Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

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THE HOWARD DEAN CHANNEL
       
       Presidential candidate Howard Dean has already distinguished himself in one way from the vast Democratic field: he smartly used the Internet service Meetup.com to organize grass-roots campaign volunteers.
       
       Now Dean has taken another interesting high tech step by launching what is essentially his own Web-based television channel http://www.howarddean.tv. By installing a small piece of software, your computer is turned into something of an Internet-based Tivo, constantly downloading video in the background, via your high speed Internet connection. Thus, when you go to the howarddean.tv page, there is a series of video programs available for immediate viewing -- full screen at better than VHS quality, with no waiting for streaming to start. The current fare at Dean's channel includes full-length versions of his recent speeches on health care, along with a long campaign trailer. The campaign promises to continually update the channel as new Dean video becomes available.
       
       Clearly, this isn't going to make the average citizen's bookmark list, but it's a very smart way to make sure that Dean supporters are entirely up on the latest video images and coverage of their candidate. And the Web is an increasingly important piece of the political machine. As I wrote last month, the January election of president Roh Moon-hyun in South Korea was widely attributed to his smart use of the Internet in that most-wired of nations.
       
       The Dean campaign is using software from Manhattan-based startup Wavexpress, headed by the colorful long-time tech entrepreneur Peter Sprague (who, along with being former chairman of National Semiconductor, has run such disparate enterprises as Design Research, Advent and Aston Martin). The Wavexpress software stakes out a chunk of cache on your hard drive and, by constantly downloading in the background, accumulates video there until you want to view it. It's an interesting alternative to streaming technology; with enough hard disk space and processor speed, the Wavexpress technology can actually deliver HDTV level resolution. Wavexpress seems to be the leader in the area although ESPN.com also has a similar technology.
       
       Wavexpress requires a fast processor and plenty of hard disk space, but if that's your machine you can download the software for a two-month trial at http://www.tvtonic.com, with free access (thus far) to movie trailers and AP news, along with some premium offerings that range from Japanese cartoons to a French-language channel about fashion models. Sprague hopes to add more specialized television -- al Jazeera, for example -- as the months go by. And, if the Dean experiment goes well, likely some additional presidential candidates as well.

From Newsweek's "Practical Futurist" Michael Rogers.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/767146.asp?cp1=1

IMO, this is a story that is just going to get bigger as the primaries get closer...

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