It's time again for everyone's favorite, the Broadband Article Roundup!

Here are some of the stories I've found interesting over the last week for your reading pleasure:

"U2 3D" Brings Hyperreal Arena Rock to the Multiplex
This story is about a new 3D recreation of a U2 concert that can be seen at some iMAX theaters wearing special glasses. While the article doesn't specifically mention the use of broadband, one factoid did catch my eye. To record this 3D video requires 20MB for a single frame. At 24fps, over the course of the production they ended up with a petabyte--or a thousand gigabytes--of data on their servers. And since they use the word "servers" that suggests that at some point all that data will be flying over a network somewhere.

Amid violence, Kenyans connect on YouTube
Fascinating story with video that tells the tale of how Kenya's largest broadcaster has started a YouTube channel with videos about what's happening in that country. While less than 1% of its citizens have access to broadband, this effort to leverage YouTube has been instrumental in allowing people outside of Kenya to keep up with what's going on, providing a direct link into what's happening on the ground.

$137 Billion Investment Required by 2010 to Close Gap Between Demand and Supply of Broadband Access
This article highlights the findings of a recent Nemertes Research Study that predicts by 2010 demand for broadband will outstrip supply. And that to close that gap it'll require $137 billion globally, which they claim is roughly 60-70% beyond what service providers were currently planning to invest. To be honest, that number doesn't seem all that big to me, and certainly not insurmountable. I should admit, though, that I say this in light of last night's Democratic debate when Obama alluded to the $2 trillion we're going to end up spending in Iraq over the course of the war. It seems to me that if we can shake the couch cushions enough to support burning through more than $10 billion a month in Iraq, finding another $100 billion to invest in our own country's infrastructure shouldn't be that hard...right?

17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers, and Business Owners
Before going any further, a twitter is a microblog. To become a twitterer, you create an account on their site and then start writing short posts describing what you're doing throughout the day. While it's primarily gained popularity as a consumer tool used to keep in touch with friends, I've long wondered about its possibilities as a professional tool for businesses. Well here's the first post I've seen diving into that topic, providing a number of interesting suggestions for how this unique online tool can be used to expand and enhance your business.

Muxicall
Had to include this as it's one of the neatest things I've seen in a while. Go to the site and you'll see a rectangle made up of smaller rectangles with the names of musical notes on them. Hold down shift and scroll over the notes and you'll begin to create music. You can choose from piano, strings, and drums. Whenever you play a note a colored circle expands featuring the light spectrum associated with that note. And for better or worse, this is a collaborative site, meaning anyone who wants to come to it and start playing can, which can lead to a bit of a cacophony. At the same time, it's kind of neat knowing that you're playing music of sorts with strangers. I highly recommend checking this out if you like neat, easy-to-use experiments with what's possible online.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 22, 2008 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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Over the weekend while playing chauffeur to a pair of car-less friends in need of help running an errand I had a brush with greatness. That's right, on Saturday afternoon, around 1:30pm, I met Matthew Lesko.

Now, that name may or may not ring a bell, but I'd be willing to bet that well over half of you, my faithful readers, have seen him on TV. In fact, you might know who he is just by hearing these two clues: "Free Money!" and a question mark suit.

Not enough? Well how about this:

So here's a guy who's made his living off of the inefficiencies of government. Some have labeled him as a shyster, someone who's sole interest is making money off of his claims of "Free Money!" He's even been listed as one of the 100 people that are screwing up America.

But when you actually talk with him you quickly realize that, while not adverse to making money, he has a different mission: to unite people with the government programs that were put in place to help them. He's just someone who can't understand why we'd create all these government programs but then not provide the average citizen with a way to know about and apply for them, so he set out to change that.

In truth, though, any talk of what he's doing or why he's doing it was much less interesting to me than how he's leveraging the Internet and broadband to make it happen.

The best evidence of this was a quick look around the surroundings as we stood in his headquarters. One half of the space was taken up by the usual trappings of an office, while the other half was totally empty. While chatting with him, he mentioned that he used to also rent the three adjoining spaces to serve as a warehouse for his many titles. But now? No need as he's read the proverbial writing on the wall and is working on taking his business all-digital. He's realized that the future isn't in selling ink-on-paper books but instead in building out an online portal where all the information that used to be stored in massive tomes can now be searched and found quickly and easily.

But that’s not all, he’s also been tapping into the power of crowdsourcing, or leveraging his audience of informed readers who want to contribute to the success of other readers in more fully utilizing government programs. As a member of his club, you can pose questions of any sort regarding how to get government funding and people will answer these requests, helping you find new resources, fill out applications and grants, and much more.

Lesko’s utilization of broadband doesn’t end there. He’s also become an avid user of Ustream.tv, a site that allows anyone with a computer and a broadband connection to start streaming video of themselves live over the Internet. He'll often have a camera on while working in his office, but back in August he took this idea even further when he setup shop in front of the US Capitol building for a 72-hour Q&A session. Not only did he take questions from people who walked by but also from people around the globe who were watching live streaming video. You can see clips from that experience here.

In talking with him you can tell this is a guy who gets it; he understands what the transformative power of broadband can mean to his business. But while in many ways he is on the cutting edge of technology, he didn’t seem like an ubergeek, just a normal businessman--or at least as “normal” as a man who sews question marks onto all of his jackets can be--who’s trying to find ways to make his business more efficient and expand its reach to serve existing and find new customers.

And from what I saw, he’s well on his way to embracing the possibilities that broadband has to offer, and in doing so he’s setting himself up to successfully transition his 20th century business into the 21st century thereby securing his future for the next 30 years as the preeminent source for getting information on how to get Free Money! from the government programs that exist to dole it out.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 21, 2008 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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While the ultimate amount of bandwidth every home will want and demand in the next ten years is very much up for debate, there is one thing I know first hand: the less bandwidth you have the less you’ll use the Internet.

This is opposite of the most often used analogy of “if we build it they will come”, where whatever capacity you put into the ground users will find a way to fill up.

The reason I’m writing this now is because for the last couple of days my wireline cable access has been down and I’ve been forced to rely solely on my wireless EV-DO card to get online.

Now this isn’t the first time this has happened. Back in the fall in the week during our move to a new apartment I was faced with the same lack of wireline access, and any time I’m on the road I’m likely connecting online wirelessly. So I know what it means to only have 500Kbps or so to work with.

In trying to exist with that little bandwidth, I’ve made a few observations:

- With less bandwidth it’s not just that you can’t do as much, it’s that you don’t want to do as much. For example, sometimes the speeds I get wirelessly are capacious enough to support watching a YouTube video as the way God intended: instant on and with no buffering. But many other times it'll hang, the video trying to play back faster than it can download. So what ends up happening? Eventually I start dreading trying to watch any online video when I’m accessing the Internet wirelessly.

It’s not that I can’t watch YouTube videos; if need be I can always click on a video, hit pause, and let it load before playing it back. It’s just that I don’t want to, I don’t want to have to deal with the hassle of waiting or sitting through a video riddled with hiccups.

So while I do subscribe to the belief that the more bandwidth that’s available the more users will find ways to use that capacity, I also support the notion that the less bandwidth one has the less one not only can but will do with it.

- I’m increasingly reliant on bigger bandwidth networks for my profession. While this probably shouldn’t be a surprise, it is a frustrating realization on the morning of a day when wireline access is still shaky and I’m supposed to be working with not one but two different videocalling applications today -- testing out TVBlob by talking with its makers in Italy through my TV, and conducting a video interview with Michael Curri, who’s based near Paris, about his work helping communities leverage broadband to promote economic development. These are two applications that either won’t work or at the very least I don’t want to even try to see if they’ll work wirelessly; it’s just not worth the hassle of dealing with limited bandwidth.

- At the same time, to a large degree I really don’t need a big bandwidth network to do what I need to do. Sure I’m limited in trying out newer high bandwidth apps, but in terms of my day-to-day life, only having 500-750Kbps of throughput is surprisingly sufficient. I mean, I’m able to surf the Web, check my email, interact with most hosted applications like an online word processor, and even watch the occasional YouTube video (when the situation warrants the wait). After lightly chastising a couple techie-friends recently for their admitted lack of a reliance on broadband, it’s startling to realize that I’ve been surviving with less than a meg of consistent service.

What this tells is me is that 1. a lot of tremendous things are possible with less than a meg of access, 2. the less bandwidth I have the less I try to use it, and 3. we’re still a helluva long ways from the point where the use of broadband is not only ubiquitous but woven into the fabric of our day-to-day lives.

On one last note, I don’t want anyone to think I’m disparaging my EV-DO card. In all honesty, I love the thing. Being able to access the Internet from anywhere at anytime is a phenomenally freeing experience. With hotels often charging $10 a night for wireless Internet, the $50 I spend a month on my EV-DO service seems like a bargain. And while I’ve been lamenting over the lack of bandwidth, this little card pretty reliably delivers a half a meg of connectivity, with the occasional burst as high as 2Mbps. It may not be fast but it works when I need it, and that’s all that matters.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 18, 2008 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's time for another Article Roundup, where I pull together a handful of articles and webpages I've found recently related to the wild world of broadband for your reading pleasure!

Racine Sophomores Discover Asteroid
Some Wisconsin teenagers in Racine through technology provided by Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI used images from satellites based in New Mexico to discover a new asteroid. Only in a broadband world can that kind of geo-busting happen!

US Places Three Cities in Top Seven Intelligent Communities of the Year
After getting shut out last year, the US placed not one, not two, but three communities in the top seven list put out by the Intelligent Community Forum. That's huge progress that I'm going to follow up with and investigate as to what helped most. Considering the fact that all the descriptions mention broadband to one degree or another, I think I know what at least one of the key factors was.

New Edge to Offer Breakthrough Service for Priortizing Traffic Over DSL
OK, so I have to admit this link is to a press release, but I thought it worth sharing to illuminate the reality that there are legitimate business cases for prioritizing traffic on an Internet access network. While I do believe pipes should be as open as possible, to suggest that all prioritization is inherently bad is quite simply false.

4Home Media Launches Broadband Home Health Service
Another press release and it's for a product that doesn't exist yet, which I tend to dislike talking about, but it merited inclusion based on the fact it's a CES story about a healthcare product that uses broadband to some degree. While much of the buzz around has been of people getting creeped out, 4HomeMedia's service lets you set up a bunch of sensors around someone who's potentially ailing, like an elderly grandparent, and keep track of them online. It'll be interesting to see what kind of demand it generates when it launches later this year.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 17, 2008 9:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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I had the great fortune to chat with Lynn Meikle of Meridian Township, Michigan on Monday.

You may have heard of Meridian recently as last Friday they made news by filing suit against Comcast to stop plans to move PEG channels from the analog tier to the digital one, which would then force analog subscribers to pay for a digital converter box to access them.

According to Meikle, the problems started with the introduction of a new statewide video franchise bill in Michigan, which has to date been interpreted as an opportunity for Comcast to revisit its local franchise agreements and pick and choose which parts it wants to abide by and which it wants to ignore.

One example of this is Comcast’s closing of public access studios, which they were charged with operating and making available to the public per the local franchise agreement. Now Meikle says the public access channel is waning as anyone reliant on those facilities to create content can no longer use them.

But the issue at hand in this lawsuit is Comcast’s desire to push PEG channels off its analog tier and onto its digital one. For them, it’s a matter of economics. By moving PEG off analog, they’re able to open up sufficient spectrum to add 40 additional digital channels and free up additional bandwidth on their network.

Meridian, on the other hand, has made the claim in court that there are federal laws that supersede the state franchise and protect the interests of PEG by guaranteeing their access to the platforms with the widest reach at the lowest cost.

But that’s only the legal way to look at things.

Continue reading "Reporting From the Trenches in the Battle Over the Future of PEG" »

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 16, 2008 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)
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So if we've got the potential for there to be a form of HD that requires a minimum of 124Mbps within the next decade, to me that suggests that the only wireline access technologies we should be considering are those that can undoubtedly provide speeds in excess of 1Gbps to homes within the next ten years.

I'm not suggesting forcing anyone to do anything, but instead that government should not be incentivizing the deployment of any network that is not designed to eventually expand to meet the demand for a gig to every home.

On a related note, I think it's high time we start up the rallying cry of "No New Copper in the Ground!" It's been a couple of years, but the last I heard the majority of new home developments were still putting copper into the ground for telecommunications. This is utterly flabbergasting to me as it's my understanding that the cost of laying fiber is now roughly the same as putting in copper, yet fiber has lower operating costs and an exponentially higher potential for delivering bandwidth. What am I missing here?

I can understand why private interests are dissuaded by the huge capital expenditures fiber to the home demands, but from the perspective of creating a national broadband policy, the government needs to be thinking about this long term as anything they're spending money on should be with an eye towards the let's-only-have-to-do-this-once long-term and not the how's-it-going-to-make-us-money short-term.

And all you have to do is look to the future of "HD" video to see that some day soon you too will have reason to want/need a gig to your home.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 15, 2008 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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I’ve lamented in the past over the government’s effort to redefine broadband as being a speed capable of streaming one high definition signal but I wanted to revisit this topic in more detail.

The truth of the matter is that “HD” has no single definition.

Even in the realm of standards, three different resolutions all claim to be HD: 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. Today most everything “HD” that you see through you cable provider or on a Blu-Ray disc is actually 720p.

But that’s not the end of untangling this briar patch because labeling one’s video as “high definition” is a practice that’s common on the Internet, yet rarely does that label apply to video that’s 720p or greater. In fact, most often “high definition” online video refers to video that’s around DVD quality, typically delivered at about 1.5Mbps. This garners the hi-def label because the clarity is so much better than VHS-quality that it feels hi-def when really the label should be “higher” definition.

The definition of “what is HD?” swings dramatically in the other direction as well.

Quad HD is basically what it sounds like: high definition with four times as many pixels than regular, old HD.

The big daddy on the block, though is Ultra High Definition Video, or in Japan “Super Hi-Vision.” To get a sense for what means, imagine a screen with sixteen times the resolution of what’s considered “HD” today (roughly 32 million pixels vs. the 2.1 million of today). This technology will also support 60 fps (frames per second) as opposed to the 24-30 fps most common today. Japan has set a goal of 2015 for this technology to be a viable commercial offering.

But here’s the really interesting thing: to make Super Hi-Vision work in the labs today it requires 24Gbps of throughput. That’s right - 24 Gigabits per second.

To be fair, before this technology enters the wild developers first must find a way to squeeze it into 124Mbps in order for broadcasters to be able to support its delivery. But even still, that’s 124Mbps to watch one video stream on one TV.

While I haven’t specifically read about Super Hi-Vision’s use online, there’s little doubt that no matter how high resolutions go someone somewhere will want to try and deliver that video over the Internet. And as speeds reach and surpass the 100Mbps to homes it may be feasible.

But the point I intended to make here is to stress the fact that “HD” doesn’t mean one specific thing; it can mean many things. Additionally, “HD” is not a static, fixed number. It’s not like once everyone has a current generation HDTV that the push to higher quality video is over. In fact, in many ways it’s just begun, especially as all online video applications strive towards higher and higher bitrates. Plus, it’d be foolish to think that even the seemingly space-age technology of Super Hi-Vision is the endgame; there’s little reason to think that video resolution won’t continue to increase.

And what will we need as the quality of video continues to increase? More bandwidth, of course.

This is another example of why to me it’s not a matter of if we’ll ever need huge pipes into every house but rather when, because once one person has super high definition everyone’s going to want it. And even if the highest of hi-def never takes off, the push towards ever higher bitrates will never end, and therefore neither will the growth in demand for bandwidth.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 15, 2008 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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Not to toot my own horn, but my submission to GigaOm's writing contest about what I'm optimistic for in 2008 related to the Internet was selected as an honorable mention!

You can see it about halfway down the list on this page.

This acknowledgment has made me even more optimistic, not because of any personal glory I may have won but because of the recognition my message received. It means that I'm not alone in my belief that 2008 can and should be a tremendous year for broadband, and that the incredible benefits it makes possible are goals worth working towards achieving for the betterment of society.

On another note, if you've read my piece earlier today on ConnectKentucky and haven't checked the comments I highly encourage that you do so as Brian Mefford stopped by and pasted in his lengthy response to Brodsky's highly critical article.

I'm looking to speak with people on both sides of this issue in the coming weeks to get a sense for where people to stand in the hopes of finding a position somewhere in the middle that we can all agree upon. More to come soon...

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 14, 2008 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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Connect Kentucky has generated tremendous buzz surrounding its efforts to spur the deployment of broadband as it builds momentum to try and establish a national model for how states can encourage growth in the supply of and demand for bandwidth.

But last week the program came under harsh criticism in a piece by Art Brodsky through the DC-based public interest group Public Knowledge.

Among Brodsky’s criticisms are that Connect Kentucky’s lauded maps aren’t inclusive to all providers, that their local community teams don’t engage as fully as they could and should with bringing about real change, and that the underlying driver behind the Connect Kentucky team isn’t an urge to do right by their state but instead an obligation to try and promote the services of their alleged backers, the big telcos.

While I haven’t seen it circling the news wire yet, I’ve had the good fortune to read the response by Brian Mefford to what he describes as a wholly inaccurate and misleading article that ignores facts in its quest to frame Connect Kentucky as a telco front group. (I’ll be following up with him personally to get further reaction and to determine if his letter is approved to print publicly.)

At this point, I don’t know enough to make a judgment call on who’s right and who’s wrong. Most often the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

From everything I’ve heard in talking to people, the Connect Kentucky folks, despite the penchant for getting good press, are upfront and forthright in talking about the challenges they’ve faced and the failures they’ve had.

And in talking with them directly I’ve never got the sense that what they’re trying to say is that their model is the best and only way to do what they’re doing.

But for now I wanted to make one simple but extremely important point regarding this matter.

No matter what amount of truth there might be in Brodsky’s piece, we must not lose sight of the fact that the two core elements of Connect Kentucky’s model--mapping broadband availability and creating teams of local leaders to encourage the adoption of broadband--are essential to our national broadband policy.

Simply put: we’ve got to have a better sense for where broadband is and isn’t available, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t start taking a more proactive approach towards encouraging adoption and use of the Internet, which is arguably best achieved at the local level.

Don’t get me wrong, we can and should have a civil discussion over the merits of one way to accomplish these goals over another, but we have to all agree that these two goals not only have merit but should be top priorities for anyone interested in America’s broadband future.

Because even if everything Brodsky said was true, and Connect Kentucky is an evil telco-run organization worried about nothing more than the interests of their corporate handlers, that doesn’t change the fact that the spirit of what they set out to accomplish is both admirable and necessary.

Whether or not they’ve gone about it in the right way is the only question at hand, and the only reasonable thing to do at this point is to continue working towards establishing national models for assessing the current state and supporting the future of broadband, whether we use Connect Kentucky as the be-all-end-all model, a source for inspiration, or a series of lessons learned on what not to do, what they’ve been trying to do has to be done one way or the other.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 14, 2008 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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One of the most lasting impressions from my trip to Vegas for CES last week was the prevalence not just of cool cameras and phones on display but those already in the hands of an attendee base heavily invested in the creation of content.

It was truly stunning how many people had their cameras and camcorders and audio recorders all out and recording, capturing different aspects of the days' events.

Presumably, many of them were trained on creating content for a blog or tech news site. So they're not just creating content, they're doing so with the intent of distributing that content over the Internet.

And perhaps none were more impressive from a tech-geek perspective then the two men behind one of my favorite blogs: Technology Evangelist. Ed Kohler and Benjamin Higginbotham often bring a full HD camera crew along with them to events, but this time around all they had was an unbelievably fancy looking phone through which they not only recorded high quality video but also uploaded directly to their blog.

Needless to say, my "only makes phone calls with the occasional text message" cell phone was feeling rather inadequate while discussing these matters over a beer at the Venetian.

But back to my main point, which is that we live in an era where anyone and everyone can be and increasingly are trying to contribute their own perspective to the public, and in doing so we're all creating incredible demand for bandwidth in order to support the transfer of all this data.

The problem, though, is that with so many new voices it can be nigh impossible to keep track of everything that's being said.

Case in point, during a recent presidential debate one online forum registered enough comments that it'd take you more than 10 hours to read them all, despite the event itself only being a couple of hours long.

As another example, after the New Hampshire primary I jumped onto Google News and saw more than 4000 stories related to that news, and those were just the more reputable news sites. I'm sure when you add in all the personal opinions on blogs and message boards the number jumps at least into the tens of thousands.

And if the trends shown at CES continue, of more and more ways to capture audio, video, and pictures getting integrated into more and more devices, there's little reason to think this trend will slow any time soon.

We truly are entering a world where everyone's a content producer, where everyone can try their hand at the process of creating news, but in doing so we're also going to have to figure out a way to sort through all this noise in order to find the truth.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 14, 2008 6:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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With their leadership in the deployment of fiber to the home, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise anyone that two of the most innovative broadband-connected devices on display come from South Korea.

The first is called the Virtual Studio from Darim. What it allows you to do is create presentations for the web where it looks like the speaker is standing in front of a futuristic screen that can virtually display any content, like PowerPoint slides or video.

The experience it creates is akin to a weatherman in front of a map, only you can also do things like reorientate the position of where your head shows up on the screen and dynamically switch between content on the fly complete with cool 3D transitions.

The system itself is a box that you connect a camera and a broadband connection to that you control with a separate LCD touchscreen. This all includes a hosting service and a host of value-added possibilities, like the ability to install a telepresence videoconferencing system alongside these presentation system.

While many of DARIM products are for high-end professionals, Virtual Studio is aimed at a broader smaller business market, with its basic entry level version clocking in at $13,000. Still a significant investment, but much cheaper than the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars analogous broadcast equipment can cost.

The other innovative Korean product I wanted to mention is SBN Tech’s Video Phone. (Should admit this is my generic name for it; there wasn’t any literature I could take away and their website doesn’t seem to list this specific product.)

While videophones aren’t new, what I liked about theirs is first off its 10-inch touchscreen. It’s the biggest screen I’ve seen on a videophone and the picture looked great, though I can’t speak for its performance as they were running it over a closed network, not the Internet. Another advantage to this device is its attempt at interoperability. While a language barrier prevented me from understanding all of what they were saying, I did catch that they’ve built this videophone to work with those made by D-Link. Plus, like seemingly everything these days, it has built in Wi-Fi so no need to connect to a computer to get online.

What I also liked was the fact that while today the device primarily just makes calls, it has the capacity to run additional applications on top of or around the live video. While it may be a challenge figuring out which applications to pursue first and how to do so without overly complicating the device, this was one of the few products that gave me a real wow factor that I saw on the show floor.

The biggest issue I had with it, though, is its cost. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but it’s going to be either $300-400 for the videophone, and then another $30 or so a month for the ability to make calls. That seems like a lot, especially per month, as there a number of free videocalling options other there, but then I realized that $30 a month is roughly what people pay for voice service. So perhaps that number isn’t so high if we assume that some day we might start to see videophones becoming more prominent than voice-only ones.

Here's a short video showing what it looks like:

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 11, 2008 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
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Instead of burying you with one mega-post I thought it best to split up my comments on specific products I saw out at CES into a series of shorter posts.

First up, I found myself somewhat surprised that one of the most innovative things I saw at the show came not from a new, small company or a large media company but instead IBM. More specifically their pursuit of the 3D Web.

As a quick background, IBM has made splashes recently with their strong interest in the virtual world of Second Life, where users create avatars in order to run (and fly) around a virtual 3D world in which they can interact with other users and build a wide variety of things, like clothes, buildings, and actions.

Also a while back I’d read about IBM’s internal project entitled the Metaverse, which was a 3D world intended for use by IBM employees to communicate with other IBM employees in a 3D environment.

So it’s not like I hadn’t heard of this before, but I still found myself surprised when I came upon IBM’s booth and the most prominent thing on display were kiosks touting their work experimenting with and developing a 3D Web.

In talking it over with their representatives, I learned that IBM is highly committed to this 3D future, whether it’s working on developing a virtual presence for a wide range of possible customers (like retail or real estate, where having a virtual mockup of a space can help close a sale) as well as for internal use.

I find their internal use particularly interesting as what started out as a skunkworks project has grown into an environment that supports the interactions of more than 5000 IBM employees. When asked what the greatest benefits of using 3D virtual worlds has been, the two primary areas were in collaboration and modeling.

On the collaboration side, they cited the positives of having more visual cues indicating who wants to be talking during a multi-person meeting (something that can be nigh impossible on a conference call) as well as the extremely positive sign that often after meetings they find pairs of people wandering off or staying behind to continue conversations. This suggests the conversations they’re having are real and engaging, despite being done through computer-generated avatars.

On the modeling front, virtual worlds and Second Life in particular offer robust tools for creating in-world objects, whether they be boxes or chairs or anything really. Because of this, IBM has found useful these tools for creating 3D virtual models of real-world products for people to get a feel for prior to manufacturing or physically prototyping. This makes a lot of sense and seems like it could be an incredibly powerful tool for many distributed workplace situations.

All in all I walked away highly impressed at the commitment IBM has made to 3D virtual worlds. And quite frankly, I couldn’t be more excited to see what having the resources of a giant like IBM committed to this space will mean for the continuing evolution of 3D environments for practical business purposes.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 11, 2008 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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Working on a longer post that details my reactions to specific products I saw while in and around the show floor of CES, but for now I wanted to share my overarching feelings.

To be frank, I was more than a little disappointed.

While I'll admit my inability to see everything CES had to offer, I feel comfortable claiming to have walked at least a third and probably more than a half of the exhibit space, which is a sufficient enough sample to draw this conclusion: there wasn't much there that used broadband in an innovative way.

Sure there were fancy shmancy webcams, boxes that bring Internet video to your TV or pocket, a variety of security systems, and other boxes that help you manage and remotely access your content, but there was next to nothing there that sent or received bits over the network that did much of anything new other than to add features and/or make easier existing functionalities.

Also disappointing was the near total lack of anything broadband-related that enhanced something other than entertainment. This shouldn't have been surprising given the overall bent of CES, but it's still frustrating that we have yet to a reach a point where a show like CES is littered with cool new technologies that leverage broadband to improve healthcare, education, and government. These areas weren't totally ignored, but at best they were only represented by a small handful of companies.

But at the same time, the degree to which entertainment is increasingly wired to the Internet is staggering. We're talking about more and more set-top boxes that bring online content to the TV, TVs that connect directly to the Internet, cars with built-in media systems, cameras that upload photos and video all on their own, home servers for backup and managing your media, USB thumb drives with Wi-fi that automatically backup to an online service, and more.

I don't think any of these things are going to improve society to any great degree, but they're all likely to find an audience eager to leverage their capabilities and in turn create more demand for bandwidth.

And despite my complaints I did find some cool things, which I look forward to sharing with you all in tomorrow's post.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 10, 2008 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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As mentioned yesterday, I attended a panel of representatives of the biggest broadband providers in the US, including: Tom Tauke of Verizon, Jim Cicconi of AT&T, Joseph Waz of Comcast, Mr. Ali of Sprint (my apologies to him if he's reading this: I didn't write down his first name, it's not in the program, and Google has failed me), and the co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance Bruce Mehlman.

The panel started with short presentations by each. Here are a few notable items I took away:

- Waz mentioned that four out of ten of their customers are still analog, but that number is decreasing, and as it continues to do so it will allow Comcast to recapture bandwidth. How much that might improve the performance of their network I didn't get a chance to ask, but I'm going to follow up with him to find out.

- Tauke focused primarily on demand for bandwidth, showing a bar graph that compared the amount of bandwidth needed for different apps contrasted against the capacity of cable vs. DSL vs. FiOS. His overall assessment is that with demand continuing to grow, all carriers are and will continue to be forced to invest in their network.

- Tauke also specifically mentioned the challenges of and need for a better way to reach rural Americans who don't have access to broadband today. I found this somewhat surprising given Verizon's push to divest itself of its rural assets, but at the same time heartening that they seem interested in directly engaging with trying to find a solution to this problem.

- Cicconi shared AT&T's attempt at creating a graphical representation of the Internet, citing the 320,000 nodes that make it up, and briefly discussing the fact that the Internet's a network of networks and therefore not controlled by any one person or company. He also alluded to AT&T's own investment to keep up with demand as it works on quadrupling the capacity of its overall network (read more about this here).

They then started in on a series of questions from the moderator. As the answers sometimes made points that were somewhat tangential to the questions, I'm just going to continue my use of bullet points to highlight those tidbits I found most interesting.

Continue reading "Thoughts from "Finding the Right Bandwidth" CES Session..." »

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 9, 2008 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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It's amazing how combining a seemingly endless show floor with limitless choice in nighttime activities can derail the best intentions of any blogger to post throughout the day. Never worry, though, as there have already been many interesting, enlightening experiences I'm looking forward to sharing with you throughout the week.

The first I want to delve into is the bizarre juxtaposition of the two sessions I was most interested in attending yesterday.

One was entitled "National Broadband Deployment: Are We There Yet?" and the other was "Finding the Right Bandwidth."

"National Broadband Deployment..." featured, among others, a representative from Google, the Consumer Electronics Association, and non-elected representatives of Congress and the Executive Office of the President.

"Finding the Right Bandwidth" featured a slate of wireline and wireless network operators, including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Sprint.

The unfortunate challenge I faced was that the first session was at noon at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the second was at 1:30 at the Venetian. Being able to get between the two in less than half an hour was an uncertain affair; both buildings are huge, it can be a scrum to get a taxi at the convention center, and the only other option--the monorail--I was completely unfamiliar with.

So, much to my chagrin, I made the decision to forgo the "National Broadband Deployment..." session for the "Finding the Right Bandwidth" session in the hopes of finding a more interesting discussion regarding the use of broadband.

I admittedly regret the decision to some degree looking back as the second session didn't plow much new ground, especially in the area I'm most interested in of the supply and demand of bandwidth--I'll share my notes from this session in my next post--but that's not what frustrated me most.

That honor goes to the unintentional symbolism of having two sessions about the availability (and, to a lesser degree, use) of broadband that each to a degree feature a different side of the debate (though Verizon and NetCoalition, a group of ISP organizations, were on stage as well) occurring on opposite sides of the conference.

It's almost like the realities of the broadband debate being overly polarized and lacking real two-way dialogue became personified in the scheduling of these two panels. The arrangement paralleled the tendency for the two sides on issues like net neutrality to not engage in a straightforward, productive dialogue.

I'm not trying to blame anyone for this happening, especially since I understand on a much smaller level the challenges of constructing a conference agenda that is inevitably imperfect due to availability and scheduling and the like.

But I couldn't ignore the irony of this arrangement.

The truth of the matter is that this intellectual stalemate that has put a chill over substantive telecom debate has to end. There are just so many issues that are going to have to be worked through over the next few years as the Internet continues its rise to prominence as the dominant medium of the 21st century.

If we want to have any hope of resolving these issues and finding the best path to America's broadband-enabled future we need to create an environment where people and companies can state their opinions and be heard and thoughtfully considered, where we can all disagree yet find a way to focus less on our differences and more so on our similarities, where we can uncover the threads of truth that connect us all and that we can all agree on.

And to do this, the only way is to have all parties come together and engage in a civil, upfront dialogue where we all respect the opinions of others, state our own opinions eloquently and without vitriol, and understand that on some issues compromise and a willingness to evolve one's positions is the only approach that will allow us to find those truths that can ultimately be what's best for our country rather than what's best for an individual company or person.

So here's to 2008, a year that I will both hope for and fight for to be the time when we finally all come together, acknowledge the importance and validity of all parties involved with making the Internet great, and find a way to come together help everyone participate in and profit from a broadband-enabled future.

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 8, 2008 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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I'm on the ground in Vegas preparing to head out to explore what many wondrous tech treasures the mega-conference CES has to offer.

Last night, while walking the Strip, my mind started to wander, taking in the sights and sounds of a casino-lined midnight street. For whatever reason, this carnival atmosphere got me thinking about broadband and the similarities between it and Vegas.

Vegas is an amalgam of stuff built on top of stuff, not to the extreme of a New York City, but enough so that you can see how growth has been organic, driven not by a central plan but by the interests of companies and individuals looking to create what they think is the best way to part people from their money.

Through this uneven growth many great successes have been realized and wondrous sites created, but you still can't shake the haphazard feeling of how today's Strip has come to be.

This was the first thought that got me thinking about broadband and the way it's been built out; a series of private companies and individuals deciding what they think is best without any semblance of a central, organizing plan.

There's another feeling I can't ignore when I'm in Vegas: the shallowness of it all. It's undoubtedly America's playground, but for what purpose? Do people feel satisfied when they leave (questionable)? Is there any real purpose here other than mindless entertainment (doubtful)?

Again my thoughts bled over to broadband as I couldn't ignore the reality that to date the impact of the Internet has been less than substantial on society as its use remains in large part limited to facilitate the delivery of light entertainment, videos of dogs chasing their tails and games that only help pass the time.

But in thinking this through further I came upon one huge difference between broadband and Vegas: in Vegas everything is geared around the central precept of cajoling people into spending as much money as possible. You can't go anywhere without finding a new way to spend your money; in fact, most of it's been designed so as to force you to walk past more opportunities to do so than you might like. And the casinos have spent billions in an attempt to create environments in which you're compelled to reach into your wallet and get into the game.

Now contrast this intent against broadband. To date, network operators have done relatively little to encourage the use of their core service of providing broadband access. There's little to no effort to get people to consume more bandwidth, to become "addicted" to its use or at least feel compelled to give it a try.

To draw from another Vegas analogy, I sometimes feel like network operators are in the business of selling timeshares. They want to get people to invest in timeshares, but not actually use them. Even more bizarre, they're fine if people show up, but they're not doing much to introduce customers to all the wonderful things that can be done there. And overall their focus seems much more on building out their services to influence public opinion and drive new customers rather than trying to maximize the experience of their existing customers.

I'll admit this analogy may not be a great one as I don't literally mean to draw parallels between network operators and timeshare peddlers, but I used it to drive home my point: there's a whole lot more network operators could, and probably should, be doing to encourage demand for their services.

In some instances, there is some small movement in this direction, but what we need is a seismic shift, something far beyond incremental steps, if we are to fully embrace the possibilities of broadband.

And despite my seemingly railing against network operators in this post, in actuality it's my belief that we won't be able to get where we want to go as quickly as we need to get there without the network operators being more engaged in the pursuit of increasing demand for bandwidth.

They've got the direct relationships with customers; they've got the networks and the ability to introduce a new era of quality of service online; so they can be the greatest partners in the push to make America broadband-enabled. If only they'd take the lesson on full display in Vegas that once you get the customer you should be working hard every day to increase their demand for your services.

But enough big-picture thought for now; it's time for me to focus on the task at hand: heading out to the conference to explore the latest and greatest in consumer electronics.

I'm going to have my laptop with me and am hoping to get some posts up throughout the day, but if not you can be sure I'll post a daily roundup of my experiences today and tomorrow in America's playground, now littered with the coolest cutting-edge toys.

Wish me luck!

Posted by Geoff Daily on January 7, 2008 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
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