Tracy Swedlow and the folks at InteractiveTV always put on a terrific event, and I'll be speaking on a panel at this year's TV of Tomorrow show on March 11th @ 11:30 am (San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center). The topic of our panel is "New Developments in Broadband Video: Can the Internet Keep Up?" It is sure to be a lively discussion - my co-panelists are from BitTorrent, Level3, Brightcove, Thompson, Narrowstep and Tandberg.

Head over to Wired and read the article. It'll make you think.

The DCIA P4P perspective is notable because it represents the interests of technology providers, P2P providers, and ISP's. It's stated mission, which appears below, is to work with each of these interest groups to deliver the best ultimate experience for end user consumers.

2/14/08 ADDITION: Click here to go to the letter as posted on the FCC web site

1) The ongoing dialogue, and any legislation tied to this subject, will have an impact on the ability of carriers, cable providers, Internet and media companies to compete for your dollars and mindshare, especially as it relates to rich media (music, video, movies, etc.).

2) The outcome will have a significant impact on what the Internet looks like in 5-10 years time. As the Internet becomes more important to your daily life, you should care about this. Kind of simple statement, but it's a pretty basic concept.

For more on Net Neutrality, here are a few links (and different perspectives):

Wikipedia
Google
Will Richmond at VideoNuze

Parks Associates new forecast for "new media" advertising is $12.2B by 2012

AlwaysOn takes a look back at 2007 financings, sales and M&A activity among the OnMedia 100

Media and Information Investment Bank The Jordan Edmiston Group has a great presentation available on the firm's website which outlines "M&A Outlook and Valuations" in the new media sector

Ben Mezrich's book Rigged is a fast, moderately entertaining read from the same author who wrote Bringing Down the House - the story of the MIT Blackjack team (a great read). This is my second attempt to read a Mezrich book and get the same entertainment value I got out of House (the other was Busting Vegas). Unfortunately, neither Rigged nor Busting Vegas were as good as House. In short - read Bringing Down the House again and skip Rigged. For more, see below.

138 million Americans watched 9.5 billion videos online in November '07 (31% of them on Google sites like YouTube).

Given Kontiki's role in digital media, and our role as the download platform for BBC's iPlayer, I'm frequently asked "how's it going?" The short answer: very well. Ashley Highfield, Director Future Media and Technology at the BBC, put up a blog post last week called "iPlayer Launch: First Indications" that provides some insight into the success of the iPlayer since it moved from beta to official launch on Christmas day. To quote Highfield:

"Demand for long-form video content over the web may be much higher than iTunes has witnessed before; It's too early to say, but I think we may be at the start of rewriting the rule book."

For more on this topic, see another good article on iPlayer by the Guardian's Mark Lawson from January 3rd.

The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer - I never actually finished The Last Tycoons by William Cohen. The author's 750 page account of the history of investment bank Lazard Freres is a reasonably good read - but no human should be forced to read 750 pages about an investment bank. As a friend who works at Lazard put it to me: "Why would anyone want to read a 700 page book on Lazard?" Putting that basic question aside, it is an interesting read - if you've got the time to work through 750 pages. For more comments, see below.

Coming out of the Holidays, I've got two new favorite toys. They're new to my arsenal, but not new on the market (in both cases, I'm not exactly an early adopter). #1 is a Toyota Prius, and #2 is my new Jawbone bluetooth headset.

I'd agree with a lot of Nick's points, but I think the groundswell of demand is perhaps higher than you might take away from the article. One data point from the article - NBC alone streamed more than 50 million shows from its web site in October.

At the end of the day, a significant percentage of consumers just don't - and won't - move quickly on new technologies. Witness the adoption of DVR's. I don't know anyone who doesn't have one, but I live in the Bay Area, and DVR penetration across the US still stands at around 17%.

On Wednesday I was at the NewTeeVee event in San Francisco. I have to say it was one of the better digital media conferences of the year. I can't really pinpoint why (it still seemed to focus on the same subjects we've heard at conferences throughout the year: a) "advertising will be big," b) "social networking is really important for video," c) "consumers want HD, and d) "let's hear from YouTube or MySpace..."), but quite a few people I talked to thought it was a great event.

For two anecdotes from the event, click to the rest of the post.