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SHEMP/MELLWRK: THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF THE MESSAGE/RAN OUT OF SPACE. THIS IS A REVOLUTION IN TECHNOLOGY AND WE ARE GETTING INTO IT ON THE GROUND FLOOR!
ViewCast - 3 - Whitepaper - Smooth Streaming
Requirements for creating and streaming
Smooth Streaming VOD
Now that we have covered what Smooth Streaming is, how do we create and deliver Smooth Streaming media for delivery on demand? There are three main parts:
1. The Encoding environment
2. The Distribution environment - Microsoft IIS Server with Smooth Streaming enhancements, or a CDN equipped with this already.
3. A compatible player -
Let’s explore each separately.
• Content Creation - To create content from existing clips you will
need an encoding environment that creates the new MP4-based
Smooth Streaming file format. Expression Encoder 2 SP1 is the
video encoding mechanism Microsoft offers; it goes along
with their Expression Blend™ 2 Service Pack 1 web development
suite. The full version (but not the trial version) lets you do full
Smooth Streaming VOD content creation using either the VC-1 or the new Microsoft H.264 video and AAC audio codecs.
Specifically, you need SP1 or later so you can select adaptive
streaming video and audio profiles and use the IIS Smooth
Streaming output media format. Expressions Encoder 2 SP 1
publishes the requisite files to the appropriate IIS server, as
detailed below.
• Content Distribution - To serve your own Smooth Streaming content you will need Microsoft’s Internet Information Service
(IIS) 7.0 , running on Server 2008, and will need to install the
Smooth Streaming extension for IIS7. This extension teaches IIS7
how to serve Smooth Streaming media assets to clients.
Reportedly, any server that supports the latest webDAV protocols
is also capable of streaming Smooth Streaming content. If you are
using a hosting provider (CDN), they will need to be similarly
equipped. Akamai has announced high-definition Smooth
Streaming support, announced March 17, 2009, and marketed as AdaptiveEdge Streaming for Microsoft Silverlight.
• Content Viewing - To surface your content, you will need to add Smooth Streaming playback support to your Silverlight application.
There are a number of ways to do this:
> Use any of the Silverlight 2 player templates included with Expression Encoder 2 SP1, to create a suitable Web-based player. Viewers will need only to download the Silverlight player when prompted, assuming it isn’t already present on their PC.
> Use the Open Video Player for Silverlight (http://www. openvideoplayer.com) or,
> Build your own player using Microsoft’s development environment and the MediaStreamSource Class based adaptive streaming implementation.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system. windows.media.mediastreamsource(VS.95).aspx
Smooth Streaming - Live
Microsoft very recently released a beta version of Smooth Streaming, that in its final release form supports live ingest. Specifically, it will accept real-time incoming encoded streams (VC-1 or H.264) from devices that can create suitable time-aligned and GOP-controlled streams. IIS Live Smooth Streaming (beta) is an extension for Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 that supports live delivery using the same HTTP delivery methods used in VOD deployment.
Live Smooth Streaming (beta) for IIS 7.0 allows you to experiment with live streaming by simulating live delivery as though the content is being ingested from a media encoder. A good encoder engineered for this application and designed to easily integrate into broadcast
workflows is ViewCast’s new Niagara® 7500 HD encoder. It includes a folder of Smooth Streaming video files (files with .ismv file name extensions), and a small encoder applet that creates simulated Live Smooth Streaming output for testing purposes from those .ismv files. You can still create your own Smooth Streaming video (.ismv) files via Microsoft Expression Encoder 2 SP1, just as you would do for VOD applications. In practice, you will use the built-in IIS publishing point manager to create a live publishing point on the IIS Live-equipped server. Once the ingest point is set up, you will push one or more streams to the Live Smooth Streaming publishing point.
Once the publishing point is set up, you can experiment with a live simulation by using the sample encoder to simulate a live ingest. As noted before, this sample application converts any .ISMV file into the needed push format.
Smooth Streaming is certain to be a revolutionary technology for broadcasting HD and professional-grade media over IP and mobile networks. If you’re interested in applying Smooth Streaming to your workflow, the Niagara 7500 HD streaming appliance from ViewCast can offer you a simple solution to take advantage of this advancement in live and video-on-demand broadcast applications.
For more than a decade ViewCast has offered the highest degree of reliable, professional-grade streaming products engineered to simplify the complex workflows required in the management and delivery of media to computers and mobile devices. Find your ideal solution for expanding your audience through the multi-platform world of Webcasting, IPTV, VOD, mobile TV, and digital asset management by talking with one of our streaming specialists today, or simply visit http://www.viewcast.com.
3701 W. Plano Parkway
Suite 300
Plano, TX 75075
USA | 800.540.4119
Europe, Middle East, Africa | + 44 1256 345610
©2009 ViewCast Corporation. All rights reserved. Osprey®, Niagara®, SimulStream® and
Niagara SCX® (and design)™ are registered
trademarks of ViewCast Corporation.
Next Generation Streaming Media Solutions
ViewCast Niagara® 7500 HD encoder
THE SLEEPING GIANT HAD A GOOD BREAKFAST ON FRIDAY AND HAS NOW LEFT THE TABLE TO GO TO THE FIELD AND DO HIS WORK. I EXPECT MONDAY WILL BE A GOOD DAY FOR WE THREE BOARDMEMBERS AND THE INSIDERS!
SHEMP/MELLOWRK: MANY PUNDITS BELIEVE VIDEO ON DEMAND (VOD) WILL REPLACE CABLE. VCST HAS BEEN WORKING WITH MICROSOFT TO PRODUCE VOD. I FORESEE MICROSOFT BUILDING DATA CENTERS LOADED WITH VCST VIDEO STREAMING PRODUCT WHICH WILL DISTRIBUTE CONTENT TO MOBILE DEVICE USERS IPADs and IPHONES WHICH CAN PLAY THE VIDEO ON THEIR FLAT SCREEN DISPLAYS. CHECK THIS OUT!
Summary: Smooth Streaming, Microsoft’s new adaptive streaming technology, is an exciting advancement that brings us closer to Web-based television-like delivery of HD media content. The underlying technology builds on Microsoft® VC-1 codec components to create multiple pre-defined streams, adding mechanisms to automatically adjust the playback to varying consumer connection speeds, and other network playback challenges, enabling higher-quality streaming media delivery over IP and mobile networks. This white paper will introduce you to Smooth Streaming and will explain how you can apply the technology in real-world VOD and live event broadcasting applications.
Whitepaper Smooth Streaming
In this rapidly transforming new media world, conventional broadcasters face continuing challenges in retaining and expanding their viewer base. Digital and hi-definition broadcasting has helped retain viewership by offering better picture quality, but online and mobile video continue to eat away at broadcast and cable audiences as viewers willingly trade quality for the convenience of the “my way, my time” features of the many compelling IP-delivered technologies.
Currently, when it comes to online video, quality may be secondary to convenience for some viewers, but not by much, and for how much longer? Until the day when we all have our own personal, unchallenged gigabit connection to some ultimate media distribution network, development resources will continue to be poured into improving the Internet- and mobile-viewing experience.
Video delivered over private, managed IP networks is already a mature technology and most advancement is in the area of improving compression ratio, that is, picture quality vs. bandwidth. The same advancements are equally important to Internet delivery, but the challenges to successful delivery are much greater when the network is unmanaged. Cramming video down the public Internet is very much like running battleground dispatches through a minefield. You have to do some fairly extraordinary things to reliably get all of the data through to the other side.
Delivering video down less-than-ideal networks is where much of the development is happening today, and one recent example of a deployable advancement is Microsoft’s new Smooth Streaming technology.
Smooth Streaming is one of several fairly recent advancements grouped under the heading of adaptive streaming technology, and its fundamental claim to fame is that it can deliver different streams from the same source
This means you don’t have the 6-10 second or more delay between source and viewer typical of standard streaming technologies. And you don’t get jerky video, as long as the network supports at least the lowest offered rate. In addition, the user enjoys faster start-up and seek times because the player can be directed to the lowest bitrate before moving up to a higher bitrate version.
Another advantage of Smooth Streaming technology comes to light when the player is an older PC with less-than-optimum video rendering components. Decoding the compressed video takes considerable CPU horsepower, more so on the modern highly compressed formats like VC-1 and H.264. High-end graphics cards share the rendering load, but not everyone has these devices in their PCs, and only very recent handheld devices are sufficiently powered to render streams consistently and reliably. In other words, if the player can’t keep up with a higher rate bit stream, the result is no better than if the network itself is the constraint. Smooth Streaming also handles this by doing the same thing it does when the network degrades — it connects to a lower bitrate stream.
The important thing for the content owner to know is that this on-the-fly adjustment happens separately for each individual viewer. That means each attached player makes its own deal with the server (or server farm) that delivers the content. Since the whole delivery is just chunks (packets) of ordinary files delivered by ordinary Web servers, this scales up instantly and massively. Prominent content delivery networks (CDNs), like Akamai and Limelight, have already deployed a huge array of HTTP servers feeding ordinary non-video Web pages, so, other than the need to manage multiple Smooth Streaming component files as a group, they don’t have to do anything too special to handle Smooth Streaming technologies. These massively deployed networks also surface yet another advantage of Smooth Streaming – the inherent HTTP delivery of Smooth Streaming content. These networks place the VOD files out near the edges of the networks, to be closer, and therefore more reliably delivered, to the end users.
This prompts the question of how different, and how many, streams are created in a typical Smooth Streaming title. For a comprehensive answer we’ll need to look a bit deeper into what Smooth Streaming actually does.
material, including HD at 720p or better, with each stream tailored and encoded separately to accommodate varying delivery options, (bitrates, frame sizes, etc.), all with a common timing relationship.
The idea is that the player can be fed sequential chunks of whatever “stream” is most appropriate for the available bandwidth, and as bandwidth increases or decreases, the player can be redirected to the most appropriate stream. The user never sees any of this happening, with the exception that the picture quality changes as the network conditions change.
Although the underlying technologies are quite different, the player experience when viewing a Smooth Streaming title is similar to what Slingbox® viewers are already familiar with: the better the network, the sharper or less pixilated the picture becomes, and the smoother the action becomes on high-motion content.
Note that “stream” is used here in quotes because the actual delivery isn’t really streaming at all: the “streams” are really small sequential chunks of HTTP-delivered progressive downloads. We’ll explain this in more detail a little later.
Savvy readers will immediately wonder how this is different from the long-available multiple bitrate streams of Windows Media® MBR and Real Networks’ SureStream technologies. Some of the difference is in how the “stream” is delivered. MBR content streamed through conventional streaming methods is still transmitted at its encoded rate, which means the network still has to deliver that average rate through the buffering process in order for the client (player) to detect and handle the deteriorating network condition.
The effect isn’t all that helpful – buffering prevents the playback experience from responding to network challenges quickly and the technology doesn’t adjust to the higher bitrates very well once network conditions improve. More importantly, with MBR you still can’t individually configure each stream with options like frame size, etc., so you are still driving less than optimum bit streams down the same path, with no really useful adaptive playback options for the player.
Smooth Streaming, on the other hand, lets you individually tailor the characteristics of each stream that most affect its playability at a given bandwidth. You separately encode the lower bitrate streams in a smaller frame size and the Silverlight™ player will scale it back up to the selected player frame size should it happen to switch to the lower-bitrate stream on-the-fly.
This brings up the concept of buffering and another advantage of Smooth Streaming — minimal wait for stream delivery and the elimination of the “stutter” associated with less than optimal buffering. With conventional streaming, a process called buffering is employed to smooth out the bursty nature of the Internet. If the network connection is faster than the stream playback rate, the buffer fills a bit faster than needed and playback is smooth.
If the net slows down, the player continues, draining the buffer as needed. If the buffer ever empties, playback stops until the buffer has additional data to draw from. If the experience hovers around either side of the “buffer-is” or “very-nearly-empty” point, you get jerky video.
Even when buffering is going well, the buffer is only so big — typically about 5 seconds with Microsoft’s conventional Windows Media. So those of us on great networks still only get no more than about 5 seconds of headroom. That can disappear in, well, 5 seconds when the connection seriously degrades.
Smooth Streaming address this by essentially eliminating the buffer. Instead of buffering up data in the “good times” and drawing from the buffer in the “bad times,” Smooth Streaming simply switches the viewer to whatever “stream” can survive the “bad times” rate.
ViewCast - 2 - Whitepaper - Smooth Streaming
Smooth Streaming - VOD
At the time of this writing Smooth Streaming is deployed as a Video-on-Demand (VOD) technology, although live versions have been field trialed. We’ll discuss what happens in the VOD process first, and then discuss what differences are involved in a live version.
In its VOD form, Smooth Streaming is a collection of individual video and audio files, one set per anticipated playback bitrate, all
processed (encoded) separately and stored on a disk as separate files. These look like any other files and are stored in folders in an entirely conventional manner.
For a given video clip, the following files are created by Microsoft’s Expressions®, the suite of tools Microsoft developed to create Smooth Streaming titles:
• MP4-structured files containing video and (optionally) audio, one file per encoded video bitrate. These files will have an .ISMV suffix.
• One (optional) audio file per bitrate, needed only if the audio isn’t mixed into the video file. These will have an
.ISMA suffix.
• The server manifest file, an XML file that points to and
defines the relationship of all the audio and video files in the title. This is used by the media server and will have an .ISM suffix.
• The client manifest file, an XML which the client uses to
know what “streams” are available, which codecs were used (to select the proper decoder), the encoded bitrates, video
resolutions, captions, etc. This file is sent to the client
immediately upon connection since it offers all needed
instructions on what to play, and how. It will have an .ISMC suffix.
You may note that the audio and video files are each the full length of the clip, not saved as individual chunks. The chunking is done by the server during delivery and is transparent to both the content developer and the viewer.
All of the .ISMV video files have something in common: they share a rather strict set of characteristics that allow the player to freely switch between them at the same point in the video timeline. This is not just a shared-timing relationship (often called ‘temporal alignment’), although that is important and is accomplished by having all streams encoded at the same frame rate. That would be enough if all frames were a complete full frame with all picture elements, but that is not the nature of compression.
There has to be some agreement on where in the various points the server/player can switch between streams, to ensure the switch occurs on a boundary that would deliver a full frame. That involves things like a common closed GOP structure, common entry point headers, etc. That’s all done in the VOD environment by the Expressions encoder and managed by the server/player relationship during playback. To the content owner, the real impact is that you will need to re-encode content to take advantage of Smooth Streaming technology.
How many streams?
Since each set of .ISMV and optional .ISMA files for any given clip title essentially represents one deliverable bitrate, how do you know how many file sets to create?
That depends on your audience. Let’s use an example that allows a full range of playback experiences, from true high-definition (HD) content all the way down to a 400K stream. We’ll make a few assumptions along the way about the bandwidth needed for each, based on Alex Zambelli’s Smooth Streaming online calculator located at http://alexzambelli.com/WMV/MBRCalc.html.
The calculations above reflect a 29.97fps frame rate and a typical 16:9 (1.777:1) aspect ratio, with a minimum bitrate of 400 kbps
and a max of 4.5 megabits. Note that Alex recommends a maximum of 2963 kbps for practical delivery by CDNs, so our example represents a very well-connected user at 4.5 Mbps.
Looking at the table, note that the calculated frame size very nearly maintains the desired aspect ratio of 1.777, but varies by the actual number of pixels in each dimension. As the users’ player and server negotiate the appropriate stream, the frame is adjusted (scaled) by the player to fit in the player’s window, which is typically sized by the Silverlight Web page designer.
In actual practice, assuming SD content, a 700K to 800K stream produces quite acceptable video playback at a typical 640x480, 4:3 display, and is within the range of most DSL users. With a 1.2 Mbps stream for more well-connected viewers thrown in for good measure, you might consider the following set of streams:
Although the Smooth Streaming technology allows you to create multiple streams, it doesn’t make you. The manifest can still be as few as one.
BITRATE WIDTH HEIGHT ASPECT RATIO
4500 1280 720 1.777:1
3185 1024 576 1.777:1
2254 800 448 1.785:1
1595 624 352 1.772:1
1129 512 288 1.777:1
799 400 224 1.785:1
565 320 176 1.818:1
400 256 144 1.777:1
BITRATE RESOLUTION
200 K 320 x 180
300 K 320 x 180
500 K 480 x 240
800 K 480 x 240
1.2 M 640 x 360
ViewCast - 3 - Whitepaper - Smooth Streaming
Requirements for creating and streaming
Smooth Streaming VOD
Now that we have covered what Smooth Streaming is, how do we create and deliver Smooth Streaming media for delivery on demand? There are three main parts:
1. The Encoding environment
2. The Distribution environment - Microsoft IIS Server with Smooth Streaming enhancements, or a CDN equipped with this already.
3. A compatible player -
Let’s explore each separately.
• Content Creation - To create content from existing clips you will
need an encoding environment that creates the new MP4-based
Smooth Streaming file format. Expression Encoder 2 SP1 is the
video encoding mechanism Microsoft offers; it goes along
with their Expression Blend™ 2 Service Pack 1 web development
suite. The full version (but not the trial version) lets you do full
Smooth Streaming VOD content creation using either the VC-1 or the new Microsoft H.264 video and AAC audio codecs.
Specifically, you need SP1 or later so you can select adaptive
streaming video and audio profiles and use the IIS Smooth
Streaming output media format. Expressions Encoder 2 SP 1
publishes the requisite files to the appropriate IIS server, as
detailed below.
• Content Distribution - To serve your own Smooth Streaming content you will need Microsoft’s Internet Information Service
(IIS) 7.0 , running on Server 2008, and will need to install the
Smooth Streaming extension for IIS7. This extension teaches IIS7
how to serve Smooth Streaming media assets to clients.
Reportedly, any server that supports the latest webDAV protocols
is also capable of streaming Smooth Streaming content. If you are
using a hosting provider (CDN), they will need to be similarly
equipped. Akamai has announced high-definition Smooth
Streaming support, announced March 17, 2009, and marketed as AdaptiveEdge Streaming for Microsoft Silverlight.
• Content Viewing - To surface your content, you will need to add Smooth Streaming playback support to your Silverlight application.
There are a number of ways to do this:
> Use any of the Silverlight 2 player templates included with Expression Encoder 2 SP1, to create a suitable Web-based player. Viewers will need only to download the Silverlight player when prompted, assuming it isn’t already present on their PC.
> Use the Open Video Player for Silverlight (http://www. openvideoplayer.com) or,
> Build your own player using Microsoft’s development environment and the MediaStreamSource Class based adaptive streaming implementation.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system. windows.media.mediastreamsource(VS.95).aspx
Smooth Streaming - Live
Microsoft very recently released a beta version of Smooth Streaming, that in its final release form supports live ingest. Specifically, it will accept real-time incoming encoded streams (VC-1 or H.264) from devices that can create suitable time-aligned and GOP-controlled streams. IIS Live Smooth Streaming (beta) is an extension for Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 that supports live delivery using the same HTTP delivery methods used in VOD deployment.
Live Smooth Streaming (beta) for IIS 7.0 allows you to experiment with live streaming by simulating live delivery as though the content is being ingested from a media encoder. A good encoder engineered for this application and designed to easily integrate into broadcast
workflows is ViewCast’s new Niagara® 7500 HD encoder. It includes a folder of Smooth Streaming video files (files with .ismv file name extensions), and a small encoder applet that creates simulated Live Smooth Streaming output for testing purposes from those .ismv files. You can still create your own Smooth Streaming video (.ismv) files via Microsoft Expression Encoder 2 SP1, just as you would do for VOD applications. In practice, you will use the built-in IIS publishing point manager to create a live publishing point on the IIS Live-equipped server. Once the ingest point is set up, you will push one or more streams to the Live Smooth Streaming publishing point.
Once the publishing point is set up, you can experiment with a live simulation by using the sample encoder to simulate a live ingest. As noted before, this sample application converts any .ISMV file into the needed push format.
Smooth Streaming is certain to be a revolutionary technology for broadcasting HD and professional-grade media over IP and mobile networks. If you’re interested in applying Smooth Streaming to your workflow, the Niagara 7500 HD streaming appliance from ViewCast can offer you a simple solution to take advantage of this advancement in live and video-on-demand broadcast applications.
For more than a decade ViewCast has offered the highest degree of reliable, professional-grade streaming products engineered to simplify the complex workflows required in the management and delivery of media to computers and mobile devices. Find your ideal solution for expanding your audience through the multi-platform world of Webcasting, IPTV, VOD, mobile TV, and digital asset management by talking with one of our streaming specialists today, or simply visit http://www.viewcast.com.
3701 W. Plano Parkway
Suite 300
Plano, TX 75075
USA | 800.540.4119
Europe, Middle East, Africa | + 44 1256 345610
©2009 ViewCast Corporation. All rights reserved. Osprey®, Niagara®, SimulStream® and
Niagara SCX® (and design)™ are registered
trademarks of ViewCast Corporation.
Next Generation Streaming Media Solutions
ViewCast Niagara® 7500 HD encoder
MELLOWRK:SHEMP AND I WELCOME YOU! HERE'S THE SCOOP. THE IPAD SALES BEGIN @ 5:00PM TODAY - JUSTED STARTED IN THE APPLE STORES. THEY WILL HAVE 3G WHICH WILL ENABLE THEM TO DOWNLOAD HIGH RESOLUTION VIDEOS, STORE THEM AND PLAY THEM BACK USING VCST PRODUCT AND SOFTWARE.
THEY HAVE ALREADY RUN OUT OF PRODUCT AND WILL SELL ALL THEY HAVE ON THE SHELVES AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SHIP MORE TIL MAY 7TH. THE WORD WILL COME OUT NEXT WEEK ABOUT THE "KILLER APP-VIDEO STREAMING. IF YOU THINK THE STOCK DID WELL THIS WEEK, NEXT WEEK SHOULD BE A SCREAMER. PEOPLE WILL BE BUYING THESE IPADS AND I PHONES LIKE CABBAGE PATCH DOLLS.
THIS STOCK IS MOVING UP ON SMALL SHARE VOLUME. WHEN THE VOLUME GETS TO 1MILLION, THIS STOCK WILL DRIVE TOWARDS A DOLLAR.
HERE'S AN INTERESTING LINK DESCRIBING THE DEMAND FOR THIS PRODUCT THERE WILL BE A LOT OF BUZZ NEXT AND SHOULD HELP PROPEL THIS STOCK PAST ITS YEARLY HIGH OF $0.39 TO $0.50. I CAPITALIZED THE IMPORTANT HIGHLIGHTS IN THE ARTICLE.
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s U.S. customers who order the 3G models of its iPad now won’t receive the tablet computer until May 7, a few days later than expected, as the company clambers to meet demand.
U.S. buyers who ordered one of three 3G versions before yesterday will still get their iPad by the end of this month, as originally promised, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris said. Those iPads will arrive on April 30, and the device will start selling at Apple’s stores at 5 p.m. that day, according to a statement from the company today.
Apple said last week that demand for the iPad was “far higher” than predicted, leading the company to delay international sales of the device by one month, until the end of May. Cupertino, California-based Apple sold more than 500,000 iPads in the first week after its U.S. debut on April 3.
“There’s a learning curve at play here,” said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Kaufman Bros. in San Francisco. “This is the reality of manufacturing.”
The iPad’s initial release only included models that run on Wi-Fi networks, starting at $499. The new 3G MODELS CONNECT TO THE INTERNET USING MOBILE-PHONE CARRIERS' THIRD GENERATION SERVICE, in addition to Wi-Fi networks, and will cost at least $629. Both types let users surf the Web, WATCH VIDEOS, listen to music and play games on a touch screen.
AT&T Inc., the carrier that will provide wireless service for the 3G models in the U.S., won’t start selling the devices in its stores initially, spokesman Mark Siegel said. The company won’t subsidize the iPad, he said.
‘Production Bottleneck’
Apple fell $2.48 to $244.59 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have doubled in the past year.
The company, which said on April 14 that demand will outpace supply for the next several weeks, may be struggling to get enough touch screens produced, according to ISuppli Corp.
Suppliers, challenged by the size of the display, may be unable to make usable screens in the quantities Apple needs, said Andrew Rassweiler, an ISuppli analyst in El Segundo, California. The 9.7-inch (25-centimeter) screen is made by LG Display Co., Samsung Electronics Co. and Seiko Epson Corp., according to ISuppli.
The iPad’s LED-backlit display is about 6 inches larger than the screen used in Apple’s iPhone. For the iPad, Apple opted for a screen technology called IPS, or in-plane switching, that the company says provides “crisp, clear images and consistent color with an ultra-wide” viewing angle.
“We understand that the yields on the display have been low and that they’re creating a production bottleneck,” Rassweiler said. “That they have been doing it for the iPhone for some time is great, but once you go to 9.7 inches, it is a much more complicated process.”
SHEMP
TWO VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS! JUST YOU, ME AND THE INSIDERS SEE THE VALUE AND FUTURE OF THIS STOCK. IT HAS BEEN CREEPING UP SLOWLY. THE O/S ARE VERY SMALL COMPARED TO MANY PENNY STOCKS. IT IS VERY VOLATILE. WITH THE PAST NEWS AND GOOD NEWS ON THE WAY THIS STOCK WILL BE IN THE DOLLARS SOON. MARK MY WORD.
THE SLEEPING GIANT HAS GOTTEN OUT OF BED AND IS READY FOR BREAKFAST!
I SOLD THE 130K and dumped the money in VCST which is a much better stock than this one. I still have 200,000 shares but in my mind VCST will hit a dollar by year's end and has a lot more potential in the near term then this stock. CHECK IT OUT!
The Apple Iphone and IPad wwill soon be linked to high resolution seamless video streaming and they are going to do it with a VCST product which works on 3G. For the IPAD, the announcement is supposed to be made on April 30th. This news should propel VCST's stock past this years high of $0.39 to 0.50 or more. I expect it will hit the $1.00 target by end of year. The IPAD, VCST software and the streaming inteface will bolster the sales of both Apple and VCST. This should really accelerate VCSTs profitability in the second quarter and more so in the third quarter. Although the Iphone and Ipad have been introduced, they still do not have the whole enchilada (3G). With the next upgrade days away from being announced and link to VCSY streamers and software, they will have a very high resolution video streaming solution second to none. Put on your space helmet, we are going to the moon!
SHEMP, HANG ON TO YOUR SHARES!
VCST DIRECTOR IS BUYING SO SAY PUT. DOES HE KNOW SOMETHING WE DON'T?
SEC Transaction Summary — Last 6 Months Number of Buy/Sell Transactions 8 Gross Shares Bought/Sold 798,944
Number of Buys 8 Shares Bought 798,944
Number of Sells Shares Sold
Net Shares 798,944
SEC Transactions — Last 2 Years Trans Date Filer Ownership Type Price Shares
Apr 23, 2010 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director indirect Buy 0.24 5,000
Apr 21, 2010 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director indirect Buy 0.24 10,000
Apr 20, 2010 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director indirect Buy 0.24 107,900
Apr 15, 2010 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director direct Buy 0.2559 110,000
Apr 12, 2010 LATHAM LAURIE L
Officer direct Buy 0.1378 6,044
Apr 5, 2010 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director direct Buy 0.18 475,000
Apr 1, 2010 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director direct Buy 0.1617 25,000
Apr 1, 2010 PLATT GEORGE C
Officer direct Buy 0.16 60,000
Oct 19, 2009 LATHAM LAURIE L
Officer direct Acquisition (Non Open Market) 0.1805 4,698
Sept 9, 2009 BRANDENBURG DAVID
Director indirect Buy 0.20 219,500
INSIDERS BUYING UP MORE VCST.
Director David Brandenburg just filed another Form 4 to purchase another 110,000 shares of VCST @ $0.26. Insider buying is good news for shareholders. GO VCST!
ALHIGOU:
NOW WE ARE THREE!
SHEMP AND I WELCOME YOU
$0.30 COMING UP SOON.
SHEMP - NICE TO HEAR A VOICE AGAIN. I THOUGHT YOU LEFT ME ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS!
Stock breaks through $0.30 this week and should stay around that level for awhile. Looks like the NAB loves the products.
If orders start coming in fast and news gets reported weekly especially on new orders, it could test $0.50 before the earnings report. The products are being sold to schools, theaters, concerts, cafes, hotels, mobile content providers and mobile users, etc.
They had a $3.5M quarter of last year. With the new products and the excitement generated at NAB over the products, these factors will likely translate into much improved sales. I expect they will likely do $5M per quarter or more. With 88 employees, they should turn a nice profit and the stock should easily get to $1.00 by the end of the year. If the international sales continue to grow in India, Asia and Europe, the PPS will rise rapidly. The economy is an important factor. It must pick up some steam for all this to come to fruition. Getting to your magic $2.00 mark will require the company post sales figures in the coming quarters far in excess over what has been stated here.
The good news is the product is fully developed, works and is getting very positive reviews. How many penny stocks have host of viable products that are in demand. At 24 cents this stock is a bargain.
JUST MY SIMPLE PERSPECTIVE!
SHEMP 317 - YOUR A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS!
They are in with Apple and Cisco. If your going to be successful, you need to line up with the BIG BOYS! The video streaming market is taking off. VCST offers the FULL ENCHILADA! I have watched this stock get beaten down from $0.50 and I wanted to get in near the bottom. I see it going back to $0.50 after the next earnings report and expect it will get to $1.00 by year end. Just my Opinion. Step into the elevator as this stock is "GOING UP!"
HERE'S SOME NEWS OUT THIS WEEK: Director David Brandenburg just filed a Form 4 to purchase 475,000 shares of the common stock. DO YOU THINK HE MAY BE ON TO SOMETHING!
OTHER NEWS!
ViewCast's award-winning solutions simplify the complex workflows required for the Web-based streaming of news, sports, music and other video content to computers and mobile devices, empowering broadcasters, businesses and governments to easily and effectively reach and expand their audiences. With more than 350,000 video capture cards deployed globally, ViewCast sets the standard in the streaming media industry. ViewCast Niagara(R) streaming appliances, Osprey(R) video capture cards, and Niagara SCX(R) encoding and management software provide the highly reliable technology required to deliver the multi-platform experiences driving today's digital media market.
Todays News :
PLANO, Texas, April 5, 2010 -- ViewCast Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: VCST), a developer of industry-leading solutions for the transformation, management and delivery of digital media over IP and mobile networks, will showcase the three newest entries in its solution portfolio at the 2010 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 10-15, Booth SL1709. These new solutions - ViewCast Media Platform (VMp(TM)), Niagara(R) SCX(R) 6.2 streaming media management software with Apple(R) iPhone(R) support, and SchedulStream(R) scheduling software - will be making their world debut at the industry's largest gathering of digital media professionals, with over 85,000 people expected to attend. ViewCast will also be hosting live demonstrations of its Niagara 7500 and Niagara 2120 streaming media appliances at the event.
"The recent pace of technology innovation at ViewCast has been breathtaking to witness, and the 2010 NAB Show is the perfect forum to showcase our latest breakthrough solutions," said ViewCast President and CEO Dave Stoner. "Customers of all sizes and levels of technical expertise can apply this new technology to elevate the power and value of their digital media infrastructure, with seamless solution interoperability to assure end-to-end content management flexibility."
ViewCast Media Portal (VMp) - VMp is a unified framework that helps organizations manage the full lifecycle of their digital media content, supporting online video publishing, live video streaming, video on-demand and digital asset management. VMp manages the entire lifecycle of digital media, from capture through delivery, including ingest, transformation, indexing, workflow management, search, publishing and distribution capabilities. Comprised of the VMp Live, VMp Portal and VMp Production modules, VMp affords users the flexibility to choose the modules that address their unique requirements and evolve their VMp implementation as business needs, objectives and applications change.
Niagara SCX 6.2 with Apple iPhone Support - ViewCast's powerful streaming media management software now supports HTTP-based adaptive streaming to Apple iPhone mobile devices. New features include integrated segmenting, adaptive bit-rate encoding, support for CDN authentication protocols, and built-in AES-128 encryption. Niagara SCX software provides a single, unified user experience for all of its supported streaming codecs, equipping users with unmatched flexibility to reach their audience via the most popular media formats, including Adobe Flash H.264, Windows Media(R), Silverlight(R), RealVideo(R), 3GPP and other formats - simultaneously, in any combination - via one easy-to-use interface.
SchedulStream Software - ViewCast's SchedulStream software enables users to schedule and automate live and on-demand encoding and streaming functions. SchedulStream optimizes scheduling workflows and productivity with easy-to-use templates for applications, including webcasting, video on demand (VOD), and distance learning, providing an intuitive web-based interface that enables users to schedule the delivery of content for a specific date and time, including one-time, repeat, and ad hoc encoding sessions. Designed for use with Niagara SCX software, SchedulStream can be administered remotely, and supports simultaneous encoding of multiple formats and channels.
ViewCast at 2010 NAB Show
ViewCast will be previewing VMp, Niagara SCX 6.2 streaming media management software with Apple iPhone support, and SchedulStream, and will be hosting live demonstrations of Niagara 7500 and Niagara 2120 streaming media encoders at 2010 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 10-15. Visit ViewCast at Booth SL1709.
IF THEY ARE DOING VIDEO ON DEMAND/VIDEO STREAMING ON THE APPLE IPOD, THEY MUST BE DOING IT ON THE APPLE IPAD.
HOLD ONTO YOUR HAT _ THE SLEEPING GIANT IS GETTING OUT OF BED!
Viewcast is a sleeping giant and this sleeper is about to wake up. I will buy more at this price.
I must be the only one on this board! Want to get as much as I can of this stock before it goes to a $1.00.
THOSE IN DOUBT OF THIS STOCKS POTENTIAL, READ THE LATEST NEWS POSTED THREE HOURS AGO!
ViewCast Corp. (VCST.OB) to Show New Streaming Media and Digital Content Management Technology at 2010 NAB Show
Scottsdale, Arizona 4/05/2010 07:31 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)
QualityStocks would like to highlight ViewCast Corp. (OTCBB: VCST). ViewCast's award-winning solutions simplify the complex workflows required for the Web-based streaming of news, sports, music and other video content to computers and mobile devices, empowering broadcasters, businesses and governments to easily and effectively reach and expand their audiences. With more than 350,000 video capture cards deployed globally, ViewCast sets the standard in the streaming media industry.
In the company’s news today,
ViewCast Corp. announced it would debut new tech at Booth SL1709 during the upcoming April 10-15 NAB Show in Vegas.
Long known as a sector powerhouse in distributed digital media solutions, VCST looks to unveil 3 major new products alongside demos of the Niagara 7500 and Niagara 2120 streaming media encoders to the eagerly awaiting venue goers:
• ViewCast Media Platform (VMp™) is a lifecycle-based digital content management framework, designed to handle every part of the content workflow, from capture to delivery, all in a unified environment that seamlessly supports direct-to-web publishing, streaming of live video, video-on-demand (VOD) and robust asset management.
• VCST’s established Niagara SCX® streaming media management software goes version 6.2, now offering powerful Apple iPhone leveraging capacity via HTTP-based adaptive streaming, and features like integrated segmenting, adaptive bit-rate encoding, CDN authentication protocol support, and built-in AES-128 encryption. The Niagara software environment presents an open canvas across all of its supported streaming codecs, offering users unprecedented range of fluidity when it comes to reaching their target audience, be the methodology Adobe Flash H.264, Windows Media®, Silverlight®, RealVideo®, 3GPP or other leading formats.
• Also on display at the VCST booth will be the new automating software for live or on-demand encoding and streaming called SchedulStream. SchedulStream is designed as an intuitive workflow optimizing platform, with templates from webcasting, VOD, and eLearning, the software is a flexible means to automate timed content distribution via remote administration, capable of encoding multiple formats and channels simultaneously.
President and CEO of VCST, Dave Stoner, commented on the “breathtaking” pace of technology advancement at the Company, and hailed the NAB Show as a great opportunity to show all industries large and small the power of VCST’s products when it comes to harnessing the value of their digital media infrastructure.
LOOK AT THE TRADES
SHARE PURCHASES: 2,600,000
SHARE SALES 11,000
SHARE PURCHASES AFTER MARKET 2 @ 350,00.
This stock is sitting on a launch pad and is ready to go to the moon!
PUSH THE TRADES BUTTON BELOW AND OBSERVE THE GREEN!
New Grass Processing and Storage Facility Under Construction in China Looks like the building might be shown on the photograph of the plantation near the lake. Just a hunch!
IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VIASPACE Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: VSPC), a clean energy company growing Giant King(TM) Grass as a renewable, low-carbon energy crop, today announced that the first harvest of Giant King Grass has been completed and that a new grass processing and storage facility is under construction on company land in China.
Chief Executive Dr. Carl Kukkonen stated: "The grass from this harvest provided seedlings for planting on our new land and is also being used to supply samples for testing and analysis by potential customers such as DP CleanTech and other electric power providers. The new building, now under construction, will process Giant King Grass into pellets and other biomass products, as well as prepare seedlings for the planned expansion of planted acreage."
According to Kukkonen, a new independent analysis in Europe verified that Giant King Grass has excellent energy content (19.2 megajoules per dry kilogram, or 4,585 kilocalories per kilogram-- slightly higher than previous measurements). And the fast-growing nature of Giant King Grass means it is a highly productive and economically advantageous crop, compared to all other biomass crops. Furthermore, Giant King Grass can be harvested in the first year, whereas many other energy crops cannot be harvested until they have been growing for two or more years. "We feel these characteristics together make Giant King Grass very attractive to biomass users, and we are seeing evidence of that in the form of requests for proposals, sales inquiries and MOUs," he said.
Kukkonen gave a presentation on Giant King Grass at the Next-Generation Biofuels Feedstocks USA Conference held November 16-17, 2009, at Le Meridien Hotel in San Francisco. The presentation--with pictures of the harvest, new land and building--is available at the bottom right of the home page of VIASPACE's website
www.VIASPACE.com.
The PDF Slide Show is interesting: Giant King Grass Energy Crop Presentation at Pacific West Biomass Conference. I see a building near the lake on the plantation where the grass is growing. Is that the storage and processing building? Not a fact, just a hunch!
A follow-up interview with Kukkonen was published on November 23, 2009, by the DTN Ethanol Center. The interview is available at the bottom of the home page and may be accessed directly at http://www.dtnethanolcenter.com/index.cfm?show=10&mid=83&pid=37 .
YOU BE THE JUDGE!
http://www.viaspace.com/docs/biofuels_jakarta_compressed_final.pdf
This is the slide show being presented by Viaspace.
THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE SEC RULES GOVERNING 8-K FILINGS
Other Conforming Amendments
We have revised former Item 11 (new Item 5.04) of Form 8-K, regarding the temporary suspension of trading under company's employee benefit plans, to clarify that the required Form 8-K must be filed no later than the fourth business day after which the company receives the notice required by section 101(i)(2)(E) of the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974147 or, if such notice is not received by the company, on the same date on which the company transmits a timely notice to an affected officer or director within the time period prescribed by Rule 104(b)(2)(i)(B) or 104(b)(2)(ii) of Regulation BTR.148 The former Item 11 provided that the Form 8-K must be filed not later than the date prescribed for transmission of the notice required by Rule 104(b)(2) of Regulation BTR. We have also provided for the filing of the updated notices under Rule 104(b)(2)(iii) of Regulation BTR.149
We have also amended the General Instructions to Form 8-K to combine Instruction B.6 with Instruction B.2. These two instructions are largely identical beyond the fact that they apply to different items. Therefore we have combined them into a single instruction addressing both items.
We have amended Note 1 at the end of Exchange Act Rules 13a-10 and 15d-10 regarding transition reports.150 The previous note referred to Item 8 of Form 8-K, which has been re-designated as Item 5.03. Thus, we have conformed this reference accordingly. In addition, we have amended Item 9.01 of Form 8-K, Financial Statements and Exhibits, to ensure that financial statements required to be filed subsequent to an acquisition reported under Item 2.01 are due 71 days after the date the initial report on Form 8-K was required to be filed.
Finally, we have revised Exchange Act Rule 12b-23151 to make clear that companies may incorporate by reference into their registration statements and reports information previously disclosed on Form 8-K without the requirement to file such Form 8-K reports as exhibits to the statements or reports.
GUESS WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL MAY TO SEE AN 8-K!
IS POSSIBLE THE 8-K CAN BE DELAYED UNDER THE ACQUISITION CLAUSE!
Question: Is the automatic 71-day extension of time in Item 9.01 of Form 8-K available with respect to dispositions?
Answer: No. The automatic 71-day extension of time in Item 9.01 of Form 8-K is available only with respect to acquisitions, not dispositions. The Division’s Office of the Chief Accountant will continue to address questions regarding dispositions on a case-by-case basis. [April 2, 2008]
Todays Buys and Sells:
6.5 MILLION SHARES BOUGHT
2.0 MILLION SHARES SOLD
INVESTORS ARE ACCUMULATING SHARES!
They need to put the negotiations on C-SPAN. I'm tired of these back room negotiations. Its like Chicago politics! They need to put the negotiations on C-SPAN.
MY OPINION!
With all of the negotiations, it is likely they will have to amend the S-1 one more time before they can list VGREF with an official PPS.
I suspect the deal is done and the amended S-1 will likely be out tomorrow and VGREF will begin to trade on Tuesday. By Tuesday we should be clear on what has occurred in the agreements and the impact on the shareholders.
As stated below in a previously issued statement by Viaspace, it takes many iterations, but the coming iteration will be the final one.
Previous Statement by Viaspace on the S-1 Filing:
VIASPACE Inc., a clean energy company growing Giant King™ Grass as a low-carbon, renewable energy crop, announced this morning that it has received an extension until January 15, 2010 for the second closing of its purchase of Inter-Pacific Arts on the same day it filed an amended Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission to list its majority-owned subsidiary, VIASPACE Green Energy Inc. (VGE), as a separately reporting public company.
With common shares expected to be traded on the OTC Bulletin Board, VIASPACE Inc. anticipates that its majority ownership in VIASPACE Green Energy, current management and operations of VGE, and VGE’s focus on renewable energy will remain unchanged.
Dr. Carl Kukkonen, CEO of both VIASPACE and VGE stated, “We are in close communications with the SEC and believe that their approval of the VGE registration statement will be forthcoming quickly. For our shareholders that do not understand the process, the SEC has the duty to make certain that publicly listed companies meet obligations of US securities laws. In order to be publicly listed, a company files a registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC which is made public on their website. The SEC then provides comments on the filing, and the company makes appropriate changes and files an amended Form S-1. This process can take several iterations, and results in a filing that accurately describes the company and enumerates the risks of investing to potential investors.”
He continued, “It may seem like a long process, but at the end the company has been extensively reviewed by the SEC and complies with their requirements for legal and financial disclosure. VIASPACE is publicly listed, has audited financial statements, files quarterly and annual reports with the SEC, and makes public announcements of all material events as required. VIASPACE Green Energy upon its approval will follow the same transparent procedures.”
The S-1 filing, effective registration by the SEC and exchange-listing of the common shares of VGE also meet a condition for the second closing of the October 21, 2008, acquisition of Inter-Pacific Arts (IPA). VIASPACE Inc. is currently in negotiations with the seller of IPA to effect the second closing, and the deadline for the second closing has been extended until January 15, 2010. The seller of IPA is a large shareholder and strong supporter of VIASPACE.
I am new to the Board. Here is the full article!
Bomb-sniffing dogs to replace worthless magic wands in Iraq
Published 4 February 2010
There is an added poignancy to the death of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians in dozens of car-bomb attacks: The Iraqi military and police spent millions of dollars in U.S. military aid money to buy hundreds of worthless “magic wands” to be used as explosive detectors at hundreds of checkpoints; how many lives could have been saved had real detectors been used? This Iraqi reliance on superstition is now coming to an end: the U.K. government has banned the export of the fraudulent device, and the U.S. military is rushing hundred of bomb-sniffing dogs to Iraq ahead of the 7 March elections (Click title to read more)
On duty in Mosul, Iraq // Source: militaryphotos.net
New dogs, old tricks. We reported three months ago that the Iraqi government has spent tens of millions of U.S. aid dollars to buy thousands of “magic wands” which were supposed to detect explosives at checkpoints. One American officer described the device as working “on the same principle as a Ouija board.” Another officer said that to believe the claims of the British company which is selling the device, and of the Iraqi authorities that swear by it, “would be laughable” — except that people are dying as a result: “[the company and Iraqi government have] crossed an insupportable line into moral depravity,” the American officer said (“Iraqis Use ‘Magic Wand’ at Checkpoints to Detect Explosives; U.S. Officer: This Is ‘Laughable’,” 5 November 2009 HSNW) 5 November 2009 HSNW).
This waste of millions of U.S. aid dollars on a superstition is coming to an end, and not a moment too soon. It is coming to an end on two fronts:
Bomb-sniffing dogs
AP reports that the American military is stepping up the delivery of bomb-sniffing dogs to Iraq with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government under pressure for using equipment that has proved ineffective in finding explosives.
The first 25 of 145 trained bomb-detection dogs are due to arrive Friday in Baghdad, Army Maj. Sylvester Wegwu told the Associated Press. The remaining 120 dogs will be delivered over the course of a year, said Wegwu, who works as military adviser to the Baghdad Police College.
The dog airlift follows a request to the U.S. military from Iraqi officials for more of the trained dogs, signaling that Iraq is looking to use other bomb-detection methods after questions were raised about the capabilities of a wand-like, bomb-detection device widely used at checkpoints across Iraq.
The dogs will be paired with Iraqi police handlers at the college and will undergo training as a team.
The dogs’ arrival comes as U.S. and Iraqi officials warn of a possible increase in violence ahead of national elections slated for 7 March.
The new Iraqi canine teams could be deployed within forty-five days, with a handful of them out on Baghdad’s streets ahead of the vote, said police Brig. Gen. Mohammad Mesheb Hajea, who oversees the training program.
Iraqi forces have been reluctant to expand the use of bomb-sniffing dogs until recently because of Muslim traditions that view dogs as unclean. The dogs will be used to search cars, buildings, and other areas, though they will not be used to check people for explosives unless a specific individual is a suspected bomber, Hajea said. “Our culture is different from the European culture and the American culture,” said Hajea, who also runs his own veterinary clinic in Baghdad. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has said Iraqi authorities have requested scanners capable of looking inside sealed portions of vehicles in addition to the dog teams.
Export ban
Two weeks ago the U.K. government banned the export of the hand-held device which had been marketed as a bomb-detection device in Iraq and Afghanistan because of allegations that it does not work.
The U.K. Press Association reported that police had arrested Jim McCormick, the director of ATSC, the company that makes the device, on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation. The report said McCormick had been released on bail.
Bomb-sniffing dogs to replace worthless magic wands in Iraq
Published 4 February 2010
The police said that it launched an investigation after the force became “aware of the existence of a piece of equipment around which there were many concerns.”
ATSC’s product, the ADE651, is marketed as a bomb detector and has been reportedly bought in large numbers by the Iraqi military to use at security checkpoints. The Iraqi government is understood to have spent about $85 million buying thousands of ADE651 bomb detectors for use at its 400 checkpoints.
While the United Kingdom has said it would discuss the issue with Iraqi authorities, the export ban is limited to Iraq and Afghanistan based on the danger it could cause to British troops operating there.
Britain’s department for business, innovation and skills said in a statement that its “legal power to control these goods is based on the risk that they could cause harm to U.K. and other friendly forces.”
British authorities did acknowledge that independent weapons experts had cast doubt on the device. “Tests have shown that the technology used in the ADE651 and similar devices is not suitable for bomb detection,” the statement said. “As soon as it was brought to the attention of the Export Control Organization and Lord [Peter] Mandelson [the U.K. business secretary] we acted urgently to put in place export restrictions which will come into force next week.”
Background
Last year, the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization seeking to debunk claims of the paranormal, publicly offered ATSC $1 million if it could pass a scientific test proving that the device could detect explosives. Mr. Randi said no one from the company had taken up the offer.
ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.
IT DOES! The market is huge and no one has a product that is currently able to do the job. With the General Dynamics, Viaspace, Sionex and Imaginative Technologies Consortium and funding by the DOD for continued research, they may eventually provide the needed technology to do the job and get in on the ground floor of this lucrative market.
VIASPACE Press Release
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIASPACE to Demonstrate New System for Chemical, Explosive and Toxic Gas Detection to U.S. Army
05/04/2009
Under $750,000 Phase II Contract
PASADENA, CA-May 4, 2009-VIASPACE Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: VSPC) a clean energy company with subsidiary operations in security-related systems and technology, has scheduled a mid-May 2009 field demonstration of its new detection and analysis system for identifying hazardous chemicals, explosives, industrial toxic gases, and the chemical components of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The demonstration is part of a phase II contract awarded by the U.S. Army in August 2008. The contract provides up to $750,000 in funding over a two-year period.
Through its subsidiary Ionfinity, VIASPACE is developing a new chemical-agent sensor in joint collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, General Dynamics, Sionex, and Imaginative Technologies. The program, entitled "Advanced Robotic Detection of Chemical Agents, Toxic Industrial Gases, and IEDs for Force Health Protection," was awarded by the U.S. Army's Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program. The objective of the program is to develop and demonstrate a prototype-an enhanced version of General Dynamics' JUNOTM hand-held chemical agent detector incorporating VIASPACE's chemical-agent sensor-that can be mounted onto unmanned ground vehicles for missions involving combat-casualty care and protection of medical personnel.
Ionfinity also has a $786,000 contract with the U.S. Navy entitled "Miniature Electronic Sniffer for Navy Vertical Take off Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (VTUAVs)"
Ionfinity Chairman, Chief Operating Officer and Principal Investigator James Weiss said: "We believe this and other security-related systems being developed at Ionfinity and through VIASPACE's collaborations will be able to meet the ongoing needs for improved capabilities to detect a range of hazardous chemicals and gases, explosives and other dangerous substances and materials. Due to the nature and number of these threats, detection systems also have to be easy-to-use, provide timely and accurate readings, and be compact and durable."
In addition to the security industry, in which approximately $55 billion is spent annually, Weiss sees potential for this new detection system to be applied in chemical analysis and monitoring for defense and homeland security, and commercial applications in environmental monitoring, agriculture and medicine.
According to Company information, the chemical-sensor system includes: 1) a powerful new detector called a Differential Mobility Spectrometer; 2) a non-radioactive ionization method that does not fragment or multiply-ionize sampled specimens; and 3) a micro-gas chromatograph for confirmation and enhanced detection capability. The system will detect chemicals at anywhere from parts-per-trillion (ppt) to parts-per-billion (ppb) levels within 6 seconds.
T9F,
I can't locate the article, but here are two articles that may be of interest to you and the board:
BAGHDAD — Despite major bombings that have rattled the nation, and fears of rising violence as American troops withdraw, Iraq’s security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless.
Johan Spanner for The New York Times
The sensor device, known as the ADE 651, from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Iraq has bought more than 1,500 of the devices.
The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.
Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.
With violence dropping in the past two years, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has taken down blast walls along dozens of streets, and he contends that Iraqis will safeguard the nation as American troops leave.
But the recent bombings of government buildings here have underscored how precarious Iraq remains, especially with the coming parliamentary elections and the violence expected to accompany them.
The suicide bombers who managed to get two tons of explosives into downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25, killing 155 people and destroying three ministries, had to pass at least one checkpoint where the ADE 651 is typically deployed, judging from surveillance videos released by Baghdad’s provincial governor. The American military does not use the devices. “I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives,” said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military. “If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work.”
The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.
Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”
The Justice Department has warned against buying a variety of products that claim to detect explosives at a distance with a portable device. Normal remote explosives detection machinery, often employed in airports, weighs tons and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ADE 651’s clients are mostly in developing countries; no major country’s military or police force is a customer, according to the manufacturer.
“I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.”
He attributed the decrease in bombings in Baghdad since 2007 to the use of the wands at checkpoints. American military officials credit the surge in American forces, as well as the Awakening movement, in which Iraqi insurgents turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, for the decrease.
Aqeel al-Turaihi, the inspector general for the Ministry of the Interior, reported that the ministry bought 800 of the devices from a company called ATSC (UK) Ltd. for $32 million in 2008, and an unspecified larger quantity for $53 million. Mr. Turaihi said Iraqi officials paid up to $60,000 apiece, when the wands could be purchased for as little as $18,500. He said he had begun an investigation into the no-bid contracts with ATSC.
Jim McCormick, the head of ATSC, based in London, did not return calls for comment.
The Baghdad Operations Command announced Tuesday that it had purchased an additional 100 detection devices, but General Rowe said five to eight bomb-sniffing dogs could be purchased for $60,000, with provable results.
Checking cars with dogs, however, is a slow process, whereas the wands take only a few seconds per vehicle. “Can you imagine dogs at all 400 checkpoints in Baghdad?” General Jabiri said. “The city would be a zoo.”
Speed is not the only issue. Colonel Bidlack said, “When they say they are selling you something that will save your son or daughter on a patrol, they’ve crossed an insupportable line into moral depravity.”
Last year, the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization seeking to debunk claims of the paranormal, publicly offered ATSC $1 million if it could pass a scientific test proving that the device could detect explosives. Mr. Randi said no one from the company had taken up the offer.
ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.
To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable,” Colonel Bidlack said, “except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”
Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.
Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.
If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.
On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle.
During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.
“You need more training,” the general said.
Riyadh Mohammed contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 5, 2009
An article on Wednesday about a bomb detection device used by the Iraqi security forces that is considered useless and costly by the American military misstated the surname of the leader of ATSC (UK) Ltd., the London-based company that has sold hundreds of the devices to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. He is Jim McCormick, not Mitchell.
Ionfinity - Monitoring and Detection Systems
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ionfinity is developing next-generation sensors based on new mass spectrometry (MS) technology that can detect and analyze extremely small quantities (or residues) of chemicals and hazardous materials such as explosives, toxic gases, chemical/biological weapons and drugs.
And with the incorporation of Ionfinity miniaturization technology, new portable monitoring devices and detection systems are being developed for homeland security, defense, biomedical, industrial process control, agricultural and environmental monitoring and safety applications.
Markets
Ionfinity's new sensor technology has direct application in the defense and homeland security industry, in which approximately $55 billion is spent annually, as well as potential applications in chemical analysis and monitoring for commercial applications, such as environmental monitoring, agriculture and medicine.
Technology
Ionfinity is developing a "soft-ionization" technology for next-generation mass spectrometers, differential mobility spectrometers and systems dependent on ion-level sampling that can not only revolutionize the traditional applications of MS for industrial process control, biomedical, and environmental monitoring but also lead to new detection systems for homeland security.
The latest technology being developed enables detection at levels from ppt (parts-per-trillion) to sub-ppb (parts-per-billion) within 10 seconds and, with miniaturization, by a system no larger than a shoe box. And with projected ruggedness, low power consumption and low cost, the system could be used in many applications where monitoring of air, water or other substances is required.
Product Development
Ionfinity is developing a compact, stand-alone chemical-sensing device consisting of: 1) a new and powerful detector called a Differential Mobility Spectrometer; 2) a non-radioactive ionization method that does not fragment or multiply-ionize sampled specimens; and 3) a micro-gas chromatograph for confirmation and enhanced detection capability. The device will detect chemicals and materials of interest at ppt (parts-per-trillion) to ppb (parts-per-billion) levels after 6 seconds. The sensor is self contained with respect to power and communications.
Research & Development and Technology Partners
Ionfinity is involved in ongoing collaborations with California Institute of Technology (Caltech), National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA), and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Ionfinity is also involved in partnerships with General Dynamics Corp., Sionex Corp., and Imaginative Technologies LLC.
Business Partners
Development Projects
Current development projects include:
A U.S. Navy contract to develop and commercialize a miniaturized, high-sensitivity system for detecting and analyzing chemical, explosive, and drug residues in suspect vessels. (See News, April 21, 2009)
A U.S. Army contract to develop and demonstrate a prototype—an enhanced version of General Dynamics' JUNO(™) hand-held chemical agent detector incorporating VIASPACE's chemical-agent sensor—detection and analysis system to identify the chemical components of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). (See News, May 4, 2009)
News on the British Bomb Detection Device
Export ban
Two weeks ago the U.K. government banned the export of the hand-held device which had been marketed as a bomb-detection device in Iraq and Afghanistan because of allegations that it does not work.
The U.K. Press Association reported that police had arrested Jim McCormick, the director of ATSC, the company that makes the device, on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation. The report said McCormick had been released on bail.
Looks like the ATSC product went to the dogs-literally!
They should have waited for IONFINITY which is still undergoing testing. Were all waiting for IONFINITY SHOWTIME!