which is currently in its nascent stage, is known as Asynchronous Flash and XML, much like AJAX, but with possibly greater potential.


[edit] Content protection
Many times, Flash authors will decide that while they desire the advantages that Flash affords them in the areas of animation and interactivity, they do not wish to expose their images and/or code to the world. However, once an .swf file is saved locally, it may then quite easily be decompiled into its source code and assets. Some decompilers are capable of nearly full reconstruction of the original source file, down to the actual code that was used during creation.

In opposition to the decompilers, SWF obfuscators have been introduced to provide a modicum of security, some produced by decompiler authors themselves. The higher-quality obfuscators use traps for the decompilers, making some fail, but none have definitively been shown to protect all content.


[edit] Competition

[edit] Format and plug-in
Compared to other plug-ins such as Java, Acrobat Reader, QuickTime or Windows Media Player, the Flash Player has a small install size and fast initialization time. However, care must be taken to detect and embed the Flash Player in (X)HTML in a W3C compliant way. A simple and widely used workaround is provided below:

<object data="movie.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="500">
<param name="movie" value="movie.swf"/>
</object>

More Information on how to detect and embed Flash Objects in a W3C compliant way is provided in the xSWF description. SMIL is a W3C Recommendation that provides some of the same capabilities as Flash.

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller, or streams to use less bandwidth, than the corresponding bitmaps or video clips. For content in a single format (such as just text, video or audio) other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less CPU power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades.

In addition to a vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player includes a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time, support for video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics. As of Flash Player 8, it offers two video codecs: On2 Technologies VP6 and Sorenson Spark, and run-time support for JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and GIF. In the next version, Flash is slated to use a just-in-time compiler for the ActionScript engine.

Flash as a format has become very widespread on the desktop market. According to a NPD study, 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed,[3] with 45%-56%[4] (depending on region) having the latest version. Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

Flash players exist for a wide variety of different systems and devices. Flash content can run consistently on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (Macromedia has created or licensed players for the following operating systems: Windows, Mac OS 9/X, Solaris, HP-UX, Pocket PC, OS/2, QNX, Symbian, Palm OS, BeOS, and IRIX). See also Macromedia Flash Lite for Flash compatibility on other devices.

Adobe offers the specifications of the Flash file format (excluding specifications of related formats such as AMF) to developers who agree to a license agreement that permits them to use the specifications only to develop programs that can export to the Flash file format. The license forbids the use of the specifications to create programs that can be used for playback of Flash files.

Since Flash files do not depend on a truly open standard such as SVG, this reduces the incentive for non-commercial software to support the format, although there are several third party tools which use and generate the SWF file format and a large and vibrant open source community. Apparently, the Flash Player cannot ship as part of a pure open source, or completely free operating system, as its distribution is bound to the Macromedia Licensing Program and subject to approval.


[edit] Free software alternatives
There is, as of late 2006, no complete free software replacement which offers all the functionality of the latest version of Adobe Flash. Gnash, based on GameSWF, is a Flash player replacement that is under development and has the support of Free Software Foundation (FSF). Gnash supports Flash 7 and below, but not files that require version 8 or 9 features.

A full end-to-end implementation of the W3C SVG specification would offer close competition for most of the features of Flash in an open, standard way. Adobe used to develop and distribute the 'Adobe SVG Viewer' client plug-in for MS Internet Explorer, but has recently announced its discontinuation.[5] It has been noted by industry commentators[2] that this is probably no coincidence at a time when Adobe have moved from competing with Macromedia's Flash, to owning the technology itself. Meanwhile, Opera has supported SVG since version 8[6], and Firefox's built-in support for SVG continues to grow.[7]


[edit] Authoring
In October 1998, Macromedia disclosed the Flash Version 3 Specification to the world on its website. It did this in response to many new and often semi-open formats competing with SWF, such as Xara's Flare and Sharp's Extended Vector Animation formats. Several developers quickly created a C library for producing SWF. February 1999 saw the launch of MorphInk 99, the first third party program to create SWF files. Macromedia also hired Middlesoft to create a freely available developers' kit for the SWF file format versions 3 to 5.

Today, several open and free libraries and tool sets exist to generate and manipulate SWF files on many platforms. These include the Ming library, SWFTools, and the combination of swfmill and MTASC.

Macromedia has made the Flash Files specifications for versions 6 and later available only under a non-disclosure agreement, but it is widely available from various sites.

Many shareware developers produced Flash creation tools and sold them for under $50 USD between 2000 and 2002. In 2003 competition and the emergence of free Flash creation tools, most notably OpenOffice.org, had driven many third-party Flash-creation tool-makers out of the market, allowing the remaining developers to raise their prices, although many of the products still cost less than $100 USD and support ActionScript. As for open source tools, KToon can edit vectors and generate SWF, but its interface is very different from Macromedia's. Another, more recent example of a Flash creation tool is SWiSH Max made by an ex-employee of Macromedia. Toon Boom Technologies also sells traditional animation tool, based on Flash - Toon Boom Studio.

Adobe wrote a software package called Adobe LiveMotion, designed to create interactive animation content and export it to a variety of formats, including SWF. LiveMotion went through two major releases, but failed to gain any notable user base. Cartoon Man X Studios is one of the studios that uses this software.

In February 2003, Macromedia purchased Presedia, which had developed a Flash authoring tool that automatically converted PowerPoint Files into Flash. Macromedia subsequently released the new product as Breeze, which included many new enhancements. Since that time, Macromedia has seen competing PowerPoint-to-Flash authoring tools from PointeCast (not to be confused with PointCast) and PresentationPro among others. In addition, (as of version 2) Apple's Keynote presentation software also allows users to create interactive presentations and export to SWF.

In April of 2006, the Macromedia Flash SWF file format specification was released with details on the then newest version format (Flash 8). Although still lacking specific information on the incorporated video compression formats (On2, Sorenson Spark, etc.), this new documentation covers all the new features offered in Flash v8 including new ActionScript commands, expressive filter controls, and so on. The file format specification document is typically obtainable by subscribing to Macromedia's membership system and license restrictions (which include a prohibition against using these specifications to develop a free alternative).


[edit] Criticisms

Simple animation in Flash 6.0; a square moving across the screen in a motion tween, one of the basic functions of flash.
[edit] CPU load
Flash animations with complex vector or heavy video content may put a high load on the CPU.[citation needed]


[edit] Usage
Due to the increase in the use of Flash in aggressive—and even intrusive—online advertising, tools have emerged that restrict Flash content in some or all websites by temporarily or permanently turning Flash Player off depending on user requirements. Examples of such tools are Flashblock for the Mozilla Firefox browser, both of which are commonly used in conjunction with each other to allow users to control what Flash content they see.

Many websites rely on Flash being available by default on a user's web browser and will not check to see if it is available. If Flash is not used, users may be unable to access some Flash-dependent websites or site features. Another thing sites like this are dependent on is a fast connection. While it isn't impossible to see Flash-based sites with a slower form of internet, such as dial-up, or a slow form of DSL, it may be frustrating for the user. Tools such as Flashblock do alert the end user to the fact that Flash content is present on the site, allowing the user to view it if they wish.

Using Flash content stores the content of the web page in a binary file and the sections are not static like a web page. Thus, Flash-based content is not easily suitable for indexing by search engines. However, this problem can be alleviated with correct web design.

Like most new technologies that are easy to learn, Flash has often been misused in a way that lacks customer focus. Flash, particularly in its early days, was used to create unusable and inaccessible sites. In recent years the Flash usage has matured and the quality is much higher.

Flash is also used for online "TV Shows". Also known as webisodes, these are very popular It is also used for online games. These are even more popular. People make online "studios" and they make their "shows" for the internet. Here is a list of "studios":

Cartoon Man X Studios, LegendaryFrog, Homestarrunner (The Brothers Chaps), Dead Battery Productions,


[edit] Local Shared Objects
Main article: Local Shared Object
Flash Players from version 6 can store and retrieve persistent data without offering any visible signs to the user - in a manner similar to that of cookies. It is possible to clear the temporary files that Flash stores on your computer either through the Flash website, or by clearing the files manually. The default storage location for LSOs is operating-system dependent. For Windows XP, the location is within each user's Application Data directory, under Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects. Additional information is available at the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Local Shared Objects — "Flash Cookies" page.


[edit] Application flaws
Specially crafted files have been shown to cause Flash applications to malfunction, by allowing the execution of malevolent code. The Flash Player has a long history of security flaws that expose computers to remote attacks. However, exploitation of these flaws has remained at the proof-of-concept stage and has not escalated into a real-world problem.

In addition to entries in the Open Source Vulnerability Database, security advisories published in August 2002, December 2002, and November 2005 highlight three examples of reports about various Flash Player versions that allowed remote code execution.


[edit] Accessibility issues
Internet users who are visually-impaired, and who may rely on a screen reader, braille display, or using larger text sizes and/or high-contrast color schemes may find sites that make extensive use of Flash difficult or impossible to use.[8] While later versions (Flash Player 6 and onwards) support accessibility functions, site designers may not necessarily design the Flash content with these considerations in mind.


[edit] Flash Player on various platforms
The Adobe Flash Player is mainly optimized for the Windows 32 bit platform. There is a 32 bit version for Mac OS X; under Linux, version 7 and version 9 are both available. Adobe has been criticized for neglecting to optimize its products on non-Microsoft platforms. This has led to poor web surfing performance on Macintosh and Linux computers, since many websites use Flash animations for menus and advertisements.[9][10]

Adobe has rewritten the bitmap drawing routines in Flash Player 8 for Mac, using OpenGL planes via Quartz to draw the surfaces. The new drawing code is reported to be actually faster than its Windows counterpart, where JPEG, TIFF or other bitmap images are composited into the animation.

Flash Player 7 for Linux had poor sound support (the sound could lag about a second behind the picture); this issue is reportedly resolved in Flash Player 9. Flash Player 8 was never released for Linux, Adobe stating they would skip that version and instead focus on preparing Flash Player 9. This decision led to disappointment in the Linux community, with some people feeling that Adobe had abandoned the Linux market. Flash Player 9 for Linux was released in January 2007, providing platform parity once again. Adobe have not yet released any of their development software for any UNIX-like operating system except Mac OS X.

Although Windows, Linux and Mac have extensive 64 bit support, Adobe has yet (as of October 2006) to release a Flash Player for the x86-64 architecture on any operating system. There were some reports from Adobe employees[citation needed] who said the Flash implementation is very 32bit specific and porting to 64bit systems would require a lot of effort. They also said that Adobe wish to release a 64bit version as their market turns to 64bit.

To date there is no Linux Flash Player available for non x86 compatible processors (e.g. x86-64 native, PowerPC, ARM, etc).


[edit] Market share
Adobe claims Flash reaches 97.3% of desktop Internet users.[3] Independent market share data is not available because the several companies who periodically gather browser usage data (see Usage share of web browsers) do not measure Flash penetration. Analyzing website logs, one developer in 2002 estimated 90% of Internet Explorer users and 71% of all users had Flash installed, though the latter figure included automated bots.[11]

Developers considering Flash must keep in mind that any such estimates relate to the general population, and should take into account the characteristics of the particular user category their website targets.


[edit] Related file formats and extensions

[edit] Flash-specific file formats
Ext. Explanation
.swf .swf files are completed, compiled and published files that cannot be edited with Adobe Flash. However, many '.swf decompilers' do exist. Attempting to import .swf files using Flash allows it to retrieve some assets from the .swf, but not all.
.fla .fla files contain source material for the Flash application. Flash authoring software can edit FLA files and compile them into .swf files. Proprietary to Adobe, the FLA format in no sense counts as "open".
.as .as files contain ActionScript source code in simple source files. FLA files can also contain Actionscript code directly, but separate external .as files often emerge for structural reasons, or to expose the code to versioning applications. They sometimes use the extension .actionscript
.swd .swd files are temporary debugging files used during Flash development. Once finished developing a Flash project these files are not needed and can be removed.
.asc .asc files contain Server-Side ActionScript, which is used to develop efficient and flexible client-server Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX applications.
.flv .flv files are Flash video files, as created by Adobe Flash, ffmpeg, Sorenson Squeeze, or On2 Flix.
.swc .swc files are used for distributing components; they contain a compiled clip, the component's ActionScript class file, and other files that describe the component.
.jsfl .jsfl files are used to add functionality in the Flash Authoring environment; they contain Javascript code and access the Flash Javascript API.
.swt .swt files are 'templatized' forms of .swf files, used by Macromedia Generator
.flp .flp files are XML files used to reference all the document files contained in a Flash Project. Flash Projects allow the user to group multiple, related files together to assist in Flash project organization, compilation and build.
.spl .spl files are FutureSplash documents.
.aso .aso files are cache files used during Flash development, containing compiled ActionScript byte code. An ASO file is recreated when a change in its corresponding class files is detected. Occasionally the Flash IDE does not recognize that a recompile is necessary, and these cache files must be deleted manually. They are located in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash8\en\Configuration\Classes\aso on Win32 / Flash8.
.sol .sol files are Local Shared Object files, these files are the Flash equivalent to browser cookies.


[edit] Generic file formats used by Flash
Ext. Explanation
.avi AVI file is a video file, standing for Audio Video Interleave. Flash includes several compression codecs, including some from Radius.
.gif A GIF image; either a single static frame or multi-frame animation.
.png A losslessly-compressed PNG image.
.jpg An image in the popular lossy, full-color JPEG image compression format.
.ssk .ssk files are Intergraph SmartSketch [3] 2D CAD drawings.
.3ds Some third-party software converts animated 3D file formats, notably the common 3D Studio Max format, to SWF files as rendered vector animations.


[edit] Product history (authoring tool)

Future Splash
Flash 1-5
Flash MX & MX 2004
Flash 8
Flash 9FutureSplash Animator (Spring 10 April 1996) - initial version of Flash with basic editing tools and a timeline
Flash 1 (December 1996) - a Macromedia re-branded version of the FutureSplash Animator
Flash 2 (June 1997) - Released with Flash Player 2, new features included: the object library
Flash 3 (31 May 1998) - Released with Flash Player 3, new features included: the movieclip element, JavaScript plug-in integration, transparency and an external stand alone player
Flash 4 (15 June 1999) - Released with Flash Player 4, new features included: internal variables, an input field, advanced Actionscript, and streaming MP3
Flash 5 (24 August 2000) - Released with Flash Player 5, new features included: ActionScript 1.0 (based on ECMAScript, making it very similar to JavaScript in syntax), XML support, Smartclips (the precursor to components in Flash), HTML text formatting added for dynamic text
Flash MX (ver 6) (15 March 2002) - Released with Flash Player 6, new features included: a video codec (Sorenson Spark), Unicode, v1 UI Components, compression, ActionScript vector drawing API
Flash MX 2004 (ver 7) (9 September 2003) - Released with Flash Player 7, new features included: Actionscript 2.0 (which enabled an object-oriented programming model for Flash), behaviors, extensibility layer (JSAPI), alias text support, timeline effects
Flash MX Professional 2004 (ver 7) (9 September 2003) - Released with Flash Player 7, new features included all Flash MX 2004 features plus: Screens (forms for non-linear state-based development and slides for organizing content in a linear slide format like PowerPoint), web services integration, video import wizard, Media Playback components (which encapsulate a complete MP3 and/or FLV player in a component that may be placed in a SWF), Data components (DataSet, XMLConnector, WebServicesConnector, XUpdateResolver, etc) and data binding APIs, the Project Panel, v2 UI components, and Transition class libraries.
Flash Basic 8 (released on September 13, 2005) - A less feature-rich version of the Flash authoring tool targeted at new users who only want to do basic drawing, animation and interactivity. Released with Flash Player 8, this version of the product has limited support for video and advanced graphical and animation effects.
Flash Professional 8 (released on September 13, 2005) - Released with the Flash Player 8, Flash Professional 8 added features focused on expressiveness, quality, video, and mobile authoring. New features included Filters and blend modes, easing control for animation, enhanced stroke properties (caps and joins), object-based drawing mode, run-time bitmap caching, FlashType advanced anti-aliasing for text, On2 VP6 advanced video codec, support for alpha transparency in video, a stand-alone encoder and advanced video importer, cue point support in FLV files, an advanced video playback component, and an interactive mobile device emulator.
Flash Basic 9 & Flash Professional 9 (to be released May-June 2007)

[edit] Future developments
Adobe Labs (Previously Macromedia labs) is a source for early looks at emerging products and technologies from Adobe-Macromedia, including downloads of the latest software and plugins. Flash 9, Flex 2, and ActionScript 3.0 are discussed.

The important new development in Flash is its increasing use in providing the presentation layer in handheld devices. Adobe is aggressively courting cell phone and PDA vendors, and partnering to deploy Flash Lite as the user interface.

The code name for the next release of the Flash authoring tool, ver 9.0, is "BLAZE" as explained in this post in Flash Product Manager Mike Downey's weblog. This next release is expected to focus on designer/developer workflow and integration with other Adobe Systems creative suite products. The new version of Flash will be known as Adobe Flash after the recent acquisition of Macromedia.

A project currently in development at Adobe Labs is the Apollo Project[4] which is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to reuse their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). While features of Apollo are still being fully defined, the project aims to be made available in public beta form in early 2007, with final release planned for later that year.


[edit] See also
Flash animation
Adobe Flash Lite
Adobe Flex
FutureSplash Animator
Macromedia Shockwave
OpenLaszlo
Flashification

[edit] References
^ Adobe Completes Acquisition of Macromedia
^ Adobe Delivers Flash Player 9 for Linux
^ a b Flash Player Statistics
^ Adobe Flash Player Version Penetration
^ Adobe to Discontinue Adobe SVG Viewer
^ SVG.org > SVG.org wiki entry for Opera
^ SVG.org > First Firefox 2.0 Beta Released
^ Skills for Access : How To : Provide text equivalents for graphics : in Flash
^ Improving Flash Playback In Mac OS X
^ The Accidental Switcher
^ Percentage of Flash Users (Percentage of Browsers with Flash Plug-in) - Documents - Andy Jeffries

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Flash Player 9 for Linux arrives, looks great
Jan. 17, 2007

Adobe Systems Inc. on Jan. 17 finally released the long-awaited Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux. Although a binary-only release, it's already proven quite popular within its first 24 hours of release.

Spread the word:
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This version of Flash Player was meant to be feature-comparable to Adobe's latest Windows and Mac OS versions, which were released in late June of 2006. All Flash Player 9 family versions render content far faster than earlier editions. On Linux, it also does a much better job at syncing video and audio.

Adobe also claims that Flash Player 9 for Linux offers more efficient memory utilization, and that it adds advanced features for graphics, video, text, as well as support for the AVM2 (ActionScript Virtual Machine), which enables up to 10 times faster scripting performance.

Ten times faster? I decided to see just how fast it was compared to Adobe Flash Player 7.0.69, the previous Linux version.

To do this, I set up both versions on an Insignia 300a, an older Best Buy's house brand desktop PC. This PC has a 2.8 GHz Pentium IV, 1GB of RAM, and an Ultra ATA/100, 7200 RPM, 60 GB hard drive. It was running SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop).

I quickly found that while Adobe Flash Player 9 was, to this user's eye, much faster than Adobe 7, it wasn't ten times faster. I would say, however, that it felt about three times faster than the previous version.

The fact that's it's not as fast as advertised isn't a big deal. The video/audio synchronization on a variety of Flash games, movie trailers, and cartoons was perfect. This is the first version of Flash on Linux I have ever seen that really is just as good as the Windows and Mac OS versions.



Finally, a Linux version of Adobe's Flash Player that's just as good as the Windows and Mac OS versions

Flash Player 9, according to Adobe's release notes, needs at least an 800 MHz or faster processor, 512MB of RAM, 128MB of graphics memory, and ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) compatible audio hardware. Note: it will not work with OSS (Open Sound System) audio. If you try to run it with OSS (Open Sound System) or ESD (Enlightened Sound Daemon), you won't get an error message; you simply won't get any audio.

Adobe engineers are, however, working on an open-source dynamic library called flashsupport, which can be used by developers to create support for OSS and other non-officially supported audio formats.

As for the operating system compatibility, it's been tested and found to work with RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 3, Update 8; RHEL 4 Update 4; and SUSE Linux 9.x, 10.1, and 10.2. Besides SLED 10, I also found that it works with the Ubuntu-based MEPIS 6.01.

On the browser side, I found that it works with Firefox 1.5.0.8 and 2.0.0.1 and Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.0.5. It will not, however, work with non-GTK2-based browsers like KDE's Konqueror and Opera. You can, however, invoke it as a standalone application from these Web browsers.

Besides Flash support, Adobe has also contributed the AVM2 source code to the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla is hosting a new open source project called Tamarin. Tamarin's goal is to implement a high-performance, open-source implementation of the ECMAScript 4th edition (ES4) language -- aka JavaScript -- specification, and AVM2 for the Mozilla browser family.

But, as Mike Melanson, Adobe's lead engineer on the Flash 9 for Linux project said in a recent penguin.swf blog posting, "Adobe did not open source the Flash Player." and "Adobe did not incorporate the Flash Player into Mozilla."

With the AVM2 code in the open, it will, however, be easier to create an open-source Flash 9 compatible player, and will also be easier for Mozilla to incorporate such a player into Firefox or SeaMonkey. There is, of course, already an open-source Flash player: GNU Gnash, which is SWF (ShockWave Flash) 7 compatible.

If, however, you don't mind using a binary program on Linux, Flash Player 9 is proving to be an excellent program. Flash content developers aren't being left out, either. Linux developers can create, test, and deploy Flash using the free Adobe Flex 2 SDK (software development kit), Adobe Flash Player 9, and the free Flex Data Services 2 Express.

Both Red Hat and Novell have announced that they will be including the Flash Player 9 in their next distributions. Can't wait that long, or use another distribution? You can download Flash Player 9 as either a compressed library or as an RPM, here. In either case, installation is a snap.

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On2 Platform to Put Flash Files on Mobile Handsets
February 16, 2007

By Patrick Hoffman
On2 Technologies announced Feb. 12 that it has developed the Flix Engine 3GPP transcoder, a platform that allows Flash 8 video to be played on cell phones and other mobile devices.
With the Flix Engine 3GPP transcoder, set to come out this spring, On2 Technologies hopes to provide businesses, Web site operators and consumers with a platform that can encode and publish a large number of video clips using Adobe Flash Video to make their content available on mobile phones.

The new compression platform from On2Technologies extends from its Flix Engine encoding platform, which is a server-side transcoding engine that can take video in any format and convert it to video compatible with Flash Player 8/9, a graphic animation technology that allows users to design their own custom animations and other images.

In the business world, there has been a growing need for this content to be able to be distributed to mobile devices as Savello said that companies have previously used "Flash Video as a marketing and training tool and for building community within their customer base."

Read more here about Macromedia taking Flash mobile.

"There is a huge demand for mobile device manufacturers and carriers to offer this content on their phones and for many UGC [user-generated content] sites, this will be an easy upgrade to their existing Flix Engine infrastructure," Savello said.


The Flix Engine 3GPP transcoder is also expected to benefit Web site operators because sites that already have a large volume of Flash Video content can use the platform to convert Flash Video files into 3GPP format so that they can be viewed on mobile devices.

"Sites including YouTube, Google, MySpace and AOL can take videos from their users in any format and transcode them to Flash Video on a server or farm or servers," Savello said.

The Flix Engine 3GPP will run on Windows or Linux-based servers and produce the video files that would be compatible with mobile handsets from companies such as Motorola, LG, Samsung and Nokia.

Check out eWEEK.com's Mobile & Wireless Center for the latest news, reviews and analysis on mobile and wireless computing.

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3GSM - Adobe brings Flash video to phones
advertisementStephen Lawson, IDG News Service

13/02/2007 15:20:54


Adobe Systems' Flash video, the format that made Web video a hit, is coming to a version of Flash for mobile phones.

On Monday at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Adobe announced video will be included in Flash Lite 3, the next version of the Flash runtime environment for mobile phones. Licensees should be able to get the new software in the second quarter of this year, and Adobe hopes consumers will see it in action by year's end, said Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for mobile and devices at Adobe.

Adding video to Flash Lite will simplify the process of creating and distributing mobile video, which now forces mobile operators to use a fragmented set of special tools, according to Adobe.

"The same video tools they use for delivering Web content can be used for delivering mobile content as well," Murarka said.

Although relatively few mobile users are watching video on their phones today in most countries, carriers and entertainment companies are starting to bet bigger on the new medium. Last week a division of Time Warner signed a deal with Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson for use of the company's technology to deliver news and cartoons, and U.S. operator Amp'd Mobile signed on Hollywood partners to create original mobile shows. The drive to put short video programs on tiny cell-phone screens follows the exploding popularity of short, relatively low-quality clips on Web sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube that use Flash video.

With the upcoming version of Flash Lite, carriers and content companies will be able to use the same Flash server for mobile as for Web video, as well as the same streaming protocol and the same encoding tools and processes, Murarka said. Videos probably would have to be resized for small handset screens but would not have to be completely re-encoded, he said. This will make it easier and faster to get shows onto handsets, he said.

Flash Lite videos can be presented in a variety of forms, including streaming video, downloadable clips and screen savers, and within Flash-based applications, according to Adobe.

In addition, because the video capability is part of Flash Lite, it will be easier to integrate it with software for using video, such as channel selectors and play, reverse and fast-forward controls, he added.

More than 200 million phones have been shipped with Flash, Adobe said Monday. That includes both Flash Lite and FlashCast, a client-server platform that lets carriers send content to phones in the background so subscribers can use it even outside the network's coverage area.

About 120 million of those Flash phones shipped in 2006, and that was the first year when a majority of them -- about 70 percent -- were sold outside Japan, Murarka said. Japan's NTT DoCoMo was an early adopter of the technology, delivering a FlashCast news and information service called i-channel, which has more than 8 million subscribers, according to Adobe.

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Viacom's MTV Networks and Adobe Showcase Mobile Applications at 3GSM
Release Date: 2007-02-13
Original Link: http://presszoom.com/story_124302.html


The new FlashCast channels are the latest example of the ongoing alliance between Adobe and Viacom. Last summer, the two companies announced that Adobe would serve as the preferred technology provider for rich media authoring tools and interactive online video solutions for Viacom’s extensive array of television, motion picture and digital properties. In September, a number of new casual games based on such hit franchises as Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” were published as part of the Shockwave Minis launch using Adobe Flash® Lite™ technology. Additionally, several of MTV Networks’ broadband channels - including COMEDYCENTRAL.com, MTV.com, VSPOT at VH1.com, LOADED at CMT.com, LogoOnline, and TurboNick at Nick.com - have since standardized on Flash technology to deliver streaming video.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(PressZoom.com) -
BARCELONA, SPAIN — Feb. 12, 2007 — At the 3GSM World Congress, MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), and Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) are previewing new mobile media applications featuring exclusive MTV Networks programming and leveraging Adobe® Flash® technology. The innovative mobile media applications, available later this year, will deliver music, comedy and entertainment content from the MTV, VH1, Logo and COMEDY CENTRAL brands directly to handsets that support Adobe FlashCast™.

The new FlashCast channels are the latest example of the ongoing alliance between Adobe and Viacom. Last summer, the two companies announced that Adobe would serve as the preferred technology provider for rich media authoring tools and interactive online video solutions for Viacom’s extensive array of television, motion picture and digital properties. In September, a number of new casual games based on such hit franchises as Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and MTV’s “Pimp My Ride” were published as part of the Shockwave Minis launch using Adobe Flash® Lite™ technology. Additionally, several of MTV Networks’ broadband channels - including COMEDYCENTRAL.com, MTV.com, VSPOT at VH1.com, LOADED at CMT.com, LogoOnline, and TurboNick at Nick.com - have since standardized on Flash technology to deliver streaming video.

“The MTV, VH1, COMEDY CENTRAL and Logo FlashCast channels that we are jointly demonstrating at 3GSM are indicative of the rich experiences that can be created on the handset when the power of programming meets the power of technology,” said Greg Clayman, senior vice president of MTV Networks’ Mobile Media. “With FlashCast technology, we’re able to create innovative mobile experiences that allow our viewers to connect with the music, comedy and entertainment programming they love.”

“Viacom is at the forefront of defining great mobile experiences and we are excited that our partner is choosing Flash to make it happen,” said Al Ramadan, senior vice president, Mobile and Device Solutions at Adobe. “The first results of our partnership can be seen in our booth at 3GSM demonstrating our commitment to working closely together in the future to advance the innovation of mobile experiences.”

Adobe’s FlashCast is a flexible client-server solution that delivers rich, intuitive mobile data experiences. Building applications with FlashCast technology gives MTV Networks another option to quickly and easily extend the reach of its premium programming to the handset, connecting viewers with their favorite content wherever they are. The MTV FlashCast channel, for instance, features artist interviews, features and breaking stories from MTV News, as well as news for the game community. The VH1 application features the Best Week Ever blog and VH1 news; the Logo channel features its popular NewNowNext blog as well as programming from the recently acquired 365 Gay, After Ellen and After Elton web sites; and the COMEDY CENTRAL FlashCast application features jokes, “Booty Call” pick-up lines, “What’s Your Sign” horoscopes and more.

The MTV Networks’ FlashCast channels will be on display at Adobe’s booth, A50 in Hall 8.

About MTVN Mobile Media
As the world’s leading provider of video content for the handset, MTVN publishes more than 600 clips and 30 hours of video per month in the United States alone, across all major carriers and leading MVNOs. Globally, the company has partnerships with nearly 70 carriers and connections with more than one billion subscribers. MTV Networks’ Mobile Media delivers a diverse array of video programming, ringtones, graphics and other content from its CMT, COMEDY CENTRAL, Logo, MTV, Nickelodeon, The N, Spike and VH1 brands. MTVN’s mobile efforts reflects the company’s overarching commitment to developing content for all screens, from television to broadband and wireless, and the company’s video programming.

About MTV Networks and Viacom
MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), is one of the world's leading creators of programming and content across all media platforms. MTV Networks, with more than 130 channels worldwide, owns and operates the following television programming services - MTV: MUSIC TELEVISION, MTV2, VH1, mtvU, NICKELODEON, NICK at NITE, COMEDY CENTRAL, TV LAND, SPIKE TV, CMT, NOGGIN, VH1 CLASSIC, LOGO, MTVN INTERNATIONAL and THE DIGITAL SUITE FROM MTV NETWORKS, a package of 13 digital services, all of these networks trademarks of MTV Networks. MTV Networks connects with its audiences through its robust consumer products businesses and its more than 200 interactive properties worldwide, including online, broadband, wireless and interactive television services and also has licensing agreements, joint ventures, and syndication deals whereby all of its programming services can be seen worldwide.

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information - anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com .

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DoubleClick Continues to Innovate Digital Marketing Through Live Streaming Video Ads
DoubleClick Works with Foglight Entertainment and New Line Cinema to Create Innovative Live Streaming Ad Campaign
By BusinessWire
HOTLINKS
Click for the lowest price on streaming
add your linkNEW YORK, BUSINESS WIRE -- DoubleClick Inc., the premier provider of digital marketing technology and services, today launched its new, cutting-edge Live Streaming video advertising solution that enables advertisers to broadcast live events to users in real time through rich media ads. DoubleClick debuted the new solution on February 9 with the launch of New Line Cinema's much-anticipated thriller, The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, which will hit screens nationwide on February 23.

Video on the Internet has become increasingly sophisticated thanks to advances in technology that have enriched the experience for consumers. Additionally, online video provides advertisers the opportunity to interact with their audiences in a way that is increasingly dynamic--with live, streaming video taking this new media even one step further in advancement.

New Line Cinema's The Number 23 movie ad campaign is the first of its kind, created with the help of production company Foglight Entertainment. New Line, which is holding 23 promotion events around the country in support of its movie launch, partnered with Foglight to film patrons giving their "confession" at a live event at a local Washington D.C. bar. Each 30-second spot was filmed, edited and broadcast live, using DoubleClick's new Live Streaming capability, to popular websites such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. eastern standard time, on Friday, February 9.




"New Line Cinema is on the cutting edge of video advertising. They are continually brainstorming with us in order to find new and innovative ways to promote The Number 23, and Live Streaming was the answer," said Chris Young, executive vice president, rich media for DoubleClick. "This is an exciting time for online video advertising, and marketers will continue to invest in more engaging elements, like Live Streaming, incorporated into online campaigns."

"We built our reputation on TV production, but now spend about 50 percent of our time on bringing a new level of creativity to video online. Our work with New Line and DoubleClick reinforces our position as a leader in online broadband production," says Gregg Backer, President and CEO of Foglight Entertainment.

DoubleClick's Live Streaming capability was developed in the company's Innovation Lab, a brain trust within DoubleClick that brings groundbreaking video and rich media technologies to life. The Innovation Lab serves as a catalyst for innovation by ensuring that clients can respond to the fast-paced changes in the industry with relevant technologies.

DoubleClick's Live Streaming solution is available to all advertiser, agency and publisher clients through its DART Motif rich media services. Clients can provide their own streaming content, or can work with DoubleClick to arrange for live video coverage and editing. In order to assure proper standards, live video can be filtered or quickly edited before appearing in the ad.

DoubleClick provides the technology and know-how that makes digital marketing work - measuring its success, improving its performance and enabling clients to increase the return on their investment. DoubleClick offers rich media and video advertising solutions to meet the needs of both the advertisers and publishers online. It is the only solution provider that offers robust video solutions to both sides of the market through such as Streaming Video ads for advertisers and DART Motif(R) for In-Stream and DART Motif for Flash-in-Flash for publishers. By addressing and anticipating clients' needs with solutions and products, DoubleClick delivers high quality global services and is focused on providing solutions and tools that enable key metrics, transparency and accountability.

To learn more about DoubleClick's Live Streaming solution, you can visit http://www.dartmotif.com/formatsfeatures/formatsfeatures_livestreaming .asp

(Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

About DoubleClick

DoubleClick provides technology and services that empower marketers, agencies and web publishers to work together successfully and profit from their digital marketing investments. Our focus on innovation, reliability and insight enables clients to improve productivity and results.

Since 1996, DoubleClick has empowered the original thinkers and leaders in the digital advertising industry to deliver on the promise of the rich possibilities of our medium. Today, the company's DART and Performics divisions power the online advertising marketplace. Tomorrow, we will continue to enable clients to profit from opportunities across all digital advertising channels as consumers worldwide embrace them.

DoubleClick has global headquarters in New York City and maintains 16 offices around the world to serve its more than 1,500 clients.

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Web Hosting Firm, VitalStream, Enlisted for Toyota Hybrid Community Campaign

Irvine, California - (The Hosting News) - February 20, 2007 - Integrated web hosting and audio and video streaming provider, VitalStream Holdings, Inc., has been chosen by advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi LA, to provide VitalStream's Flash Video Streaming for the Interactive Online Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) ''Reasons'' Campaign.

VitalStream's Streaming Service for Flash delivers video content illustrating various reasons Toyota owners drive Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive vehicles, including the Prius, Highlander Hybrid SUV and the Camry Hybrid, the first Toyota hybrid car to be assembled in the US. The site invites drivers to share their preferences for getting behind the wheel of a hybrid car. Those reasons include cost-savings, environmental responsibility, futuristic design and advanced technologies such as ''regenerative braking, which captures energy from braking to recharge a hybrid's batteries.

Peter Kang, Interactive Creative Director for Saatchi and Saatchi LA remarked, ''VitalStream's Flash technology and expertise in content delivery makes it the perfect video streaming provider for user-generated sites. VitalStream's content delivery network allows us to focus on other portions of the Toyota campaign. We've created a virtual community in which Toyota hybrid fans and others curious about hybrid technology can congregate, leaving the web site's service and monitoring in the capable and reliable hands of VitalStream. VitalStream's proprietary solution for Flash includes MediaConsole, a workflow management toolset that integrates with all media streaming formats and includes pre-built skins and a real-time reporting dashboard. VitalStream provides the MediaOps software development kit to assist customers like Saatchi and Saatchi LA with their Flash application development. MediaOps, a library of Flash software and Flash-developed objects, enable developers to quickly and easily implement their Flash projects.

With VitalStream's Streaming Service for Flash, Toyota's web site visitors are expected to have the ability to easily upload personal photos and video clips of their vehicles. VitalStream's proprietary transcoding framework, configured to Toyota's specific requirements, enables web surfers to submit videos in most formats, including Windows Media, Quicktime, MPEG, DV and 3GP. VitalStream converts the video clips to Flash 8 and streams them on Toyota's site.

Philip N. Kaplan, President and COO at VitalStream added, ''Saatchi and Saatchi LA is a world leader in innovation, known for creating ad campaigns with impressive creativity and cutting-edge techniques. This choice further validates that VitalStream is the premier content delivery network for delivering rich media for user-generated sites. The scalability of our technology and expertise in Flash video streaming helps achieve the goals of both Saatchi and Saatchi LA and Toyota and enables drivers to express their individuality and support for hybrid technology.''

Saatchi and Saatchi LA's goal is to positively influence U.S. popular culture. Since its founding in 1975, the West Coast office of Saatchi and Saatchi has been creating world-famous creative ideas on behalf of its clients. The agency recently launched the campaign for the Toyota Yaris, which included the first ever ad-sponsored mobisode Fox's Prison Break. The agency picked up two Bronze Lions at Cannes 2006, including one for Toyota Tacoma Tide, the only U.S. automotive spot to medal at the festival. Saatchi and Saatchi LA is the agency of record for Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., and it also serves Toyota Dealer Associations and Procter and Gamble.

VitalStream, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of VitalStream Holdings, Inc., is a global provider of integrated content delivery services that endeavors to enable businesses to broadcast digital media and communications to worldwide audiences via the Internet. The company provides complete solutions, including video and audio streaming, advertising placement, delivery, reporting and analysis, live event broadcasting, media asset management, integrated web hosting and consulting services, designed to seamlessly integrate with leading streaming media technologies. VitalStream engineered its content delivery network certified for quality delivery in the United States, Europe and Asia. VitalStream's customer base includes many of the largest and fastest growing streamers of audio and video content, including Disney and Myspace.com. Notable new customers added during the second quarter of 2006 include Greyhound, the United Nations, Microsoft Prodigy, Buy.com, QuePasa, Home Depot and Gillette. VitalStream's customer base includes Fortune 500 corporations, movie studios, news broadcasters, music companies and advertising agencies, including ABC Radio, CNET, and Disney.

To learn more about the new online community, please visit: www.toyota.com/hybrids.

For more informatiom about VitalStream, please visit: www.vitalstream.com.

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Doubleclick launches Live Streaming video advertising solution
19 februari 2007

DoubleClick Inc. today launched its new, cutting-edge Live Streaming video advertising solution that enables advertisers to broadcast live events to users in real time through rich media ads. DoubleClick debuted the new solution on February 9 with the launch of New Line Cinema's much-anticipated thriller, The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, which will hit screens nationwide on February 23.

[cksla]

Could a Video Download Surge Hurt Media Cos?
A study on ad-supported and paid video downloads was released today by Adams Media Research that I think has an interesting connection to a piece I wrote the other day about software that grabs Flash streaming video.

According to the "Video on the Internet: Ad-Supported Streaming and Download-to-Own" report, advertiser spending on Internet video streams to PCs and TVs will near $1.7 billion by 2011. Far more, it predicts, will come from consumer spending on movie and TV downloads: $4.1 billion.
The firm thinks ad-supported video will dominate during an experimentation phase between now and 2009. Afterwards, spending on video downloads will ramp up, since more and more people will have Internet-enabled televisions.

Most people I spoke with about Applian's new software, which allows users to grab streaming Flash videos and archive them on their PCs, didn't see a huge threat to content producers, video distributors or advertisers. But if the number of people downloading videos is set to grow substantially, surely more people will seek out inexpensive software like this, allowing them to grab videos, and either view them on their TVs, or their PCs or mobile devices, rather than paying content owners for them. Already today, with conversion software, they can watch the streaming video files they downloaded on their phones or iPods.

Hey, who knows?

Posted by Kate Kaye at February 22, 2007 4:21 PM

[cksla]

Server Side Flash Video Encoding
48 posts | 19.01.2007 | Return to List | RSS Feed

Kan (14.11.2005):

Does anyone know it is possible to encode flv video files in batch server-side (linux server) from other formats? (.mov, .avi, .wmv, .mpg) A php API would be particularily great!

JeroenW (15.11.2005):

Not that I know of. there is only the expensive ON2 SDK for flash video. And that only works for windows. that is what the guys at Youtube.com use.

Ryan (06.12.2005):

I am doing this on my site http://www.audiri.com/ There is a program called ffmpeg which comes with most linux distributions, it works great except it doesn't convert from wmv, so there is a patch you can get email me at [e-mail]

JP (22.12.2005):

Hey Ryan -
I tried emailing you but I got no response. I need some more info on that WMV patch for ffmpeg. You can email me or post here (jpatten |at| wi.rr.com

Thanks

Gavin (25.12.2005):

that is what the guys at Youtube.com use.



Are you sure??

@ JP: do you know more about ffmpeg, or do you WANT to know? It's a bit unclear. I'm struggling with the same thing. Ffmpeg won't convert wmv3 (or mov), though it is listed in it's supported formats.

JP (26.12.2005):

I've gotten some WMVs to convert but I havent checked their version. I have searched around regarding WMV9 and ffmpeg and the word is that MS is supposed to be releasing WMV9 as an open standard and when it is, ffmpeg will support it.

Gavin (26.12.2005):

Yes, it will convert wmv, but only wmv1 & wmv2. Not 3 unfortunately.

@ Jeroen: Actually, On2 just released the Linux version of the engine. I may be switching to that because ffmpeg just isn't working for me.

Steven Gong (22.02.2006):

ffmpeg can't encode rmvb either...

JeroenW (23.02.2006):

@Gavin: might be the smartest choice. I don't see ffmpeg keeping up with all the different formats there are at present.

eyecatcher00;) (16.04.2006):

:|i want ur help.plz tell me how to do the same thing that youtube had done.i need it using php


Greg Cohen (25.04.2006):

Actually you can do later versions of ./wmv with this hack to ffmpeg

http://www.richardgoodwin.com/wp/2006/02/15/building-ffmpeg-to-support-windows-media-files/

cyburdine (06.07.2006):

or you could use mencoder which encodes flvs from wmv3 right out of the box.

good times.

chas (07.07.2006):

might help if u give link to mencoder

Gavin (10.07.2006):

Hmm, does mencoder do serverside encoding? I can't really tell from what I've read.

Soeren (06.08.2006):

mencoder can of course be used for serverside encoding.. however it doesn't support on2 vp6 encoding currently (as does ffmpeg etc.) ..

so there's nothing out there besides the expensive on2 sdk that allows command line vp6 flv encoding

MF (13.08.2006):

There is a video to FLV SDK available here:
http://blue-pacific.com/products/turbinevideosdk/

It is a lot cheaper than On2's.

Cheers!

Mat (14.08.2006):

What's best practise for storing the files once they've been encoded? Should they be stored in a DB as binary data (blobs) or should they be stored on the file system? What do sites like Flickr and youtube do?

Thanks

Mat

Soeren (15.08.2006):

@MF although turbine is cheaper it seems it doesn't support the on2 vp6 codec so you're stuck with the older "spark" codec - the on2 sdk is the only one supporting vp6 currently afaik

@Mat can't speak for flickr and/or youtube but i'd say it's better practice to store large amounts of binary data like encoded videos in the file system and not in the DB itself!

Mat (15.08.2006):

Thanks. I'm been doing some research and it seems like that is the consensus. Store the files in the file system with a reference to them in the DB. If anyone else has a good case for storing the files as binary data in a DB I'd be interested to hear it.

Thanks for getting back to me.

Mat


Mat (15.08.2006):

By the way, has anyone got any opinions on Sorensen squeeze? It looks pretty good and integrates with On2 VP6.

http://www.sorensonmedia.com/solutions/prod/mx_win.php

Mat

Jake (22.08.2006):

A good reason to store your movies in a BLOB in a database is for security. In other words, you can restrict access only to users who have permission to view them.

You could use HTTP authentication to protect movies from unathorized access, but http is much more difficutl to work with than simply serve-side scripting/database permissions.

My 2 cents.

Another Ryan (29.08.2006):

Or you could keep the movie in a folder not on the web and access it through, say, a php script that checks permissions.

Mikey (08.09.2006):

Im interested in an upload and convert scvript..

What I want is for only me (ADMIN) to upload a video via a page in my sites admin.. and for it encode into .fla and store the newly created .fla in the directory where flash player gets its .fla from and then for the script to delete the original file that was just encoded.

all I have to do then is add the file to my playlist... or the script could do that too...

Anyone know of any scripts like this?

My host runs linux so I beleive it should have this ffmpeg installed... if not my hosts are very good and Im sure I could have it installed.

Where do I start?

I dont want to have to sit and encode then upload..

Mikey (08.09.2006):

I meant FLV not FLA sorry my bad

karlitos (08.09.2006):

that might be possible using some command like list files, and you point it to your files directory so he grabs each flv file and place it in the playlist, but i dont know how to do it.

sidd (12.09.2006):



sidd (12.09.2006):



video (19.09.2006):



reconbot (19.09.2006):

1) make sure ffmpeg is up and running and it works (play with it on the command line)
2) learn how to escape your input to shell commands (in php http://us3.php.net/exec)
3) write a script that scans a directory for your incoming movie files, encodes them and saves them to a different directory.
4) access control can be implemented by having all your movie files outside of your web directory and have a script (in php http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.readfile.php ) process user permissions, output the proper headers (may not be needed) and then output the flv.
*NOTE* take care about what files this script will output, you don't want someone easily exploiting it to read your passwords or email or something.

5) setup the flash player to call the script with whatever filename, the script will check permissions, the filename and then output the file to the flash player and it will play.

Good luck!

Martins (19.09.2006):

Please i want to stream Video with flash_flv_player at my website, www.nigerianfolks.com , i would you to check it out and see if you could help me configure the player which is already installed at my host addres and upload a file which i will provide as the first video.
I am new in this field and i need all the help i can get and am willing to pay a lil bit or post your banner in my website.
Please do mail back to let me know how you feel about it.

Martins ...Owner www.nigerianfolks.com

Varun (18.11.2006):

Read This one,
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=FLV_Video_Compression

Antaes (28.11.2006):

Check http://www.effectmatrix.com/total-video-converter/

Should be worth of it !!

jdq (05.12.2006):

Is it possible to use ffmpeg and create not flv's but swf's?

(or a way to easily convert the flv's to swf's on the server?)

Michael Janich (07.12.2006):

No, ffmpeg (or another tool) does not create
SWF files directly. If that would be the case,
you would not need this player at all.

My conversion script is (just in case that is
of someones interest):

ffmpeg -i /tmp/video-inputfile.xxx -y -ar 44100 -ab 64 -f flv -s 320x240 /usr/share/tomcat5/webapps/ROOT/outputXXX.flv

irene (18.12.2006):

@michael
can you give me some guide on how you do it in flash? what i need is an swf that asks for a video to be uploaded and that uploaded video will then be converted to flv and then saved to flash media server. please.. a tutorial or something.. tnx!

wess (03.01.2007):

I have a working php version of video uploading using ffmpeg to handle the conversion. Its still a work in progress. If you are interested in trying it out just email. Or if you want to help me turn it into an opensource project, I am always up for coding for the opensource world.

My email is: wcope(a)noisewater(dot)net.

Take care,
Wess

wess (04.01.2007):

As promised I have created a little package for doing this. www.wattz.net for the latest release. This is beta, so there will be more to come. This is just the beginning, I am currently working on thumbnail functionality and such. All the info should be there, if you have any questions or would like to help out, please email me.

Thanks,
Wess

JeroenW (05.01.2007):

Great work wess!

wess (05.01.2007):

Im going to continue to develop it too, version .2 will be done early next week, hopefully it will have thumbnail functionality to it.

JeroenW (06.01.2007):

Great! I suppose you use the FFMPEG-PHP library for that? Automated thumbnailing is a nice, bandwidth and time-saving feature.

FreakyHase (07.01.2007):

Hey

I get this :

Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /path/to/my/website/test/classes/video.class.php on line 11


michael (07.01.2007):

Is there a consensus on the best way to do serverside encoding to flash on a windows platform (2000 server). Our site has been using the MS toolkit and converting various formats to .wmv files for a number of years but with flash taking over web video, we want to switch to flash. The only thing I can find is the very expensive on2 flix engine and not so cheap blue pacific terbine. Are there any other alternatives? Thanks for any suggestions.

Rohan Pinto (08.01.2007):

I'm using mencoder and flvtool2, to convert videos on the serverside (*nix). Give it a shot, It works pretty well, except for the fact that it hogs my CPU. (my site is http://konkan.tv)

If you know of any betetr linux flv encoding tools, do let me know.

wess (10.01.2007):

Rohan, can you please send me an email, Im having some issues with Mencoder and flvtool2, wondering if you could help me out. I would like to add that to my php class so it will convert wmv.

So if you get time, please shoot me an email: wcope(a)noisewater(dot)net

Thanx

pangaea (14.01.2007):

As far as I have found, this is the only available way to do integrated server-side encoding for Flash 8 video...

http://www.flashvideosdk.com
(bottom of page)




moe (15.01.2007):

does anyone know of a hosting solution that laready has ffmpeg installed on thei servers?

JeroenW (18.01.2007):

Dreamhost does have this.

vcv (19.01.2007):

vc
===================================================
Adobe's Narayen sees growth in video, mobile
Interview: Adobe's president discusses the importance of providing developers with tools that work across several platforms



By Elizabeth Heichler, IDG News Service

January 30, 2007


With its acquisition of Macromedia in late 2005, Adobe Systems won control of the Flash technology that has become a nearly ubiquitous way of authoring and viewing interactive and multimedia content on the Web. Now, the 25-year-old software company with deep roots in creative applications and an iron grip on electronic documents thanks to its de facto-standard PDF document format, has its eye on development and content presentation across all sorts of platforms and devices.

President and COO Shantanu Narayen recently sat down with a group of IDG journalists to talk about the opportunities that mobile platforms and digital video present for Adobe. Joined by David Mendels, senior vice president of the enterprise and developer solutions business unit, Narayen also described the company's hopes for its multiplatform runtime environment, code-named Apollo, that is designed to run Web applications using Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax, and PDF and is due for public beta release later this year.

IDG: What are the key areas of growth for Adobe?

Narayen: Clearly, the creative customer is still a very important customer to us, and there what we're trying to do is enable them to create content across print and the Web, but also increasingly video and wireless. We're seeing a tremendous explosion of digital video, which we think is a huge growth area for us. And also wireless because creating content for wireless devices is very hard. So in the next version of our Creative Suite applications, we're going to be looking to dramatically expand how we can help people create content. This year, we're going to be releasing Creative Suite 3, which will be the first generation of applications that combines products like Photoshop and Illustrator from Adobe and Dreamweaver and Flash from Macromedia.

We think Apollo is going to enable a new generation of applications that combines the power of the desktop as well as the interactivity and connectedness of the Internet.

IDG: Tell us more about your plans for the mobile data arena.

Narayen: We work a lot with handset manufacturers and operators. The current offerings we have include Flash Lite on the client. Handset manufacturers or operators can provide a really compelling experience, and people using these phones can browse the Web and get Flash content.

What's even more exciting is that we now have a new service we're offering through operators called FlashCast.... What we've introduced is a new metaphor, a TV-channel-like metaphor, which allows you to have, say, weather or news or sports or specialized channels. You now have the ability to subscribe -- all the data is automatically sent down to your phone. We've introduced FlashCast services in conjunction with [NTT] DoCoMo. This server-based offering, it's more subscription based, [so] it's an ongoing revenue stream, for us as well as for the mobile operator.

Moving forward ... Apollo, the runtime will also be mobile-aware. The benefit to a developer or an enterprise or to an author is you author once, and you have the runtime everywhere, you have the ability to run applications everywhere. So that clearly is why we think that we have the ability to provide all the authoring, all the runtime, and a way to deploy it in a scaleable way in an enterprise.

IDG: How do you see your competitive stance versus Microsoft right now, especially with its Expression Web tool?

Narayen: We certainly compete with Microsoft; however we've competed with them in the past, and I think that's an important thing to also remember. We competed with them in print technology very early on. We competed with them in fonts, we competed with them in imaging for many years. We competed with them on the Web for years,. Dreamweaver versus Frontpage. You know, as it relates to the creative community, we still believe we understand that creative community. And that community wants a heterogeneous environment.

Mendels: The fundamental issue is cross-platform. There's almost no one I talk to who doesn't want to either be heterogeneous and work on Linux or Mac or Windows, or want the option in the future to do that.... If developers want to build things, express themselves heterogeneously across the Web, across devices, you know, that isn't Microsoft's strength. They've got a lot of strengths, but that's not their strength. Their big opportunity is people who have a Microsoft end-to-end environment.

IDG: Adobe has a long history as a software company -- over the years, how have you seen business models in software change?

Narayen: If you think about the company, it's actually changed very dramatically over these 25 years. We started with a completely royalty model. With Postscript, we had HP and IBM and Apple as large customers, and that was the business model, royalty based. And we built a very successful applications business on top of that. And then we moved into the enterprise, and that's license revenue, it's consulting services, etcetera.... So we already today have some very different business models all sort of coexisting in our overall company's financial model, which is clearly very successful and profitable one. Clearly, we see the trend toward both delivery of software through hosted mechanisms and subscriptions and the ability to monetize it differently. Second is the need for us, for a certain set of customers, to not monetize it by charging them for it but through other advertising mechanisms.... It's the spectrum of delivery and business models. Piracy is huge for us in other countries, and that [advertising-supported model] is a way in certain countries to also monetize.

IDG: What might be some applications you could offer in this way?

Narayen: Well, take video. With YouTube, right now people just have the ability to upload a video. Wouldn't it be really cool if we provided something that enabled people to do basic video editing through a hosted service, or image editing through a hosted service, or even run your entire enterprise offerings as a hosted service?

(IDG News Service Senior Writer China Martens and Infoworld Assistant News Editor Paul Roberts joined Heichler in conducting the interview in Boston.)

=============================================
2.0 link0 Jeroen Wijering: Server Side Flash Video Encoding link1 Jeroen Wijering: Server Side Flash Video Encoding en-us 51.45 5.467 some rights reserved (cc) Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:45:07 -0800 Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:56:04 -0800 vcv link2 :pvc Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:56:04 -0800 JeroenW link3 Dreamhost does have this. Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:05:53 -0800 moe link4 does anyone know of a hosting solution that laready has ffmpeg installed on thei servers? Mon, 15 Jan 2007 05:22:27 -0800 pangaea link5 As far as I have found, this is the only available way to do integrated server-side encoding for Flash 8 video... [url=http://www.flashvideosdk.com>" target="_blank">http://www.flashvideosdk.com]http://www.flashvideosdk.com> (bottom of page) Sun, 14 Jan 2007 19:19:26 -0800 wess link6 Rohan, can you please send me an email, Im having some issues with Mencoder and flvtool2, wondering if you could help me out. I would like to add that to my php class so it will convert wmv. So if you get time, please shoot me an email: wcope(a)noisewater(dot)net Thanx Wed, 10 Jan 2007 06:34:56 -0800 Rohan Pinto link7 I'm using mencoder and flvtool2, to convert videos on the serverside (*nix). Give it a shot, It works pretty well, except for the fact that it hogs my CPU. (my site is link8 If you know of any betetr linux flv encoding tools, do let me know. Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:25:08 -0800 michael link9 Is there a consensus on the best way to do serverside encoding to flash on a windows platform (2000 server). Our site has been using the MS toolkit and converting various formats to .wmv files for a number of years but with flash taking over web video, we want to switch to flash. The only thing I can find is the very expensive on2 flix engine and not so cheap blue pacific terbine. Are there any other alternatives? Thanks for any suggestions. Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:39:25 -0800 FreakyHase link10 Hey I get this : Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /path/to/my/website/test/classes/video.class.php on line 11 Sun, 07 Jan 2007 07:32:56 -0800 JeroenW link11 Great! I suppose you use the FFMPEG-PHP library for that? Automated thumbnailing is a nice, bandwidth and time-saving feature. Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:36:30 -0800 wess link12 Im going to continue to develop it too, version .2 will be done early next week, hopefully it will have thumbnail functionality to it. Fri, 05 Jan 2007 07:38:38 -0800 JeroenW link13 Great work wess! Fri, 05 Jan 2007 05:24:27 -0800 wess link14 As promised I have created a little package for doing this. www.wattz.net for the latest release. This is beta, so there will be more to come. This is just the beginning, I am currently working on thumbnail functionality and such. All the info should be there, if you have any questions or would like to help out, please email me. Thanks, Wess Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:50:20 -0800 wess link15 I have a working php version of video uploading using ffmpeg to handle the conversion. Its still a work in progress. If you are interested in trying it out just email. Or if you want to help me turn it into an opensource project, I am always up for coding for the opensource world. My email is: wcope(a)noisewater(dot)net. Take care, Wess Wed, 03 Jan 2007 07:47:41 -0800 irene link16 @michael can you give me some guide on how you do it in flash? what i need is an swf that asks for a video to be uploaded and that uploaded video will then be converted to flv and then saved to flash media server. please.. a tutorial or something.. tnx! :$ Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:38:29 -0800 Michael Janich link17 No, ffmpeg (or another tool) does not create SWF files directly. If that would be the case, you would not need this player at all. My conversion script is (just in case that is of someones interest): ffmpeg -i /tmp/video-inputfile.xxx -y -ar 44100 -ab 64 -f flv -s 320x240 /usr/share/tomcat5/webapps/ROOT/outputXXX.flv Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:19:57 -0800
http://www.jeroenwijering.com/rss/?thread=152

[cksla]

Lycos launches free video portal
January 9, 2007
Ben Camm-Jones



Lycos has launched Lycos TV, a free online video portal.


Lycos TV will offer film, music and TV content to users as well as news and sports reports.

Lycos has also teamed up with content provider Roo and will make Roo's entire back catalogue available to users. Roo will additonally provide Lycos with its video streaming tools.



Lycos plans to add its own original video content soon after the launch and will also be adding user-generated content in the future.



“Our users demand an enriched web experience and moving to a comprehensive online video content service was the obvious place to start," said Jeffrey Lee, managing director of Lycos UK.



“Roo's technology meant that we could get a video portal up and running with a huge amount of video content available to users from the word go. However, it also provides us with a platform that we can use to add content from other partners, our own Lycos UK-generated content and which we will use as a platform for content generated by our community of users over time,” he continued.



Robert Petty, chief executive of Roo said: “With the increasing importance of offering streaming video to keep audiences engaged, we are pleased to be given the opportunity to work with the Lycos brand.”

[cksla]

Broadband Enterprises is #1 Online Video Network, comScore Says
Reach of 1,700+ Site Network Bests Media Giants ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN as Well as Industry Peers


NEW YORK, Jan. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Broadband Enterprises (http://www.broadbandenterprises.com/), the premier online video network, which has a 1,700+ site affiliate network, drew an aggregated audience account of 15.8 million unique streamers, beating competitors in the streaming video space such as Google, Brightcove, Roo and Tremor according to comScore's October streaming video data. This data demonstrates that Broadband Enterprises has become the unparalleled leader in the online video distribution space. It is also indicative of the company's tremendous potential reach among the online streaming universe, which represents one of the biggest opportunities for those advertisers seeking the power of sight, sound and motion in an online venue.

While these data are not directly comparable, Broadband Enterprises' audience aggregate (i.e., potential audience) is significantly larger than actual video streams served by many major media companies like ABC, CBS, NBC and ESPN. Potential reach reflects all of the streams served on BBE's affiliates, as BBE has the right to sell pre-roll video ads on a portion of each affiliates' total streams. In contrast, actual audience is a measurement of all streams served by the respective video entities, as these media entities cited have rights to 100% of this streaming ad inventory.

Formed in 2004, Broadband Enterprises has built the world's largest online video network, consisting of more than 1,700 publishers and delivering over 800 million monthly streams. With less than 20 employees, Broadband Enterprises has become the premier online video network for major brand advertisers looking to reach the highly coveted broadband video audience.

"All told, the combined syndicated and internal data demonstrate the profound reach and effectiveness of our network of affiliates," said CEO Matt Wasserlauf. "Our network ensures that our advertisers are reaching their target markets with optimal exposure. At a time where brands are all looking to jump on the broadband video craze, we've created the most efficient delivery system for their brand to get out and be seen on the web."

One of Broadband's biggest traffic drivers has been its original web-only workplace makeover series, Cube Fabulous (http://www.cubefabulous.com/). The web's first hit series, Cube Fabulous, now in its second season, has drawn over 20 million unique viewers (according to BBE's internal data). The show's success has lured several big name sponsors, including AOL, Monster and Honda.

To learn more about Broadband Enterprises or to speak with Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of Broadband Enterprises, please email [e-mail].

About Broadband Enterprises

Formed in 2004, Broadband Enterprises is the premier online video network. Broadband Enterprises consists of more than 1,700 publishers, delivering over 800 million monthly video streams. Broadband Enterprises vSyndicate service offers publishers a revenue-generating, full-service, fully-managed broadband video content and advertising solution. More information at http://www.broadbandenterprises.com/.

Contact:

Neil Steinberg
5W Public Relations
212.584.4306
240.350.1101
[e-mail]

Website: http://www.broadbandenterprises.com/
Website: http://www.cubefabulous.com/

[cksla]

What's behind Samsung's deals with Google and Yahoo
By Hyojeoung Kim(ZDNet Korea)
January 9th, 2007
Samsung Electronics signs deals with internet giants Google and Yahoo, from Las Vegas on the 9th. With these strategic deals, Samsung will serge into the internet market even stronger.

Samsung looks to conquer mobile internet market too
With Google deal, Samsung announced release of handset that incorporates Google client applications, will be available for consumers within first half this year. Samsung¡¯s Google phone incorporates Google mobile search, which enables consumers to search for information. It includes an exclusive Google icon in the application menu, offering one-click easy access to Google search, Google maps (Map, Satellite, Hybrid), and Gmail (Google Mail) to manage their emails on the move.


(Fig. 1 Samsung/Google phone, Credit:Samsung Electronics) Ultra Edition SGH-Z720 is a 3.5G HSDPA equipped with 3 Mega pixel camera and Bluetooth functionalities.
In addition, with the Yahoo deal, Samsung will embed Yahoo client applications into all handsets being sold to over 60 countries worldwide. The soon to be released Samsung/Yahoo handsets will enable managing Yahoo Go, Yahoo one search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and My Yahoo a brisk. In addition, both Samsung and Yahoo will work together to come up with extended Yahoo services through Samsung phones.

Kitae Lee, President of Telecommunication Network Business at Samsung Electronics, said, "Today's internet is quickly changing from fixed stationary environment to highly mobile environment. Samsung Electronics will continue to create world that allows true ubiquitous, readily available information through mobile internet sector."


What's in for the Samsung-Google and Yahoo deals?
It seems that Samsung's deals with global internet giants Google and Yahoo is aimed to ride on the emerging mobile internet service within cell phone applications. In actuality, globally, there are active deals between mobile telecom and internet web firms, handset manufacturers and internet companies.


(Fig. 2 Samsung/Yahoo phone, Credit:Samsung Electronics) (SGH-E570), resembles a water drop, folder type round design
Major Tel-Coms like Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular and Sprint have on going deals with major web companies. It is a clear indication of growing efforts being made to get mobile internet search into as an exterior search method to website search markets .

Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, and Sony-Erickson and other cell phone manufactures have hooked up with Google and Yahoo; continue developing exclusive software and icons into their devices. Future looks bright for the phone manufacturers, Telecom and internet companies. These kinds of deals being made between them bring mutual benefits a certainty for them.

The cell phone manufactures could gain distinct advantage through adding mobile search capability to their devices. And wireless mobile carriers will get a cost saving opportunity to extended web networks and internet companies will gain cell phone users (more than double the current PC users) to profit from. In addition, mobile search with messenger, blogs, and UCC will serve as new applications to further bring up mobile internet business. With the trend, we could also see mobile web applications spreading into Web 2.0 for more future deals.

In the meantime, with the advent of high speed mobile communications combined with high-tech cell phones has made using main web 2.0 technology with wireless internet possible already, making importance of meeting consumer needs with mobile blogging, mobile internet search.

[cksla]

What's behind Samsung's deals with Google and Yahoo
By Hyojeoung Kim(ZDNet Korea)
January 9th, 2007
Samsung Electronics signs deals with internet giants Google and Yahoo, from Las Vegas on the 9th. With these strategic deals, Samsung will serge into the internet market even stronger.

Samsung looks to conquer mobile internet market too
With Google deal, Samsung announced release of handset that incorporates Google client applications, will be available for consumers within first half this year. Samsung¡¯s Google phone incorporates Google mobile search, which enables consumers to search for information. It includes an exclusive Google icon in the application menu, offering one-click easy access to Google search, Google maps (Map, Satellite, Hybrid), and Gmail (Google Mail) to manage their emails on the move.


(Fig. 1 Samsung/Google phone, Credit:Samsung Electronics) Ultra Edition SGH-Z720 is a 3.5G HSDPA equipped with 3 Mega pixel camera and Bluetooth functionalities.
In addition, with the Yahoo deal, Samsung will embed Yahoo client applications into all handsets being sold to over 60 countries worldwide. The soon to be released Samsung/Yahoo handsets will enable managing Yahoo Go, Yahoo one search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and My Yahoo a brisk. In addition, both Samsung and Yahoo will work together to come up with extended Yahoo services through Samsung phones.

Kitae Lee, President of Telecommunication Network Business at Samsung Electronics, said, "Today's internet is quickly changing from fixed stationary environment to highly mobile environment. Samsung Electronics will continue to create world that allows true ubiquitous, readily available information through mobile internet sector."


What's in for the Samsung-Google and Yahoo deals?
It seems that Samsung's deals with global internet giants Google and Yahoo is aimed to ride on the emerging mobile internet service within cell phone applications. In actuality, globally, there are active deals between mobile telecom and internet web firms, handset manufacturers and internet companies.


(Fig. 2 Samsung/Yahoo phone, Credit:Samsung Electronics) (SGH-E570), resembles a water drop, folder type round design
Major Tel-Coms like Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular and Sprint have on going deals with major web companies. It is a clear indication of growing efforts being made to get mobile internet search into as an exterior search method to website search markets .

Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, and Sony-Erickson and other cell phone manufactures have hooked up with Google and Yahoo; continue developing exclusive software and icons into their devices. Future looks bright for the phone manufacturers, Telecom and internet companies. These kinds of deals being made between them bring mutual benefits a certainty for them.

The cell phone manufactures could gain distinct advantage through adding mobile search capability to their devices. And wireless mobile carriers will get a cost saving opportunity to extended web networks and internet companies will gain cell phone users (more than double the current PC users) to profit from. In addition, mobile search with messenger, blogs, and UCC will serve as new applications to further bring up mobile internet business. With the trend, we could also see mobile web applications spreading into Web 2.0 for more future deals.

In the meantime, with the advent of high speed mobile communications combined with high-tech cell phones has made using main web 2.0 technology with wireless internet possible already, making importance of meeting consumer needs with mobile blogging, mobile internet search.

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What's behind Samsung's deals with Google and Yahoo
By Hyojeoung Kim(ZDNet Korea)
January 9th, 2007
Samsung Electronics signs deals with internet giants Google and Yahoo, from Las Vegas on the 9th. With these strategic deals, Samsung will serge into the internet market even stronger.

Samsung looks to conquer mobile internet market too
With Google deal, Samsung announced release of handset that incorporates Google client applications, will be available for consumers within first half this year. Samsung¡¯s Google phone incorporates Google mobile search, which enables consumers to search for information. It includes an exclusive Google icon in the application menu, offering one-click easy access to Google search, Google maps (Map, Satellite, Hybrid), and Gmail (Google Mail) to manage their emails on the move.


(Fig. 1 Samsung/Google phone, Credit:Samsung Electronics) Ultra Edition SGH-Z720 is a 3.5G HSDPA equipped with 3 Mega pixel camera and Bluetooth functionalities.
In addition, with the Yahoo deal, Samsung will embed Yahoo client applications into all handsets being sold to over 60 countries worldwide. The soon to be released Samsung/Yahoo handsets will enable managing Yahoo Go, Yahoo one search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and My Yahoo a brisk. In addition, both Samsung and Yahoo will work together to come up with extended Yahoo services through Samsung phones.

Kitae Lee, President of Telecommunication Network Business at Samsung Electronics, said, "Today's internet is quickly changing from fixed stationary environment to highly mobile environment. Samsung Electronics will continue to create world that allows true ubiquitous, readily available information through mobile internet sector."


What's in for the Samsung-Google and Yahoo deals?
It seems that Samsung's deals with global internet giants Google and Yahoo is aimed to ride on the emerging mobile internet service within cell phone applications. In actuality, globally, there are active deals between mobile telecom and internet web firms, handset manufacturers and internet companies.


(Fig. 2 Samsung/Yahoo phone, Credit:Samsung Electronics) (SGH-E570), resembles a water drop, folder type round design
Major Tel-Coms like Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular and Sprint have on going deals with major web companies. It is a clear indication of growing efforts being made to get mobile internet search into as an exterior search method to website search markets .

Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, and Sony-Erickson and other cell phone manufactures have hooked up with Google and Yahoo; continue developing exclusive software and icons into their devices. Future looks bright for the phone manufacturers, Telecom and internet companies. These kinds of deals being made between them bring mutual benefits a certainty for them.

The cell phone manufactures could gain distinct advantage through adding mobile search capability to their devices. And wireless mobile carriers will get a cost saving opportunity to extended web networks and internet companies will gain cell phone users (more than double the current PC users) to profit from. In addition, mobile search with messenger, blogs, and UCC will serve as new applications to further bring up mobile internet business. With the trend, we could also see mobile web applications spreading into Web 2.0 for more future deals.

In the meantime, with the advent of high speed mobile communications combined with high-tech cell phones has made using main web 2.0 technology with wireless internet possible already, making importance of meeting consumer needs with mobile blogging, mobile internet search.

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This about sums it up regarding the situation we are looking at with AOL video IM. Gentlemen start your engines.

From Briefing.com story this afternoon on On2:

Based on our conversations with contacts, we expect that ONT compression software technology will indeed help to provide the two-way video for the AOL VoIP and instant messaging products. All of the products will supposedly let people use two-way video at the same time they are using either AOL voice or chat.

Furthermore, we anticipate that the AOL deal represents incremental business for ONT, in the form of an upfront fee and an ongoing royalty... We note that AOL had been using earlier versions of ONTs video compression software already for about the past two years, so it's not a stretch to think that AOL has also licensed ONTs latest software... We expect that AOL indeed needs the latest version of the ONT product to provide the anticipated features for its new service.

And as far as we know, the ONT compression tech is one of the only viable options for the type of video voice-over IP that AOL expects to offer. Our sources tell us that a standards-based codec used in Apple Chat is pretty much too expensive to be viable, and that one of the only other options is MSFT Windows Media and we highly doubt that AOL would use MSFT technology, given that the two firms compete in instant messaging.

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Re Skype. The hype today is a rumored possible buyout by Ebay at stratospheric numbers. Already lots of talk regarding the logic of such a deal. Some like it. Some are scratching their heads without a clue.

http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/2005/09/08/skype-ebay-merger-cx_de_0908skype.html

Well wait till they get a load of Skype video using VP7. LOL. Its really amazing that the smart boys who pick apart deals haven't picked up on the real potential for offering efficient bidirectional video communications based on a free IP delivery platform like Skype to millions or Ebayers engaged in hundreds of millions of daily transactions. They ought to think a few minutes more and maybe then the lights would stop flickering.

Who knows for sure whether Ebay buys Skype. Maybe. Maybe not. It's not as dumb as some may think. And if it should happen. and iF Skype video is VP7, as I am coonvinced it is, then we will all be running with the bulls.

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“No one really knows 100% if vp7 will make the final release of skype video. the major risk is that skype goes and buys their own codec.” Well, Skype undoubtedly knows and probably will be revealing the answer in the near term future.

So, who's codec do you theorize that Skype could get for a $1 billion, assuming that On2 isn't really in the picture? Is it going to be MPEG? H.264 ? How about MSFT? Somebody out there got one we don't about or is Skype going to somehow make their own? Here’s your challenge:

1) Identify an existing, proven codec that is: a) amenable to being acquired for your arbitrary price, and b) is technically capable of resolving the challenging requirements imposed by live, two way video communications at a quality level the market is going dictate as minimally acceptable.
or
2) Explain how they are going to build a codec from scratch meeting the requirements within the critical time frame necessary to remain in the competive mix for video VOIP applications.

First, if Skype has $1 billion to buy a codec and seriously was of the mindset to do so, why wouldn’t On2 be the simple object of their desire – especially since, if published reports are accurate, they are intimately familiar with VP codec technology? I'll tell you why. They don’t need to buy what they can license under fair and reasonable terms.

Second, there is a major technical reason why VP7 has suddenly begun to attract attention of serious contenders for video VOIP applications: VP7 flat outperforms competitor codec technologies like MPEG4, H.264, and WM/VC-1 in both efficiency and quality for video communications over IP. To be the best you have use the best. That's why Skype will be partnering with On2 and not sombody else.

Third, there are licensing and royalty issues attendant with MPEG4 and H.264 which seriously interfere with their adoption into the video IM/VOIP markets. And for sure, there is absolutely no way that an MPEG/H.264 product can be outright acquired by anyone without the acquisition running afoul of anti-trust regulations.

Fourth, Skype isn’t going to buy anything Microsoft owns – if anything it would be the reverse with Microsoft swallowing Skype in an outright acquisition; or better for MSFT, somehow getting Skype to fall into the trap of adopting the Microsoft codec thereby making Skype their captive partner. I don’t see any of Microsoft’s major competitors permitting it to grab Skype. Do you think Skype would seriously consider using WM/VC-1?

Fifth, Skype doesn’t have $1 billion either to buy a codec or to innovate its own codec. If they did then maybe we would already be talking about a Skype’s buyout of On2. What If EBAY bought Skype? Then they probably have the $1 billion. Think EBAY would then try and buy On2 or some other codec technology for $1 billion? On2 I posit would be the only viable tech for them to try and buy. So, that could be real good for On2 at the right price. As far as developing their own codec? Not going to happen. There ain’t no way anyone seriously contemplating a major role in VOIP today is going to get there thinking they can take time to build their own video compression engine. They can throw $1 billion at it to no avail because time is of the essence. By the time they could get a non-infringing, minimally acceptable performing codec built, debugged and tested the market for video they are chasing will have been grabbed by everybody else.

If, and I grant if, Skype and GIPS have licensed On2 VP7 codec technology and AOL shows up to the party with VP powering their Triton AIM product, then I think On2 will be sitting in the cat bird seat providing the video underpinnings for the evolving video IM and VOIP markets. I would even go so far as to conjecture that VP7 could quickly be accepted as a de facto video standard within that space. I’m betting we will know pretty shortly.

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AOL Closing in on Video VoIP Launch
By Erin Joyce
September 7, 2005

www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3546946

After years of endless speculation in the industry about plans for video over its vast Instant Messaging networks, AOL is closing in on its own splashy video Voice over IP calling service, internetnews.com has learned.

According to a source familiar with the offering, AOL is about two weeks away from moving the video calling product into wider public use.

The service, expected to get a major airing at the upcoming VON VoIP Conference in Boston the week of Sept. 19, will be aimed at its Instant Messaging and ICQ base of users, the source added.

Details on pricing were sketchy. But it is expected to be a mix of paid services and free, though free services wouldn't be as extensive. The idea is to get users of its popular IM clients to consider paying up for enhanced calling and messaging services involving video.

If it catches on, the service could give AOL an opportunity to monetize its base of free ICQ and AIM users at a time when its dial-up customers are defecting to broadband providers via DSL or cable modems.

AOL pegs its U.S. base of AIM users at over 41.6 million. According to research firm comScore, in July 2005 it counted about 30 million unique visitors for AIM, and pegged MSN's Messenger base at 25.9 million unique users, up 11 percent from the year before. Yahoo Messenger is in the third place in comScore's numbers with 25.6 million users, up about 16 percent from last year's tally.

An AOL spokeswoman declined comment but said the company's Triton beta offers enhanced Voice over IM and Video over IM components.

AOL's Triton Beta 0.15 includes a feature called "Call Log" that evidently enables you to see your VOIP calling logs. This leads to a series of Web pages in the totaltalk.com domain. One screen asks users to "Sign in here to access your voicemail, call logs, contacts, settings and more. Add this page to your Favorites/Bookmarks so you can come back often."

However, AOL has been offering VoIP in Canada -- through totaltalk.ca -- since June.

Adding video to its current VoIP offerings appears to be the next obvious move for AOL, even though it was unclear how this would expand on AIM's current support for its feature called Live Video IM, which already enables real-time PC-to-PC calls.

According to the source, AOL's video calling product is built on three components. One involves a SIP-based softphone product provided by Pingtel, a maker of IP PBX software. Pingtel calls its softphone "the world's first enterprise-grade open source softphone for computer desktops and laptops."

The second component is to be provided by Global IP Sound, a provider of networking software that eases Internet-based call quality problems, such as jitter, packet loss, clock-drift, acoustic and network echo. The video compression codecs used in the calling feature are expected to be provided by On2 Technologies , a maker of compression software.

Pingtel and On2 declined to comment for the story.

Although Global IP Sound also declined to comment, it is already on record about its relationship with AOL. In a June 30, 2005, filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Global IP Sound said it signed an OEM deal with AOL. "The contract includes Global IP Sound's VoiceEngine and VoiceEngine Multimedia solutions."

GIPS already counts VoIP darlings Skype and Google Talk as customers. Skype, which had planned to launch a wider public beta of its own video over VoIP service last week, has now delayed that launch until later this fall, according to a Skype spokeswoman. The service is expected to be free when it does launch.

Although Google has only recently launched its own IM product called Google Talk, the involvement of Global IP Sound in the offering is yet another signal that Google is also positioning its IM platform for a possible video-calling component in the future.

Video calling over Instant Messaging networks has long been a goal of every IM platform provider. The breathtaking speed with which online users have embraced online chat and the peering nature of presence-based chat easily positions an IM platform for a video component.

AOL is also expected to license the video-calling platform to third-party providers interested in adding the video calling component to their platforms.

But whether it could get customers -- consumers or business users for video-conferencing services -- to pay up is the question. "It's definitely an arms race in communications, but I'm not sure there's huge demand for this kind of stuff," said David Card, a media analyst with Jupiter Research (Jupiter Research and internetnews.com are owned by the same parent company).

"AIM is a great platform and one of the places where AOL is the clear leader," he added. "But I don't see a huge demand for video conferencing. The only place you could charge for it would be with professionals."

The service is the latest among a flurry of Voice over IP maneuvers and Video IM buzz getting louder by the day. The most recent move came from Microsoft, which bought VoIP player Telio, a San Francisco-based provider of PSTN termination and click-to-call functionality, a popular feature with its collaboration offerings.

That's in addition to MSN's full-screen Video over IM capabilitythat it recently improved in version 7.5.

Last June, Yahoo (Quote, Chart)jumped into the fray when it acquired VoIP provider Dialpad Communications. Yahoo is planning to use the voice platform across its portal network, as well as in its instant messaging application. Like Microsoft's purchase of Telio, Dialpad also features PSTN calling features that let users call over the Internet or place a call to traditional landlines and mobile phones.

Keith Nissen, senior analyst with research firm In-Stat MDR, said thanks to advances with video compression, video is ready for Internet phone calls. Also, chipsets have become so cheap that they can be incorporated into relatively inexpensive mobile phones, for example.

"From that perspective, mobile operators are looking at video streaming as a means to add to their services. There's no reason why ISPs cannot do the same. Skype, Vonage are coming out with their own branded wireless phones. If cellular operators can offer video, why can't they?"

Like Jupiter's Card, Nissen is also skeptical that the offering will catch fire with consumers. It's not like anyone's clamoring for video calling.

"But maybe where you have family members living and working in another country, there would be a market for video and voice integrated services from that perspective," Nissen told internetnews.com.

That said, there's no stopping the arrival of video communications, he added. Take the gaming world. Microsoft's xBox game cube offers VoIP with its online gaming features.

"I always know when my son is gaming late at night when I hear him using the voice features to communicate with his fellow players. VoIP is now part of that experience. IP-TV will be offering new communications services, and integrating voice," Nissen added.

"There's a lot of overlap between video and IM. It makes sense that it would become an add-on capability. Video will be incorporated into a lot and lot of services, everything from entertainment to traditional voice calls to your data communications."

Colin Haley of internetnews.com's Boston bureau and Chris Saunders, managing editor of Jupitermedia's SysOpt.com, contributed to this story.

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ONT now presents a prefect storm for ground floor investing in a transformative tech stock. Those savvy enough to comprehend the intricacy and brilliance of the On2 business model are about to enjoy an explosive run.

VALUE: These shares are beat to hell because of legacy misshaps, lack of revenue, and secrecy. Yet the business model now unfolds perfectly before us, obvious to those who understand the disruptive nature of pristine IP video delivered to every imaginable platform from handsets to PC's to mobile satellite displays. Skype is valued at ~$4B with 50M users and nominal revenue. Why? - because its disruptive, strategic tech! On2 will reach nearly a billion users via Flash and Flash Lite alone. That's a big number. Do the math.

DISTRUPTIVE TECH: Applications previously impossible will spawn new content and delivery channels. Media is going to change as the technology suddenly catches-up to the marketplace of ideas. Obvious applications like video conferencing, videophone, distance learning, and mobile satellite video become practical, economical, and seamless in quality. The way rich media content is developed, distibuted, and consumed will change radically and suddenly - that's disruptive!

WHEN? This paradigm shift is happening now. On2 is poised squarely at the epicenter, the enabling engine of this infotech revolution - powering best-of-breed partners like MacroAdobe, Skype, XM, and the rest. This rocket is fueled, lit, and rumbling loudly.

CRITICAL MASS: Feel the pressure build with each landmark deal after deal. There's a lot of errant speculation about the value of these deals. When the royalty aspects are made known, she's headed for the moon!

BALLS ON THE GRILL: I'm all in, packing six digits with an avg. price around $0.57, and I couldn't be happier. Buy now and strap yourself in for a kickass thrillride. Load up, average down and quit whining like investor girly men!

NOTE: Bashers will be ignored. I'll let my shares do the talking over the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, FU all in advance for your pinheaded moronic babble that flows endlessly and pathetically. Only the weakest minds would spend hours daily posting smack about a stock. I'm embarrassed for you all really. Its a stock, not a terminal illness - buy, sell, or shut the hell up!

majordojo
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 08/19/05 01:45 am
Msg: 131488 of 13157 majordojo

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MACR deal
by: lariatforprofit 08/15/05 10:39 pm
Msg: 131106 of 131188

The common perception of this board does not make it accurate. The common perception of this board also seems to change with the wind and the share price and is a perfect example of why you should not gleen information from a message board to make investment decisions.

The ON2 revenue stream for encoders and software come in the form of direct sales of the Flix line of products and the royalties generated by the licensing of software to companies that make and use encoding software. This is why ON2 has an exclusive franchise for a number of the encoding functions. THAT is the end of that story.
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MACR deal
by: lariatforprofit
Long-Term Sentiment: Strong Buy 08/15/05 08:57 pm
Msg: 131092 of 131189

According to a conversation with DAM in April, they make money on the exclusive franchise for a number of the encoding functions. Beyond the encoders sold by ON2, they license the software to companies that make and use encoding software. This would include MACR, Sorenson, Autodesk, and others and drives a seperate royalty stream that is independent to the license that MACR paid for.

They are also, according to DAM, working on Flash video ports to non-PC platforms which I assume to be reltated to Flash Lite and the mobile market. This market is by itself substantial and as I pointed out in prior posts, it should be a slam dunk. It would be silly for MACR to use something else considering that they have not only paid for it, they have publicly proclaimed that they raised the bar by selecting ON2 in the first place. Some will call this dot connecting, I like to think of it as common sense.

NDA's are frustrating, but we have an impressive client list with a number of them yet to announce major developments/initiatives. Given the size and market penetration of some of these companies, the backend arrangement is where the money is going to be.



The distribution of Flash is a "watershed event" because of its market penetration and it should be believed that this will not only aid ON2 in "inking" other revenue deals but improve its revenues, visibility and branding. It should also take us into the mobile market. The mobile market will require encoders, decoders and porting which will also generate revenues.

Our Flash connection also makes the XMSR deal more attractive because of the versatility that is attached to it. XM can be received through your computer. If they can deliver video to your car, they can deliver it to your computer, just like they deliver their radio service. Seems to me that a royalty will be tacked onto the subscrition fee.

AOL, VOIP partners (apparently Skype and another company reported to be one of the industries largest). These are partners that have yet to announce what they are doing with our product. Undoubtedly a revenue stream there. A revenue stream that I'm sure will become clear when deployments are made.

As I have said, NDA's are unfortunate and frustrating, leaving you with nothing more than
to establish how significant the deals could be until you get more information. The question for the investor in this game is when to buy. I have decided to buy and accumulate ahead of the PR's than after when the share price reaches where I would have sold what I'm willing to trade.

I think that DAM's ass is just dead by disguise and out of necessity. LOL Our partners are too big to want to advertise their intentions before there is a deployment on the horizon.

This is what I choose to believe and why I invested here. The video revolution is on the horizon and I think that ON2 is going to be a big part of it.

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Video Calling Service by VoIP Darling Goes to Public Beta Next Month

www.aspnews.com via NewsEdge Corporation

Voice over IP darling Skype is slated to put its two-way video phone service to the public test in August, likely at the end of the month, internetnews.com has learned.

Sources close to the company said Skype is slated to launch the public beta next month and that it has licensed compression codecs from On 2 Technologies , a video compression technology pioneer.

The company's VP6 compression codecs are already in use by Macromedia for optimizing video on its Flash platform, as well as other major Web players such as AOL.com, which is aggressively ramping up its video offerings online.

Skype's video calling service, which was given a brief public viewing at the Always-On conference in San Francisco last month, is a video-enhanced PC to PC phone service and is expected to be free when it is offered commercially.

The Luxembourg-based Skype counts about 46.8 million users of its software that enables free phone calls from Skype-enabled computers. Since the company aired a sneak preview of its video service last month, sites have been buzzing about when the public beta would launch.

The service offers broadcast quality viewing so callers can watch each other while talking on their PC-enabled Skype service. Compression techniques by the On2 codecs are key aspects that enable broadcast quality video calls.

On2 Technologies said it had no comment about the beta and doesn't comment on products not yet in full release. However, On2 just announced Wednesday the release of VP7 Personal Edition, which it calls a free personal-use version of VP7 Video for Windows encoder. More than 600,000 users have downloaded On2's VP6 video compression software.

Kelly Larabee, a spokeswoman for Skype, said the company has not yet announced a release date for the public beta.

The alpha release from last month is ongoing, along with internal testing, she said. Larabee would only confirm the consumer beta release would be soon.

As to whether the video phone offering will be free or part of the company's SkypeOut premium service when it is released commercially, expected later this year, Larabee said that decision will be announced when the company makes the beta version publicly available.

"We want it to be something people are comfortable using and that everybody can use. It will be a consumer product first and foremost," she told internetnews.com .

"We weren't the first to deliver Voice over IP, but we were the first to deliver it in a way that's better quality than before, and in a way that just works. That's our goal with video."

The release is sure to get the attention of Vonage, the N.J.-based VoIP provider, which began packaging the Packet8 videophone product with its broadband telephony service last year. The Packet8 desktop phone uses a broadband connection to transmit audio and video and was initially listed for $299 plus a $29.95 monthly fee for the service.

The Skype video calling beta comes as video compression techniques are enabling an explosion of video services over the Web. AOL.com has launched video search as part of its recent portal launch. Google recently added moving pictures to its video search beta service.

Broadcast outlets such as CBS are ramping on their online presence, while cable outlet CNN.com has gone back to offering free video on its site and is ramping up new premium video offerings, expected to be launched in early September.

With broadband penetration expected to hit 50 percent in the U.S. alone by the end of this year, according to Forrester Research, it was only a matter of time before video calling over the Web would be unleashed.

Skype would be a likely candidate to bring the first free video calling service to the world. Since the launch of its free, PC-to-PC calling service in 2003, the company's growth has been white-hot. It now counts 46.8 million users of its free calling service, which connects users of the Skype software for PC to PC calling.

It also counts 1.6 million paid customers for its premium offering, SkypeOut. SkypeOut allows calls from computers to regular landline or mobile telephone numbers and lets users purchase credits that are applied to per-minute calling at rates that are typically lower than those for traditional phone service.

On Wednesday, Skype announced that it would lower its rates by an average of 15 percent in order to celebrate the one-year birthday of the SkypeOut premium service. The SkypeOut global rate is currently about 1.7 cents per minute.

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How does Macromedia NOT include a ON2 encoder if they're using ON2's codec? I'm no expert engineer, but surely you can't have a freaking codec without a freaking encoder. They go hand-in-hand!

When you take video across a network, due to your bandwidth you usually have to compress your Video and then Decompress it at the receiving end. This is where the term CODEC(COmpress)(DECompress).

With the Macromedia deal MACR has licensed On2's codec--with their rights specifically stating they can do whatever they want with the Decoder. Macromedia's decoder is the actual Flash Player you have installed on your computer. It would be insane for On2 to try to charge MACR for the decoder because having a free download for viewers to use is the ultimate purpose here. So MACR paid On2 $1.5 million for the use of their Codec in a portion of their software they will give away.
However, On2 retained the ENCODING rights to the Flash Player. This means all the NEW video that gets compressed has to use the On2 codec (if it will be up to Flash 8 standards--the player IS backwards compatible). In essence On2 is being paid a license fee for everyone who wants to create Video for Flash 8. So all the resellers who create specialized software for encoding Flash content will need to license On2's codec, paying them a licensing fee. Macromedia also has their own professional encoding tool they will be selling. There are differing opinions as to whether or not MACR will have to pay a royalty/license on this encoding tool because we don't know the complete terms of the licensing agreement. In my opinion, based on statements DAM has made in CC's is that On2 will receive money from the MACR encoding tool. DAM stated On2 retained the rights to the encoder, thus my belief we will get paid for their product as well.

In reference to your earlier questions about what is up with On2's business plan--DAM has stated before their goal was to get on as many products and devices as possible during their development phase. This phase took place over the last couple of years. We are now in Leapfrog, MACR, AOL, ported to several chips, XMSR, and possibly in Skype and AIM. Mission accomplished if we are talking deployment. Now we are actually in the deployment stage where there companies are actually paying On2 for the use of their codec. AOL basically "tried out" On2 through the use of VP5--they had to pay a licensing fee, but it was minimal for the extent they used the codec.
If you review the financials over the last couple of years you will see a significant drop off for quarterly revenues. At that particular point in time, about a year and a half ago, DAM switched the company's revenue model from License based to Royalty based. I, among other people, hoped he would do it gradually so there wouldn't be such a huge drop in rev's, but it may have been that deals like MACR and XMSR came along at that time which made it--in the long run--not make sense to keep to the Licensing fee model at all.
Most product deployments take about a year to two years to actually roll out a usable product. Well guess what, we are coming up on that year-two year time frame and with the business model we have sales should explode. Not only should they explode with MACR, AOL, XMSR, Skype, Leapfrog, and others, but it should be sustained due to the royalty model.

As you have heard from the most recent CC and seen in the financials, On2's expenses STAY at $1.4 million per quarter whether they do $300K in sales or $10 million in sales. This is where your money is highly leveraged and the company can double or triple based off one decent size royalty bearing deal. Imagine 2, 3, or 4 decent size royalty bearing deals.
============================
Flash will have the ONT codec. This is the fine line ONT has to walk. How much do they give away without giving everything away?

This is cause of all the uncertainty here.

A big part of it is that it's not just a codec, but filters, etc and other widgets that further improve quality and allow for extended functionality.

Assumedly, Flash8 will contain SOME of the ONT special sauce, but not ALL.

ONT then SELLS Flix encoding PACKAGES that allow developers to add x, y and z functions, etc. for a price of $X.
======================
the bets are as to whether there is sufficient incentive for flash developers to buy flix or not.

and how much outside software wants a flash encoding capability, which on2 has the rights to sell.
=======================================
The way I see it MACR has a lot of juice going in. Without some massive distribution in a product that people are going to buy and use (recall ONT statements in the 10K relating to the fact that they are a component company, not an end product company - even in the case of Flash - think of it like this - Flash is the Camaro and ONT/Flix is the after-market carbs, headers, etc).

So MACR has "hand". ONT needs to then give away enough encoder to make MACR happy without giving away so much as to make their aftermarket (carborator, headers, etc) obsolete/moot/whatever.
=============================================
I've got a good idea right now and believe the best opportunity for ON2 is in the real-time VVoip market where their codec works well. I don't think there are any codecs developed for real-time packet loss and jitter.

Flash has one million developers and ON can sell so many Flix encoders, especially since Flix isn't a market leading brand. (thx pso, I wondered why the heck anyone would sell a product for 1.5M). Skype will have easy one million users. Will Skype license the codec, the encoder, or both from ON? I'm guessing codec only, since they can develop their own encoder and not pay extra royalties. So, how much does ON charge for codec royalties?
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[cksla]

Ensign Files Bill To Deregulate

Both Phone And Cable Markets


By Drew Clark

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., Wednesday offered the first substantial legislation in the debate over rewriting the 1996 Telecommunications Act by introducing a bill that would free both the Bells and the cable industry from considerable regulation.

The bill would erase substantial provisions of communications law governing telephone and cable television, while creating a framework under which government intervention into the marketplace eventually would disappear.

"Americans' ingenuity and creativity can provide more choices for consumers if government bureaucrats will get out of the way and allow our companies to compete," Ensign, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee's Technology subpanel, said at a press conference unveiling the bill.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who until last year was chairman of the Commerce panel, is a co-sponsor, and Ensign said he will seek bipartisan support. Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has indicated he is working on his own telecommunications reform measure, which is expected to be introduced after Congress' August recess. Republican staffers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also have been meeting in an effort to draft a broad telecom bill.

The bill would immediately allow Bell telecom companies and others to enter the market for video services without the need to obtain local or state franchises. New entrants would have to pay an up to 5-percent franchise fee to municipalities, as do current pay-television providers.

The bill immediately generated support from the telecom and technology industries, as expected. But it also received warm words from the cable industry. (See next story.)

The legislation would require new video providers to comply with rules on copyright, programming, privacy and public access to the airwaves that now govern cable companies.

It would not require the "build out" of services within a particular community -- a major demand of the cable industry. But cable also would benefit under Ensign's bill by no longer being required to meet the franchise obligations of multiple localities. But cable also would benefit under Ensign's bill by no longer being required to meet the franchise obligations of multiple localities.

The radio and television broadcast industry would remain unaffected by the legislation. Cellular telephone providers also would not be greatly affected, although the measure would pre-empt state laws governing wireless services.

During his press conference, Ensign dwelled upon Skype, a Netherland-based Internet telephone software company that allows users of high-speed connections to make free calls.

"Skype has 40 million customers worldwide," he said. "Ten million are in the U.S. alone. This is a service that is siphoning traffic away from carriers [in the United States], just like what happened to the music industry with peer-to-peer file-sharing." Skype was created by the same people who initially created the Kazaa file-sharing software.

Ensign noted that while it is impossible to "tax, regulate or control" services like Skype, he added that the presence of such technology "underscores the need for us to update our laws." He also referred to the United States' drop to 16th place in per capita broadband penetration, according to recent a report by the International Telecommunications Union.

"This bill will create jobs, stimulate the economy and increase consumer choice," Ensign said, noting that the key area unaddressed by the bill is the fund designed to provide universal telephone service to all Americans. He said Stevens has more has more experience in that area. The Universal Service Fund is of particular importance to Stevens' heavily rural home state. , R-Alaska, has more experience in that area and will control the timing under which the legislation is discussed.

Ensign and his aides said the senator sees the Internet's deregulatory and voluntarily negotiated rates for data traffic as the future model for all telecommunications.

But not everyone had nice things to say.

"The best thing you can say is that this is a Bell bill dressed up in sheep's clothing," said Earl Comstock, chief executive officer of CompTel/ALTS -- an association of Bell competitors. "It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the way in which networks operate and the way in which they are headed."

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7/20/2005 Skype: A new, friendly communications monopoly?
-Posted by Dan Farber @ 10:01 am

Home Software Infrastructure Wired & Wireless Web Technology
The first morning session of the AO2005 Innovation Summit was a Skype video call (vSkype correction: vSkype is from a third-party user of Skype's API. The product used for the video call was a Skype internal alpha product that the company said will be the foundation for its video offering later this year) between host Tony Perkins and MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco in Palo Alto and Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom and investor ($10 million in Skype) Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Zennstrom declined to answer any questions about Yahoo trying to buy his company, annual revenue (said to be in the $6 to $10 million range, according to Bambi) and other financial matters or any other rumors. However, he did talk about Skype's business model and some of the company's strategies.

Skype's goal is to grow its user base and improve its products as fast as possible. In other words, get big super fast and prevent incumbent telecoms or other competitors (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, etc.–any company with a big installed base) from impeding momemtum. Zennstrom said, "We are trying to create an ecosystem and our extend network…and we are focused on developing our products and extending our APIs so we can be bigger than we could be by ourselves."



Tim Draper (left) and Niklas Zennstrom via vSkype an alpha version of Skype's forthcoming video product

Besides opening its APIs so that developers can plug Skype into their blogs, Web sites, games or applications, Skype has developed an affiliate program that allows companies to co-brand the Skype service. So far, sites in China, Korea, Japan Taiwan and some European countries have co-branded the service, Zennstrom said. And, he is looking to make deals with smaller U.S. portals. Skype is also expanding the number of platforms it will support, such as Window Mobile Edition and Symbian. Zennstrom said that Palm was less of a priority because it isn't that great for real-time voice processing and that the user base is as big as other platforms.

In terms of the business model, Zennstrom said: "What is a great model for us is terrible for telecom companies." Skype can provide it basic service for free because its telecom service is in the software, and it doesn't require lot of capital expendutre or money to acquire cusotmers. "We get a lot of users because we allow them to communicate for free and then sell them value-added services, such as voicemail and Wi-Fi access, to a portion (1.7 million) of our users," Zennstrom said. "We want to decrease RPU (revenue per customer), because by doing it we get a lot of user paying and just a little money per users. That's very different than the telecoms."

Despite Skype's meager revenue to date, Draper wasn't shy–in fact, he was absolutely giddy during the interview–about characterizing Skype as the next huge thing, a backbone for a global, massive communications service. "We aren't replacing the telephone," Draper said, "we are creating a richer communications service." He went on to outline a bit of high tech history: "It took HP 40 years to become $1 billion in market cap; Microsoft, 15 years; Oracle, 9 years; Yahoo, 9 months; Skype about 3 weeks (I'm not exactly sure what that's based on). The cycles where companies go through S-curves are going faster and faster, and the market size is getting bigger and bigger–the world has opened up. We are seeing incredible value created in shorter and shorter time, and Skype is coming up in new curve and eclipsing Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. In another 20 years something will come along and eclipse Skype."

You would expect that kind of evangelism from Skype's savvy VC investor, but it's not all about valuations all the time as we saw when the bubble burst. That said, Skype could be your new friendly (no walled gardens), communications monopoly–based on having billions of users around the world connecting through Skype services. The company understands where the Web and communications is heading, and how to grow a market. Telecoms with try to block ports, buy or quash Skype, and competitors will try to duplicate Skype's model–which is all good for users. But Draper says he is holding out for at least a $1 billion offer for Skype before he'll give the acquisition path a thought–as least that what he said on this day…

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Zennström: 'Skype to reach billions with video phones'
And the VoIP company won't be bought for less than $1bn...

By Michael Singer and Ben Charny

Published: Thursday 21 July 2005

Voice over IP company Skype has tens of millions of users but envisions attracting billions with the help of video phones, says company CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennström.

Zennström demonstrated a beta video version of Skype during his keynote at this week's AlwaysOn conference at Stanford University in California. The application is a plug-in based on Skype's core telecommunications technology and is being tested internally. Speaking from his office in Estonia, the executive did not say when the product would be ready for release.

Flanked by Tim Draper of investment firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (Skype's largest investor, to the tune of $10m), Zennström said his goal is to use innovations from developers and outside partners to help build his business to a level that could rival Google and Yahoo!.


"We are trying to create an ecosystem and extend our network... and we are focused on developing our products and extending our APIs (application user interfaces) so we can be bigger than we could be by ourselves," Zennström said, declining to respond to speculation that Yahoo! is trying to buy his company. Skype's annual revenue has not been disclosed but analysts suggest it could be in the $6bn to $10bn range.

So far, Skype has been successful with an affiliate program that allows companies and small website owners to co-brand the Skype service. So far, sites in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and some European countries are onboard.

Zennström also noted that his company's partnerships with hardware manufacturers, including Motorola and Siemens, would help increase Skype's user base. So far, Palm OS-based smart phones were not being considered, Zennström said, because the operating system wasn't that great for voice processing.

At one point, Zennström affirmed claims that Skype software uses some of the computing resources and available bandwidth on a connected PC to create super groupings of network identities or nodes without user permission. The executive explained that any such practice helped the software better locate a Skype user on the network.

"If I can share my computer resources and not pay my phone bill, some people think that is a good thing," he said.

Video telephony has perennially been the "next year" application for leading providers of internet telephony, meaning they've all said it's coming but have yet to introduce the services. In the US, video telephony is available from Packet8, a Silicon Valley-based net phone operator. Meanwhile, gear makers Cisco Systems, Avaya and others are trying to develop ways to lower the costs of video phones, which are considered too high for most consumers.

Analysts believe businesses will be the first adopters of video telephony, mainly as a way to cut down on travel costs associated with in-person meetings. Consumers are less likely to adopt such a service until the price of phones drops to affordable levels - below $100 each, analysts say.

Considering that Skype's telephony software has been downloaded more than 132 million times, and has up to 3 million simultaneous users at any time of day, Skype's entry into the video phone application game is sure to boost the industry's chances.

But it remains to be seen whether Skype customers are willing to buy video phones or pay for any new video phone software the operator is going to release. That's because Skype's is mostly a free service if the calls are made between internet-connected PCs, although it does offer premium services such as SkypeOut, which lets users make calls from their PC to traditional phones for about two cents a minute. So far, SkypeOut has about 1.1 million customers, which Skype says allows it to lay claim to the title of largest commercial voice over IP (VoIP) operator.

Draper, who helped fund cutting-edge companies such as online email provider Hotmail and internet advertising software firm Overture, affirmed that he and Zennström would like to keep Skype a private company. The investment banker said Skype wouldn't even consider being acquired for less than $1bn.

Michael Singer and Ben Charny write for CNET News.com

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Forget the phone and Skype me!






July 28, 2005




Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom is turning the US$1 trillion telecoms industry upside down. BLOOMBERG


Last September, Tom Online, the Beijing-based Internet company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, was ready to start a version of America Online's ICQ instant messaging service. At the last minute, executive vice president Elaine Feng agreed to meet Geoffrey Prentice, Skype Technologies' director of new business.

The latest brainchild of Swede Niklas Zennstrom and Dane Janus Friis, founders of file-sharing company Kazaa, millions were using Skype's software to talk for free on personal computers. Feng loaded the program on her laptop computer and forgot about it until the next day, when the computer rang.

Solina Chau, who holds a 24.5 percent stake in Tom Online, ''Skyped'' Feng, calling to prod her to drop ICQ and add Skype instead. Feng agreed - becoming another convert to a technology that's threatening to turn the US$1 trillion (HK$7.8 trillion) global telecommunications industry upside down.

''Skype is like a meteor heading for Earth,'' says James Enck, a London-based telecommunications analyst who wrote the first report on Skype in September 2003, a month after the software's introduction.

Since then, 80 percent of the 2,000 companies surveyed by New York-based Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, the world's second-biggest accounting firm, say they're using, testing or planning to switch to Internet-based calls in two years.

``The loss of voice revenue is happening much faster than many people expected, and the big telcos have no choice but to respond,'' Enck says.

Zennstrom, 39, and Friis, 29, are veterans at staging technology incursions that shatter the status quo. They have turned their Luxembourg-based company into a global telephone service with 40 million customers, a feat that may change the scrappy Scandinavian outsiders into Internet capitalists.

Developed by the same Estonian programmers who built Kazaa, a Napster-like program that shook up the entertainment industry by letting people share music and video files, Skype software has been downloaded more than 140 million times, according to the company's Web site.

That's a pace second only to Kazaa's 390 million downloads. Skype is adding 130,000 registered users a day - in the process creating its own vocabulary, as in ``Skype me'' - all without spending a cent on advertising.

Zennstrom declines to say whether Skype is profitable. ``I don't release any financials unless I have to,''


he says.

Tony Kern, a Skype user who advises clients in the telecommunications industry as deputy managing partner at Deloitte, says: ``There is definitely a cool factor around Skype.''

Marc Vollenweider, co-founder and president of Bermuda-based research firm Evalueserve, says his firm uses Skype for about 50,000 minutes of phone calls each month, saving about US$60,000 a year.

When Skype increases security and flexibility, Vollenweider may switch another 800,000 minutes of voice calls to Skype for his more than 700 analysts in Gurgaon, India, outside New Delhi.

``Once they come up with a business model, they'll see more revenue,'' says Vollenweider, who outlined Skype's threat to the telephone industry in a January research note. Among his conclusions: ``The cost of a basic phone call will disappear.''

Like Kazaa, Skype relies on peer-to-peer technology, which taps the computing power of participants' PCs around the world.

There are no costs for centralized servers, switches or other equipment. Calls within the Skype network are free, and calls to regular telephones are cheap.


Zennstrom and Friis are betting that a telephone service, which avoids the copyright issues that dogged Napster and Kazaa, will evolve as a less controversial use of peer-to-peer technology.

They picked the name Skype, which has no real meaning, because it had a catchy ring in any language. ``It just sounded cool,'' Friis says.

Skype gets revenue in two ways. The first, SkypeOut, lets users place calls to regular phones for about 1.7 euro cents a minute. Callers buy prepaid calling cards for 10 euros (HK$93.37), which provide about 600 minutes.

SkypeOut works with the London-based Colt Telecom Group, Broomfield, Colorado-based Level 3 Communications and other companies to connect users to the public switched telephone network, the international system that regular fixed-line telephones use.

The second source of revenue, SkypeIn, provides users with a phone number so they can receive calls from regular phones. A customer in London can get a San Francisco number that lets friends and family in California call him or her at local California rates. The service costs 30 euros a year. Zennstrom says about 5 percent of Skype customers pay for one plan or the other.

Zennstrom estimates that as many as 30 percent of Skypers are business clients, such as Kern and Vollenweider. Nicole Channing, who runs a New York hedge fund company called Anomaly Capital Partners, says she Skypes people in her San Francisco office daily.

``We use it as squawk box,'' Channing says. ``It's on all the time. We also instant message a lot, and if we have to speak, we Skype.''


The world's largest telephone companies - Verizon Communications, SBC Communications and Tokyo's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp - are racing to update their networks to handle Internet calls.

BT Group, Britain's biggest phone company, unveiled plans last year to invest US$20 billion to build a European network based on technology known as voice over Internet protocol.

VoIP breaks calls into packets of electronic ones and zeroes and sends the data over available routes, eliminating the expense of keeping a channel open to await a call - whether or not one is pending.

VoIP-only companies such as Edison, New Jersey-based Vonage Holdings have racked up about three million US customers. Vonage's 700,000 subscribers pay US$20 to US$30 a month. Internet powerhouses Yahoo, Time Warner's America Online and Microsoft's MSN online service are boosting their voice-messaging capabilities.


Carsten Schloter, chief executive of Swisscom's mobile phone business, says dropping the price of a phone call can ease defections to Skype.

``It's a question of when does it hurt so much that you react with a price structure that kills Skype?'' he says.

Price cuts can backfire and hurt the incumbents. Since May, Swisscom has reduced its fixed-line and mobile phone rates and lowered its earnings and sales estimates.

In the quarter ended March 31, sales from Swisscom's fixed-line traffic, including local and long-distance calls, fell 12 percent to 294 million Swiss francs (HK$1.37 billion) from a year earlier.

Telephone companies aren't about to get wiped out overnight. ``Skype destroys the value of telcos, but it is not building a replacement business,'' says Lars Godell, a telecom analyst at Forrester Research. ``Skype does not address any unmet needs.''


For Skype to be truly successful, it must offer a range of services, such as call forwarding and voice-mail alerts that pop up in e-mail inboxes. That would happen if a bigger partner, such as MSN or Yahoo, takes over Skype, Godell says.

Zennstrom declines to comment on takeover speculation except to say that he has read the chatter on the Web. In June, the buzz in online chat rooms was that Yahoo, the most-used Internet site, was about to acquire Skype.

Instead, the California company paid an undisclosed amount for Dialpad Communications to gain technology that will let Yahoo users make calls to a telephone from a PC.

``Competitive battles take place over years, not months,'' says Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president for communications products.

``We at Yahoo are focused on the marathon and not on the sprint.'' He declined to comment on the possibility of Yahoo acquiring Skype.

Phone company rivals say consumers will look beyond Skype's free and low-priced services and, instead, demand offerings such as high-speed Internet hookups and movie downloads.


``We've been doing voice for a hundred years,'' says Michelle Swittenberg, who is responsible for Verizon's VoIP strategy as executive director for consumer products.

``When the time is right to turn on the engine behind our VoIP product, we'll integrate it across our wired and wireless network.''

Verizon, with 33 million fixed-line subscribers and 45 million mobile users, started offering VoiceWing VoIP service in July 2004 at US$34.95 a month. It has since introduced a US$19.95-a- month plan.

Swittenberg says that more Internet-based products are coming; she declines to discuss them.

Putting the world's phone-service providers on the defensive isn't bad for Skype, a company with 145 employees, including software developers, working out of a drab block in Tallinn, Estonia.

Skype's main office is in a former warehouse on a narrow street at the heart of London's Soho, with its theaters, clubs, specialist bookstores and two Virgin Megastores.

In typical Internet startup fashion, about a dozen employees hunch over laptops, sitting on cheap wooden chairs in the white, loft-style room a stone's throw from sex shops selling pornography and massages, and coffee shops serving Italian brews and biscotti. The only nod to luxury is a blue sofa near the main door, adorned with lime-green Tom Online promotional cushions.

With Skype, Zennstrom has a second chance to create a global Internet company like Google, the most-used search engine, or Amazon.com, the world's largest Internet retailer.

Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, calls Skype a classic disruptive technology.

The term, coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, describes a product that bubbles up and eventually overturns the dominant technology in its market.

Draper compares Skype to free e-mail company Hotmail, purchased by Microsoft in 1998 for US$450 million and now boasting 190 million users.

Contemplating how Skype has sparked a frenzy among the world's biggest communications firms, Zennstrom cracks a rare smile.

``What I seem to have done is to get the giants running faster,'' he says.









































BLOOMBERG






Copyright 2005, The Standard, Sing Tao Newspaper Group and Global China Group. All rights reserved. No content may be redistributed or republished, either electronically or in print, without express written consent of The Standard.

[cksla]

Unwired world
07/29/2005

By KOJI NISHIMURA

The Asahi Shimbun

From global banking at the touch of a button to letters from home with video and voice, it's a wired, wired world.

Don't bet on it.

Telecom providers are out to pull the plug. They see the future, and it is wireless.

It is also a savage struggle for bandwidth.

Companies already offering wireless communication services such as providers of public wireless networks, cellphones and personal handy-phone system (PHS) are competing to expand their areas of coverage as well as data transmission speeds.

Other companies are aggressively vying for channels to provide a new range of services. All that competition should mean a wealth of choice and convenience for consumers.

However, expansion of services will require allocation of new radio frequency bands.

One company considering establishing a wireless network is Livedoor Co.

In June, Livedoor announced a plan to set up a wireless network to cover the area within East Japan Railway's Yamanote Line, which circumscribes central Tokyo.

Senior Vice President Tomoki Terui said earlier this month, "The age has arrived in which you can carry the Internet with you."

Livedoor's plan would enable users to connect to its wireless network from anywhere in the Yamanote loop. Now, users of wireless local area networks (WLANs) have to be near a base station.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. said this month that its group companies involved separately in wireless networks will in the future share base stations. It will also increase the number of stations.

Internet service provider Softbank BB Corp. has also decided to move into the wireless network business as part of its plans to expand its telecommunications operations.

One strength of WLAN is data transmission speed matching that of ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) services without fixed lines.

That speed enables users to receive video images through the Internet.

One disadvantage of WLAN is that it cannot be used by a person in motion.

Cellphones have the advantage in terms of mobility.

However, because cellphone base stations cover a wide area, many users end up sharing the same frequency band, making it difficult to increase data transmission speed.

To overcome that weakness, several companies, such as NTT DoCoMo Inc., KDDI Corp.'s au service and Vodafone KK, are planning to introduce in the next fiscal year what they call the 3.5-generation cellphone, which would be faster than current third-generation cellphones.

DoCoMo and Vodafone plan to increase the data transmission speed by about tenfold in the 3.5-generation models.

For PHS, a major selling point is that users can remain constantly connected to the Internet for a flat monthly rate. It is a service that is not offered with cellphones.

Like cellphones, PHS service falls short in terms of broadband speed, but Willcom Inc., the largest PHS service company, plans to increase data transmission speed by up to six times by 2007.

However, Willcom President Yoichiro Yatsurugi said his company would step up efforts to develop the next-generation PHS since the faster speed would still be slower than 3.5-generation cellphones.

A new development that could intensify competition is technology that emits radio signals over a large area, so-called metropolitan area networks (MAN).

One such technology is WiMAX being marketed globally by Intel Corp. of the United States.

The technology allows users to maintain data transmission speeds similar to ADSL even while in a vehicle traveling at 120 kph.

WiMAX's wide coverage combined with a function that automatically switches from one base station to another makes it convenient for travelers.

In Japan, Yozan Inc. and Heisei Denden Co. have announced business plans utilizing WiMAX technology. KDDI has also started experiments with the technology.

Another promising technology is iBurst, developed in part by Kyocera Corp. A single base station using this technology can cover an area with a radius of several dozens of kilometers.

Livedoor said it will use the iBurst technology to supplement its wireless network.

During experiments, the technology enabled use of the popular Skype Internet phone software from a moving vehicle.

Industry experts said both technologies have the potential to become hits.

Technological advantage is not the only factor that will determine which standard comes out on top. The central government's allocation of radio spectrums will determine who the players are.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is planning to allocate a license in the 2-gigahertz band mainly for third-generation cellphones.

While they are not in the cellphone field, both Livedoor and Willcom have asked the government to open the competition to iBurst technology as well as the next-generation PHS.

Although industry experts predict a low probability that those new technologies will win the upcoming allocation, an executive with a cellphone company said, "There is a public relations effect simply from their expressing an interest."

These experts feel that Livedoor and Willcom may be laying the groundwork for future allocations in different bands.

New technology such as WiMAX and iBurst could be critical in winning future allocations.

KDDI President Tadashi Onodera said, "Since (WiMAX) emits a strong radio signal over a wide area, it will require a special frequency under the license system to guarantee quality by avoiding mixed transmissions or interference."

Because WLAN transmitters cover a small area, licenses are not required to install base stations.

It will not be easy to satisfy demand for spectrum since broadcasters already monopolize frequency bands for transmission of visual images.

A study group under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is planning to compile a report by the end of the year on the transmission methods best suited for different uses as well as the date when such methods should be introduced.

So far, the study group has received 72 different methods from 44 companies for inclusion in the final report. That report might be the guideline for government's policy on radio spectrum allocation in the near future.(IHT/Asahi: July 29,2005)

[cksla]

Communications portals are coming
Commentary: Video, voice, chat - the next new normal

By Bambi Francisco, MarketWatch
Last Update: 7:23 PM ET July 25, 2005


SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Over the weekend, I was in the Downieville, California where more people mine for gold than speak on cell phones.

It's really not a surprise for this Sierra-mountain town nestled in the heart of gold country. But we all know that outside metropolitan areas -- such as San Francisco -- cell phone coverage drops like clockwork.

It makes me wonder how much people really care about futuristic video-cell-phones when they are still waiting for ubiquitous, uninterrupted phone coverage.

But after reading some recent media and blog reports about Skype -- the online service that lets computer users make free, or very cheap, calls using something called voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) -- I was left wondering whether video calls might not be the next new thing. That is -- cheap calls on WiFi mobile phones that let you also see who you're speaking to.

Well, video cell phones may not be around the corner, but a video and voice calling, instant messaging all-in-one communications hub on our desktop is becoming a reality. When it does, it will certainly improve upon the primitive instant messaging clients on our desktop.

Last week, at Tony Perkins' Always On conference, I interviewed Niklas Zennstrom, the CEO of Skype, along with Tim Draper, of Draper Fisher, who invested $10 million in Skype.

The interview was conducted via the Web. Tony and I were on stage while Zennstrom and Draper were both in Estonia. It was the first time that Skype displayed its video capabilities. It's a service that is still in the testing stages, and no release date has been given.

Admittedly, I was more intent on learning about Skype's business model, and its chances of survival against cable companies, like Comcast (CMCSK: news, chart, profile) , phone companies, like Verizon (VZ: news, chart, profile) , and, of course, Microsoft's (MSFT: news, chart, profile) MSN, Google (GOOG: news, chart, profile) , Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) and Time Warner's (TWX: news, chart, profile) AOL.

They all want a piece of Skype's action. Skype has 46 million registered members who use it to make free phone calls over the Internet. About 1.7 million pay to use SkypeOut's service, which allows subscribers to use their PC's to call regular phones.

The one-hour interview was 100% Web based. It cost both Skype and Always On practically nothing to beam these boys in.

If we were to have done the interview via satellite, the hour interview would have cost $850. That doesn't include the cost for a truck and crew. Actually a satellite hookup to Estonia would have required 2 satellite hops, so the cost would really have been $1700. The interview is available on Always-On. Click here.

Zennstrom wouldn't comment on speculation about Yahoo's interest in buying Skype for $100 million. Additionally, neither Zennstrom nor Draper would comment when I asked whether Skype is on a run-rate to generate between $6 and $10 million on sales.

But what Tony and I failed to ask more questions about was the video technology itself.

So, here's a brief explanation of just what the 600 or so attendees watched, and why it was worth showcasing.

The video quality was pretty good. And, that's important to note considering most video quality over the Net has been grainy and choppy. There was a minor operator failure (by me) in the beginning when I couldn't find the right button to hit to expand the video image of Draper and Zennstrom. But overall, the video demonstration proved that video over the Internet will be a reality soon enough, and that the experience will be enjoyable, and not just bearable.

Importantly, it will be a must-have feature that's graduated from the experimental stages.

Microsoft's MSN rolled out an enhanced version of its messenger client with an integrated audio/video PC-to-PC VoIP solution back in April. To date, MSN said in one day it supported 8 million Webcam sessions. AOL, which introduced video integrated with its instant messaging client in February 2004, is expected to roll out a new a unified communication service (code name Triton) that will become the default AIM service. This new client may likely have some video capabilities integrated as well.

What about taking Skype mobile?

Today Skype can be used on a PDA, which runs PocketPC. But I cannot run Skype on my Palm (PALM: news, chart, profile) Treo because it runs the Palm OS, which Skype does not run on.

Skype will have a dedicated Skype WiFi phone, so Niklas tells me.

"A Skype WiFi phone is a phone that looks like a mobile phone, but it has the Skype familiar user interface in the display, where you can see if people are online or not," he said, via e-mail. "The phone connects to a WiFi access point instead of the expensive cellular networks."

As for video on cell phones, here's what Draper had to add: "On cell phones, there will be a great opportunity for Skype video. I suspect that WiFi phones will also soon have video capability."

Sound off: What do you think of Skype's technology and would it be a good acquisition target for Google? Ping [e-mail] or go to Bambi.blogs.com



Bambi Francisco is Internet editor for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

[cksla]

Skype start testing of video phone

Thursday 21 July 2005, 02:00:05


Written by Net 4 Now



The Skype web blog reports that Skype’s Niklas Zennström and board member Tim Draper performed an hour-long interview from Skype’s engineering office to a conference for 200 people at www.alwayson-network.com in Stanford, California.

They used Skype video and their pretty faces were beamed up on two gigantic screens with top video and audio quality.

The audience were reported as being very impressed.

Work on the video version of Skype started over a year ago but this is still an internal testing version, so don’t yet ask how or where can you get it!

[cksla]

Skype Sets Video Beta Launch
By Erin Joyce
July 29, 2005


Voice over IP darling Skype is slated to put its two-way video phone service to the public test in August, likely at the end of the month, internetnews.com has learned.

Sources close to the company said Skype is slated to launch the public beta next month and that it has licensed compression codecs from On 2 Technologies (Quote, Chart), a video compression technology pioneer.

The company's VP6 compression codecs are already in use by Macromedia for optimizing video on its Flash platform, as well as other major Web players such as AOL.com, which is aggressively ramping up its video offerings online.

Skype's video calling service, which was given a brief public viewing at the Always-On conference in San Francisco last month, is a video-enhanced PC to PC phone service and is expected to be free when it is offered commercially.

The Luxembourg-based Skype counts about 46.8 million users of its software that enables free phone calls from Skype-enabled computers. Since the company aired a sneak preview of its video service last month, sites have been buzzing about when the public beta would launch.

The service offers broadcast quality viewing so callers can watch each other while talking on their PC-enabled Skype service. Compression techniques by the On2 codecs are key aspects that enable broadcast quality video calls.

On2 Technologies said it had no comment about the beta and doesn't comment on products not yet in full release. However, On2 just announced Wednesday the release of VP7 Personal Edition, which it calls a free personal-use version of VP7 Video for Windows encoder. More than 600,000 users have downloaded On2's VP6 video compression software.

Kelly Larabee, a spokeswoman for Skype, said the company has not yet announced a release date for the public beta.

The alpha release from last month is ongoing, along with internal testing, she said. Larabee would only confirm the consumer beta release would be soon.

As to whether the video phone offering will be free or part of the company's SkypeOut premium service when it is released commercially, expected later this year, Larabee said that decision will be announced when the company makes the beta version publicly available.

"We want it to be something people are comfortable using and that everybody can use. It will be a consumer product first and foremost," she told internetnews.com.

"We weren't the first to deliver Voice over IP, but we were the first to deliver it in a way that's better quality than before, and in a way that just works. That's our goal with video."

The release is sure to get the attention of Vonage, the N.J.-based VoIP provider, which began packaging the Packet8 videophone product with its broadband telephony service last year. The Packet8 desktop phone uses a broadband connection to transmit audio and video and was initially listed for $299 plus a $29.95 monthly fee for the service.

The Skype video calling beta comes as video compression techniques are enabling an explosion of video services over the Web. AOL.com has launched video search as part of its recent portal launch. Google recently added moving pictures to its video search beta service.

Broadcast outlets such as CBS are ramping on their online presence, while cable outlet CNN.com has gone back to offering free video on its site and is ramping up new premium video offerings, expected to be launched in early September.

With broadband penetration expected to hit 50 percent in the U.S. alone by the end of this year, according to Forrester Research, it was only a matter of time before video calling over the Web would be unleashed.

Skype would be a likely candidate to bring the first free video calling service to the world. Since the launch of its free, PC-to-PC calling service in 2003, the company's growth has been white-hot. It now counts 46.8 million users of its free calling service, which connects users of the Skype software for PC to PC calling.

It also counts 1.6 million paid customers for its premium offering, SkypeOut. SkypeOut allows calls from computers to regular landline or mobile telephone numbers and lets users purchase credits that are applied to per-minute calling at rates that are typically lower than those for traditional phone service.

On Wednesday, Skype announced that it would lower its rates by an average of 15 percent in order to celebrate the one-year birthday of the SkypeOut premium service. The SkypeOut global rate is currently about 1.7 cents per minute.

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Skype Video
Public beta next month

It appears that Skype has plans to launch the public beta testing of its two-way video phone service in August, likely at the end of the month, reports Internetnews.com. Skype's video calling service, which was given a brief public viewing at the Always-On conference in San Francisco last month, is a video-enhanced PC to PC phone service and is expected to be free when it is offered commercially.

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The Sims 2 is the follow-up to the best-selling PC game of all time. On2 is proud that Electronic Arts has licensed VP6.2 for use in The Sims 2.

Written by Barry (S ADMIN)

It appears that The Sims 2 will not save uncompressed AVI video files when creating a movie, it has turns out that EA has licensed On2's VP6.2 codec for use in The Sims 2. That means movies created from The Sims 2 will need that codec. On2 claims that their codec provides better video quality than Windows Media 9, Real 9, or H.264. You can find the trailer of The Sims 2 on the VP6 samples page. It's very likely that the necessary files will be included with the Sims 2 when you install it.

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Digital Standards: EVD Dream Realized
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March 30, 2005 - by Isabel Ding

Early last month, the website of Ministry of Information Industry (MII), formally announced that China had chosen home-developed Enhanced Versatile Disc (EVD) technology as the national standard for the country's electronics industry. For Zhang Baoquan, president of Antaeus Group and the main force behind the EVD standard, the news was welcomed with relief. "Finally I can have a good sleep tonight," said Zhang.

Zhang's reaction was understandable. Just three weeks earlier, the real estate tycoon had been intent on bringing the MII to court for its delay in announcing EVD as the national standard. In Zhang's eyes, the delay was causing great harm to the EVD industry in China, bringing enormous losses to investors and confusing consumers. His proposed litigation announcement against a government ministry brought about a great disturbance in the electronics sector.

STANDARDS BATTLE Zhang is the single largest private investor in the EVD project. In July 2004, his Antaeus Group signed an agreement with Beijing E-World Technology, the owner of EVD technology, to set up a joint venture named Beijing Antaeus Universal Digital Technology Co Ltd. Zhang invested 200 million yuan (US$24.15 million) in Antaeus Universal, with a further intention to invest 1 billion yuan (US$120.77 million) into the EVD industry over the next three years. EVD was sent over to the MII for testing and the belief was that it would quickly be established as the national standard.

However, the MII on several occasions postponed the establishment of the standard. At the same time, another two standard unions - HDV, put forward by the Kaicheng High Definition Co Ltd, and HVD, a standard brought about by the Shanghai Jingchen Co Ltd - were being developed. In the HDV union, Zhong Baixin of the CCTV Information Media Co committed to providing content for the standard, while the two largest home electronics sellers Gome and Suning were willing to help with sales. Meanwhile, the HVD union received the support of nineteen major home electronics manufacturers, including some former EVD supporters like Changhong, TCL and SVA.

All three standards were ordered to be handed in to the MII for final testing and confirmation. The developers behind HVD and HDV, however, were unwilling to do so and failed to attend the latest test meeting held by the MII. Some insiders believe that their related appeal to the testing was behind the subsequent delay of the standard announcement.. Zhang reacted angrily to the delays and told the media that he would sue the MII if the government maintained its silence. Several days later, nearly twenty EVD manufacturers joined with Zhang in appealing for an announcement.

EVD VICTORY The day EVD was established as the national standard became a day of celebrations for the EVD unions. "I am so happy," said Liu Dan, the vice president of Beijing E-World Technology. "After five years of hard work, this is the best reward for us."

Hao Jie, the president of Beijing E-World Technology, joined the celebratory mood, but at the same time cautioned that the announcement was just the start. Hao warned that three crucial tasks would need to be completed in the near future. First, to continue to cooperate with the local manufacturers and further promote the industrialization procedure of EVD. Second, to proceed with research and development about the related technology. Third, to apply EVD to become an international standard.

Shinco, the representative of the EVD manufacturers, has expressed congratulations on the establishment of the national standard. "We have built a basement with an annual production capability reaching one million disc players and the capability could be raised further according to the market status," says Fan Wenjian, a Shinco spokesman. Fan also pointes out that Shinco sold two hundred thousand EVD disc players in the last year and says the company will focus on developing more categories of products in the future. "Previously, Shinco suffered from the entanglement of several standards and sales did not go well. But we predicted the company would create another sales climax in May," continues Fan.

Yet to TCL, a home electronics manufacturer that joined in both the EVD and HDV unions, the national standard means a nailing down of the direction the company should follow. Zheng Yu, the product manager of TCL, told CIB that they have been following the three local standards throughout and that the MII announcement would not influence them much. "We are a big company and we can not lose one business chance for another business chance," said Zheng.

In contrast to the victor's upbeat mood, Ren Aimin, the chief executive officer of HDV developer Kaicheng High Definition, was bullish. "It is only an industry standard recommended by the MII and will not restrict the development of HDV," said Ren.

Zhong Peifeng, the president of Shanghai Jingchen,immediately flew to Beijing and continued to negotiate with MII officials. Zhong told media that he was planning to apply HVD as another national standard in China and said that HVD would continue to compete with EVD in the market.

Even more dramatic was the news that HDV and HVD are in talks to set up a private alliance. The two standards are planning to reduce the price of their products, in an attempt to strike against EVD sales. Kaicheng High Definition also announced that it would change the conception of HDV to IPHDV, with added functions related with the Internet, and would apply for the new format to be accepted as a national standard.

However, as the man who kindled the quarrel, Zhang Baoquan was the most satisfied by the result. "Since the standard is confirmed, the confusion in the Chinese high-definition disc players market will be terminated. If the HDV or HVD producers dare to use the name of high-definition disc players in the future, they are certainly cheating the consumers. Consumers can ask for competition, and EVD companies will help to watch the market," said Zhang.

Zhang's ambition is not limited in the disc players market. What really stirs his mind is a dream of setting up an empire of EVD movie theaters. The first EVD cinema was set up in his own building, Antaeus Plaza, at the beginning of this year and in his plan at least 100 thousand digital cinemas would be built around the nation in the next few years. Zhang believes that the low cost and convenient distribution of EVD technology will bring about a revolution in the movie industry.

Making use of the Chinese wireless local area network (WLAN) is Zhang's other big plan. Currently he has set up alliance with a telecom company named CETC CHINACOMM to run the business of VOD (Video On Demand), which can provide the audience clear EVD movies. The test period of their VOD operation has finished and Zhang plans to run the business from CETC CHINACOMM base stations across the country.

CHALLENGE Though the conflict of standards does not look like ending at any time soon, both the EVD and HDV companies will soon need to face a much bigger enemy. According to Zheng Yu, two foreign standards, Blue Ray and HD DVD, are a serious threat to local manufacturers. "EVD and HVD are both based on Red Ray technology, which is less advanced than Blue Ray technology. When the foreign competitors arrive, there could be a disastrous war between the two sides," says Zheng.

Blue Ray, a next-generation disc technology, which is being jointly developed by a number of global electronics companies including Sony, Samsung and Philips, is predicted to enter the China market at the beginning of next year. However, the other standard, HD DVD, developed in Japan, will come to China in the second half of this year. According to Zheng, they have a strong technological background and have gained support from both international manufacturers and Hollywood movie studios. Zheng believes that this will challnge the very purpose of national standard - to help China have a say in international trade and protect the Chinese industry and market.

For Fan Wenjian, things are not as bad as they look. "We can't stop their coming to China, but EVD can be improved too. Currently some Hollywood movie makers have agreed to support EVD and they will be seen in the Chinese market soon," says Fan.

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Three Picks In Telecommunications Services
07.26.05, 3:41 PM ET

SG Cowen said second-quarter results in the telecommunications sector point to continuing improvements in the hosting/co-location market, as well as to the slowing of price declines in the bandwidth market.

The research firm said its top picks in the sector are Equinix (nasdaq: EQIX - news - people ), Terremark Worldwide (amex: TWW - news - people ) and Savvis Communications (nasdaq: SVVS - news - people ). In addition, SG Cowen said that both Internap Network Services (amex: IIP - news - people ) and Arbinet-thexchange (nasdaq: ARBX - news - people ) are showing more clarity and more promising earnings outlooks. For the second quarter, Savvis showed rapid growth and improving prices in hosting, particularly the co-location segment. "These trends should also benefit Equinix, Terremark, and Internap," SG Cowen said.

The research firm said IP bandwidth pricing declines appear to be slowing in the wake of the SBC Communications (nyse: SBC - news - people ) and AT&T deal, as well as the Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people ) and MCI (nasdaq: MCIP - news - people ) deals. "This benefits Savvis and Internap," the research firm said.

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Thu Jul 28 2005 5:55PM EDT
: INTERNAP NTWK SVCS (AMEX:IIP)-Rated 'TOP PICK' Strong Buy Near term Target $0.75 12Month Target $1.25, Note: Very positive news related to INTERNAP as clients of INTERNAP> AT&T T and Microsoft Corp. MSFT announced a groundbreaking strategic alliance that is expected to revolutionize the development, deployment and delivery of next-generation Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications services. Also note: INTERNAP has alerted investors that this year is a milestone in regards to INTERNAP seeing Net Income positive, INTERNAP has 5 Analysts rating the stock with Buy ratings & peer perform ratings & Targets from $1 to $1.50 per share, We see INTERNAP as being undervalued & an excellent penny stock to invest in as not many Analysts rate a penny stock proves that INTERNAP is a worthy investment,Note: (IIP) is trading at a forward P/E of just 16x Earnings while Savvis Communications Corp (SVVS) is trading at a forward P/E of 90x Earnings for 2006, We feel IIP's current fair value is $0.75 = P/E of 25x 2006 Earnings, Note Alert from msn money on (IIP), Broker notes from SG Cowen:

The research firm said IP bandwidth pricing declines appear to be slowing in the wake of the SBC Communications (nyse:SBC) and AT&T deal, as well as the Verizon Communications (nyse:VZ) and MCI (nasdaq:MCIP) deals. "This benefits Internap," the research firm said.

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Flash 8 poised to take on Web video

By Paul Festa
http://news.com.com/Flash+8+poised+to+take+on+Web+video/2100-1032_3-5808794.html

Story last modified Thu Jul 28 11:33:00 PDT 2005




Macromedia plans to unveil its Flash 8 software early next month with an emphasis on video capabilities that some think could up-end the Web video market.
Macromedia is expected to announce the latest version of its signature Flash software Aug. 8, or 8/8, and release the software a few weeks later, said a source familiar with the company's plans. Macromedia, whose shareholders will vote on a proposed acquisition by Adobe Systems on Aug. 24, released the Flash 8 public beta, a test version, earlier this month.

Flash, originally a Web site animation tool, has emerged as a potentially formidable competitor in the race to build powerful Web-based applications. Macromedia has officially re-designated it as a platform for application development.

News.context

What's new:
Macromedia next month plans to launch Flash 8, the latest version of its signature software, with an emphasis on video capabilities.
Bottom line:
Flash, which has emerged as a potentially formidable competitor in the race to build powerful Web-based applications, could challenge Microsoft, RealNetworks and Apple and up-end the Web video market with Flash 8.

More stories on this topic

But it is the software's video capabilities that are stirring the most interest, particularly among those who think the new version's improved codec, which is its particular video compression format, and various other advantages could make it a significant threat to Microsoft's Windows Media technology, RealNetworks' Real format and Apple Computer's QuickTime format.

"This new version of Flash is quite an improvement," said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies in Campbell, Calif. "If positioned more as a media engine, then it could cause Real, Apple and Microsoft some concern since it will evolve into a competitive platform for streaming video."

Macromedia, which has penciled in a summer release date for Flash 8, declined to comment further on its timetable for the release.

The company has promised big changes in Flash 8, and many of them center on its video capabilities. Flash 8 boasts a new codec, On2 Technologies' VP6, that both companies claim will provide dramatically improved quality over the Flash 7 video codec. Flash 8 also supports alpha transparency, which lets authors combine Flash video with text, vector graphics and other Flash elements.

But while Macromedia touts Flash 8's new video bells and whistles, those betting on a Flash video ascendancy point to longstanding Flash benefits, particularly its cross-platform reach.

Because of its small size and its being bundled with Microsoft Windows and other operating systems, Flash is almost universally distributed. More than 98 percent of personal computers connected to the Web have some version of the Flash player installed, according to Macromedia, and more than 100 equipment manufacturers are building Flash into their devices.

In several demonstrations of Flash video in recent months, Macromedia has mocked the experience that some Web surfers go

"Over time I can see Flash eating away at the market."
--Chris Swensen, analyst,
NPD Group through when trying to access RealNetworks or Windows Media video clips. In the demonstration, the people trying to access the video are confronted with dialogue boxes prompting the download of large players. Then they have to choose bandwidth speeds and other options.

Flash video, by contrast, is "playerless." That means video clips play embedded in the Web page, and Flash developers can design their own interfaces and determine their own buffers and other technical settings.

Macromedia's potential competitors say the software is too lightweight, failing to offer an array of features important to both media purveyors and consumers.

"Flash doesn't have digital rights management, and studios care about DRM," said Michael Schutzler, senior vice president of media for RealNetworks. "We are focused on intellectual property that has value, where DRM matters. Flash is fine for ads, but none of the studios are going to do this."

Microsoft defended the comparative bulk of Windows Media Player, saying the software does a number of things Flash couldn't. The company specifically mentioned its 15 content services, media library for content management, device synchronization and CD-burning capabilities.

"While Flash is receiving some good uptake on the Internet today, it has limited applications beyond short form, streamed content," Kevin Unangst, director of Windows Digital Media at Microsoft, said in an e-mail interview. "The scalability of Windows Media Video 9 (WMV9) allows it to be implemented in an incredibly broad range of applications, from standard definition video on wireless handsets to high-definition video on next-generation DVD."

Macromedia, which tends to downplay its competitive position against Microsoft, doesn't offer much of an argument to the company's claim that Flash and Windows Media are targeting different markets.

"I don't think there's really direct competition between Flash video and Windows Media," said Kevin Lynch, Macromedia's chief software architect. "The direction we're headed with Flash video is aiming at Web video, video embedded on Web pages. That's a different segment than downloadable videos, full-length movies, and Windows Media is supplying features toward that model."

But even if Macromedia is leaving full-length downloads to the fatter clients, analysts say Microsoft and RealNetworks can't be happy about Flash video's progress in either technology or popularity.






Previous Next "Macromedia is going to keep increasing its functionality, and it will be a competitive threat over time," said Chris Swensen, analyst with the NPD Group. "Over time I can see Flash eating away at the market."

At least in the Web video segment, Flash has already begun its advance, according to one analyst.

"While I never discount Microsoft and doubt that Windows Media Player will get knocked out of the marketplace by Flash video, I also know that some leading brand sites are already voting for Macromedia," said Harley Manning, an analyst with Forrester Research. "And I think that more will do the same when the new player and tools arrive. At the very least, this will force Microsoft to think differently about some aspects of their product."

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had a round of emails
by: posyche 06/28/05 01:22 pm
Msg: 125924 of 125924

today with our esteemed leader.

aside from the groaning about where we sit right now, was able to ascertain that there is indeed a
real snapshot here.

the only trouble is convincing him that it is of serious investor value to present some clearer revenue projections or goals from the macrodobe deal.

his response is to let revenues speak for themselves.

as previously he has restated that it is all the market cares for right now (distribution model out the window again???), which led me to believe that there will be at least something to speak of.

i feel it is time to start presenting projections based on potential sales figures or at least revenue goals at this point, so that we and the market can begin to guage progress.

if he does not feel the need to do so, then either of two scenarios exist.

one, the numbers won't cut it, thus, no comment is admitting how poor they may be in relation to expectations, and

two, the quarter will speak for itself, presenting a decent insight as to what revenues one could project given a growth rate out into the near or mid-term future.

the dollar amount per encoder is 149.00, give or take whether we are selling direct, or licensing, thus the real math must be based on percentages of adoption by developers.

that adoption has to be somewhat based on the sorenson history, which the only figures posted on were at around a 10-15% percent adoption rate, which is why i revise my outlook currently to around 5 mil, from 2-3.

expenses will be greater, and add ons and additional revenues will be necessary to reach a profit, but nonetheless, the outlook begins to look a lil better to me.

at least i got some straight answers today.

pos

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Viewpoint Opens Its Distribution Network to Free General Use in Support of Its Online Advertising and Consumer Products Businesses

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 14, 2005--Viewpoint Corporation (NASDAQ:VWPT) - a leading provider of innovative visual technologies for the web and the desktop - today announced that the Viewpoint Media Player (VMP) will no longer require a broadcast key to display content, thereby giving all developers free access to the Viewpoint Distribution Network for the very first time.


In addition, to enable developers to more readily create Viewpoint content, the company announced it will give free trials of its Enliven content creation tool (formerly codenamed 'Bonfire') to any developer who registers at Viewpoint.com.

"This move is a natural progression for our businesses," said Jay Amato, Viewpoint's chief executive officer. "By giving developers free access to our network and an easy way to create content, we in one fell swoop extend the Viewpoint Media Player's reach into new channels of distribution beyond the estimated 120 million computers we currently reside within. This powerfully supports not only our advertising business - by potentially making our player more pervasive - it provides strong backing to our search and photo management distribution strategies as well."

While Viewpoint will continue to charge its traditional fees to enterprise customers who require technology support, service, custom engineering and SDK support, the new Viewpoint Media Player v3.3 will allow those clients and any developer to publish content in the Viewpoint format and distribute that content to an unlimited number of websites without restriction. VMP v3.3 is available as of June 15th and also boasts Mozilla/Firefox(TM) support, VetScript(TM) - a full scripting language - and simple communication between Flash(R) ActionScript(TM) and VMP objects.

"This new functionality and ease of use means developers have a new tool to add to an arsenal that includes Flash," says Nicolas Brun, Viewpoint's director of technology. "Now developers are free to blend Flash and Viewpoint content easily in order to provide their clients with the cutting-edge presentations they're increasingly looking for."

To make the creation of Viewpoint content simpler and faster, Enliven will be offered as of June 15th as a free introductory offer available on the Viewpoint website. Enliven provides developers with a simple authoring environment, drag-and-drop scripting, real-time preview of content, and publishing templates to make posting to the web fast and easy.

"Also, to serve our loyal developers who have experience creating Viewpoint content, we're offering a professional version of Enliven," adds Mr. Brun. "Enliven PRO gives developers extensive file import capabilities to enable the creation of content that blends all media types such as 2D, 3D and video into something extraordinary."

Enliven PRO is available at an introductory price of $249.95. It comes bundled with Right Hemisphere's Deep Exploration and Viewpoint's video encoder powered by On2 Technologies as part of the package. To access the Enliven download page and to read more about new VMP and Enliven features and functionality, visit: http://www.viewpoint.com/pub/products/ after 8pm on June 15th.

ABOUT VIEWPOINT

The Viewpoint Platform is the technology behind some of the most innovative, visual experiences on the Web and on the desktop with leading clients such as America Online, General Electric, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Lexus, Microsoft, Samsung, Scion, Sony and Toyota. The Unicast Online Advertising Suite - the Company's next-generation ad deployment and management system - and the Viewpoint Toolbar - the Vision for the Future of Search - are the latest breakthrough technologies using the full power of the Viewpoint Platform. More information on Viewpoint can be found at www.viewpoint.com.

The company has 130 employees principally at its headquarters in New York City and in Los Angeles.

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Looking into the Crystal Ball: The Future of Open-Standard Internet Video

At Streaming Media East last month, three industry experts took a look into the crystal ball, and reached different conclusions regarding whether the standards-based H.264 or Microsoft’s proprietary VC1 will win out.


By Tim Siglin
June 1, 2005
http://www.streamingmedia.com/r/printerfriendly.asp?id=9080

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Limelight Networks is the content delivery network for video, games and music. The best distributed delivery and streaming performance at the best price.

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Start with the premise that standards-based compression technologies, such as MPEG-2, have effectively solidified the broadcast market. Add in a pinch of discontent with proprietary compression technologies and a dash of hope that H.264 (AVC) is enough of a quality leap from MPEG-2 that broadcasters will adopt it. Add three panelists, mix it all up, and throw in an effective moderator--Dale Sorenson of Sorenson Services USA--and you’ll have the makings of a very interesting discussion at the recent Streaming Media East show.

Sorenson asked the panelists first to define the difference between IPTV and streaming media. Acknowledging that “IPTV” had been used by Cisco for several years in a different context and that “streaming media” is a term that suffers from the “what does that mean exactly?” syndrome, Phil Smith of Complete Media System took a stab at defining both. He defined IPTV as “D1 TV delivered over IP to a consumer’s TV set, often in a ‘walled garden’ scenario—an intra-ISP/telco/cable provider domain with limited or no open access to public Internet.”

Smith’s definition of streaming media was a bit more nebulous—“delivering video or audio content from anywhere on the ’Net to a device (PC, mobile, PDA, etc.)”—and was challenged by the other panelists as being problematic for its breadth and the fact that many product manufacturers have moved away from the term “streaming media” to alternates like “Internet video” or the the equally nebulous “digital media” or “rich media.”

Segueing into an issue to which many in the audience would later refer during the question-and-answer session, On2 chairman and CEO Doug McIntyre noted his real concern. “Who will win the format war?” McIntyre asked. “Microsoft made strong initial headway in the broadcast space, but a window of opportunity is open now in that H.264 is on the market and VC1 is not yet.” VC1 is the version of Windows Media 9 that Microsoft has submitted to SMPTE for consideration.

“I think Microsoft has two issues,” McIntyre continued. “First, the intellectual property issues; second, the fact that many major players are uncomfortable doing business with Microsoft, for fear of domination of IPTV in the same way that Microsoft dominates the desktop space. On a positive note, even though our view of Microsoft’s long-term pricing is a bit clouded, Microsoft has shown they are willing to spend money or pay companies to use their product—buying their way into markets they deem important to future Microsoft business. It will be hard for telcos, ISPs, and cable providers to turn down billions of dollars in incentives if Microsoft attempts to buy the market.”

Envivio president and CTO Julien Signes added to McIntyre’s comments by noting that “MPEG LA has a clear published cost structure for licensing H.264 … Even if you don’t like it, it’s there. VC1, when it is finalized by SMPTE,” he continued, “will have similar licensing fee requirements, but final pricing is not yet out on the market. So it’s hard to compare a known quantity, H.264, with the unratified VC1 and its unknown licensing fee.”


Complete Media Systems’ Smith added an interesting international perspective about Windows Media versus H.264. “12 months ago, many telcos told us they were planning to use Windows Media; now that H.264 is out on the market, the situation has dramatically flipped,” Smith said. “Almost 90% of the international telcos, ISPs and cable companies we talk to now say ‘we want H.264.’ I think they were looking at Windows Media a year ago because it was the best on the market, but now that an open standard (H.264) is available with DVD quality at 1.5Mbps, telcos now have a way to obtain good quality at low data rates but not be beholden to Microsoft.”

Signes added his thoughts: “Chipset manufacturers like ST and Sigma are now putting out a significant number of decode chipsets designed for set-top boxes that have MPEG-4 or H.264; they can’t put out VC1 chipsets because it’s not finalized.” He also went on to state that “100% of new video phones coming out have QCIF H.264, so the consumer space seems to be moving to H.264, but the market for desktop streaming media is still wide open.”

On2’s McIntyre disagreed, saying that product manufacturers, especially for tools like instant messaging, are afraid to move completely away from Windows Media. When questioned on the fact that Apple’s iChat AV uses H.264 for its new 4-port video instant messaging, McIntyre dismissed the Mac, joking that “out of 250 million users, I only know two that use Macs.”

Moderator Sorenson countered that Apple’s dominance in the creative space could strengthen H.264’s position, since Apple’s QT Broadcaster and Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro provide on-demand, progressive download and live streaming of H.264. Smith added that his sense was that Microsoft’s change in strategy, allowing H.264 under Microsoft’s DRM scheme, could signal a sea change. “The question becomes whether Microsoft will be willing to risk owning the DRM market—especially the portable DRM market—versus trying to own the whole encoding, transmission, and delivery chain.”

“I think it’s very un-Microsoft to give up anything,” McIntyre countered. “I view this just like the Godzilla movies where the fighter jets appear to have killed Godzilla, but he rises again to dominate. Note that Texas Instruments’ digital signal processor (DSP) group is focusing on WindowsMedia as the ‘top of the heap’ solution, while H.264 is much less of a priority at TI. That should tell you something.”



Julien Signes weighed in with his opinion. “The reality is that the 20 companies backing H.264 have a much-wider combined size and weight in the broadcast space than Microsoft. This makes me wonder to whether Microsoft will be able to maintain momentum.”

Sorenson then shifted the discussion by posing this question: Given the fact that H.264 is guaranteed to be in the two new high-definition DVD standards (Blu-ray and DVD-HD), what does that mean to Internet video?

“Convergence of formats across all platforms (cell phones, DVD, etc.) signals a change in the way that content is created,” said Signes. “It creates a critical mass of content in one format. Remember that H.264 support is now available native in QuickTime 7 on the Mac, is available in open-source Linux and Windows players, and will soon be available in QuickTime 7 for Windows. I think we’ll still have to accommodate all three formats on the Blu-ray and DVD-HD spec for internet video over the next two to three years, but the critical mass of H.264 professional video content delivery—including satellite, IPTV, broadcast content creation—is coming.”

“I think Phil Smith’s business model of a multiple-decode set-top box will be the successful model for much longer than two to three years,” On2’s McIntrye added, “simply because it allows consumer to see content in any format that they want. I also think, though, that content creators will need to need to continue to encode content in multiple formats.”

Noting his appreciation for the multiple-encoder set-top box plug, Smith argued that content creators need to encode in multiple formats. “Content creators need to focus on the content and content protection and not worry about the ‘technology geek issue’ of what format to use to encode their content,” Smith said. “Unless you’re sending content directly to end users and know that some of them use Windows Media, use H.264 to take advantage of the fact that H.264 can output profiles for content to be shown on cell phones, DVDs, Internet video, and studio-quality.”

When asked by an audience member to describe his multiple-encoder set-top box, Smith replied, “Until everyone standardizes on one format, we have created a set-top box that uses a TI DSP to do the three major formats (MPEG-2, Windows Media, H.264). We can dump a codec from the DSP and load up another one within 50 milliseconds, making the consumer behavior of ‘flipping channels’ seamless between multiple format types. It’s also a pure IP set-top box, tested against Tandberg, Envivio, and other encoders. We’re also contemplating putting a general purpose processor (x86) on board to run Linux or Windows.”

The session wrapped up with a brief discussion of two topics: first, how consumers will obtain IP set-top boxes (Smith feels they will be subsidized in the short-term by IPTV providers but, just like the telephone, customers will soon be able to select these devices in retail stores); second, a request from the audience for a synopsis of the benefits of using a standards-based codec versus a proprietary codec.

Dale Sorenson noted that mass production requires “drawing ‘a line in the sand’ to stop continual tweaks.” He also noted that proprietary codecs over time become better since they can modify both the encoders and the decoders.

Signes noted, though, that “a standard like MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 is based on the decoder, which allows everyone to compete on how to make the encode better.” He noted that MPEG 2 originally started at 6-8Mbps for standard definition transmission but is now consistently down around the 2-3Mbps range.

“Broadcasters could move to a downloadable encoder that would sit on a DSP or an application-specific integrated circuit,” he added, “but it would not be a cost-effective strategy.”