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Vista wins Olympic gold; XP doesn’t place.
July 1, 2008
An NBC deal means Vista users can watch the entire Beijing Olympic Games through online streaming. But those on XP are out of luck, as are Mac and open source users.
Technically the deal isn’t favoring Vista as such; rather the set-up will only work on Media Center, meaning you’ll need either either the Home Premium or Ultimate editions.
That eliminates an even greater proportion of the potential audience: many business users on notebook PCs will be unable to watch, while handheld devices such as video iPods are also a no-go.
Even those who are able to take advantage of the service will have to download an extra piece of software, Wavexpress, to be able to see the video. As analyst Phil Leigh pointed out to Investors Business Daily, that’s likely to be offputting, particularly given that popular video sites such as YouTube don’t require any additional software.
Wavexpress is actually the key to the deal: it’s fundamentally an agreement between NBC and Wave Systems, which produces the software, rather than NBC teaming up with Microsoft.
It’s likely NBC chose to partner with Wave Systems to make it easier to sell advertising that will be inserted in the videos. It’s likely they’ll be able to command high rates among firms which want to target fans of particular sports. However, it’s questionable whether this will outweigh the potential revenue from broadcasting online to a wider audience through all operating systems (or even just all Windows users).
The broadcast deal partially makes up for Vista’s previous Olympic disappointment. Games organisers originally decided to use XP for all official tasks such as scheduling and tracking results, with reports they feared Vista wasn’t reliably stable enough. They later decided to switch to Unix for the core work, though XP will still appear on many official desktop PCs.
Broadband Enterprises, ScanScount.
Note: Prior Blockbuster post relatest to StupidVideos.com.
Broadband Enterprises Partners with ScanScout for Video Overlay Ads
April 22, 2008
While video advertising is still rather experimental as many attempt to move away from pre-roll ads and others merely try to monetize online video in the best way possible, it appears to be the interactive overlay ads that are beginning to get the most attention from video ad networks. Broadband Enterprises has a wide array of big name clients that utilize its video network, and has in fact done a great deal in the way of pre-roll ads.
Now, in an effort to add some variety to the mix, BBE has signed an exclusive partnership with ScanScout to provide overlay video ads. ScanScout has been building up its client base and working on alternatives to the pre-roll video ad for some time now, and has created an auto-match technology for optimizing ad placement across videos in its publishers’ networks.
I’m sure we’ll see more of the bigger names in the online video advertising space building on the current appeal of in-stream overlay ads in order to incorporate more interactive options for advertising purposes, which can also be automated to a large degree. VideoClix is an example of how this can be developed out for marketing campaigns within a network environment on the advertisers and publishers ends.
Time Warner Invests in ScanScout
September 9, 2007
Time Warner Investments has joined the Series A round of video advertising startup ScanScout. The amount of the investment was not disclosed, though the round had originally netted $7 million in May from General Catalyst Parters, Ron Conway, and First Round Capital.
We spoke with ScanScout CEO Doug McFarland last week, who said the strategic investment from the media giant would help open up industry connections, paving the way for cooperation with other Time Warner (TWX) video properties such as Truveo. Time Warner has a variety of online video-related investments, including Veoh Networks and Ripe Digital Entertainment.
ScanScout is serving between 25 and 30 video advertising campaigns on some 13 to 15 sites, including blip.tv, Operator11, and Next New Networks, according to McFarland. Remember the company’s strength is contextual targeting, done mostly on a performance basis so advertisers only pay when a viewer clicks on an ad.
The ad units are similar to those used by YouTube and VideoEgg, where a text ad telescopes into an overlaid video ad when a viewer clicks on it. An upcoming feature includes the ability to include ads in embedded video players, which seems like a natural step but could present problems with sites like MySpace, which don’t allow outsiders to make money off their pages.
Interestingly, McFarland admitted that due to the inappropriateness of placing its advertisers’ next to content like porn or bad news, the market for video ads is greatly reduced. “We are finding that for a lot of video — plus-50 percent of the video streams out there — there’s not an appropriate ad to serve,” he said.
ScanScout employs 22 people in offices in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Are Online Video Advertisers the Next Acquisition Targets?
June 04, 2007
Online Advertising has been getting lots of attention, evidenced by Google’s (GOOG) Doubleclick acquisition, Microsoft’s (MSFT) aQuantive (AQNT) acquisition, and Yahoo’s (YHOO) RightMedia acquisition. My earlier post discusses additional potential roll-ups in the world of online advertising agencies.
Online video advertising, a relatively newer concept in Internet marketing, is quickly becoming an important opportunity, evidenced in a study indicating that almost 6 viewers out of 10 watch video clips on the Internet. Google’s acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion clearly authenticated this trend, although monetization of these video viewership is still minimal.
According to eMarketer, online video advertising by 2010 will constitute 10% of all Internet marketing. Another study by Online Publishers Association shows that 44% of those watching an online video ad after watching the advertisement took an action such as visiting a Web site, going to a store or requesting additional product information. According to Adams Media Research, advertisers by 2011 will spend approximately $1.7 billion on Internet video advertising.
I suspect that from now on Microsoft will become more alert about what it needs to acquire, how soon and at what price. Google, most likely, will try to crack this nut via internal R&D and unless a startup comes up with rocket science technology and IP, that is protected by patents, their approach will likely be to challenge the droves of Computer Science Phds to justify their existence by coming up with the technology themselves. Yahoo, on the other hand, also needs to keep up the acquisitions.
So whom would Microsoft, Yahoo and others acquire next to plug the holes in their video ad technology portfolio?
One of the more visible startups in the field is ScanScout. Based in Massachusetts, ScanScout, a new entrant to the race, claims to display relevant video ads based on the clips being viewed, similar to the way Google AdWords functions. It uses tags, metadata, colors, text and audio of a clip to identify video ads to be displayed. The organization demonstrated this by showing the advertisement of a sports car when cars were being discussed. ScanScout technology further allows customers to place additional ads so they appear as a conversation moves from one topic to another.
In addition to displaying keywords based ads, ScanScout offers advertisers to choose categories in which they want to show their ads. ScanScout gets a commission when Web site visitors click on a video ad. With ScanScout advertisers can limit their ads from getting associated with undesirable content.
PureVideo Networks, parent of StupidVideos.com, Blip Networks, parent of blip.tv, and NBC Universal (GE) are some organizations that have so far tried ScanScout and seem to be impressed with the service. Microsoft finds ScanScout’s technology “pretty interesting stuff”.
ScanScout’s key investors include Georges Harik, previously an executive with Google, where he assisted in the development of Google’s search technology. Other investors are General Catalyst Partners, Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital and Ron Conway, the Angel investor with a golden touch.
Scanscout looks like a possibility.
Velocity Interactive Group
"What's really expensive are companies with very little revenue and no earnings, but lots of users." Could this apply to Wavexpress with the Olympic Deal?
Velocity Interactive Put $10 Million Into Broadband Enterprises.
Levinsohn, Miller Linking With SV VC ComVentures
December 18, 2007
Former Fox Interactive head Ross Levinsohn and former AOL CEO Jon Miller, who spent the fall trying to launch a digital media rollup with the backing of private equity group General Atlantic, have moved on. They're now joining up with Palo Alto-based VC firm ComVentures, or at least parts of it -- the two will link up with of three of ComVentures partners, and their $1 billion plus-portfolio. Levinsohn and Miller's new company gets their old company's name -- Velocity Interactive Group.
Confused? It doesn't get a lot clearer. Levinsohn and Miller say that technically, they're continuing with their jobs advising General Atlantic, but don't spell out why they tabled their plans to launch a rollup fund. We also can't shed much light on what's become of two ComVentures partners who are no longer with the company.
Levinsohn and Miller generated a lot of buzz over the past few months -- first when they looked to have launched a deep-pocketed M&A effort, and later, as they came close but never acquired anything with GA. Now the two say that they've made deals, after all -- but that they were done alongside ComVentures: Indian TV companies NDTV Networks and IndiaTV; Fabrik, a media storage company; Doppleganger, a Second Life-like "virtual world"; and Mixercast, which has something to do with "creation, publication and distribution of all types of rich-media expression."
Next up: Levinsohn says the new company will look to invest in more digital media deals, up to the $20 million to $30 million range; he says they're in the midst of 2 to 4 deals that could close by February.
"It's getting a little more irrational, and I think 2008 is going to be worse. There is a level of fear and desperation out there from buyers and it is easier to buy than to create." says Levinsohn, who's best known as the guy who helped Rupert Murdoch buy MySpace for a song in 2005. "What's really expensive are companies with very little revenue and no earnings, but lots of users. Somewhat affordable are companies with decent revenue, some earnings, but smaller user growth."
Levinsohn and Miller form Internet roll-up fund
August 31st, 2007 Ross Levinsohn (left), the former News Corp. exec who masterminded the early acquisition of popular social networking company MySpace, has formed a new firm that will invest in Internet businesses.
Levinsohn is reportedly being joined by Jonathan Miller (below), former chief executive of America Online.
It is called Velocity Investment Group, according to the WSJ, and sounds very much like the plan Levinsohn was rumored to be making last November. According to that rumor, he was caught raising an Internet “roll-up” fund while still employed at News Corp., and was forced to leave. Levinsohn has never commented on those reports
A roll-up fund is one that “rolls up” multiple properties in a single industry to make a more efficient behemoth. Velocity will purchase start-ups in related content areas and boost their online ad revenue by selling across multiple properties, according to the WSJ report. Velocity is also considering buying out companies that broker ads for other Web sites. It is being advised by the investment bank Allen & Co.
Both men have also become advisers to a large private equity firm, General Atlantic, and will work with that firm’s investments in media and consumer companies. GA issued a press release today about their role, but it’s expected that GA is backing Velocity in some way.
GA has invested $1.3 billion in more than 20 companies in the digital media and consumer sector since 1995, including AKQA, Dice, Network Solutions and NDTV.
Broadband Enterprises.
“TVTonic makes money via advertising. It has a deal with ad network Broadband Enterprises, which sells ads in about 20 percent of the feeds coming into the service.”
Velocity Interactive Puts $10 Million Into Broadband Enterprises
The newly formed Velocity Interactive Group (Jonathan Miller’s and Ross Levinsohn’s vehicle for investing in digital media) is making its first investment: $10 million in video ad network Broadband Enterprises . Already one of the largest video ad networks and producers of video commercials for the Web, its video ads reach about 45 million people a month through 1,800 affiliate sites. In comparison, video ad network Tremor Media, which raised $11 million on Monday, reaches twice as many people. But video is hot, and whoever can scale the fastest will be sitting pretty. As Miller (the former CEO of AOL) tells me:
The agencies want to deal with a handful of people. They can deal with a dozen sites—the Security Council. They can’t deal with the General Assembly. So the game is really about can we be one of the 10 or 12 that they deal with. Scale matters.
Broadband Enterprises CEO Matt Wasserlauf estimates that his company streams 200 to 300 million video ads per month. He says that advertisers like American Express, AT&T, Honda, McDonald’s and Proctor & Gamble like his Vindico video ad software because it reports back metrics immediately in terms of time spent watching the ads and click-throughs. (With some other competing video ad platforms there is still a delay in when advertisers get that feedback).
Even though the New York City startup was formed four years ago, this is the first outside money it is taking. Velocity is putting up the entire A round itself. “They are cash-flow positive and making money today,” says Miller, on tens of millions of dollars in revenues. That’s an easy investment decision.
Video syndicator and pre-roll provider Broadband Enterprises has raised $10 million from Velocity Interactive, a VC firm helmed by Ross Levinsohn, the former President of Fox Interactive and Jonathan Miller, AOL’s former Chairman and CEO.
Matt Wasserlauf
Chief Executive Officer
Matthew Wasserlauf, is a 16-year veteran in the media and broadband advertising industry. He created and formed Broadband Enterprises in April, 2004 and currently serves as the company’s CEO. Broadband Enterprises is the first, full-service broadband company and is the premier online video network.
For the past three years under Wasserlauf’s leadership, Broadband Enterprises has been servicing its clients through the sales of online advertising, syndicated programming, original online programming and VINDICO, the company’s own created research tool, making Broadband Enterprises one of the few full-service broadband companies.
Prior to forming Broadband Enterprises, Wasserlauf spent four years as the VP of Sales at The Feed Room. Under his guidance, Wasserlauf help created millions in advertising revenue and help lay the foundation for the streaming video advertising industry today.
Prior to joining The Feed Room, he spent a year as the Director of Sales for CBS.com. During his tenure Wasserlauf delivered over $10 million in revenue for cbs.com. He also pioneered sales; selling websites including “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “Survivor.”
In 1999, he completed his MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and graduated Indiana University in 1991 with a B.S. in marketing.
Wasserlauf resides in Haworth, N.J. with his wife Dara and his two sons, Zachary and Theo.
Bryon Evje
President of Technology
Bryon Evje has been the Chief Operating Officer of Broadband Enterprises for over two years and has been responsible for expanding the company’s network across 1,700 web publishers, whose aggregate monthly footprint includes 800 million video streams and approximately 25 million unique users. He joined Broadband Enterprises in October, 2004.
In addition to overseeing the company’s affiliate network, Evje has structured strategic programming partnerships and built the company’s syndication and technology businesses. He is also responsible for helping shape the company’s original production strategy and partnerships.
Prior to joining Broadband Enterprises, Evje was vice president for broadband video distributor Wavexpress, with primary responsibilities including fulfilling operational and sales functions for one of the web’s pioneering Video On Demand (VOD) technology providers.
Evje began his internet career as a professional sports content provider for ACSSports, he was responsible for all programming operations for a host of major professional sports teams, including the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Browns and Washington Capitals.
He began his professional career as a sportswriter, where he wrote for a variety of sports websites, including ESPN.com, Fox Sports.com, The Sporting News.com, as well as online advertising industry trade magazines and websites.
He graduated form New York Tech in Long Island in 1995 with a BA in Communications.
Evje currently resides in Atlanta, GA, with his wife Joanne and his two sons Tyler and Griffin.
Darryl LaRue
EVP, Marketing and Operations
Darryl LaRue has joined Broadband Enterprises as the executive vice president of operations & marketing in January, 2007.
In this role, LaRue will be responsible for the development and execution of all of the company’s online video campaigns. He will also be responsible for managing & developing the company’s operations, marketing & sales planning groups.
Prior to joining Broadband Enterprises, LaRue was VP of sales & business development for Warner Bros., digital distribution division. During his two and a half years, he managed a bicoastal online sales force that helped generate revenue for the studio in online media advertising & digital licensing.
During his tenure at Warner Bros., he was instrumental in the launch of new business areas, including online syndicated library distribution of Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera properties and original “made for broadband” content development with successful online properties such as Waiting 2 B Discovered and On Set, On Edge.
Prior to Warner Bros., he was the director of interactive sales for NBC TV stations division, where he managed all online revenues for the 13 NBC TV stations, four Telemundo stations and Access Hollywood’s web properties.
LaRue was internally transferred into his role at NBC after working at General Electric’s corporate headquarters in the corporate strategy group, corporate initiatives.
He possesses digital startup experience from his tenure at Live365.com, where he assisted in building one of the top streaming music networks in the online space.
http://www.broadbandenterprises.com/2008/Advertising/
Blockbuster's Movielink.
Interesting that this also uses Microsofts silverlight and media player. One of the other handful of companies mentioned in Bert1956's article. Seems like they could have hosted the Olympics event. Wonder if Blockbuster will be paying attention to Wavexpress?
Paramount Gives Away Next Jackass Movie Online
Dec 14, 2007
Jackass 2.5 is coming to an Internet screen near you, and it's free. Paramount Pictures, MTV and Blockbuster have partnered to distribute the latest feature length film from the daredevil reality franchise in an ad-supported environment.
From December 19th through the 31st, the film will be distributed by movie rental firm Blockbuster's Movielink service as a streaming video over Microsoft's Silverlight media player. The movie won't be directly available from Blockbuster, but instead will be distributed by the movie's own site at blockbuster.jackassworld.com. As co-sponsor, Blockbuster will manage advertising for initial distribution of the film.
Blockbuster will also sell pre- and post-roll video advertising, and has signed on Clearspring to manage its inventory. Additionally, interactive marketing firm Deep Focus will support the release, according to CEO Ian Schafer.
Distributing a feature length ad-supported film online is new territory for Paramount, according to Alex Carloss, EVP and GM Digital Distribution for the studio.
"It was a wonderful opportunity to take a look at the standard model and see if we could shake it up a bit -- to prove that distribution over the Internet is real," he said.
The original Jackass television show aired on MTV from 2000 to 2001, and consisted of cast members conducting dangerous stunts or playing pranks. Jackass seemed appropriate for online distribution compared to other Paramount and MTV content, the company said, as a majority of its fans are from a younger demographic and accustomed to watching short videos online, said Carloss.
http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627880
New Online Video Distribution.
Report: Blockbuster in talks to join Hollywood Video-On-Demand joint venture
April 29th, 2008
“We’re exploring our options, so it’s not surprising there are rumors out there”, says a Blockbuster spokeswoman.
The latest rumor, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, is that the company best known for its ‘bricks and mortar’ video rental business wants to join the recently announced Hollywood joint venture, led by Viacom, to create a new premium TV channel and Video-On-Demand (VOD) service. The other existing partners are Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate.
In return for investing, Blockbuster would get digital rights to the new channel’s programming, “people familiar with the situation” told the WSJ.
Blockbuster is an obvious possible partner. It used to be owned by Viacom, whose executives know its business well. Blockbuster also has been casting its net wide for new partners as it attempts to spruce up its video-rental business model with new digital ventures. Last year, it acquired Internet movie provider Movielink to offer video-download services to customers, and it has focused on forging exclusive content deals for its various services.
Ironically, the Viacom-led joint venture is already being compared negatively to the original Movielink service, which started life in 2002 as a joint venture between Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and MGM, but failed to resonate with users. Last August Movielink was acquired by Blockbuster.
Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate form ‘game changing’ joint venture
April 21st, 2008
If you were going to announce a new ‘game changing’ joint venture involving four leading Hollywood studios, you wouldn’t choose to do it on a Sunday, right? Because that’s precisely what Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate have done, with their newly formed premium TV channel and VOD service, which will be rolled out in the fall of 2009.
While details given in the press release are thin on the ground, plastered over by a very generous helping of hyperbole, the yet-to-be named “Innovative Premium Entertainment Service” will offer new and classic feature films and original TV programing from each of the studios involved, and in what looks like a major shake up of the traditional U.S. pay TV market (lookout HBO, Showtime and Starz), the joint venture will have first access to upcoming films such as “Iron Man,” “Star Trek,” “The Pink Panther 2,” “Cloverfield” and “Robocop.” The combined back catalog will also cover classic hits such as “Dirty Dancing,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Crash,” “Braveheart,” “Forrest Gump,” the “Godfather” series and the Rocky and James Bond franchises, notes Hollywood Reporter.
However, of more significance to last 100, the new joint venture will have a strong online component, according to an interview given to paidContent by Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman: “As we go forward and make further announcements, you will see that this will be oriented toward the consumer. It will also meet the needs of varying distributors and take advantage of online distribution…innovative both in presenting the content and in distributing it.” Dauman says that the joint venture will enable the studios involved to have greater control over their own destiny compared to traditional distribution deals, in terms of what they can and can’t offer online during competing release windows. This suggests to me that we may see paid-for downloads of premium content offered at the same time as pay TV.
Viacom, Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate Form New Joint Venture to Create an Innovative Premium Entertainment Service
Next-Generation Premium Television Channel and Video on Demand Service to Offer New and Classic Box Office Hits and Original Television Series from Paramount, Paramount Vantage, MGM, United Artists and Lionsgate for Distribution in the Premium Pay Television Window Beginning Fall of 2009
April 20 Viacom Inc. NYSE: VIA NYSE: VIA.B, its Paramount Pictures unit, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) and Lionsgate NYSE: LGF have formed a joint venture that creates a next- generation premium television channel and video on demand service that combines new and classic feature film output and original television series of five leading studios. The new premium channel, which will launch in the fall of 2009, was announced jointly today by Philippe Dauman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom Inc.; Brad Grey, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures; Harry E. Sloan, Chairman and CEO, Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM); and Jon Feltheimer, Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lionsgate.
The new venture will have access to Paramount and Paramount Vantage titles released theatrically on or after January 1, 2008 and MGM, United Artists and Lionsgate titles released theatrically on or after January 1, 2009. The venture's programming slate will have exclusive access during the pay television window to such recent and highly anticipated films as Iron Man, Star Trek, Pink Panther 2, Cloverfield, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Shutter Island, GI Joe, Love Guru, and Valkyrie, along with many others currently in production including planned new installments of Robocop and Outer Limits.
In addition, the new venture will have access to motion picture titles spanning the vast libraries of the five studios, which libraries include Braveheart, Forrest Gump and the Mission: Impossible, The Godfather and Star Trek franchises from Paramount; the James Bond, Pink Panther and Rocky franchises from MGM; and Dirty Dancing, Reservoir Dogs, Crash, Monster's Ball, the Saw franchise, the Tyler Perry catalogue and The Blair Witch Project from Lionsgate. The new venture will also feature new original television series created by the five studios.
Viacom will provide operational support to the venture, including marketing and affiliate services through its MTV Networks division.
Dauman said: "This venture has the potential to be a game changer for the industry. We are building an innovative service that will use traditional and new digital distribution technologies to bring great film and television entertainment directly to the consumer. By combining the output of Paramount with MGM and Lionsgate, two film and television powerhouses, we are creating a premium film and television programming brand with unique flexibility to bring consumers the very best blockbuster movies and innovative TV series.
"We are extremely pleased to be in business with MGM and Lionsgate in this exciting new venture which will provide our companies with a strong presence in the premium TV marketplace well into the future."
Grey said, "For close to a century, Paramount has produced and distributed some of America's best-known and beloved films - a tradition that continues today, with an outstanding lineup set through 2009. That commitment to great entertainment is matched by Paramount's focus on creating new and innovative platforms that offer more access and flexibility to consumers. We look forward to launching this historic premium entertainment service with a strong slate that includes new releases like Cloverfield, Iron Man, and Star Trek alongside Paramount's legendary library."
Sloan said, "At MGM, we are very pleased to have found two partners that share our vision of providing first-run movies and premium-quality original television programming across linear and digital platforms in a new way. Our approach delivers unique flexibility for program distributors as well as consumer options that will provide the highest quality entertainment. The newly revitalized MGM, under the direction of Mary Parent, Chairman, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, is preparing to bring top projects to the venture including the newly acquired Robert Ludlum's The Maratese Circle, which will star Denzel Washington as well as franchised movies based on James Bond, Pink Panther and Thomas Crown."
Feltheimer said, "We are excited to be working with two of the most respected studios in the business to start a new venture which marshals the historic legacy of the past, the filmed entertainment leadership of the present and a vision for the digital marketplace of the future. Our prestigious and prolific libraries, diverse and commercially powerful new feature film releases and enormous television series development expertise combine to make this a formidable and uniquely compelling entertainment service from day one. This is a true next-generation premium content offering for the consumer."
Paramount has been a leading producer and distributor of motion pictures since 1912 and has a library consisting of approximately 3,500 motion pictures. In 2007, the studio theatrically released Transformers, Blades of Glory, Norbit, Beowulf, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Kite Runner, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men, among others, receiving 26 Academy Award nominations and winning 7 Academy Awards. The Paramount library boasts Oscar winners Braveheart, Forrest Gump, and Titanic, as well as such classics as The Ten Commandments, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Sunset Boulevard. In addition, several of the most successful franchises in film history, including Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, The Godfather and Indiana Jones, are part of the Paramount Pictures library. Paramount's leadership has also produced some of the most celebrated programs on television, including HBO's The Sopranos.
MGM owns the world's largest modern film library and it is comprised of celebrated titles from the United Artists, Orion Pictures, Goldwyn Entertainment and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment libraries. The rich and extensive library has earned 205 Academy Awards including 15 for Best Picture for such films as Dances With Wolves, Rain Man, The Silence of the Lambs, Annie Hall, Platoon, Midnight Cowboy and West Side Story. MGM films have also won 156 Golden Globe Awards and 147 British Academy Awards. With approximately 4,100 films and over 10,400 hours of television programming, the MGM library includes such tentpole feature film franchises as Rocky and Pink Panther and the celebrated James Bond franchise, the longest running and most profitable film brand in history. The studio also has a successful television track record, with programs like People's Choice Award winner Stargate Atlantis, which has begun production on its fifth original season and the ratings-winning series American Gladiators for NBC.
Lionsgate is the leading independent producer and distributor of motion pictures, television programming, home entertainment, family entertainment, video on demand and digitally delivered content. The Lionsgate filmed entertainment library comprises approximately 12,000 titles, including such evergreen hits as Dirty Dancing, Reservoir Dogs, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, The Blair Witch Project, Crash, Monster's Ball, the Saw franchise, the hit television series Weeds and the entire Tyler Perry catalogue. Recent Lionsgate hits include Forbidden Kingdom, Tyler Perry's Meet The Browns, The Bank Job, Rambo, Saw 4, 3:10 To Yuma, Good Luck Chuck, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? and War. Lionsgate won the 2005 Best Picture Academy Award (R) for Crash and has earned 31 Academy Award (R) nominations in the past nine years, more than any other independent studio. In addition, Lionsgate's fast-growing television business has generated the recent hit comedy Weeds and critical sensation Mad Men.
Snackman.
“In addition to going Vista-only for this downloadable Olympics coverage, NBC will be cross-promoting the MSN brand on NBCOlympics.com and featuring Olympics coverage prominently on MSN.com.”
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080623-nbc-olympics-on-the-go-download-service-is-vista-only.html
NBC Olympic Advertising revenue.
It will be interesting to see what the rates are for the download service and what the Wavexpress percentage equals.
NBC SUFFERING ITS OWN OLYMPIC TRIAL$
June 4, 2008 -- With just two months until the Beijing Olympics, NBC is scrambling to sell out ad time for its broadcast of the Games.
The Peacock network is said to be aggressively pushing advertisers and their agencies to buy spots during the Olympics as part of the "upfront" sales negotiations that started in mid-May.
Ad execs estimated NBC was anywhere from $150 million to $300 million shy of its sales target.
Officially, though, an NBC spokesman said sales were on track. "We're about 80 percent sold and on pace with past games," said NBC's Brian Walker.
In April, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker said the network had sold about 75 percent of the available Olympic ad time and that demand was "incredibly strong."
General Electric-owned NBC is also pushing promotional tie-ins and other ad deals to unload as much time as possible before the opening ceremonies in August, ad execs said.
"Whenever you negotiate with the networks you try to figure out what the hot-button issues are and the Olympics are definitely a hot-button issue for them," said one ad buyer, who asked to be unnamed, citing the sensitive talks.
The network aims to pull in $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion in Olympic ad sales, topping the $1 billion goal it set for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.
NBC needs to bring in about $1 billion in ad sales to break even on the games. The network paid about $900 million for the US rights to broadcast the Olympics and will spend another $100 million on coverage.
Most of the big spenders have already bought during the Games, which means NBC will have to chase smaller advertisers to close the gap. NBC is charging north of $750,00 for a single spot. Ad execs said the pro-Tibet protests against China are weighing on the Olympics, despite NBC's assertions to the contrary.
A second culprit is the slowing economy. Ad buyers noted the red-hot "scatter" market - in which advertisers buy whatever ad time is left over after the upfront season ends - has cooled in recent months.
"It's definitely slowed down," said one ad buyer. "The economic situation is now having an impact."
Wave Fan.
Nice article.
So revenue could be based on a percentage of NBC negotiated adverising rates rather than per download?
NBC plans to sell TV-like video ads that will appear with the video downloads. Wavexpress will get a share of the ad revenue.
Some advertisers such as a footwear manufacturer or sporting goods store might be willing to pay top dollar if it means reaching a select audience interested in a specific sport, says Altman Vilandrie's Hurd.
Vista Silverlight requirement.
The following states users must have Microsoft Windows Vista and all video at the NBC Olympics site requires Silverlight. Also states available only to users of Vista or Silverlight. Service is limited to about 100 million people.
NBC service will show Olympic events via computer
Monday, June 23, 2008
Fans will be able to catch up on the Beijing Olympics on their laptops during their commute this summer.
That’s the idea behind the NBC Olympics on the Go service the network announced Monday. Fans select which sports they’re interested in, and the program automatically downloads the coverage once it’s available. Then they can watch the events without being online.
The service, provided by Wavexpress, is free.
Beijing is 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, which means many events will take place while Americans are sleeping. Coverage is expected to generally be available through the service within 12 hours after an event ends.
Users must have Microsoft Windows Vista to use the service, which runs on the operating system’s Media Center. According to Microsoft, about 100 million people have Vista.
NBC Olympics on the Go download service is Vista only
June 23, 2008
NBC announced two significant technology partnerships with Microsoft and Wavexpress today to provide 2008 Olympics coverage over the web. The new initiatives embody a natural evolution for Olympics coverage considering the times—but they're available only to users of Vista or Silverlight.
Powered by Wavexpress' TVTonic Internet video service and client, NBC Olympics on the Go will allow owners of Media-Center-capable Windows Vista PCs (that's Home Premium and Ultimate) to download "up-to-HD" coverage on a sport-by-sport basis. Users can chose from a number of channels in Wavexpress' TVTonic client that NBC's coverage of the Beijing Games will be categorized into, and the NBC Olympics on the Go client will be able to access event coverage roughly 12 hours after an event ends. Ars Technica confirmed with Wavexpress that users will not be able to keep downloaded coverage indefinitely, though videos will remain playable at least for the duration of the games.
In addition to going Vista-only for this downloadable Olympics coverage, NBC will be cross-promoting the MSN brand on NBCOlympics.com and featuring Olympics coverage prominently on MSN.com. As Bill Gates announced at CES back in January, all video at the NBC Olympics site requires Silverlight, Microsoft's rich web application and video streaming technology that competes with Adobe's market-dominant Flash. Microsoft's been pushing Silverlight pretty hard lately, and if a lot of consumers don't have a reason to install it yet, the Beijing Games in August should be a good a reason as any.
"Over the past 20 years, we have continually expanded our coverage of the Olympics to new platforms as they have become available, and the Beijing Games will mark another milestone," said Gary Zenkel, President, NBC Olympics, in a press release. "By teaming up with MSN and Microsoft, we can give both the core fan and casual consumer of the Olympic Games an amazing online experience, combining high-quality video with the storytelling and analysis that we're known for. We chose to partner with MSN and Microsoft," Zenkel continues, "because technologies such as Silverlight help us deliver the kind of next-generation online viewing experience that will change the way the Olympics is experienced for millions of fans in 2008."
Providing summer Olympics coverage in a downloadable format like this is a natural evolution for NBC. For the 2004 Olympics, all the buzz was about the sheer amount of coverage NBC would be broadcasting (over 1,200 hours in total), as well as the introduction of over 300 hours of HD coverage from NBC and its affiliates. With NBC Olympics on the Go, consumers will have a convenient new option for bringing Olympics video footage with them, though the coverage will be sandboxed to PCs—and then just the ones running compatible versions of Vista.
As far as portable media players are concerned, "We are not addressing portable players with this service," Wavexpress told Ars Technica. "NBC has other distribution outlets for other platforms and types of experiences." NBC has yet to make any announcements for those hoping to bring 2008 Olympics footage in something more portable like an iPod, Zune, or PlaysForSure-compatible device.
NBC Universal and copyrights.
NBC Universal Fight For Network Filters To Stop Copyright Infringemen
http://www.webtvwire.com/nbc-universal-fight-for-network-filters-to-stop-copyright-infringement/
May 7, 2008,
Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune
Microsoft has posted an item on its Zune Insder blog related to this. See the end of this post.
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.
A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it. Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it would start selling video programming for the Zune, mainly TV shows. These include programs from NBC Universal, which has pulled its shows off Apple’s iTunes Store.
Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s. He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.
Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.
Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.
For now, both issues are rather theoretical. NBC does have some variation in its wholesale price schedule, although Mr. Perrette declined to describe it. Microsoft has chosen to absorb the differences and sell all shows for about $1.99.
Nonetheless, Mr. Perrette said, NBC wants the flexibility to sell older shows at lower prices and hit shows at higher prices than the standard Apple has set. It also wants to create various deals that would, for example, allow a discount for people buying a season or other group of episodes at one time.
“That separation of the wholesale pricing flexibility and what the retailer decides to charge is core to us,” Mr. Perrette said. “Zune was willing to provide that.”
Similarly, the copyright filtering system is still in development and its exact form has not been set.
Mr. Perrette said the plan was to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.”
He said this would be similar to systems being tested by Microsoft, Google and others that are meant to block pirated clips from video sharing sites. NBC is also working with Internet service providers like AT&T to put similar filters right into the network.
Mr. Perrette added that NBC is trying to develop similar hardware technology with SanDisk, through whom NBC also sells its programming.
Adam Sohn, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to discuss details of this effort other than to say that the software company is exploring anti-piracy measures with NBC. He said Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns.
At the same time, it will be difficult for Microsoft to add features that consumers don’t like to its Zune products, which already lag far behind Apple in the market.
Mr. Perrette said NBC understands the potential resistance. “In the short term, this will not win us a lot of friends,” he said. “In the long term, the consumer wants there to be quality premium-produced content, and in order for that to continue to be a viable business, there needs to be significant protection around it.”
In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member of Microsoft’s Zune team, refers to this post, and the blog discussion it prompted. He writes:
We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.
It’s worth noting that Mr. Perrette told me that Microsoft committed to explore filtering; he didn’t say it committed to implementing those filters.
Here is what Mr. Sohn, the Microsoft spokesman, told me yesterday when I asked him about what Mr. Perrette said: “I don’t think they are wrong, but we are not going to characterize those discussions.” Later he added, “We have agreed to work with NBC across a range of topics, and protection of copyrighted material is certainly one of them.”
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/microsoft-may-build-a-copyright-cop-into-every-zune/
Will NBC Free Olympic Coverage Be Successful?
Media Mogul John Malone Thinks It Is Absurd
June 21, 2008
We’ve seen from the recent debate over Google’s ability to make YouTube profitable, how hard it is to make money from Web video, especially the free-to-watch, ad-supported variety.
John Malone, the billionaire media mogul and chairman of Liberty Media and DirecTV has spoken to The FT about how moves by US networks to put their content online for free may prove to be a bad move in the long-term.
Beijing Olympics Live Online
He drew particular attention to NBC’s plans to offer hundreds of hours of coverage of this summer’s Beijing Olympics online for free, a risk seeing as the network paid $2.3bn for US broadcast rights for the games a few years back.
“I think the idea that they’re going to put television shows and movies on the internet, bypass their traditional
distribution and have no way of collecting revenues is absurd.”
“Very expensive events – expensive to buy and expensive to produce – are not going to have adequate underwriting through advertising.”
“You’ve got to be very careful what you promise to the public on the internet. They’re going to have a very hard time getting anyone to pay them for their content.”
Risky Experiment
Malone has a good point, and it is certainly the case that the networks are taking a big risk offering content on the Internet for free at this stage in the hopes advertising revenue will cover the costs involved.
If experiments such as Hulu fail to prove profitable, how do the networks and programme-makers then extricate themselves from the position they have got in to and start charging for content instead? Web users just wouldn’t stand for it.
Protecting His Interests
However, it is also clear that Malone is trying to protect his business interests because as chairman of a pay-TV broadcaster, if the online experiment does succeed, people will no longer be willing to pay for cable TV services and the like.
The joint NBC and Microsoft collaboration offering free live and on-demand Web coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing is definitely going to be an interesting showcase of the technology to watch the outcome of.
Conclusions
While NBC will likely lose revenue on the Web compared to what they can make with a traditional broadcast, if the coverage draws millions of Web viewers to NBC’s site, it will not only show the potential of such an event, but help NBC gain viewers.
Malone is certainly entitled to his opinion, but when set against his obvious desire to keep the current business model in place, it has to be taken with a pinch of salt.
NBC Universal.
Was there any past deal with Wavexpress and Vivendi?
October 8, 2003
G.E. and Vivendi Agree on Terms of NBC Universal Merger
General Electric and Vivendi Universal S.A. said today that they had signed a definitive agreement to merge Vivendi's American entertainment assets with NBC, G.E.'s broadcasting subsidiary, firming up a deal that was tentatively reached last month.
The new company, to be called NBC Universal, will be 80 percent owned by General Electric. Shareholders of Vivendi Universal Entertainment, the entity G.E. is buying, will own the remaining 20 percent of the combined company.
The companies, in a joint statement, placed an estimated value of the combined entity at $43 billion.
But the actual price General Electric is paying is far less than that.
Under the terms of the transaction, Vivendi will receive about $3.8 billion in cash through a stock offering. Of that total, Vivendi shareholders will get $3.3 billion. The remainder will go to other investors in Vivendi Universal. In addition, General Electric will assume $1.7 billion in Vivendi debt.
Analysts said the terms announced today were not sharply at odds with what was disclosed on Sept. 2, when Vivendi announced it had entered into exclusive talks with General Electric, ending a very public auction for its American entertainment assets that stretched through the summer.
"General Electric paid a fair price," said Tom Burnett, president of Merger Insight, an affiliate of Wall Street Access, an independent broker-dealer and research firm.
"There could be some tax benefits to Vivendi in the deal that we can't see yet," he said. But the "$43 billion valuation number they use is kind of a stretch, because that is more than three times 2003 pro forma revenues and more than 14 times estimated 2003 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization."
Vivendi had been seeking to unload Vivendi Universal, which among other things owns Universal Pictures, Universal Television and a number of cable television stations, to pare a huge pile of debt amassed under Jean-Marie Messier, its former chief executive.
In a conference call from Paris this morning, Jean-Rene Fourtou, Vivendi's chief executive, said the merger would raise Vivendi's earnings per share and cash flow by at least 30 percent in 2004, and possibly by as much as 50 percent, according to Agence France-Presse.
Mr. Burnett and other analysts said the deal should put to rest speculation that General Electric would get out of the broadcasting business.
"A lot of people wanted G.E. to get out of television and to sell NBC at a huge gain," said Mr. Burnett, who personally owns some G.E. shares.
With this deal, General Electric "is saying that NBC is a core competency."
Jeffrey R. Immelt, G.E.'s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement that "with this merger, NBC will stay in the forefront of the fundamental changes taking place in television and other media."
"The new NBC Universal will have the assets, the management team and the operating focus to prosper in a digital world and enhance value for G.E. and Vivendi Universal shareholders," he said.
Because of overlaps in the two businesses, the combined entity will also be able to achieve substantial cost savings. In their joint announcement, the companies said they have identified $400 million to $500 million in potential synergies.
Kerry Stirton, an analyst who follows General Electric at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said that immediately after the Sept. 2 announcement, "I had been saying cost savings of $300 million."
"But now that I have had a chance to pester them more," Mr. Stirton added, "I think their numbers are in the ballpark. Our European media team believes that, too."
As previously announced, Robert C. Wright, NBC's chief executive, will run the new NBC Universal.
As a minority partner, Vivendi will get three seats on the NBC Universal board.
The deal, which still must be approved by American and European regulators, is not expected to close until the first half of 2004, the companies said.
"We don't see any regulatory problems," Mr. Stirton said. "You are creating something that looks a lot like what exists at four other entities," he said, referring to Viacom, AOL Time Warner, Fox and Disney. "They all have a similar vertical integration scheme."
NBC Universal will have about $13 billion in sales. With its expanded position in cable and broadcasting, General Electric will become one of the nation's biggest media companies and should stand to enhance its negotiating position with producers of television programs, analysts said.
NBC Universal's portfolio of cable channels will include USA Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, CNBC, Bravo, Trio and MSNBC, which it owns jointly with the Microsoft Corporation.
NBC Studios and Universal Television, the combined entity's production assets, have a collective library that includes more than 32,000 television episodes.
Universal Pictures, the producer and distributor of motion pictures, has a library of more than 5,000 films.
In the past, Mr. Immelt has said NBC did not need to expand beyond television and into the movies, even though it has been the only major broadcast network without ties to a Hollywood studio.
Since early last month, however, when the company entered into exclusive negotiations with Vivendi, G.E. has defended getting into the movie business, citing Universal Pictures' summer hits "Seabiscuit" and "2 Fast 2 Furious."
Although he has been buying and selling assets since he took over the top jobs at General Electric in September 2001, the deal with Vivendi is the biggest transaction Mr. Immelt has done.
Even so, given G.E.'s immense size, adding 80 percent of Vivendi Entertainment will not mean much to its bottom line: G.E. has said that starting in the second year after the transaction closes, the deal should add 1 cent to 2 cents a share to its earnings.
Stock market reaction to the announcement was muted. On the New York Stock Exchange this afternoon, Vivendi's American depository receipts closed down 4 cents, at $19.17. General Electric's stock slipped 53 cents, to $30.20.
Even though the bottom-line effect to General Electric will not be that big, Mr. Stirton said the deal should send a important message to investors.
"This accelerates the amount of nonfinancial services profits they will generate," he said. "That is important because one of the things investors want to see is faster growth from the businesses that are not part of G.E. Capital."
Top cable companies try reining in heavy web use
Jun 3, 2008
Top U.S. cable operators Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc will begin testing ways this week to limit individual subscribers who use the largest amount of Internet capacity in an effort to protect their high-speed networks.
The moves are a response to government inquiries as well as the heavy costs of upgrading existing broadband infrastructure due to the explosion of downloading and watching music and videos.
Such usage is "taxing the infrastructure," a Time Warner Cable spokesman said. "In order to make investments in the infrastructure, we have to find the revenue to pay for it."Some technology blogs have criticized the new pricing structure and usage limits, which they said would curtail interest in viewing videos online and enrage consumers who currently pay for unlimited service.
Time Warner Cable said it will launch a service on Thursday that charges new consumers of high-speed Internet service based on their usage. Broadband subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will be charged $1 per gigabyte above monthly allowances, a company spokesman said.
Separately, Comcast said it has changed the way it will manage network traffic and begin a test to slow the transfer of files to individual subscribers who are its heaviest users during congested periods.
The tests will begin Thursday in the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Warrenton, Virginia areas.
Time Warner Cable's new policy is intended to address its top 5 percent of users, who have spent a "disproportionate" amount of time on the company's network, the spokesman said.
Consumers in Time Warner Cable's test region will be offered several levels of service. A $29.95 per month plan for slower speeds of 768 kilobits per second and a 5 gigabyte limit would let users send and receive nearly 350,000 e-mails, play 170 hours of online games, or download more than 1,380 digital songs per month.
At the high end, a $54.90 monthly fee for a 15-megabit-per-second service and a 40 gigabyte monthly limit would allow subscribers to watch 124 hours of standard-definition videos or download 11,070 songs.
COMCAST MULLS NEW BILLING
Comcast is currently looking at "consumption" billing plans. The top U.S. cable operator offers tiers of service differentiated by speed, but not by size limits.
A Comcast spokesman said it is also evaluating a monthly 250-gigabyte limit for customers to manage its heaviest users, but it has not made a decision.
"We want to deliver the best online experience for our customers," a Comcast spokesman said. "We can do it really quickly and without the need for government intervention."
In January, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said it would investigate complaints by consumer groups over the blocking of file-sharing services such as BitTorrent on Comcast's service.
At the time, Comcast said it did not block such services, but used network management technology to slow delivery of files to heavy users of such services.
Comcast's new approach will stop distinguishing the type of activity or services that are considered bandwidth hogs, but will slow delivery of files it believes is taxing the network.
"Setting the caps is a very simple matter to change," the Time Warner Cable spokesman said. "If usage patterns are such that we need to change those, we certainly can."
Google and cable firms warn of risks from Web TV
Wed Feb 7, 2007
New Internet TV services such as Joost and YouTube may bring the global network to its knees, Internet companies said on Wednesday, adding they are already investing heavily just to keep data flowing.
Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, said the Internet was not designed for TV.
It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet.
"The Web infrastructure, and even Google's (infrastructure) doesn't scale. It's not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect," Vincent Dureau, Google's head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress.
Google instead offered to work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks' high-quality delivery of shows.
One cable chief executive, Duco Sickinghe from Belgian operator Telenet, said it was "the best news of the day" to hear that Google could not scale for video.
MIXED BLESSIN
Google was welcomed with a mix of fear and awe by the cable TV companies, which are concerned that Web companies will try to steal their lucrative TV business. The Internet on the whole is a mixed blessing, cable carriers said.
Broadband Internet delivery to homes and small businesses is one of the most lucrative segments for cable TV operators, but heavy investments in infrastructure are needed to meet the rapid rise of Internet file-swapping and video downloads.
The data involved in one hour of video can equal the total in one year's worth of emails.
"Most of the IP (Internet protocol or data) traffic is peer-to-peer (file swapping), and most of that is video. Every year we have to invest substantially just to maintain the user experience. In fact it has actually decreased," said Spanish cable operator ONO Chief Executive Richard Alden.
"People (Internet service providers) don't like to talk about (the fact) that just to stand still, they have to invest. But you cannot keep investing at the same clip," he added.
Research group Gartner estimates that 60 percent of the Internet traffic that is uploaded from computers is peer-to-peer traffic, mostly from consumers swapping films and TV shows through select user groups and BitTorrent.
Financial advisers praised the cable TV industry because, unlike the large telecoms operators, it has been expanding and has been more efficient with capital and more profitable.
Shares of cable operators trade at around nine times forecast 2007 earnings before interest, tax amortization and depreciation (EBITDA), while telecoms operators trade at around six times, said Charles Manby, Goldman Sachs' global co-head for the telecoms, media and technology industries.
Cable operators are set to return to capital investments of a modest 10 to 12 percent of revenues, but they can be forced to spend much more due to outside pressures from increased Internet consumption and from rival telecoms operators that upgrade their broadband Internet packages to fiber optic super speeds.
"Then, the world becomes cloudy," Manby said.
Xerox and Microsoft.
Interesting past history.
http://www.contentguard.com/ip.asp
EU Wary of Microsoft DRM Purchase
In a move to prevent Microsoft from using its dominance in PC operating systems to control the burgeoning field of digital rights management, European regulators are considering blocking the company's acquisition of an influential DRM patent holder.
The European Commission announced in late August that it was launching an in-depth investigation into Microsoft's and Time Warner's acquisition of the digital rights management company ContentGuard. Its final decision is due Jan. 6, 2005.
The reason for the EC's concern is that ContentGuard owns key patents based on early 1990s work by Mark Stefik, a researcher at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, on DRM technologies. These include machine-readable markup languages to attach rights to content so that, for example, an article could be read but not printed, or a rights-holder could specify how many times a song could be played. The technologies also include the ability to attach fee-charging mechanisms, and other such basic DRM ideas.
In 2000, Xerox, with some investment from Microsoft, launched ContentGuard as an independent company; in April 2004, Microsoft and Time Warner announced they would acquire all of Xerox's ownership aside from a small equity stake.
The EC's focus is primarily on Microsoft, against which it has mounted a number of recent actions. According to the EC's press statement, "After a preliminary review, it appears to the commission that the transaction might create or strengthen a dominant position by Microsoft in the market for digital rights management (DRM) solutions."
Although the DRM market is still in flux, as it grows those patents could provide their owners significant control over all types of content. That control could arguably be even more significant if Microsoft is able to leverage its dominance in the desktop market so that its technology becomes the gateway through which all content must pass to reach consumers.
This is especially true since ContentGuard claims that its patents cover all rights-expression markup languages, the tags that establish what people can do with digital content. If that claim is upheld in court, it could block the development of alternatives intended to aid libraries and other public domain sources.
Gary Barnett, IT research director with London-based firm Ovum, believes that the ContentGuard case is in fact much more significant than the EC's recent Media Player action, in which it ordered Microsoft to unbundle its player from the Windows operating system.
"By obliging Microsoft to pull its Media Player out of Windows all you're doing is inconveniencing users, because if Microsoft owns the formats the consumer has to have the media player," he said. "Whereas, the formats are what's going to determine who really controls content on the internet, and fundamentally that's what all this is really about. I'm very encouraged by the fact that the EU is starting to look at what is potentially a gigantic issue for all of us."
Within the United States, federal antitrust regulators have taken no action. But because both Microsoft and Time Warner have substantial operations in Europe, they are required to report such acquisitions to the European Commission, which oversees antitrust actions in the European Union.
According to Mark Jones, a London-based antitrust lawyer with Norton Rose, the EC has 25 to 30 working days from the date of the initial report of such an acquisition to review it and decide whether to let it pass or to investigate further. Between its August announcement and the January deadline, said Jones, the EC will produce requests for further information, hold at least one hearing and at some point present its statement of objections. The deadline for its final decision can be extended if all parties agree or if the companies offer to make concessions and negotiations are underway.
The EC, for its part, can choose to apply sanctions or block the merger entirely -- as it did when General Electric wanted to merge with Honeywell even though the Federal Trade Commission had previously cleared it.
It may seem surprising that the EC can block an acquisition involving only American companies. But, said Jones, "The reality is that Time Warner and Microsoft won't ignore the EC. Because of the level of their business activities in Europe, they have a relationship with the regulator -- in the case of Microsoft, a pretty bad one."
In a separate action, last week a Luxembourg court heard Microsoft's appeal against the EC's March ruling fining it $612 million and requiring it to sell a version of Windows without Media Player.
On April 27, [2000] at WinHEC, Microsoft announced a joint venture with Xerox called ContentGuard, a startup Internet company that is a spin-off of Xerox. ContentGuard will provide digital rights management (DRM) software technology that protects and manages books and documents, music, software, and other valuable content for distribution over the Web. Microsoft will contribute future technology and startup money to this venture, and Xerox will contribute about 17 key patents to the new company. Xerox will own 75 percent of ContentGuard, and Microsoft will own the remaining 25 percent. ContentGuard will be based in McLean, Virginia, with offices in Palo Alto and El Segundo, California.
A striking example of the need for this new DRM technology involves Stephen King's online release of his e-book novella, Riding the Bullet. With downloads of the e-book exceeding 500,000 in the first 48 hours, it didn't take long for hackers to break the book's encryption code and illegally distribute the book worldwide.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft president and CEO, said, "People love getting content delivered to them wherever and whenever they choose, and we want to ensure that they continue to have many opportunities to do so. The secure and safe delivery of digital media is of primary importance to not only everyone in the business of content distribution, but consumers of this information as well." Rick Thorman, Xerox president and CEO, added, "ContentGuard will offer a safe and secure e-commerce environment for publishing and distributing any high-value or copyrighted material."
Industry analysts anticipate that future word processing documents, spreadsheets, email messages, media players, and e-book readers will all have built-in DRM features, and that these features will be almost transparent to the document publishers and readers. High-value digital content, such as market research, business reports, books, periodicals, sheet music, patent applications, and academic course packs, have all been early adopters of this technology. Xerox and Microsoft jointly announced plans to extend ContentGuard's technology to audio and video content.
Xerox developed ContentGuard's DRM technology at its Palo Alto Research Center and augmented it with contributions from Microsoft. ContentGuard will provide software, consulting services, and Internet-based solutions to help content distributors disseminate digital content over the Internet in a way that's protected but still easily accessible to consumers.
ContentGuard's Internet content protection software locks digital content, preventing unauthorized users from forwarding it or copying it unless they have paid or registered with the content owner. A reader must obtain a digitally-signed license to unlock the content. When users attempt to access a ContentGuard-enabled document, they are sent to a DRM Web site where they make a payment as they would in any standard e-commerce transaction. The user can then download the digital content and see or hear it by employing a standard viewer or player. Although the user can distribute the work, subsequent readers or viewers will also require a registration. ContentGuard currently has competition from other companies offering DRM technology in the market.
ContentGuard uses Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML). To work broadly, this technology requires a standard for DRM on the Internet. In the WinHEC announcement, Microsoft and Xerox noted that Microsoft and ContentGuard will collaborate on the development of a common DRM standard for the digital content. ContentGuard will deliver its DRM XrML code royalty-free to developers and content providers to make this standard widely available.
ContentGuard will continue to collaborate with Microsoft and Xerox on future development of DRM technology. Microsoft announced that it will support ContentGuard's licensing and rights labeling format in its own DRM solutions. Microsoft Reader, which displays books on screen, will be the first product to incorporate the new ContentGuard technology when it appears this summer. ContentGuard will also extend its technology to support future versions of Windows Media Player and Windows Digital Rights Manager.
Microsoft Collaborates with Xerox and ContentGuard to Facilitate Secure Distribution of Electronic Content
ContentGuard, Inc., a Xerox spin-off company augmented by Microsoft investments, will offer an easy way to protect digital material distributed over the Internet and expand consumer choice.
PALO ALTO, Calif., April 27, 2000 — When Stephen King's novella, "Riding the Bullet," was released over the Internet last month, the publishing world heralded it as a glimpse into the future of electronic book distribution. Its release proved two major points about eBooks. First, it proved there was real demand for premium digital content -- there were 500,000 downloads of the book in its first 48 hours of availability, and some servers shut down trying to keep up with the demand. It also proved that digital content is subject to piracy. Hackers managed to break the book's encryption code, and pirated copies were distributed illegally to a number of Web sites and chat groups.
The distribution of books and other digital media over the Internet has opened up enormous possibilities for consumers in how they can sample, experience and purchase electronic materials. At the same time, suppliers are working to create a distribution system known as "digital rights management (DRM) technology" that ensures protection for copyrighted material while making it easy for consumers to buy and enjoy these forms of digital entertainment.
"People love getting content delivered to them wherever and whenever they chose, and we want to ensure that they continue to have many opportunities to do so," said Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer as he announced today's launch of ContentGuard, Inc., a spin-off of the Xerox Corp.
The new Internet company, created with the help of an investment from Microsoft, will offer a comprehensive software system to protect and manage books, documents, music, software and other valuable content that is distributed over the Web. "The secure and safe delivery of digital media is of primary importance to not only everyone in the business of content distribution, but consumers of this information as well," Ballmer said.
ContentGuard's DRM technology, originally developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and augmented with contributions from Microsoft , provides products such as software and consulting services as well as Internet-based solutions to help content distributors disseminate digital content over the Internet in a way that is protected but still easily accessible to consumers.
Microsoft and ContentGuard will also collaborate on future development of DRM technology. Microsoft will support ContentGuard's licensing and rights labeling format in its own DRM solutions. Microsoft Reader, a new software product for displaying books on screen, will be the first product to incorporate the new ContentGuard technology when it debuts this summer. The technology will also be extended to support future versions of Windows Media Player and Windows Digital Rights Manager.
"ContentGuard will offer a safe and secure e-commerce environment for publishing and distributing any high-value or copyrighted material," said Xerox President and CEO Rick Thoman.
ContentGuard's Internet content protection software is designed to "lock" digital content, preventing unauthorized users from forwarding it or copying it unless they have paid or registered with the content owner.
Once content owners such as publishers or authors establish specifications for how customers will access their publications, ContentGuard will incorporate those specifications into the content and use encryption technology to "lock" the content. Anyone who wants access to the material must obtain a digitally signed "license" to unlock the content. When users attempt to access a ContentGuard-enabled document, they are sent to a digital rights management Web site where they make a payment as they would in any standard e-commerce transaction. The user can then download the digital content and see or hear it by employing a standard viewer or player.
While users can redistribute the content, new recipients will have to acquire their own "license" before gaining access to the content. In other words, if someone enjoyed reading, "Riding the Bullet," and wanted to send it to a friend, he or she could do so, but the recipient would have to pay for the right to read it.
While DRM technology has been available from many sources, the benefit of the ContentGuard approach is that it is flexible enough so that publishers can use marketing initiatives such as single chapter preview programs or one-time usage scenarios to promote their products. Such promotions will let consumers sample content before actually having to pay for it.
"Content wants to be free, but content creators want to get paid," said Dick Brass, vice president for technology development at Microsoft. "ContentGuard's ease of use for publishers and for consumers certainly ensures it an immediate presence in the eBook industry." Brass and Xerox Internet Business Group president, Michael Miron, will be co-chairmen of ContentGuard's board of directors.
Microsoft and ContentGuard will also collaborate on the development of a common digital rights management standard for the many emerging digital content categories. This will assure that content developers such as publishers and authors receive payment and retain control over how their materials are used.
ContentGuard will work to establish one of its core technologies, XrML (eXtensible rights Markup Language) as a standard for digital rights management on the Internet. It has agreed to provide the XrML code to the industry royalty-free to stimulate its use among software developers and content providers. By freely licensing XrML, ContentGuard is promoting the use of digital rights specifications among authors, artists, publishers, distributors and retailers who may use software products from different vendors.
"The creation of common standards among these varied groups will be critical to making the most of the Internet as a way of distributing published materials," Miron said.
Although ContentGuard's current focus is on the publishing and eBook markets, creating a standard way for applications to support digital rights management opens doors for many markets. It will allow developers to create a new generation of common products such as word processing applications, spread sheets, email, media players and eBook readers, with built-in digital rights management features. The ContentGuard technology will be integrated into commonly used technology so as to create minimal intrusion for the consumer.
"Digital rights management will become a ubiquitous element of all content exchange eventually, whether for secure ecommerce or for ensuring the persistent protection of high-value sensitive material," Brass said. "ContentGuard's mission is to drive this evolution."
Currently, the ContentGuard software suite can protect the distribution of digital content such as market research, business reports, books, periodicals, sheet music, patent applications and academic course packs. Plans are under way to enable ContentGuard for audio and video material.
"Ultimately, as ContentGuard and other digital rights management software is widely adopted, consumers will be able to access a far greater range of digital content over the Internet than ever before-whether it's music, software or eBooks," Brass said. "Since they won't need to download special software, this process will be simple and fast."
Topseeded.
Here's a bit more:
Advectis – now Xerox Mortgage Services – is a leading provider of mortgage industry software and services. Its flagship product, BlitzDocs Collaboration Suite™, is a safe, secure paperless mortgage solution that manages the flow of electronic loan documents from origination through post-closing and archiving. The web-based service enables all mortgage participants to capture, submit, underwrite, audit, share and archive loan documents electronically.
Since 2000, Advectis has been in an emerging category undefined by the mortgage industry. The company’s early positioning was a simple description of what the company provided: "Paperless origination, underwriting, and archiving," or paperless mortgage solutions. This positioning served the company well in its early days; however, challenges emerged because the term "paperless" had a variety of meanings and was not a clear differentiator.
Solution
As Advectis evolved, Arketi Group led a messaging initiative to better position the company and its offerings in the market. Research workshops revealed that the key differentiator was the technology’s ability to enable multiple mortgage participants to capture, submit, share and exchange documents electronically. Arketi created a new articulation based on the concept of exchange – a collaborative document network – and tested it through primary research. Further fine-tuning led to a positioning succinctly expressed in the tagline The #1 Network for Mortgage Document Collaboration. This is both more accurate and more compelling – and a harder claim for a competitor to copy, as there can only be one number 1.
Arketi took an integrated marketing approach in rolling out the new positioning. The strategy included incorporating the new messaging into collateral, website, email marketing campaigns and webinars, as well as in annual industry surveys, white papers, case studies and other thought leadership components.
Results
Advectis has enjoyed 66 percent compounded annual growth for the past three years and a 600 percent increase in its customer base. Monthly loan volume has increased by 130 percent, revenue has grown by 107 percent, and the lender customer base has more than doubled. The company has also seen a 500 percent jump in web-based leads from email and other online programs. Today, BlitzDocs customers benefit from a network that includes more than 20,000 broker shops, the top seven mortgage insurance companies, and three of the top due diligence providers. Collectively, BlitzDocs investor participants represent more than 50 percent of loans purchased in the secondary market. Perhaps even more telling, Advectis’ competitors have begun imitating the company’s “collaboration” positioning.
In late 2007, Advectis was acquired by Xerox Corporation and is now Xerox Mortgage Services. Arketi Group is currrently engaged in updating and rebranding many of the successful marketing programs under the new brand, as well as adapting their messaging to reflect developments in the mortgage industry.
BlitzDocs Case Studies.
http://xerox-xms.com/case.html
Social Networks Getting Serious About ID Verification
May 8, 2008
Social networking Web site MySpace and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) recently agreed to explore and develop secure age and identity verification technology along with better ways to quickly report online abuses — a move signaling a new national effort to improve online identity management.
In the agreement, MySpace acknowledged the important role of ID technology in social networking safety. The News Corp.-owned Web site agreed to create an Internet Safety Technical Task Force — which will include contractors and other social networking sites — to find and develop online identity authentication tools to protect users of all ages from predators who hide their identities.
The NAAG continues to advocate age and identity verification as vital tools to protect users, especially minors, who use social networking sites.
While many of the proposed measures revolve around updating ID management and abuse reporting technology, Notaries increasingly are being sought to identify users before they even begin using online services. Online dating Web site Luvoo.com — disturbed by the lack of personal accountability and true identity management online — calls upon Notaries to verify the identity of persons before they can use the site as a “verified” member.
Another option for the task force could include using Notaries as Trusted Enrollment Agents to issue secure digital certificates to online users, which could be used universally to prove ID before being granted access to a Web site.
Notary TEA's.
Notaries to Serve as Trusted Enrollment Agents.
May 15, 2008
Specially trained notaries to serve as Trusted Enrollment Agents to secure identity credentials used in electronic transactions.
With the Real Estate market in crisis nationwide, Notary Signing Agents are feeling the dramatic effects with few assignments available and smaller signing fees than in years past. Fortunately, due to the business community's demand for secure electronic transactions, opportunities are emerging as notaries will serve a crucial role in the identity credential issuance process.
In the May 2008 edition of The National Notary magazine, The National Notary Association announced that training for the Trusted Enrollment Agents (or notary TEA's) will be available at the NNA's 30th annual conference, May 27-30 in New Orleans.
In simple terms, the notary enrollment agent will certify the identity of individuals involved in secure electronic business transactions, either sending, receiving or handling electronic documents. The trusted notary agent's role will be in the identification required during the issuance process for these individuals. The electronic identity credentials used, typically a PKI digital certificate, allow access to the secure documents.
The credential’s issuance and identification process is crucial to the trust that can be placed in the transaction. Without trusted identity, the security of any associated transactions are faulty. This is where the professional notary as an identity screener, and the all-important human interaction (which is often otherwise limited or eliminated in electronic transactions) proves vital to the process and the integrity of the transactions.
Thus far, two major corporations that handle government contracts will be participating in the NNA's Trusted Enrollment Agent program. SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) and Exostar will pilot the Notary TEA program.
The NNA’s TEA program will opens the doors of opportunity to many notaries who become trained and serve as trusted agents.
Contractors to the Federal Government are typically required to receive federated identity credentials between the public and private sector. The integrity of the network is assured by the accuracy and trust through the application of a federated trust model. This model allows for real-time authentication and revocation.
The National Notary Association is a non-profit professional organization that offers educational training, publications and promotes professional development and best practices for notaries public throughout the United States. The NNA’s Model Notary Act has been influential to state legislators since it was first written in 1974. With over 300,000 members nationwide, the association has been focusing on the advancement of the notary officer’s role in the electronic age in recent years.
Escrow
Specifically it relates to:
BUSHNELL, NOLAN K
BAGALAY, JOHN E
GILDER, GEORGE
MCCONNAUGHY, JOHN E JR
Each state:
On June 9, 2008, Nolan K. Bushnell was granted 10,000 shares of stock under the Company's Amended and Restated 1994 Non-Employee Directors Stock Option Plan. These stock options vest the day following the grant.
Non-Employee Director Stock Options (right to buy)
Conversion or Exercise Price of Derivative Security 1.28
I think this was filed last year at this time.
Todays Filing:
From today's propectus filing.
Because the Company will not regain compliance with the Market Value Rule by May 29, 2008, we expect the Nasdaq staff to provide written notification that the Company’s securities will be delisted from The Nasdaq Global Market. The Company may appeal the determination to delist its securities to a Listing Qualifications Panel and is considering this option.
Supercub.
Maybe WAVX is on the reverse turn of a Sprague double helix.
PETER SPRAGUE, "Supercub", License #0022
Peter Sprague started Scuba diving at the age of 17 in 1956 and published his first underwater photos that summer. He also got his pilots license that summer and has been flying ever since. He currently flies a 1955 Super Cub and has flown it across the country and up to the coast of Labrador. The plane is currently in FLorida and will be flyig around the Carribean during the course of the next year. He has dived in a variety of locations includijng New Guinea, Aldabra, the Red Sea and Belize. He has worked as a photographer for UPI in Moscow and Mongolia, built a chicken farm in Iran and been Chairman of National Semiconductor, Aston Martin and Wave Systems along with a variety of other entrepreneurial activities. In 1970 he ran for Congress against Ed Koch. Peter met Graham in 1978 and has long admired his efforts to open up the underwater world around us.
http://www.deepflight.com/flight/meetpilot.htm
Sub Prime
04.21.08
When it comes to private submarines, DeepFlight Super Falcon is in leagues of its own.
The world's most advanced personal submersible sits on the floor of Hawkes Ocean Technologies' spacious workshop adjacent to the yacht-filled harbor of Point Richmond on San Francisco Bay. Or at least the essential parts of the sub do--the computer-sculpted pressure hull that allows DeepFlight Super Falcon, as this baby is called, to withstand the bone-crushing pressures 1,000 feet down yet still glide through the water like a shark; the state-of-the- art thrusters that will generate enough vroom to slam the pilot back in his seat when he hits full throttle; a lithium-polymer battery system; and a sparkling dashboard navigational display system that might have come straight out of a Lamborghini design.
All these elements are scattered about the shop among other flotsam--a spherical hatch, a deep-sea-diving suit, and less-identifiable items from previous efforts--like mounds of glittering treasure strewn on the ocean floor. Each Falcon part has been fashioned from scratch (with the aid of several high-powered computers) by the company's cheerful English founder, Graham Hawkes. Dressed casually in jeans and an open shirt and surveying the pieces around him, he says, "It's not as if there's a submarine catalog to get this stuff from."
The grand eminence in his field--perhaps the only eminence--Hawkes has personally designed and built three quarters of all the personal manned submersibles ever made, totaling more than 60 craft. But the Falcon is by far the most ambitious. It's not just its functionality, he says, but "the style, the comfort, the feel." The whole sensory package. When this very first Falcon is ready to be handed off in May to its new owner, venture capitalist Tom Perkins, Hawkes believes he will have finally turned private undersea travel into that thrilling, full-body experience he calls "a real 'Yee-hah!'"
Sixty-year-old Hawkes began constructing submersibles in the 1970s, such as the Mantis, a craft with a manipulator arm designed to repair undersea drilling platforms. (Mantis made a cameo in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, with Hawkes aboard.) He also developed a variety of other undersea vehicles for offshore fieldwork, salvage and scientific research. (Film director James Cameron dove in a Hawkes creation to film his documentary Aliens of the Deep.) His (very few) competitors in the sub-building business are still producing the undersea equivalent of dirigibles, he maintains: bulbous, cumbersome, slow-moving craft with foggy, porthole views. His submersibles, however, are designed to be speed cruisers, the equivalent of an underwater private jet. "What Graham does is analogous to designing spacecraft," says researcher Dana Yoerger of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. "He is totally in a class by himself."
With its broad wings, slim fuselage and trim tail, the Falcon will "fly" through the water at up to ten knots, or about 11 miles an hour, which is warp speed undersea. While dirigible-type subs are perfectly suitable for going up and down, Falcon is able to roam. Its pilot is free to cruise along, taking in the Imax-like view, nose down to descend an undersea cliffside, or soar up to the surface. He can also perform underwater barrel rolls or loop-the-loops. The Falcon will be equipped with glass-bubble canopies fore and aft, and will be available in one-, two- or three-person versions. "People always want to share the experience," Hawkes says.
Five years ago, Peter Sprague, former chairman of the board of National Semiconductor, took his first ride in the Aviator, one of Graham's earlier submersibles. It was part of the $15,000, four-day "flight school" Hawkes was conducting in Mexico's Sea of Cortez to train potential undersea pilots. The experience was thrilling, he says, but not long ago Sprague tried out a Falcon prototype and was blown away by the advances achieved in just a few years. "It was just like flying my SuperCub," he says, referring to the hardy version of the Piper that he flies around the Alaskan outback. He mastered the controls so quickly that he soon started doing what he termed "Sprague double helixes," corkscrewing down a hundred feet, then doing a reverse turn to come back up.
Others who piloted the early Falcon models say that the near-total silence beneath the surface is broken only by the gentle whir of the Falcon's electric-powered thrusters and the soft blowing of the air vents. Unlike a commercial airplane, where cabin pressure can vary by as much as 20 percent, the Falcon's pressure is intended to be nearly constant. "So your ears won't pop," Hawkes says. The thrust is instantaneous, and the turns tightly controlled. As the sub descends, the pale blue water near the surface turning indigo then finally pitch black, the wing lights come on to penetrate the gloom, and lasers illuminate any obstacles beyond the reach of natural light. A five-point harness snugly secures each pilot, but should there be an accident, like an engine failure or a snapped wing, the sub's natural buoyancy will float the Falcon back to the surface. This sub actually crashes up.
When Peter Sprague sees a Hawkes submersible, he says he immediately thinks Bugatti, which isn't far off the mark when you start looking closely at the price tag. At $1.7 million a copy, the Falcon isn't cheap. But it is the first of the Hawkes line to be designed for batch production, up to five at a time. Not exactly an assembly line, but a significant step in lowering production costs and eventually increasing affordability.
Meantime, what would you pay to be able to explore the undersea world in such freedom? Hawkes marvels at the $25 million that joyriding American billionaires like Microsoft's Charles Simonyi are shelling out to blast off into what he dismissively calls the "sterile vacuum" of outer space. Ninety percent of the seafloor is terra incognita, Hawkes says. "That's the equivalent of the entire surface of Mars, plus the moon," insists the man who holds the record for the deepest solo plunge. "You never want to come back up." But it's always nice to know you can.
http://www.forbes.com/fyi/2008/0421/096.html
LandWarNet
Slide 15, Tpm and NAC.
http://www.afcea.org/events/pastevents/documents/Track4Session4-DataStrategy.ppt
Nasdaq Global Market.
Can't wave just appeal the delisting and stay listed during the appeal process? Couldn't Wave just state the shelf which has not yet been declared effective will bring them into compliance?
From the PR:
If Wave has not regained compliance with the Rule by May 29, 2008, the Nasdaq staff will issue a letter notifying the Company that its common stock will be delisted. At that time, the Company may appeal the determination to delist its common stock to a Listings Qualifications Panel. Alternatively, if the Company cannot meet the requirements for continued listing on The Nasdaq Global Market, it may apply to transfer to The Nasdaq Capital Market.
Wave Systems plans to exercise diligent efforts to maintain the listing of its common stock on The Nasdaq Global Market, but there is no assurance that it will be successful in doing so. If the Company does not resolve the listing deficiency, the Company may apply for listing on The Nasdaq Capital Market.
Wave shelf registration:
"Wave filed a $25,000,000 S-3 shelf registration with the SEC on April 18, 2008 which has not yet been declared effective."
From another company AVANIR:
As previously reported on March 27, 2008, AVANIR received notification from NASDAQ that the market value of the Company’s listed securities had been below $50 million for the previous 10 consecutive trading days and therefore had fallen out of compliance with continued listing requirements for the NASDAQ Global Market. On April 7, 2008, the Company completed a $40 million offering of common stock and warrants to a select group of institutional investors, which allowed AVANIR to regain compliance with NASDAQ standards.
Several companies delisting notices state:
We have the right to appeal a staff determination to delist our securities and our securities will remain listed until completion of the appeal process.
MusicGiant’s Agreement with Niveus Media Enables HD Music Downloads via Media Center
By NEWS RELEASE | September 8th, 2006
MusicGiants, the leader in HD music downloads and Niveus Media, Inc., award-winning manufacturer of hardware and software digital media entertainment solutions, announced an agreement allowing easy access to HD music on Niveus Media Centers.
“MusicGiants and Niveus are pleased to provide customers with a turnkey means of accessing the music they love in the highest sound quality available,” said Scott Bahneman, CEO, MusicGiants. “Niveus has created a custom Windows Media Center Edition interface for the MusicGiants’ store. Users will be able to browse our entire library and purchase music from the comfort of their couch via a remote control.”
Representing the very best in quality, craftsmanship and performance, Niveus Media is committed to incorporating the latest hardware and software solutions in their award-winning Media Centers. They are fanless, quiet, sleek media centers, with the fidelity and performance expected from high-end audio video equipment.
“The quality of audio and video of a Niveus Media Center combined with MusicGiants HD content will provide our customers with a true high fidelity experience, said Tim Cutting, CEO, Niveus Media. “We’re proud to be the first to deliver MusicGiants HD content through the Windows Media Center platform and believe that this relationship will be a tremendous benefit to our customers.”
Learn more about this exciting new partnership and see a live demo at the upcoming CEDIA Expo in Denver, September 14-17, 2006 in the MusicGiants booth #745, and the Niveus Media booth #710.
About MusicGiants
MusicGiants is the only HD Music Download service delivering
content from all of the major labels. With up to seven times the sound
Niveus AVX Media Center PCs to Ship with Wavexpress TVTonic Pre-Installed
LOS GATOS, Calif., June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Niveus Media, a manufacturer of media entertainment devices for the consumer electronics market, today announced that it will ship Wavexpress' TVTonic broadband video application pre-installed on all Niveus AVX Media Center PCs. Wavexpress is majority- owned by Wave Systems Corp. , a leader in trusted computing.
The Niveus AVX is the first ultra quiet, fanless
Entertainment PC to offer the power of a full-size desktop in an A/V component form factor. Measuring just over seventeen inches wide and just under four inches tall, the Niveus AVX is a truly stackable component that integrates seamlessly into any home entertainment A/V rack. In addition, the Niveus AVX is powered by Microsoft`s latest Windows Media Center Edition software allowing users to experience their digital media content like movies, television, music, and photos in a home theater environment. What's more, the Niveus AVX now features WMV High- Definition compatibility, Intel chipsets, and FireWire (IEEE 1394) connectivity.
Wavexpress' TVTonic, which is compatible with Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition, is a leading Internet video distribution and management application. TVTonic extends the digital video recorder functions of the Niveus AVX by providing access to Internet-delivered video channels. These channels download and store high-quality programming which can be viewed at any time. TVTonic features full-screen, DVD-quality video, automated program delivery and expiration, integration with the Media Center Remote, and a channel design optimized for the TV screen.
"The opportunity for broadband entertainment services in the living room is an exciting new realm for the Media Center PC," said Tim Cutting, president and CEO, Niveus Media. "Pre-installing TVTonic on the Niveus AVX enables our customers to receive IP-based video channels which offer unique and original programming, not necessarily available from cable or satellite TV providers."
"Wavexpress is committed to delivering Internet video channels for Media Center and the digital home theater environment," said Michael Sprague, president and COO, Wavexpress. "This is a significant move by a manufacturer, and we are delighted to be expanding the range of viewing choices that Niveus AVX customers enjoy."
Niveus AVX Media Center PC Availability The Niveus AVX Media Center PC is now shipping with a starting price of $2,400. Further details and configurations can be found at http://www.niveusmedia.com/.
Ecrow56.
Since Seagate is contributing its Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drives with DriveTrust technology I'm hoping Wave and or Wavexpress is involved.
Maybe some one can remember the details of the broadcast patent. If I remember correctly some of the details covered a systems were content was delivered all at once to a hard drive cached and then filtered???
Video Giants and Seagate FDE.
This approach sounds familiar.
Music Giants Rolls Out Video Giants Service
01.08.08
Las Vegas —Today you can order your movies and other entertainment online from Netflix , one disc at a time. What if you could get all the video and audio programming you want, all at once?
That's the premise behind Video Giants. Started by Music Giants, the leading provider of uncompressed, non-DRM downloadable digital music, Video Giants will offer a wide array of video programming. The first announced program provider is Paramount.
While the client software will be embedded in some OEM systems, such as those from Fuze, Envive and Russound, the primary delivery vehicle will be an external hard drive delivered direct to the buyer's door. This drive can be attached to a Windows Media Center PC, which then calls up over the Internet for the right DRM keys. Music Giants has partnered with Seagate, who will be providing hard drives for use in the program delivery process.
Unlike Music Giants, Video Giants will be using DRM to protect program content. Music Giants CEO Scott Bahneman noted that while the music studios are starting to adopt a non-DRM approach, DRM is still part of the picture for the foreseeable future for video content. Pricing and availability were not available.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2247039,00.asp
Atrato adds disk encryption, cozies up to Seagate
15 Apr 2008
Atrato Inc. and Xiotech Corp. have more in common now than just features of their new storage systems. This week Atrato revealed a relationship with drive maker Seagate Technology, which spun out Xiotech six years ago and last year sold it the technology that forms the foundation of Xiotech's Emprise systems.
Atrato will add Seagate's DriveTrust full disk encryption (FDE) to its self-healing disk arrays, a partnership that will eventually allow Atrato to offer digital rights management to media customers. But some observers in the industry suspect Atrato is also cozying up to Seagate for strategic reasons.
Atrato will use the FDE feature on the 5400-rpm and 7200-rpm 2.5-inch SATA disks inside its boxes. Seagate claims that the encryption operates at wire speed. "Companies in our target market, which deliver media content, license it from major motion picture studios and become the stewards of that content," said Steve Visconti, Atrato's executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Disk encryption is picking up steam, with EMC and IBM among the storage vendors pushing disk encryption. Still, Atrato's stated objective doesn't add up, said Robin Harris, an analyst with the Data Mobility Group. "What's the value-add of disk-level encryption when data's already striped over hundreds of drives?" he asked.
Visconti disagrees. "For many of our customers, that extra protection is important," he said. "Since it's in a small form factor, the disk array could be separated from the controller and removed whole from a data center."
Atrato-Seagate-Xiotech triangle
Harris said that Atrato's new partnership with Seagate is more likely an answer to Xiotech's close relationship with Seagate. Besides selling Xiotech the intellectual property for the Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) technology inside the Emprise systems, Seagate gave Xiotech $40 million in funding to bring the systems to market.
Atrato and Xiotech tout their new systems are self-healing. Both vendors said their systems will not need service through a multiyear period, and both use sealed components containing multiple disk drives.
Xiotech uses Seagate's drive diagnostics software in the Emprise system, giving it the ability to get down to clean code without firmware "hairballs" on each disk. "For Atrato, it looks good to be aligned with Seagate, especially when Xiotech can tout their direct relationship," Harris said. "This also reads to me like the DriveTrust guys at Seagate are looking to get some traction."
Visconti said that the relationship with Seagate will involve co-development of an extension to FDE that would establish relationships between particular endpoints (for example, PCs at the other end of a wire from a content delivery provider) and particular data, something that can be made much more granular by encrypting at the individual drive level. This is what would allow Atrato to offer digital rights management to its media-industry customers.
Atrato powers high-definition entertainment systems
On Monday, Atrato disclosed an OEM deal with MusicGiants, which uses Atrato's Velocity1000 storage and Seagate Secure encrypted drives in its high-definition entertainment systems. MusicGiants' CEO Scott Bahneman said the customer facing digital rights management is most important when it comes to content licensing. MusicGiants wants to deliver high-definition movies through a download-to-own service, and he said that digital rights management is crucial to working with content owners in that market.
"If those content owners require it, it's good to know we can use Atrato to offer it," he said of the existing at-rest encryption feature. "But most attention is paid to customer-side DRM [digital rights management]."
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid5_gci1309811,00.html
Atrator - Goverment Customer.
Monday, April 14, 2008
SRC Computers forms partnership
SRC Computers Inc. has formed a partnership with Atrato Inc. to market computer software and hardware to offer faster access to large databases.
Colorado Springs-based SRC, which was started by supercomputer pioneer Seymour Cray and employs nearly 50, sought out Westminster-based Atrato to improve data access for a government customer the company did not identify and recently installed the first system.
“To address all levels of our customer base, we search nearly three years for the right solution before we found Atrato,” SRC President Jon Huppenthal said. “This is pretty exciting for a group of customers that represent a potentially large market.”
SRC spent 10 years and $60 million trying to bring the power of a supercomputer to a much broader market, but instead developed a technology that combines microprocessors with a type of semiconductor that can be reprogrammed on the fly to do a specific task.
Atrato Eliminates Barriers to Massive Content and Data Delivery for Digital Entertainment
Tue Feb 12, 2008
Atrato Eliminates Barriers to Massive Content and Data Delivery for Digital Entertainment and High Performance Computing
New Company Backed by Industry Icons and $18M in Funding will
Unlock Applications and Revenue via Breakthrough Storage and I/O
Capabilities
DENVER
Atrato, Inc (www.atrato-Inc.com) today announced the official
launch of the company and initial details of their breakthrough technology, a high-performance storage platform that is designed to eliminate the barriers to high-speed / high-volume data access,unlocking revenue and opportunities for a range of applications and
industries.
Atrato also announced its $18 million in initial funding and
strong lineup of backers, including influential industry leaders whoserve as investors and advisors:
-- Jesse Aweida, Aweida Venture Partners, founder and former
president / CEO of StorageTek
-- Tom Porter, formerly CTO, Seagate and IBM storage executive
-- Gary Gentry, SVP Maxtor, Seagate
-- Dick Blaschke, an IBM and EMC veteran
"While the storage industry has spent billions on R&D, creating
highly dense and scalable systems, there has been little progress in
the development of high-performance storage platforms to keep up with
the increasing demands of digital content and data on-demand," said
Jesse Aweida, general partner of Aweida Venture Partners and founder
of StorageTek. "The I/O bottleneck between storage and servers is the
final remaining obstacle to unlocking a world of revenue,
applications, and end user fulfillment. Atrato's distinctive ability
and technology know-how will change the traditional mindset of storage
by providing the highest performance storage platform in a secure
environment."
Atrato assembled an impressive management team led by president
and CEO Dan McCormick, formerly an executive with Xiotech and Seagate;
and joined by Jonathan Hall, founder, and also formerly an executive
with Xiotech and Seagate; executive vice president Steve Visconti,
formerly with Cisco Systems, Airespace and Ascend; and COO Perry
Nelson, formerly with New Global Telecom, Avolent/Solant and American
Management Systems.
"Atrato has the right team and technology to provide new
opportunities for companies by eliminating barriers to content and
data access," said Tom Porter, former Seagate CTO and IBM storage
executive. "While scalable storage needs have, for the most part, been
addressed, the ability to access that content and data on-demand has
remained difficult and expensive until now."
"Instant access to infinite data is the new mantra of storage,"
said Dan McCormick, president / CEO, Atrato. "It might sound like a
cute tag line, but we really are trying to get people to think beyond
the limitations they have become accustomed to. Our platform will help
users in a range of industries to go beyond these limitations and
achieve new, previously impractical or impossible capabilities."
The company is fully operational, with beta product and initial
customers in place. Atrato will share additional details about
customers and product in the coming months.
About Atrato
Based in Westminster, Colorado, Atrato Inc.'s (www.atrato-Inc.com)
mission is to help companies in entertainment, the Web, IPTV, HPC and
VOD open up infinite new worlds of content for customers by offering
them high-speed, high volume data access. Atrato's high-density
storage system with integrated data acceleration does nothing less
than change the economics of high-speed/high-volume I/O processing.
Content Delivery with Seagate FDE.
Strategically partnering for secured content delivery
Startup Atrato with is video-delivering sealed canisters of hard drives, is partnering with Seagate to securely deliver content to end-users.
Atrato contributes its radically new Velocity1000 arrays which are based on sealed canisters of twenty or so 2.5-inch hard drives. Atrato software and technology with spare drives means that the arrays is essentially self-healing. It also has accelerated I/O through the use of multiple 2.5-inch drive spindles. The V1000 is targeted at video collecting and video delivery businesses such as video surveillance and cable TV head-end functions which need the multiple simultaneous delivery of hundreds of video streams.
Seagate is contributing its Momentus 5400 FDE.2 hard drives with DriveTrust technology providing full disk encryption to secure the drive's content. V2100s with encrypting canisters, Atrato claims, will be able to:-
- Increase performance for serving non-linear editing, video-on-demand, media streaming, and other content-rich applications
- Improve security, delivering a higher degree of control for content owners and ease of use for consumers,
- Optimize cost-effectiveness for data centers, including significant savings in power consumption and rack space.
The ease of use for consumers might be a little hard to take on board as digital rights for media are involved.
Atrato and Seagate hope that encrypting V1000s will prove popular for the distribution of high-definition media content as it promises to safeguard content owners' digital rights and prevent piracy.
Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates and the organizer of storage Vision and Creative Storage conferences, said: “Digital content is the currency and lifeblood for many businesses. The present constraints to distribute and effectively monetize it have been hampered by performance, security and cost-effectiveness. Recent advancements in storage offer the chance to overcome these hurdles and enable a value-add through embedded technology. By combining Atrato’s robust, self-maintaining system with Seagate technologies such as DriveTrust hardware encryption, companies can yield a streamlined method to access and expedite critical issues in the digital distribution process.”
Atrato suggests several markets for encrypting V1000s, some of then surprising. For example, it cites 'home theater systems that range between $3,500 to $25,000 comprise over 22% of the market according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Atrato solution providers will be able to create new offerings in high-definition (and, in some cases, better-than-HD) content, helping to expand the market for theater-quality video and studio-quality audio, allowing a richer set of services to this growing customer base.'
Other market areas include home downloads, digital cinema, (cable TV) head-end distribution and high-end video surveillance.
Atrato CEO and co-founder Dan McCormick said of Seagate: “Their ability to build a robust, rich featured drive is ideally suited for the content market and is exactly what is needed to complete our vision of SAID (Self-maintaining Array of Identical Disks), which is the linchpin of our core technology and design.”
Atrato and Seagate will carry out co-marketing, joint development and industry showcase solutions. Both companies will promote and co-brand their relationship. Atrato stated 'For the sales channel, the companies will use their combined technical work to penetrate new markets and accounts while capitalizing on the home market and encryption-based environments.'
They are at work now and expect to announce joint customers in the next few months.
Seagate has a relationship with Xiotech whose recently announced Emprise arrays also use sealed canisters of hard drives, 3.5-inch ones though, and have self-healing functionality.
http://www.blocksandfiles.co.uk/article/4800
MusicGiants Has Integrated Atrato VOD Storage
April 16th, 2008
With encrypted HDDs from Seagate
Atrato, Inc., a provider of high-volume on-demand storage for the high performance computing, digital entertainment and Web sectors, and Seagate Technology announced that MusicGiants has integrated Atrato V1000 systems into its content delivery platform. The systems will integrate Seagate Secure hard disk drives with DriveTrust full disk encryption (FDE) technology to enable secure digital content distribution to MusicGiants’ high-end customers.
The partnership will support end-to-end content distribution to ensure the highest quality and security available, while eliminating compatibility issues with various operating systems and digital rights management (DRM) software. As a result, consumers will find new levels of ease and enjoyment from their entertainment systems.
“MusicGiants delivers the highest quality films and music directly into high-end customers’ home theater systems,” said Scott Bahneman, CEO of MusicGiants. “We have over 40 manufacturers that are integrating our HD content store in their audio and video equipment, so we have to support several different configurations. This new system from Atrato and Seagate provides us with the extreme availability, bandwidth, reliability and security we need to make sure our customers have a flawless experience today and into the future.”
As a leader in the distribution of HD entertainment, MusicGiants provides a unique platform that delivers high quality content directly into home theaters. Currently the only digital music company licensed in HD from all of the major music labels; MusicGiants recently expanded its high quality content offering to include movies and television with its new VideoGiants service.
MusicGiants’ content makes its partners hardware look and sound better because MusicGiants delivers the full amount of data that makes up a song or film, instead of eliminating bits of the data to save on delivery or storage costs like all other digital service providers do. Because of this, the demands on MusicGiants delivery system are severe. “Sometimes music or video purchased from us is ten times the size of the same song or film obtainable from another provider so our delivery systems have to be up to the task,” said Bahneman.
MusicGiants’ content delivery vault is at the heart of its distribution model. The content delivery vault embeds Atrato’s V1000 storage system and functions as an ingest engine, distribution platform and format processing system. Atrato’s V1000 was selected for its ability to meet the high I/O bandwidth and multi-platform support for high bit-rate quality video and music.
The content delivery vault also incorporates Seagate Secure encrypted drives to ensure multiple layers of security throughout the distribution process. At the data level, block level encryption is used to secure data while in-flight between various storage elements. At the system level, disk drives run compatibility checks and provide content access only with the assigned system enclosure.
“Consumers of high-definition, high-fidelity entertainment will love this solution,” said Patrick King, senior vice president of Seagate’s Consumer Solutions Division. “Through the Atrato/Seagate partnership, owners of high-end home entertainment systems will now have the content to match the quality of their systems. And content providers will also win with the security and flexibility of the MusicGiants digital content delivery system.”
“MusicGiants has a strong vision for end-to-end secure content delivery and is bringing new innovations and advancements to the market,” said Steve Visconti, EVP of Atrato. “We are pleased that the company has chosen our V1000 system to provide the intelligence and power behind their content delivery vault. MusicGiants quickly recognized the power of the system to address the sheer volume of content they are managing, across multiple formats.”
http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/systems/seagate-atrato-musicgiants-hdd-encrypted-vod
CES: Paramount endorses hard drives
Here's an unusual first. Paramount Pictures announced a deal Wednesday to let MusicGiants, an online music store that caters to audiophiles, sell collections of movies loaded onto hard drives. Buyers will be able to transfer the contents of those drives onto personal computers or, more likely, home media servers. The deal marks the first time Paramount -- and probably any major Hollywood studio -- has let its films be a) delivered on hard drives and b) loaded in bulk onto home servers. MusicGiants will also be able to sell downloadable titles one by one through its new online video store, dubbed VideoGiants, although it doesn't plan to do so until later this year.
The agreement is more of a baby step than a flying leap for Paramount. It covers only a subset of the studio's catalog -- just the titles cleared for permanent downloadings, many of which are older ones such as "Mission: Impossible" and "Braveheart." Initially, the movies won't even be in high definition. Nor does MusicGiants pose much of a piracy risk. The movies on the hard drive are encrypted, and they stay that way even after they're transferred onto a home server. Also, rather than trying to compete with Apple's iTunes store, the company has focused on selling pricey encyclopedic collections and pristine quality tracks to high-end customers. The first users of the download store, in fact, are likely to be owners of expensive custom home entertainment systems. The company has deals with the makers of at least eight home-theater companies to pre-install the VideoGiants store software onto their home media servers.
Nevertheless, the announcement is significant for a couple of reasons. First, the industry is still struggling to figure out how to let consumers load media servers -- think of them as audio/video jukeboxes in the home -- with copies of the movies they buy on copy-protected DVDs and high-definition discs. They've been working on a standard approach to "managed copy" for months, and yet there's still no agreement among the studios, tech companies and consumer-electronics manufacturers. Second, don't forget the tale of woe told by Kaleidescape, another company selling high-end home entertainment products. Kaleidescape's CEO, Michael Malcolm, has said he tried in vain to persuade the studios to let his company sell high-priced home media servers with packages of movies loaded onto their hard drives. Despite the fact that these systems had military-grade security and princely price tags -- the least expensive system sold for about $25,000 -- Kaleidescape couldn't win over the studios. So it found a clever way to record movies off of the DVDs its customers bought, prompting a lawsuit by the DVD Copy Control Association (a judge sided with Kaleidescape) and repeated efforts by the studios to change the licensing rules for DVDs to push Kaleidescape out of compliance. If MusicGiants can persuade more studios that loading home servers with authorized copies of movies is a good thing, perhaps there's hope yet for Kaleidescape.
http://opinion.latimes.com/bitplayer/2008/01/ces-paramount.html
Healthspring, Inc.
We have also improved data security. We are in the process of implementing full disk encryption for laptop and desktop devices. In addition, we are deploying full encryption and forced authentication on all PDAs that house company information through Blackberry Enterprise Server rules enforcement.
P.17
http://sec.edgar-online.com/2008/02/29/0000950144-08-001509/Section3.asp
RSA 2008.
Any idea why the "United States Congress" is show on slide #12?
https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/news/events/rsa_2008/RSA_Keynote_Monday_Pre-conference_040708.pdf
Seagate and FIPS 140-2.
So this is the FDE approval Seagate has been waiting for?
Q. Is the Momentus drive going to be FIPS 140-2 compliant?
A. We do not have FIPS 140-2. (FIPS 140-3 is currently in draft review: http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/140-3.htm) compliaince. Development and product cycles are too short for disk drives to acquire FIPS certification; the Seagate Momentus 5400 FDE.2 drive is already on its second generation (the .2 designation). We are working with the federal government on FDE and expect the result of this will be NSA approval of FDE security. Seagate announced our FIPS 197 AES validation certification on July 30, 2007.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=dn_sec_ask_expert_landing&vgnextoid=860d4eab3f6b3110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD#momentus
Shelf Registration.
Anyone have an ideal as to how long it takes for it to be declared effective?
muenchen.
Turn's out this is the other "Wave Systems Corp."
Digital FTO is a division of Wave Systems Corporation, a California Corporation founded in 1994. Headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA since 1995. Wave Systems manufactures computer chips and provides services to other semiconductor manufacturers.
G2E - Global Gaming Expo.
November 18-20, 2008 Las Vegas.
Wave Systems Corp. Booth 5817.
Has Wave been here before?
MPC to provide Coast Guard with computers.
NAMPA, Idaho, Jan. 9 Idaho-based MPC Computers announced it will supply desktop and notebook computers to the U.S. Coast Guard under prime contractor Apptis Inc.
MPC Computers is a subsidiary of personal computer vendor MPC Corp. The computers supplied by MPC are under a five-year deal Virginia-based Apptis has with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"MPC is extremely pleased to partner with Apptis to meet the needs of the U.S. Coast Guard, whose active duty force encompasses more than 40,000 people," Mark Cox, MPC area vice president of federal sales, said in a statement.
"We have met the Coast Guard's needs for PCs for both administrative use and in Coast Guard vessels for the past eight years, backing our systems with a customized service and support program. We are gratified to be selected to continue this important relationship in partnership with Apptis."
Officials say as the prime contractor Apptis will administer the contract with the Coast Guard.
"We are looking forward to partnering with MPC on this contract," said Stu Strang, Apptis senior vice president. "We believe that our contract management, coupled with MPC's high-quality products will deliver tremendous value to the U.S. Coast Guard."
MPC reseller wins exclusive contract with US Coast Guard for desktop and notebook PCs Contract is worth over $100 million over five years At the Coast Guard’s request, the reseller is fulfilling 100% of the orders with MPC systems. http://www.secinfo.com/d17Bkz.u4m.d.htm
MPC Computers Wins Defense Logistics Agency Contract
NAMPA, Idaho, March 25, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- MPC Corporation (Amex: MPZ) today announced that it has been awarded a government contract to supply the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) with desktop, notebook and tablet computers. The contract award positions MPC as a sole-source OEM supporting DLA users in the US and abroad.
The DLA contract is set up as an IDIQ (Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity) with additional one-year options, and is currently anticipated to average approximately $10 million a year in purchases. The computer products to be delivered include desktop and portable PCs from both the MPC and Gateway Pro product lines. MPC acquired Gateway's professional business in October 2007.
Leveraging the TPM on your vPro platform to secure all of your software certificates
Oct 4, 2007 8:06 PM
To All,
I have been asked to provide some information on how one can leverage the TPM as part of vPro. I thought a great starting point would be to outline how the TPM can help harden any client software certificate on the PC. We have found that this generally works if the other parties have done thier certificates in a standard way.
First Why should anyone care?? By using the TPM there are a number of benefits.
1. The keys are protected by hardware.
2. The password to release the use of a key is matched in hardware with adds true strength to the key access control.
3. If all of your apps where to leverage the TPM you start to have centralized key managment by managing the TPM you manage all of your keys. It's like centrally managing networking and having every app just use the connection.
Please treat the following list as just enough to get the juices going. There is more detailed examples at www.wave.com under solutions and we are working on guides for all the major vpn providers. The TPM is a powerful tool it is time to play with it.
First Turn on your TPM This is done in bios
You must then load your TPM utility software in the case of Wave this is call the Embassy Security Center and is shipped standard on a dell platform
You must enable your TPM and then "Take Ownership" This is the password that is used to permission other functions including generate keys. On Centrally managed systems this is done by your admin.
Now you are ready to have the TPM generate Keys for a specific need. For example fetch a VPN Certificate using the Microsoft CA
The microsoft CA needs to be told which CSP to use in order to leverage the TPM. This can be done by selecting advanced and then selecting the Wave CSP This will cause the Key pair to be generated using the TPM. There are many other settings that will cause other actions and I suggest messing with them to see what works best for you. For example if you select strong Key protection then the TPM will require a Password everytime that key is used.
Check your enterprise you will be suprised to see how many TPMs you have
Steven
Did you know all of the cool things that can be done with the TPM on your vPro platform
Sep 27, 2007 9:50 AM
Sep 26, 2007
As a leading developer of software for the TPM I thought it would be valuable to outline a number of cool solutions that can be enhanced with the TPM. TPM 1.2 is a part of the vPro platform and can dramatically enhance the security of any corporate infrastructure. With tens of millions of devices already in the market the tpm technology is in a position to help.
As full disclosure Wave Systems Corp. Builds tools for both client and central management of TPMs. We supply Intel’s motherboard group with software that is bundled for free with their motherboards and has been for the last few years. We are also Dell’s supplier and Gateway’s supplier of TPM software. Finally we support Seagate’s hardware full disk encrypting drives and we demonstrated support for Intel’s new Danbury technology at last weeks IDF. Wave is on the board of the Trusted computing group and we broadly and actively contribute to the specifications and the community.
Let me start with a simple list of things one can do!
Did you know that your TPMs
Can support strong multifactor authentication to the Windows Domain
Can support Strong wireless networking using 802.1x (really 802.11i) for both machine authentication and/or user authentication
Can support 802.1x or IPSec for strong machine authentication (this is a very powerful addition for any NAC implementation including Cisco CNAC)
Can provide a common key management infrastructure for any application needing key services Allowing the enterprise to centralize their desktop key management. This works with Microsoft EFS, Third Party File and Folder encryption and other Signing applications
Can be used to harden integrity measurements in Nac solutions using Microsoft NAP or trusted computing group TNC specs
Can fully support Windows XP and Windows Vista Deployments
Can harden any MSCAPI compatible certificates
Ultimately all of this is done by Leveraging the TPM’s CSP (cryptographic Service Provider) This is how any application can talk to the TPM. The CSP is third party provided software and is supplied by Either Your OEM or a company like Wave and is typically free from the OEM.
Due to a variety of reasons the biggest first step is to turn the TPM on and take ownership. This is done in the BIOS. One the TPM is activated it will ask the user to take ownership and now the device is ready to be used. There are server products that enable central management of Ownership for the corporate customer. Every Enterprise should be turning on their TPMs and taking ownership.
To get a feel for this I have posted an implementation guide for a wireless hot spot on our web site at http://www.wave.com/solutions/Implementation_Guide.pdf this will provide a good flavor as to what needs to be done. If you build this type of bench lab it will give you a good idea of how TPMs could be broadly used.
To long a post but Perhaps a good starting point for discussion.
Steven Sprague
CEO
Wave Systems Corp.
vPro - Steven Sprague
http://communities.intel.com/people/steven.sprague
Building B/Sezmi One True Set Top Box Aims to Kill TV as You Know It.
Last week, we had a demo of the TV godbox we reported on last summer by Building B—now Sezmi. If anything, their claims have actually gotten bolder: They're promising the "first complete TV 2.0 solution" that rolls up traditional TV with movies, on-demand, DVR and internet video, all presented seamlessly to viewers. That's a tall order, and moreover, an extremely complicated one.
Let's start with the setup. They're getting content to you in three ways. The vast majority of TV viewing is of the major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox. Happily, they're broadcast for free over the public DTV waves. That subwoofer looking thing? That's a DTV receiver for that picks up all of those broadcasts. Second, they're working on content deals with cable channels, which be delivered via private broadcast (via satellite, actually) that your receiver also picks up. The final leg is video delivered over broadband, to the box, which is also a DVR with a terabyte of storage: Some of the broadband pipe will be used for the cable content (depending on the load vs. private broadcast), but it's also the pipe for YouTube and net video obviously.
Ideally, you won't know (or care) about where the content is coming from. One of the big things they're pushing, which I don't know people will be able to swallow is the idea of personal portals over channels. Basically, it'll learn your viewing habits and create what are essentially smart playlists of content, drawn from broadcast, cable stored content and internet video, all meshed together—kind of like TiVo on Web 2.0 crack, since it has a TV Guide menu with a list and times of shows and whatnot as well, but decentralized from the channel metaphor. Each person in the house has their own button on the top of the remote and it'll switch to customized programming for them. The web 2.0 business comes in not only with the streaming video stuff, but you can recommend shows and content to other users. Channels can also have their own portals, kind of like hyper web pages oriented around their shows and on demand video content. (It's in this sense that it wants to kill TV as you know it.)
Of course, contextual ads are part of the personalization shebang, but I thought they were done well, and at this point, it's part and parcel of anything of that nature. Plus, the ads combined the whole freeness of the broadcast networks over the public DTV waves equal cheapness—supposedly half the monthly rate of cable, though they wouldn't get more specific than that.
All of that sounds (sorta) great in theory, but for one, I think it's too complicated for the average consumer, in the sense that they're still pretty grounded on the channel metaphor. Ironically it's the non-attached, non-HD-fanatic that they're targeting here—your aunt and uncle, maybe not your grandmother. I don't know if they'll bite.
The other issue is more on the business end. They've gotta sign a lot of deals to make this happen, both with content partners (I neglected to mention any like CNN or ESPN because Sezmi hasn't announced any deals yet, though some are in place) and with a front-end partner. That is, you're not gonna go out and buy a Sezmi box. What you would buy, for instance, is a Sprint box made by Sezmi as part of a triple play package (WiMax would go great with the service actually, too bad infrastructure isn't there). And neither AT&T nor Verizon will sign up, they've got their own video dealios.
The backend is also, like I said, extremely complicated—anyone remember Moviebeam? They tried a somewhat similar trick with riding the public airwaves. On the other hand, they have some serious talent on the board and there's a lot of promise in the ideas and concept, but I can't shake the feeling we might looking at another Moxi, if only because of the business end. I hope I'm wrong.
They're starting trials now in a couple of areas, though NYC isn't one of them, with the hopes of a wider rollout by the end of the year.
SEZMI UNVEILS NEXT GENERATION TELEVISION OFFERING
The first complete TV 2.0 offering that seamlessly integrates traditional television with movies and Internet video, optimized for on-demand viewing and is personalized for the viewer
BELMONT, Calif. - May 1, 2008 - Sezmi Corporation (formerly known as Building B, Inc.) today unveiled a next generation television offering that includes many industry firsts. Sezmi also announced that it is commencing trials in pilot markets in preparation for commercial launch with broadband service providers and national retailers later this year.
Sezmi is designed to address fundamental shifts in consumer television viewing behavior and is the first television offering that is:
• A complete TV 2.0 solution: Sezmi delivers all television content, including broadcast and cable network programming, movies and Internet video, in one simple package, unlike Internet-driven offerings that do not include traditional television.
• Optimized for on-demand viewing: Sezmi embraces the migration of consumer TV viewing away from appointment-based viewing and gives consumers the flexibility to watch what they want, when they want. Sezmi's primary user interface organizes content as program lists (e.g., My Top Picks, My Genres, My Channels) that dramatically simplify the browsing and discovery of television content.
• A seamless integration of live, stored, on-demand and Internet video: Sezmi removes the artificial barriers between content from different sources and provides a single and consistent interface across live, stored, on-demand and Internet video.
• Personalized and tailored to the individual viewer: The Sezmi remote control has unique buttons for individual members of the household. Each user is presented with a personalized homepage-like screen that organizes a line-up of content that is specifically matched to the user's routines and preferences.
• Extending the benefits of social networking to the TV: Sezmi subscribers can share playlists with friends and family, contribute to community ratings of shows and benefit from community recommendations.
• Designed for self-installation: Sezmi is a simple, out-of-the-box wireless product that provides consumers a high quality television experience in minutes.
"Consumers are waiting for the television industry to catch up and meet their demand for flexible, advanced and personalized features in their television service, just like they've come to expect with the Internet, wireless communications and digital media," said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst with Parks Associates.
"With the impending digital transition, the consumer shift to on-demand viewing, high definition, Internet
video, and other disruptions, now is the time for a true television alternative to emerge. From what I've seen, Sezmi's differentiated approach, leadership and industry relationships makes it a strong contender to fill this void."
"Sezmi focused on the television consumer and built an entirely new television offering from the ground up to meet the needs of viewers that want a premium experience at an affordable price," said Buno Pati, Sezmi co-founder and chief executive officer. "We have rallied support across multiple industries and are excited to work with our partners to offer a new and differentiated TV choice to consumers."
A Unique Approach to TV 2.0
"To deliver the full range of content that consumers expect at an affordable cost we had to create a network that overcame the limitations of broadband and better aligned with mass market content consumption," said Phil Wiser, Sezmi co-founder and president. "Our integrated solution seamlessly combines the efficiency and scale of broadcast delivery with the interactivity and access of broadband. As a result, we are able to deliver a next generation television experience to a much larger group of consumers, and we can do it today."
Sezmi has developed the FlexCast™ video distribution technology that combines terrestrial digital broadcast television with existing broadband infrastructure to cost effectively deliver video content. The system utilizes available capacity in existing digital television broadcast networks and creates a private, secure broadcast transmission for content. The resulting platform provides a breakthrough television experience without
the need to upgrade existing broadband infrastructure. Sezmi has also developed a cutting edge, smart antenna indoor reception system that makes both its private broadcast and existing terrestrial TV broadcasts accessible in an unprecedented manner. This network-attached reception system can be placed in any location in the home and requires no user adjustments.
A Multi-Industry Opportunity
Sezmi is working with leaders in the broadcast, broadband, content and advertising industries to create an entertainment platform that delivers enhanced value and new opportunities as the TV industry navigates through the major disruptions it is facing. Sezmi affords broadcasters the opportunity to realize significant returns on their digital investments through a proven subscription television business model and targeted advertising. Sezmi has entered into agreements with broadcasters in its initial launch markets.
"Sezmi's innovative platform enables broadcasters to enhance their core service, while creating new revenue opportunities," said Colleen B. Brown, President and CEO Fisher Communications. "Advertisers continue to tell us they want this type of measurable targeting to generate greater efficiencies on television and as broadcasters, we need this type of audience intelligence to more effectively connect our viewers with new programs."
As an end-to-end television service that incorporates an integrated broadcast solution, Sezmi is the ideal triple-play video companion to voice and data services offered by broadband service providers. "Sezmi creates a unique opportunity for Internet service providers and telecommunications companies looking to offer customers a differentiated triple play with its on-demand, personalized and affordable video service," said Jeff Gardner, president and CEO of Windstream Communications. "Unlike IPTV, Sezmi's innovative service utilizes the existing broadband network and does not require a significant capital infrastructure investment."
Sezmi enables content companies and advertisers to capitalize on current industry disruptions to create new business opportunities. Content providers are able to reach additional viewers, enhance their brands in an on-demand environment and drive higher CPMs through targeted advertising. Sezmi creates a unique opportunity for content companies to engage with viewers and strengthen their brands as consumers migrate towards an increasingly on-demand experience.
"Advertisers are demanding Internet-like efficiency with TV advertising. They want to target the right customer with the right ad, and have accurate data on viewer response," said Tim Hanlon, Executive Vice President of Denuo Group, a Publicis Company. "Sezmi is a breakthrough service in this area. For the first time, advertisers will know
exactly who—whether it's mom or dad or the kids—watched their commercial. Sezmi will enable improvements in advertising effectiveness and ultimately increases marketing ROI, two important goals in today's cluttered ad landscape."
Sezmi has established partnerships with broadcasters, broadband providers and contentcompanies to commence technical trials in preparation for commercial launch across several major U.S. markets later this year.
About Sezmi
Sezmi Corporation has developed the first complete TV 2.0 offering by combining traditional TV content, movies and internet video in a single easy-to-use product. Designed from the ground up with next generation TV functionality, Sezmi puts consumers in total control with a personalized on-demand viewing experience. Sezmi is working with partners from broadcast, broadband, content and advertising industries to create a new TV choice for consumers. Sezmi will be offered to consumers through broadband service providers and national retailers. For more information, visit www.sezmi.com