The tales of New York City's rats are legendary. NY Rats are big and smart, and they have lots of babies. The city has a rat czar and recently held a rat summit to discuss the issue. Mayor Eric Adams was undoubtedly happy to talk about the rat problem rather than his own issues. — Read the rest

The post New York feeding rats tasty birth control appeared first on Boing Boing.

Neuroscientists have confirmed what every stoner already knows: music sounds better when you're high on weed. In a paper titled "Exploring the interaction between cannabis, hearing, and music," researchers from Toronto Metropolitan University reported results from a study in which participants "reported significantly greater hearing sensitivity and levels of state absorption while high compared to sober." — Read the rest

The post Music really does sound better when you're high, scientists report appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: If you still don't have a mouse for your WFH setup, get this ergonomic Logitech MX mouse for $89.99 (reg. $99)!

You know what part of you body seriously takes a beating after a long day or week of work? No, it's not your neck—though you need a more supportive office chair. — Read the rest

The post Your hand is cramping up! Use this ergonomic mouse instead appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Minnessota maker named Caleb Olson built the Poopcopter, an autonomous drone that seeks out dog-doo and retrieves it for disposal.

He describes it as the "world's first aerial bound self-guided dog poop removal system." See it in action below.

"The Poopcopter is capable of scanning areas defined by a user, your backyard for example, and as it scans it's performing real-time computer vision using the camera which is inside the drone," Olson says. — Read the rest

The post The Poopcopter is a DIY autonomous drone that finds and collects dog-doo appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Take 75% off this podcast player and discovery app with code TAKE10 at checkout.

We're not gonna lie: This app is so good it should come with a warning label. It's got everything a podcast junkie like yourself could ever want: millions of shows, easy discovery of new episodes, offline listening…But be warned, you'll only want more once you get a taste. — Read the rest

The post This app is your podcast dealer…don't get addicted appeared first on Boing Boing.

I recently switched over to using a vinegar-based spray cleaner (just vinegar, water, and rubbing alcohol), to clean my kitchen. It works wonderfully for me, and I love that by using it I'm saving money and reducing my exposure to harsh chemicals. — Read the rest

The post The science of vinegar: what happens to bacteria under a microscope appeared first on Boing Boing.

Preikestolen, Pulpit Rock, is one of Norway's most famous natural landmarks. It's located in Rogaland county, near the town of Forsand. It overlooks the stunning Lysefjorden, a narrow fjord surrounded by steep cliffs.

In this video of the 604m Rock, both the stunning beauty and dizzying height of the rock are shown. — Read the rest

The post The stunning view from Preikestolen, 604m over Norway's Lysefjorden appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Boring Day's DIY head speaker is a one-of-a-kind speaker straight out of the uncanny valley. It's fantastic. 

The speaker is built inside of a plastic mannequin head, with exposed wires that look like the mannequin's hairdo. The sound comes out of the mannequins eye holes which look like bug eyes.To — Read the rest

The post Bluetooth speaker inside a mannequin head appeared first on Boing Boing.

Surveillance footage of Sheriff Shawn "Mickey" Stines shooting and killing District Judge Kevin Mullins in his own chambers was played in a Kentucky court yesterday, shocking onlookers. Judge Rupert Wilhoit found probable cause to refer Stines' first-degree murder charge to a grand jury. — Read the rest

The post Surveillance footage of Kentucky Sheriff killing judge shown in court appeared first on Boing Boing.

The Verge's roundup of smart rings seems representative of a general consensus: Oura is just ahead of the game when it comes to these inconspicious gadgets. The competition is either too rough in one repect or another, be it software, syncing or the basic credibility of measurements, and the best is a model from Samsung that requires other Samsung stuff to work right. — Read the rest

The post Oura the best smart ring, say testers appeared first on Boing Boing.

Nintendo is cracking down on emulators of its hardware and media depicting their use. First Yuzu was taken down with a lawsuit, and now departs Ryujinx, a similar project that had sought to avoid the legal landmines Yuzu stepped on. — Read the rest

The post Another emulation project disappears amid Nintendo crackdown appeared first on Boing Boing.

We are doing what we do best when something threatens the consumer supply chain: rushing to buy mountains of toilet paper. Experts say the dockworkers' strike won't result in shortages, but the panic-buying might so long as the panic-buying lasts.

"They cleaned out the toilet paper at my local Walmart in Virginia.

— Read the rest

The post Toilet paper buying panic recommences as dockworkers strike appeared first on Boing Boing.

Announcing the brand new Tom the Dancing Bug book: Volume 8 of The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug book program is "IT'S THE GREAT STORM, TOM THE DANCING BUG!" Now accepting orders right HERE! Get your personalized / signed / sketched / swagged copy today! — Read the rest

The post Tom the Dancing Bug: "Hey, Ladies! Trump will be your protector!" appeared first on Boing Boing.

TL;DR: Get 37% off this touchscreen infotainment system with CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. 

Elon, who?? Okay, maybe Teslas have cool infotainment systems, but you don't have to pay crazy prices for an over-hyped screen—just grab one of these CarPlay displays for your old beater. — Read the rest

The post Teslas suck! What you really need is this whizz-bang CarPlay screen appeared first on Boing Boing.

If you have ever thought, "I wish I could play as an 8-bit version of Janet Weiss or Brad Majors," you are in luck. You can "Jump to the left and dodge to the right" in the upcoming video game adaptation of everyone's favorite midnight movie. — Read the rest

The post The Rocky Horror Picture Show is now a video game appeared first on Boing Boing.

Jason M. Allen's "Theatre D'Opera Spatial" won an art competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair, but the work was subsequently denied copyright protection due to his use of AI software to generate it and his unwillingness to disclaim that contribution to the whole. — Read the rest

The post AI artist appeals denial of copyright protection appeared first on Boing Boing.

October 1 was officially "International Raccoon Appreciation Day," for those of you who love to love the adorable trash panda. Around here, honestly, every day is raccoon appreciation day, so it's an "International Day" I can genuinely get behind.

National Day Calendar explains the origins of the day:

In 2002, a young girl in California wanted to highlight the good points about the raccoon instead of the bad ones.

— Read the rest

The post Every day should be raccoon appreciation day appeared first on Boing Boing.

A North Texas man recently spent $4000 on a guitar he believed was signed by Taylor Swift at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, Texas, and then immediately destroyed it with a hammer. Sounds like the guitar was an imposter. — Read the rest

The post Texas man wastes $4k smashing a Taylor Swift "themed" guitar appeared first on Boing Boing.

Ryan Lawler notes in his Contentinople blog that CBS's high definition stream of the NCAA men's basketball tournament has been a great success.

CBS Sports reported that traffic to its NCAA March Madness on Demand site on the first day of the tourney increased 56 percent year-over-year, to 2.7 million unique users yesterday from 1.75 million uniques a year ago.

If there is a conclusion to be drawn, I do not think it is that internet video can or should compete with television. In this case, I believe the draw is a combination of the fact that watching television on Thursday afternoon is not an option for people with a day job, and that there are many games going on simultaneously and CBS television does not always cut to the game that the individual user wants to see.

I think the focus should be on the success of delivering a high quality video experience to a large audience, many of whom were at work. This is just another step in the direction of enterprise video becoming an essential element of the workplace experience.

Last week President Obama held a press conference and took questions from a virtual audience in a video webcast.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. The White House website was open for questions for 36 hours before the press conference. 3,607,837 votes were cast for 104,129 submitted questions.

The President answered seven of those questions. One of them was about the legalization of marijuana. Some groups banded together and used the opportunity of this process to submit a high number of questions about that topic, and the despite the fact that vetters tried to avoid that issue, President Obama weighed in with a firm no.

My point has nothing to do with the politics of marijuana.

If I can be so bold as to be self-referential, my first post on this blog was to equate the power of webcasting technology to that of the printing press. The printing press broke the monopoly of a relative few (for example, monks) who had the ability to publish the written word and decide which books were worthy of reproduction and distribution (most often, the bible). The printing press made publishing accessible to the masses.

Regardless of one's politics regarding the issue, I think everyone would agree that those who favor legalizing marijuana are not in the "main stream" or among the more influential interest groups in this country. Yet the President of the United States specifically addressed their question.

The Washington DC press corps is not going to ask that question - rightly or wrongly. But the webcast by-passed the traditional media filter and brought the concerns of this group of people to the attention of our country's chief executive.

How does that translate to the corporate world? Well, what is the value of getting real feedback from the rank and file? What corporation would not benefit from taking their executives out of the bubble on the 40th floor and exposing them to the concerns of the people at the sharp end of the spear?

What is the value of a corporate culture? Most companies do a poor job of communicating and maintaining a corporate culture from the top down. But the best companies leverage webcasting to enable communications from the bottom up and include that feedback in the corporate culture.

There are perhaps a few hundred journalists with access to the President. These journalists are the only way 300,000,000 Americans can hold their leadership accountable between elections. That is, until last Thursday when webcasting allowed the people to submit questions to their President and their President decided to answer them.

President Obama's recent press conference on March 26 was available for online viewing.

According to an article written by Chris Lefkow on Yahoo, 67,000 watched the webcast live. Of course, millions if not tens of millions watched the press conference live on broadcast television so what is the big deal about another 60,000 or so watching on the web?

I wrote about the democratizing effect of using the internet to bypass the Washington press corps and taking questions from the people in my last post.

But there is at least one more point of interest. The Obama press conference exemplifies how video can be used to great effect in the enterprise.

The internet will never supplant television's ability to broadcast to tens of millions of people. Why pay for the bandwidth to replicate the scale and quality of a broadcast platform that already works very well?

But the internet does scale rather well to the needs of the enterprise: an audience of tens of thousands. And there are several "internet television" services that are emerging to deliver video across the corporate network to the employees.

But this begs the question: why should a corporation or organization invest in a network able to deliver video across its enterprise and then settle for pre-recorded video with no interactivity?

It was not the video feed that made the Obama press conference so noteworthy. It was the 104,129 questions that were submitted by the American people. Enterprise video is much more effective when it is combined with interactive rich media features like live questions and answers, live polling, surveys, testing and certification, synchronized PowerPoint, whiteboarding, registration and reporting, etc. Choosing to merely deliver the video - live or on-demand - is choosing to ignore the strengths of webcasting and get the least bang for your buck.

Why invest in servers and hubs and routers and content engines and then settle for a video platform that does not enable interactivity?

According to research done by Steve Vander Haar that he shared in a recent webcast, 68% of executives polled believe streaming video has measurable value only when it is combined with a registration system that enables reporting about who watched.

Registration and reporting adds accountability to internal communications and adds measurable results and lead generation to external communications. Internet television gives that capability away when it simply loops pre-recorded video in a window on one's website.

President Obama's press conference is a template for the effective use of internet video in the enterprise. Just as the televised Nixon vs. Kennedy debate serves as the defining example for understanding the difference between television and radio in politics, I believe this press conference will be regarded similarly for its effect on politics and on business communications.

There are plenty of corporations out there who are already doing a great job with rich media. Some of them are my clients. But the nature of corporate communications is that much of the content is for an internal audience, so there is not an obvious opportunity for organizations to learn from the successes of others. But the Obama press conference lays the formula bare for all to see.

IVT released its latest upgrades to its MediaPlatform software.

Click to view the announcement.

Forbes.com published an article by Dan Woods where he describes a battle between the traditional enterprise software providers (Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle) and Saas providers like Salesforce.com and NetSuite.

According to Woods, SaaS applications are easier to use because they offer streamlined interfaces that are modeled after successful web consumer sites like Amazon.com, Yahoo!, eBay, Google, etc. These SaaS interfaces were designed to be easily configurable.

Traditional enterprise software is not as easy to use because user interfaces are often created before it is known exactly how the software would be used. Customization to the user interface is often done at installation by systems integrators who do not have any actual user behavior on which to base their customizations.

The Big Three are well aware of the usability gap between their products and SaaS software, but it is unclear how to solve the problem. Oracle emphasizes Fusion as an integration platform. SAP recently announced an experiment called Blue Ruby that is attempting to adapt Ruby on Rails as a user interface and programming technology for its applications. But is it possible to affordably automate a business starting with a configurable application platform that must be adapted to the specific user interfaces and business processes in a company? The SaaS model starts with a usable interface and a working automation of common processes, and then has the configuration proceed from there. The hosted nature of SaaS removes the deployment barriers.

IVT software is the only webcasting and digital asset management applications available both as a SaaS and as a behind-the-firewall installation. With webcasting software, the divide has included the question: should there be proprietary hardware or should the solution be software-only.

IVT falls on the software-only side, believing that "black box" proprietary hardware is not scalable and is prone to obsolescence.

IVT software on a SaaS basis works with the network infrastructure that already exists, which is one of the competitive advantages we take to the enterprise video battle.

Steve Vonder Haar recently released an outstanding research report about the online webcasting event services business.

He states that consumers of webcasting services have been motivated by two priorities: 1) the desire to keep costs low; and 2) the desire to keep involvement of their own IT departments to a minimum. For this reason, major webcasting event service providers, like ON24, have enjoyed their greatest success at the ends of the market spectrum: low cost self-provisioning services and high touch premium webcasting services.

The premium end of the market has been bolstered by the complexity of the client's needs, which has kept fees high and competition at bay. The low end of the market had become increasingly commoditized.

He concludes that service providers are going to have to push more to the middle of that spectrum and identify more companies that require well-produced webcasts for the market to continue growing.

He also mentions that the complexity of webcast events that has traditionally protected the major service providers is no longer a significant barrier to entry. Sophisticated webcasting software offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis allows any number of production companies, agencies, and event companies to compete on an equal footing with the ON24s and the OnStreams.

According to Hoovers, the US marketing and services industry includes about 35,000 companies with combined annual revenue of about $80 billion. The industry is fragmented because the top 50 companies generate less than 40 percent of that revenue. In other words, there are a large number of potential buyers of enterprise webcasting software that want to compete for online event services business at a time when traditional advertising revenues are falling and internet advertising revenues are growing. Internet communications are definitely going to become a greater point of emphasis for these companies.

I am unable to attached the report, but you can request a copy at the Interactive Media Strategies website.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is hosting a webcast at 1 pm EDT today, Friday August 7.

Use the hashtag #HCRQ to ask a question via Twitter or email hhsstudio@hhs.gov.

Video is beginning to fulfill its promise as a transformational technology. Beyond merely cutting communications costs, video is starting to change the way companies do business, and is rapidly being accepted as a "need to have" rather than a "nice to have."

Cisco CEO John Chambers predicts video traffic on the internet will increase six fold by 2012. Here is a link to Cisco's August 5 earnings call where he makes that prediction.

A classic example of the power of video is that of electronics manufacturer NEC. They have a network of nearly 500 dealers across the United States that sell their products. They saved more than $250,000 annually in training costs by delivering product training with video webcasting rather than sending trainers to the dealers or bringing the dealers to the trainers.

They also dramatically reduced the time it takes to train the entire network on new products. Click here to watch a video case study.

A newer example shows how video can literally transform the way a company does business. A major sneaker company manufacturers its products in China. Each time they re-tooled to manufacture a new sneaker, executives would have to fly to China to ensure the tooling was correct and the sneakers were meeting specifications before they began mass production.

They began to use high definition cameras at the plant in China to webcast video of the sneakers to allow executives to make their inspection virtually. Sure, they save money on travel to China. But more importantly, there was a practical limit to the amount of people who could go to China to see the actual design come off the assembly line. The video process allows them to solicit input from a much broader segment of the company, and even get input from retailers while there is still time to respond to suggestions.

The end result is that they can bring their products to market faster than their competition, which creates a significant competitive advantage. Click here to see the video discussion.

I am particularly pleased to see clear evidence of unmistakable, game-changing ROI.

IDC released its Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker on September 2, 2009, which reports that "factory revenue in the worldwide server market declined 30.1% year over year to $9.8 billion in the second quarter of 2009 (2Q09)."

According to IDC, this is the lowest quarterly server revenue since they began tracking this market in 1996.

The obvious implication is that the economy has been awful and companies have been avoiding / deferring IT spend. But beyond that it seems that virtualization has both benefited from and contributed to this decline.

With a single server now able to run multiple workloads, it seems inevitable that the server footprint is destined to continue getting smaller within the corporate data center. But the benefits of virtualization do not stop with simply running more apps on one machine; the whole datacenter becomes more agile, more flexible to deal with unexpected changes in workload.

The ability to get more from fewer boxes is certainly a contributing factor to less boxes being bought. And tight budgets in the 2009 economy have certainly contributed to IT managers seeking out less costly options.

It will be interesting to see how the server market rebounds.

Andy Patrizio in his InternetNews.com blog quotes Rahul Agarwal, co-founder of Infiniti Research. Within the dismal sales figures, Agarwal notes that both Gartner and IDC report that unit costs are going up for server sales. Agarwal believes that this is due to sellers trying to widen margins by selling more feature-rich machines:

Our view is that to offset this volume pressure, hardware vendors will be
forced to improve unit margins by building in virtualization capability, memory
and I/O interfaces in the hardware.

So the strategy to improve revenues will enable IT departments to further utilize virtualization, continuing the trend toward fewer individual servers.

Agarwal noted that many servers out there are quite inefficient, particular amongst small-to-medium sized businesses, so the more successful players will focus on consolidation to increase efficiency and reduce the footprint. He says:

The server market of tomorrow will be a value game and not a volume game.

Here is a link to a recent post by Roger Courville on his "The Virtual Presenter" blog. It reads

A VFAQ (VERY frequently asked question) I get is “what’s the difference between web conferencing, webinars, and webcasts?”

The short answer, these days, is “not very much and a whole bunch.”

Seriously, the lines have blurred from the days that “webcasting” was akin to broadcasting (using streaming media) with virtually no interactivity, whereas web conferencing was (and remains) live, totally realtime (you don’t want any delay when you’re talking on a phone conference, right? In many use cases, you don’t on the web either).

Webinar is simply a portmanteau of web seminar – arguably a use case rather than a technology. That is brief, but it’s as deep as I’m going as I introduce IVT and their enterprise video communications.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mitch, Hugh, Jim, and Ryan, all at the same time. In addition to the knowledge and passion and history (Hugh’s a fellow ex-Microsoftie with some common connections), what I’m most enthused by is their clarity of mission.

Hello software

First, IVT’s a software company. You can host the software, but for reasons I’ll not get into, you want to take advantage of the fact that they host the software for you. What’s interesting here isn’t a “right or wrong,” it’s a commitment to a business model. Many (if not most) companies who have solutions for webcasting also provide professional production/event management services. IVT is committed to their robust partner community who deliver value-added services atop the IVT platform. Again, this isn’t a right or wrong, but you have to appreciate focus.

Hello production tools

It’s hard to tell you how important the backend of a product is. It’s what economists call an “experience good” …you have to have been there to get it and appreciate it. As it just so happens I spent many years running organizations in the production business, let me say the two words that will bring any accountants to their needs and get the producers all excited: labor and labor. Labor is expensive. Technology, especially over time, often gets less expensive. If you’ve ever produced an event, let alone a bunch of them, you know that the project management time can create a big sucking sound in your budget. This is where producers get excited… not only will they find the flexibility on the back end of IVT’s platform a joy when meeting numerous and disparate client/stakeholder needs, but it’ll save them time.

Hello customization

Okay, so many different solutions offer degrees of customization, but far fewer have down-to-the-pixel capabilities. When clients demand that, you’ve got to deliver. Further, there’s customization of user experiences, such as different tools you might make available to a presenter versus what the marketing department sees when they need to pull down a report. And then there are web services for the data integration geeks (I say that with love, mind you).

Hello remote presenters – but wait, there’s more

A point of differentiation here is multiple presenters, each with different camera types. One can have a webcam in Sydney, one can be standing in front of a hi-def broadcast camera at a conference in a New York hotel…you get the idea. Need to switch back and forth like a television newscast? Can do.

As is my style, my goal isn’t a vendor-by-vendor shootout, to talk about price, or make a recommendation. I’m excited and privileged to be independent, talk to great people with their own angle on the market, and share with you my own spin on it. It sounds like IVT has a solution if you need to reasonably reach 100 people and the horsepower to reach 20K if you need. If you need flexibility and reach and a commitment to knowing their core biz, IVT (or one of their partners) might be someone to add to your must-investigate list.

As the article appeared in TechCrunch...

IVT, a company that produces enterprise-friendly webcasting software, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from Syncom Venture Partners with Barshop Ventures, Monitor Ventures and Tudor Ventures participating in the investment round. IVT raised $3 million in Series A funding in 2006.
IVT’s SaaS offering not only helps power webcasts, but also converts multimedia files, such as slideshows, into viewable videos for the web. IVT also offers a YouTube-like hosting and social media site for companies to disseminate videos and webcasts. And the startup has a number of prominent companies that use its webcasting software including Oracle, Dow Chemical, IBM and NEC.

IVT, Inc. has moved its industry-leading MediaPlatform webcasting software platform to the cloud. With MediaPlatform increasingly being used in large-scale webcasts by media producers, as well as Fortune 500 clients, the company is elevating its delivery capacity through a partnership with a tier-1 cloud infrastructure provider.

“Our mission has always been to deliver the best quality of service and enable our clients to produce webcasts at literally any audience size without concern for infrastructure,” said Jim McGovern, Chief Executive Officer of IVT. “Now that cloud-based platforms are gaining widespread acceptance across the IT world, we can give our clients the benefit of switching capacity on and off when required.”

This is not the first time IVT has been ahead of the technology curve in the webcasting industry. The company pioneered the concept of offering webcasting software on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis with MediaPlatform. With MediaPlatform in the cloud, IVT enables its clients to benefit from what is rapidly emerging as the new paradigm for corporate computing.

In the cloud, MediaPlatform’s web services architecture can more readily serve diverse client needs by integrating with a range of enterprise systems, both cloud-based and on-premises.
The cloud, an approach to computing that places servers and infrastructure in remote, abstracted datacenters, is ideal for webcasting, which is known for unpredictable spikes in system load. By working with a tier-1 cloud infrastructure provider, IVT gains virtually unlimited capacity and world-class security, reliability, redundancy, failover, and load management.

IVT will continue to support the numerous on-premises installations of its software, including major deployments at global enterprises. IVT prides itself on offering its clients the choice between hosted and on-premises options.

MediaPlatform Debuts WebCaster, a Fusion of Performance and UsabilityNew Addition to Webcasting Software Lineup Leverages Cloud Platform for Productivity and Connectivity NEW YORK - STREAMING MEDIA EAST - May 11, 2010 -

MediaPlatform, Inc. (formerly IVT) today unveiled its latest product offering, MediaPlatform WebCaster, cloud-based webcasting software that packs leading edge event management, event customization, and production capabilities into a simple user experience. WebCaster has been built to serve the needs of demanding webcast production professionals as well as non-technical users

"WebCaster is a heavyweight performer with a flyweight price and impact on corporate IT," said Jim McGovern, Chief Executive Officer of MediaPlatform. "Our team has worked hard for over a year to exceed client expectations in virtually every aspect of the webcasting experience."

WebCaster offers a unique mix of best-in-class features, ranging from an intuitive, browser-based user interface and sophisticated reporting to multiple remote presenters and flexible producing teams. WebCaster also offers rich templates with options to customize, total operating system and browser independence, telephony to Flash® Audio input, and iPhone support.
"We went into the development process with a goal of enabling presentations from 'anywhere to anyone,'" said Greg Pulier, Founder and CTO of MediaPlatform, and head of WebCaster's development. "For every feature we considered, our constant question was, 'Will this provide the best possible experience for users at every step of the webcasting process? I am very proud of the work everyone has contributed to this outstanding offering."

With WebCaster, MediaPlatform is further establishing itself as the preferred provider for digital media producers. As the business of producing webcasts for lead generation, training, and conferences continues to expand, MediaPlatform is serving a growing number of top tier digital media production firms. WebCaster is designed to provide producers with a webcasting toolset they can rely upon as they build their production businesses. WebCaster is the newest addition to MediaPlatform's growing portfolio of media production and management offerings.

It complements the company's high-end webcasting product, now known as IVT MediaPlatform, as well as PrimeTime, MediaPlatform's video portal.About MediaPlatform, Inc. MediaPlatform, Inc. (formerly IVT) delivers best-in-class webcasting and media management technology to global enterprises and digital media producers. MediaPlatform's webcasting software enables high-impact presentations for lead generation, corporate communications and training. The company offers organizations the ability to take advantage of scalable cloud-based computing, as well as on-premises deployment, to present and manage rich media. With media management tools built on its platform, the company helps clients derive long term archive value from their investment in media content.

Join me tomorrow at 8:00 am EDT / 1:00 pm BST when I discuss the difference between Web Conferencing and Webcasting with the editors of simply-communicate.com.

Click here to register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/176834728

The Simply-communicate.com website says:

We are the community for internal communication professionals. We
started publishing in June 2005 and have since gradually grown to 15,000
registered members. Since September 2009 the service is completely free to
use.

We have around 800 articles, toolkits and templates on the site and we
are visited by 16,000 people who downloaded just under half a million articles
last year.

You can see the archive of my discussion with the editors of Simply-communicate about the difference between Web Conferencing and Webcasting by going to their site:

http://www.simply-communicate.com/

They also link to the MediaPlatform White Paper that discusses the same topic.

MediaPlatform WebCaster and Adobe's Flash Media Enterprise Server 4 with Hybrid Flash Multicasting bring a game changing solution to the challenge of delivering video to the enterprise without requiring a seven figure hardware investment for multicasting.

Up to now, solutions for managing streaming video bandwidth issues required networks of expensive hardware, ranging from Enterprise Content Delivery Networks to WAN Acceleration devices. And all of these solutions dictated Windows Media as your video format. Hybrid Flash Multicasting offers a better way; it works seamlessly with traditional IP multicast networks AND it also provides a Peer Assist multicast solution for the parts of your network that are not IP multicast enabled.

Hybrid Flash Multicasting is an outstanding solution because it:

1) allows corporations to continue leveraging the hardware investments they have made and utilize traditional IP Multicasting with Flash instead of Windows Media.

2) allows corporations to reach bandwidth-challenged locations that are not on the multicast WAN or new locations whose networks are not multicast-enabled with a relatively low cost Peer Assist solution (because it does not require new routers and configuration of switches, etc.).

This solution solves the challenge of allowing video to reach 100% of your desktops without requiring a million dollar investment in a new eCDN. And unlike other peering solutions, there is no proprietary agent that has to be propagated to every desktop. All your employees' computers need is the latest Flash player.

Here is how MediaPlatform fits into the equation:

Our WebCaster software is the only streaming video solution that integrates the multicast-enabled Flash player, as well as leveraging Flash's ability to create a cross platform viewing experience, switch between multiple live and pre-recorded video sources, switch bit rates and codecs on the fly, support mobile devices, support H.264 and VP6 to create higher quality video at lower bandwidths, etc. With our software you can take advantage of Flash to upgrade your streaming communications to a more functional format that will work behind the firewall and to the public internet, will work on any browser and operating system, and can deliver content to mobile devices.

An article about Hybrid Flash Multicasting that features MediaPlatform's CTO, Greg Pulier, recently appeared in the Flex Developer's Journal.  Click here to link to the article

Here is the opening paragraph:

Hybrid Flash multicasting is the second and decisive wave of innovation that will enable enterprises to stream video without overtaxing their network infrastructures. It eliminates the usual tradeoffs between video consumption and network investment, regardless of increased video traffic in budget-constrained corporate networks. Hybrid Flash multicasting also solves the cost and complexity challenges of IP multicasting. By combining a new form of multicasting, known as application multicasting, which leverages a peer-assisted model of video sharing with an IP multicast network, a video stream can reach virtually everyone on the network using existing bandwidth and infrastructure. Hybrid multicasting finally unlocks the full potential for video within the enterprise by combining IP and application multicasting to deliver streaming media using the most efficient algorithms within a dynamic self-optimizing topology.

Here is a link to the case study Amazon prepared about MediaPlatform's use of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Solution (S3).


http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/mediaplatform/

MediaPlatform is the only streaming software solution that allows clients to access the obvious benefits of cloud computing while retaining the ability to maintain security, achieve integrations with Active Directory/LDAP, control remote encoders, etc.

Combined with its groundbreaking approaches to multicasting Flash and leveraging the native caching abilities of WAN acceleration devices to stream HTTP, MediaPlatform's cloud offering represents the most innovative approach to enterprise webcasting available on the market today.

Interactive Media Strategies (IMS) is a market research firm that follows streaming media. They discuss the news of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype, and the prospects for Skype to emerge as a viable platform for business video communications. 

Their research compares usage levels for a range of social media and communications applications, including Skype, YouTube and Facebook. Here is a link to the video.

They report that personal use of Facebook and YouTube is relatively high but that has not yet translated into comparable levels of corporate use. They believe this raises the question of whether YouTube and Facebook will be able to outgrow their focus on the consumer side of the business to compete in the enterprise market.

Usage levels for Skype are significantly lower overall, but Skype’s penetration in business communications is higher than they see for other communications apps online among young users most likely to experiment with emerging technologies.

IMS puts forth the opinion that if Microsoft could make it easier for technology laggards to embrace Skype - i.e. integrate Skype with the Microsoft Office suite - then Skype could achieve significant enterprise adoption.

When the Baby Boomers retire they are going to be taking their substantial knowledge with them. The younger generation to whom that knowledge should be transferred likes to consume video.  This has some very interesting implications for organizations that want to capture that knowledge, organize it, and make it easy for employees to find it and benefit from it.

Here is a link to a webcast on June 1 where Dan Rasmus, a technology strategist and author of Listening to the Future , will discuss the potential for video to serve as an all important medium for knowledge transfer and organizational learning.

Topics to be Covered:
• Knowledge Acquisition via Video
• Video as a Tool for Knowledge Management
• Use of Video or Operational Efficiency
• Practical Applications of Video for Learning in the Enterprise

Click here to register for the webcast

Interactive Media Strategies released data on July 14 showing that 62% of corporations that purchased video communications technology made the decision at the President/CEO level when there was no prior investment in this kind of technology.  That number dropped to 58% when the prior year's spend was as much as $10,000.

The same data shows that when an enterprise already spends $100,000 or more annually on video, the decision-making authority is almost evenly distributed between IT (35%), functional department heads (31%), and the President/CEO level (34%).

I think the clear implication of this data is that when corporations are already committing resources to video communications and the value of video has already been established, and this kind of technology is no longer considered exotic, then decision-making authority becomes more broadly distributed to IT and the business units.

This data is interesting when paired with data released in 2010 that shows 15% of executives surveyed that do not spend money on video and are thus not using video communications believe video communications are "very effective."  58% of executives surveyed that spend $100,000 or more annual on video technology indicated they believe video communications are "very effective."

I am sure this great difference is due to several factors, including: executives who are predisposed to see value in video are those most likely to invest in it, and those that have already made a six figure investment in video will likely not be motivated to feel as if the investment was wasted.  Nonetheless, video obviously wears well because executives who are heavily invested in video believe much more in its value than executives who do not employ the technology.

Interactive Media Strategies released a quite timely study conducted in Q1 2011 that measured corporate executives' financial outlook and how their relative positivity or negativity affected their plans for spending on video.  As one might imagine, only 6% of those with a negative outlook projected increased spending on video against 64% projecting less money spent on video.

39% of executives surveyed who were expecting their finances to improve projected increased spend on video, versus 29% who projected a decrease.  Unfortunately, the study did not provide the percentage of respondents who were expecting finances to decline versus the percentage of respondents expecting finances to improve.

The above results not all that unexpected, but they lay the foundation for this very interesting data: the study measured different types of executives and how their positions within the company influenced their outlook about whether macro-economic factors would impact spend on video.

46% of those in Accounting and Finance, 43% of those in Training, and 42% of Top Executives responded that macro-economic factors had "No Impact" in their decision to purchase video technology.  Overall, 40% of non-IT personnel responded that the economic climate would have no impact.

However, only 29% of IT executives responded that the economy would have no impact.

I attribute this disparity to senior executives and heavy video users (like training executives) being more focused on the ROI and cost reductions that video brings to the enterprise, while IT executives are more focused on the cost of maintaining video delivery infrastructure and the impact on their budgets.

I believe the path to bridging this gap is to leverage the cost savings of the cloud to free up IT resources and still deliver the benefits of video to the business users.

For example, MediaPlatform's PrimeTime application for video asset management leverages public or private clouds to host our application and store all of the video assets.  For example: for clients that have Riverbed, we use a cloud instance of the Riverbed Steelhead to reduce bandwidth usage between the cloud and the network by 80%.

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