Internet TV

Technology writer, Peter Svensson, wrote an interesting story called "Will video break the Internet?". From a technical point of view there are many factors to consider. If a large number of web "surfers" were using the Internet as their primary way to watch TV, there would be a problem. More capacity is clearly needed, especially as HD-TV becomes more prevalent. The pessimists — and some telecommunications operators — see rising fees to pay for the bandwidth expansion. Optimists know that various technologies such as multicasting, caching, digital video recorders, etc. are dramatically improving the Net’s ability to deliver video content and in parallel the cost per unit of technology continues to decline. History would suggest the optimistic view is the right one.

During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta there was a bomb blast. Native Atlanta ex-patriots living in Japan and Germany and other parts of the world wanted to get as much news coverage as possible about the status but had few choices (there were no blogs then). The Internet Technology team at IBM in Southbury, Connecticut was running a large web infrastructure for the Games at the time and one of the engineers, Andy Stanford-Clark, got the idea to "stream" a local Atlanta radio station over the Internet using an IBM technology called Bamba. It was a very successful project but only a handful of people could listen simultaneously due to the limitations of the technology and the Internet. Some people thought that if there were large numbers of listeners "audio would break the Internet". Today millions of people consider audio over the Net as commonplace. (Listening to crystal clear classical music from KUSC-FM in Los Angeles through my Sqeezebox as I write this). Based on the tens of millions of daily visitors to YouTube, it is clear that video has also become commonplace. Another leading indicator is what is happening on campus. A number of universities have decided to use the Internet to deliver cable TV to their dormitories.

One of the issues Mr. Svensson raised in his story is "net neutrality", a term that means different things to different people. The fear is that the really large telecommunications companies that provide parts of the "backbone" of the Internet may decide to not only raise fees but also to be discriminatory. In the extreme it would mean that Verizon would block access to Google because they made a deal with Yahoo! or visa versa. The telcos have never been successful in getting into the content business so a new angle for them might be to make deals with content providers that would make their video move through the Internet backbone at a higher priority in return for fees. These fears have gotten the attention of lawmakers who are now talking about legislation to insure net neutrality. Legislation is the worst possible way to address the issue.

What is really needed is more competition. In Japan, the Internet service available to consumers is significantly faster than in the U.S. and significantly less expensive. For example, Yahoo! Broadband offers 8 million bits per second for about $20 per month. Up to 100 million bits per second is available. What technical breakthrough have they had? None. The breakthrough was to separate the various infrastructure elements of Internet service and allow "Adam Smith’s invisible hand" to go to work. More competition means higher speeds and lower prices. In the U.S. we have legions of lawyers and lobbyists at work doing their best to gain protections for themselves and to slow the spread of innovation such as municipal wireless and voice over IP. Will video break the Internet? No. The biggest threat to freedom of choice for content at competitive prices is a lack of competition.

Misguided or overly-prescriptive legislation can have unintended consequences. It can often fix one problem and create two new ones or add yet another layer of protectionism. Mike Nelson, former Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission (and former colleague at IBM), says "a lack of competition which lets companies exert monopoly or duopoly power is probably the biggest damper on innovation". Not all legislation is bad. It is possible to use it to increase competition and decrease regulation, to fund e-government pilot projects, “connect the unconnected,” or fund university education and research.

Other patrickWeb stories about Internet Technology

Update

There are some pictures from the New Orleans trip at flickr. Red Herring ran a story called Net 2016: The Web 10 Years After in which a number of us were quoted. See in the news. If you haven’t tried Pandora, I highly recommend it. Story to follow.

The Big Picture From Rome

The final afternoon of the Business Leadership Forum focused on the big picture — of both global political factors and technology. A panel included Karl-Heinz Grasser, Federal Minister of Finance for the Republic of Austria. He spoke about how governments can not only avoid being an obstacle to innovation and growth but also encourage competition thereby creating more jobs.
The panel was bullish about how the information revolution — ushered in by the microprocessor in the early 1970′s and the Internet of the 1990′s — has led to an explosion of new products
and new business models, However, there was a consensus that retaliation from poor economies and over-regulation by some countries could stymie the growth.
 

Mario Monti, President of Bocconi University and commissioner in the European Union for ten years, was quite optimistic about the EU — a market of 480 million people — and said that the EU itself is an innovation. He said that Europe is much more like the U.S. than it was. It is now a single market, has a single currency, and has been expanding market reach around the world. The shortcoming is that Europe, unlike America, does not yet have a constitution. This results in an economic disadvantage because the European community can not make a decision for the total. The European economy is not innovating quickly enough and in fact some countries are protecting the past at the expense of the future. Mario says it is time for "naming and shaming" the laggards through peer reviews. Then he got more specific — "Germany, France, and Italy are behind on liberalization of service markets and have resisted initiatives to increase competition". These three countries will have a negative impact on the Euro which in turn will hurt the rest of Europe. Mr. Monti’s presentation was sobering but hopeful. He said the EU has a lot of good features, that it can protect intellectual property but also move against monopolies such as Microsoft. The key to get innovation going in Europe is for the EU to innovate itself by completing it’s constitution.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger kicked off the final segment of the forum, which focused on the future.
IBM supports Linux because it is a great operating system for computers. Irving introduced Linus Torvalds the developer of Linux which he published as a student in 1991. Don Tapscott, a widely acclaimed author, who invented the term “paradigm shift”, then moderated the final panel which included Linus,
Nick Donofrio, executive vice president for innovation and technology at IBM, and Ann Mettler, executive director and co-founder of The Lisbon Council. It was a wide-ranging discussion. Linus is an incredibly humble guy. He said he has no vision, just looks 5 cm ahead before each step, and loves to solve technical problems. Linux is successful, he says, because both the development and the decision making are distributed — a "built-in meritocracy". Don asked why volunteers worked on Linux for no economic return. Linus said, “if you were all engineers, you would not be asking that question”. Open source software is viable in most all software areas, with the only exception being niche markets which are too small to get adequate collaboration. "Open source will take over most all infrastructure".

Ann said there is a huge gap between businesses which are moving ahead rapidly and societies which feel left behind. The key problem is that the economy is 70% services but the regulations and governance are still based on an industrial model. She believes that government should learn how to innovate from businesses. "Politicians are clueless about the discussion of the past day and a half". She says that businesses need to share their leanings with society. The labor market in Europe is flat because companies do not want to hire and that is because the laws are so onerous. "You can hire but you can’t fire". Labor reform is needed desperately.

Nick says’ It’ s all about change”. IBM is doing a balancing act by supporting both open things and proprietary things. The company is generating a lot of patents but also giving away a lot of patents to move the ball forward in key markets such as healthcare and education. "The world can move ahead faster if the OS is Linux — it is good enough and a "blow for freedom". A California venture capitalist asked about business ethics and Nick was very aggressive in his response saying it was not optional for companies to be totally and completely ethical in every respect. (Having been at IBM for 38 years, I can say I never ever had a  concern about ethics at the company). Nick summarized that anyone can innovate if they are willing to change. “If nothing changes, nothing changes”.
Sam wrapped up the conference by saying corporations need to be transparent. Their ultimate responsibility is to create value for the constituencies: stockholders, customers, employees.
He walks the talk.  

Intro to Roman Rendezvous Stories
Index to Roman Rendezvous stories

Demos and Podcast From Rome

April 8, 2006

IBM had some demonstrations set up in the breakout areas at the Auditorium Parco della staffed by researchers and experts in various areas. There was a lot of interest during coffee breaks. After lunch before the final session of the forum got started I had interview with Chris Barger from IBM to talk about the demonstrations and also a few thoughts on the future of healthcare and the Internet. Here is the transcript and here is the podcast.

Intro to Roman Rendezvous Stories
Index to Roman Rendezvous stories
Podcast
Transcript of podcast

Western Geocaching

There wasn’t time during the two and a half hour drive from Denver to Laramie, Wyoming to look for some of the many geocaches and benchmarks, but we did take an hour to find two interesting geocaches in Laramie.
The first cache is associated with "Welcome to Laramie" and is located at 41.3 degrees north and 105.54 degrees west.
Exactly due east from home but 32 degrees further west and more than a mile higher in elevation.

The second cache — StarBrand’s Rhyme Time #2 — was different than any I have seen so far. It was hidden in a tupperware container under a log out in a field.
On a sheet of paper were listed 100 words. In order to count the cache as a "find" you have to pick a word and write a four line poem with at least two rhymes with the word you selected. Since we were there for one of our son’s graduations from Wyotech, the poem was easy to compose….

We came for our son’s graduation
Mom and Dad are filled with elation
The ceremony was quite a creation
The students received an ovation
We had a fear this day would not be near
Now we’re here shedding a tear

From Wyoming, it was back to Denver for a flight to Las Vegas to participate in the Stratus Technologies Conference.
Staying at the Venetian was tough duty but somebody had to do it. Not being good gamblers, we found three very interesting virtual caches. A virtual cache is one where you go to a specified latitude and longitude and observe something and then send an email to the cache owner or post a picture to validate that you had actually found the cache. In some cases you have to report certain information that you would only know if you had actually been there. The first one was a commemorative plaque that had to be reported. At the second one a pose by a statue was required. The third one was most difficult to find and there were three questions that had to be answered and reported to the cache owner. Aside from the educational aspect of this cache, the surrounding scenery and wildlife made the walk worthwhile.

On Monday morning I gave a speech at the conference for 500 people and talked about the key trends I see with the future of the Internet. In the afternoon I participated in an executive roundtable to drill a bit deeper into the issues. My theme is still that we are only 5% of the way into what the Internet has in store for our business and personal lives. As for geocaches and benchmarks, the 84 I have found so far are less than one one-hundredth of a percent of those that are out there.

Wired

Wired Magazine has been a pleasure to read for more than ten years (published in San Francisco, California since March 1993). Each issue that arrives becomes part of the "read" file for the next airplane ride. I find the magazine provocative and insightful. Increasingly over recent years it has become movie and game oriented and although I am not a gamer or video fan, it is good to stay on top of where things are going with the younger generation. (Note: I am told the average gamer is now more than 30 years old).

The current issue of Wired includes an interview (sponsored by Lexus) by Charlie Rose with Eric Schmidt (CEO at Google), Ivan Seidenberg (CEO at Verizon), Michael Eisner (CEO at Disney), and film director George Clooney. The piece was obviously an advertorial and contained a lot of self-serving comments, but nevertheless, I found it very interesting and prescient.

It was surprising that Clooney, Eisner, and Seidenberg mentioned the Internet more than Eric Schmidt did. It was not that long ago that Hollywood and Telco were in denial about the Net. Eisner talked about billions of people downloading movies in minutes and said that the industry would see a lot of "bubbles breaking" but that in 5-10 years the music, movie, and television industry would be "unbelievably strong". Clooney said he thinks people will still go to theatres because they are an "event" but the content will be 100% digital with movies instantly downloaded into 300 theaters across the country.

Eric Schmidt was very consistent with the Google vision to organize the world’s information. He said that all their best ideas come from the "spend 20% of your time to work on whatever you want to" employment policy. He also said that only 1-2% of the U.S. half-trillion dollar advertising spending was on the Internet — obviously leaving a lot of upside for Google. Seidenberg wants to wire the country with fiber optic cable to every home and offer tens of megabits for multiple HDTV’s, telephony, and Internet service.

The good news for the rest of us, as long as the lobbyists don’t get in the way, is that there is going to be a lot of competition in every aspect of what the interviewees discussed. The result should be faster speeds and lower prices. The bad news is that we may have to put up with old-fashioned shotgun style advertising for a while and meanwhile there are a lot of startup companies investing heavily in new advertising techniques to identify us, target us, and blast advertising to every form of communication that we engage. Fortunately, there are also companies working on methods to preserve our privacy and protect us from being harassed.

Open and Closed

The central theme at the IBM Open Source IT Analyst Conference in Stamford, Connecticut this week revolved around the word "open". The term is used with "open source" and also with "open standards" and there is often confusion about the meaning of the two terms. A standard is like a blueprint. An open standard is one that is freely available. Open source is software that is freely available and which may implement open standards. The two terms are independent.

At one extreme, open means you can take my idea and do whatever you want with it and you don’t even have to tell me you did so. At the other extreme, closed means my idea is mine and you can not use it or even see it. In a practical sense there is a wide spectrum in between open and closed. There are many factors in the debate but long term it is breakaway innovation among communities of developers and inventors that share a common vision that is the most important argument in favor of the expansion of open source software. The downside for entrenched monopolies or those resistant to change is that open source can cause disruption and a ton of incremental competition in markets. IBM’s Dr. Bob Sutor, vp for standards and open source, says "tough". Only the greatest sinners of the past can truly repent.

The most visible example of the open standards debate is what is going on in Massachusetts. (see prior story). Some people are calling the state’s decision to separate data formats from applications a "Bill of Rights" around information. A gentleman from Boston University told me he not only is confident the decision will stick but that it will be a model for the free world. A Norwegian official said that proprietary data will no longer be acceptable. It is a struggle against existing ways of doing things but long term there are huge benefits for all of us if open document forms proliferate resulting in consistent, error-free, structured ways of doing things. Electronic physician notes about our healthcare would be a good example. IBM has targeted healthcare and education as two industries that can benefit from open documents and the company is opening up it’s intellectual property treasure trove to help enable these two industries to make a quantum leap.

What about patents? Similar to open vs. closed, patents are not all good or all bad. It is quite impressive to see how IBM has been able to balance it’s proprietary products and it’s open source solutions. They are building proprietary code and innovation on top of the open source base. At the same time they are giving patents away that have the potential to accelerate the quality of healthcare and education. In parallel they are leading an effort to improve the quality and integrity of the patent process that all companies use. The patent process has been like the jury system — not perfect but nobody has come up with a better way. In the case of the patent system, while many companies complain about the system, IBM is taking the lead to do something about it.

Other patrickWeb stories about open standards
Bob Sutor’s blog

Open and Closed – Intro

Today I attended the IBM Open Source Analyst Briefing which was held at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut. I will post a story about what I learned later but first I would like to share something about the Marriott. The hotel had a "Wired-for-Business" connectivity offer which enables guests to "Work smarter with unlimited…" in-room high-speed Internet access plus local and long distance phone calls. The cost is $9.95 per day. Not bad compared to many places. For me, using EV-DO is much better. I am already paying a monthly fee for it and it works more or less everywhere — but I have to admit it is expensive. I suspect many guests do not have EV-DO and may not want the WiFi offering. They will be confronted with $1.00 for the first 30 minutes of a local call, MCI "daytime operator assisted" rate plus 55% hotel surcharge for long distance plus a "connection charge" of $4.99 for each U.S. long distance call and $9.00 for each "International" call. This is one of many examples of companies exploiting those who are part of a declining market for old-fashioned services. Why would anyone pay $4.99 plus $1.00 for a call that they could make on their cell phone — probably within their covered minutes. As for international calling, there are many choices including Skype and my people which allows you to transfer from a cell phone to your home and then to a VoIP connection to Europe for less than ten cents per minute. Disintermediation is happening all over the place. Next time you need to call 411, try 800-FREE-411 instead.

Holmenkollen

The snow on Wednesday was melting fast, the temperature was in the fifties, and the motorcycle ride was nice. Seemed almost like Spring, until I landed the next morning in blowing snow in Oslo, Norway. The snow has been continuous for the past two days but it does not seem to slow the Norwegians down even a little. I have seen kids on skis going up hill and senior citizens navigating the streets using ski poles instead of walkers. Where I am staying in Holmenkollen, near the famous Olympic ski jump, the hotel is full of kids ready to participate in a national ski competition this weekend. While they are flying down the slopes tomorrow, I will be flying to Copenhagen and then on to Newark, New Jersey and home.

The purpose of the trip was to visit with Opera Software ASA where I am a board member. Opera has a lot of exciting things going on. Just this week they announced that it will deliver the Web to Nintendo Dual Screen users. The Opera browser will be sold as a DS card (think of it as a game cartridge). Users simply insert the card into the Wi-Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens. In the U.S. most people don’t browse on any handheld screens and now the Japanese are doing it on two screens!

Potentially even more profound is that Opera Software and Freedom Media just announced the world’s first mobile AJAX application using Opera as a "platform". In a nutshell AJAX is a set of Internet standards that allow the creation of applications that act and feel as though they are desktop applications, but they are actually web pages residing on a server somewhere on the Internet. After the web page is loaded, it quietly works behind the scenes to deliver data to the web page so that rather than "re-loading" a web page, the content of the page is changed in front of your eyes. Opera calls this new kind of application "Opera Widgets". This is the beginning of something big. What is profound about Opera widgets is that since they "live" on a web server, you can access them from anywhere — your PC, Mac, Linux setop box, game console, PDA, or your mobile phone. Stay tuned.

It is now Saturday morning and still snowing. If I thought the hotel was crowded with young people, it was nothing compared to the airport. Seems that every family in Norway is on their way to somewhere for a winter break. I asked one young man where he was headed and he said Florida. He was ready for a break from one of the world’s great winter wonderlands. SAS hosed downed the wings really well before we took off in the snow.

The MooBella Demo

It was such an exciting week at Demo that it is hard to summarize. There are many reviews of the conference on the web and you can find some of them at Kaboodle (one of the companies that debuted at Demo). There were sixty-eight companies showing off their latest and greatest — the Demo site has the full list with links to the companies, so if you want to know what is hot take a look here and click the + sign next to Demo 2006 at the top right of the page.

The product least expected but perhaps most enjoyed by the 700+ attendees was the MooBella virtual ice cream vending machine. After attendees made touch-panel choices from up to 96 combinations of flavors and mix-ins, the machine mixed and instantly froze fresh ingredients to produce a delicious scoop of ice cream within 45 seconds. The only drawback I could see was that there was no chocolate. Apparently, that flavor (favorite of 20% of the market) poses special challenges due to the viscosity of cocoa powder.

There were a number of themes that emerged at DEMO. Collaboration was one. Chris Shipley said that 2006 will be the year of collaboration. Demos included virtual meeting platforms, tools that in effect allow people to act as librarians and share their findings with others, and tools for collaborative software development. Another theme was vertical search. Google and Yahoo! are great but highly specialized searches offer much better results. Examples shown included shopping, entertainment, software code, healthcare, and politics.

Mobile applications are still somewhat limited by tiny screens but innovative new ideas were shown that make cell phones more useful than ever. One company showed a phone being used as a personal trainer during exercise. It kept track of your pace and location and plotted results on the screen. Another small device was shown that allows complete control over the phone, music, and every aspect of things going on in the house.

Security solutions were shown to protect our identity, protect our networks, stop spam and viruses at the door, and diagnose Internet traffic and catch malware before it gets to our systems. Biometric technologies were shown to allow secure payment and authentication. I look forward to some of these technologies being used in healthcare.

Through two FutureScan panels I attempted to help the audience see the future of security and computational biology. On the security panel we discussed the general state of Internet security (not healthy) but more importantly some of the research that may lead to a healthier net. To me the most promising thing is PKI. I have written much about this here. The computational biology panel was mind-blowing for most of us. Systems biology models, redesigning proteins, and learning about our genetic history will affect all of our lives. There was a great deal of interest in The Genographic Project. (A dozen DNA kits were given to the audience — you can get your own here). If you are interested in learning more about the human genome, the panelists recommended Genome by Matt Ridley. I am reading it now. We were all extremely fortunate to have had some of the world’s leading experts share their thoughts on the panels. You can find links to all the panelists here.

The most asked question between Demo attendees at breaks and meals is "See anything interesting?". Chris Shipley, Executive Producer of the DEMO Conferences, introduced sixty-eight companies — there was definitely something for everybody. I was not able to visit all the companies or hear all of their pitches, but at the end of this story I will mention eleven companies that I found most interesting — "My Top Ten Picks"