« December 2006 | Main | February 2007 »
We were very proud to see our customer Sky Broadcasting announce it had delivered more than ONE MILLION movies over the Sky Anytime service. The Sky service utilizes the VeriSign / Kontiki broadband content technology platform.
Go Sky!
The Technical and Business white papers on VeriSign's Intelligent CDN are now available on the VeriSign web site. The papers have all the details on security, DRM, scalability, our peering technology and many other valuable components. Up one level on the site, you'll also see the rest of our suite of Digital Content Services, including mobile content and interactive applications.
Dealing with Darwin, the latest entry in Geoffrey Moore's collection of books about the technology space is a good read, assuming you liked Crossing the Chasm and his other works. If nothing else, there are some good reference materials to utilize when making the case for innovation within your own company. The Cisco snapshots are pretty interesting and detailed, bringing life to some of his otherwise rather technical scenarios. This isn't a book you'll put down with a passionate "go read this now!" reference for friends (see my note on Setting the Table or In an Uncertain World for that), but it's a good read for those involved with innovation in a larger organization.
If you didn't see it, interesting article on TheStreet.com this week commenting on VeriSign's content play, Adobe and Netflix.
Great post yesterday on GigaOM regarding "Adobe's P2P Ambitions." Highlights our recently announced work with Adobe in the digital content space.
Why does peer to peer technology get such a bad rap? There are probably many answers, but the most prevalent thinking is the technology is one of the components enabling rampant illegal downloading of music and videos.
So that raises a bigger question - "Why is peering behind the illegal downloading of music and videos?" Ahh - now we get a pretty interesting answer.
Put simply, a peer to peer network can harness the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers (see Wikipedia for a longer definition and insight). Done in a safe, secure manner, it's SIMPLY THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO DOWNLOAD LARGE FILE CONTENT ON THE INTERNET. It's also an incredibly effective way to leverage networked computing power for things like medical research.
What's the point? You're going to see and hear a lot more about peering during 2007. In December, VeriSign launched its Intelligent CDN using peering technology to massively alter the economics of content delivery. A user who used to download a (DRM protected) high definition video in 7 hours can now do so in 7 minutes, assuming their media vendor of choice is using our technology. Think of a traditional CDN on steroids - distribution costs go down, user experience goes up - everybody wins. Four of the six largest long form content sites in the world - AOL, BBC, Channel 4 and Sky - are using our technology.
Other players are harnessing peering as well - think BitTorrent and the Venice Project. The result is likely going to be a lot of media coverage on peering. Take the time to understand why (see text in caps above!) - it's going to change the way you manage and watch content forever.
Last Friday on my flight from SFO to Dulles, the captain came on about an hour into the flight and made the following announcement: "Ladies and Gentlemen that bumpiness you're feeling is a 220 mile an hour tailwind. While creating a rough ride, it's also going to get us into Dulles about 90 minutes early. Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!"
The bumps were not great, but being 90 minutes early made up for a lot of late arrivals. And to arrive home at 5:00 on Friday instead of 6:30 was pretty cool.
Last year I flew about 130,000 miles (I'm the guy with the bottle of water, Bose headphones, iPod and WSJ). Nothing to be proud of, but it does provide you with some interesting time to evaluate fellow travelers and their habits. One I have not yet been able to figure out is what I'll call the Ginger Ale Phenomenon.
I would absolutely swear that more than 50% of the nonalcoholic drink orders on my flights are for ginger ale.
What is it about ginger ale? If I had to guess, I'd bet that outside of an airplane, less than 10% of the soda I've seen people drink in my life has been ginger ale.
Thanks to Google and Wikipedia, I discovered a few interesting items of note. For startersI am not nearly the first to notice the Phenomenon - according to Dan Charnas on the Columbia School of Journalism News Service site, one in ten drinks ordered on American Airlines is a ginger ale (10%), while less than 3% of regular soft drink consumption is ginger ale. I won't spend more time on the subject - Dan does a pretty good job of answering my questions about the Phenomenon - read his post if you're interested.
I did also learn on Wikipedia that the average American consumes 55 gallons of soda per year (about 19 ounces per day), which is a scary statistic. Random post for the day.
If you didn't see it, Robert Scoble made an interesting post after seeing our CDN/P2P demo at CES. One noteworthy point from our perspective - VeriSign is an enabler, not a competitor - we'd love to see Netflix use our technology in the future (4 of the 6 largest video sites in the world already do).
The comments following the post are worth reading as well. Especially the ones about BBC (uses our technology), streaming vs. download (there's no comparison for an HD quality film, but we do support both), and comments on DRM and security (VeriSign's platform integrates MSFT and other DRM platfforms, geo-IP blocking and other key components which are critical to the next generation environment - as well as security for both publishers and consumers).
For those of you who attended CES last week in Vegas, I hope you had a chance to stop by the VeriSign booth and see a demo of our recently launched Intelligent CDN. Covered by Forbes and others, the demo was a hit - seeing a full feature HD video download in a couple of minutes is a far cry from the grainy images consumers are used to seeing on YouTube (that's a 50 inch plasma below, connected to a pc downloading HD video using our secure peering technology).
In addition to current customers like AOL, BBC, Sky and Channel 4, we also announced an agreement with Adobe and featured several content sites leveraging the CDN - NBX and Axiom TV
|
ABOUT SSL CERTIFICATES |
