A bit about myself... I have been working in the 3rd party mobile software business for over 7 years and software for close to 9 years. Prior to that, I started and ran a technology development business. My interest right now is what is going to be the next big thing in Mobile. We have seen and heard alot of the hoopla, and I have consumed and dispensed my share of kool aid in my role managing a 30+ team of engineers. The question is... what is going to pop? We have seen YouTube, MySpace, JamDat, Glu Mobile... but where is the money? I am currently working on mobile TV and interested in mobile video in particular.
I found this quote from Wireless World Forum pretty interesting (and graphic... apologies in advance to the puritans):
"It’s called the money shot because it is the quality and subsequent production and marketing of this ‘special’ moment that creates the most commercial value for the final product." - Julia Dimambro, Cherry Sauce
Julia is in the Mobile Erotica business, but this quote struck me for several reasons... this statement in a nutshell summarizes the process of grooming an organization to be able to deliver the desired goods, at the right volume, to the right place, to maximize the realized potential for the organization. This "event" can be an IPO, acquisition, etc. , but the point is that the potential of the company is best leveraged for the benefit of the shareholders. The promise of this event attracts (and retains) talent, and confidence that management is able to guide the organization to this point is critical to maintaining momentum through multiple... uhh... events.
In my pursuit of information, I am tracking several sources. I thought it would be interesting to jot these down, as I am finding that I forget things more frequently these days. I feel like I am pretty regularly looking back at the day and wondering why I pissed away so much time on this or that. In reality, the info gathering is a critical component to relevance. Some technologies step up and slap you in the face demanding attention (take a look at ATSC and you will see why I believe MediaFLO and DVB-H may be still born). In any case, this is a snapshot of my headspace and hope it provides some jumping off points for others wandering through the space.
Online Resources
mediapost.com OnlineMediaDaily : these are interesting since it is clear that advertising is part of the way to the promised land of ubiquitous mobile.
abiresearch.com : sometimes this goes a bit deep into some technologies of specious interest to a software-oriented mind, but definitely provides breadth
FierceIPTV : Interesting insight into the more STB-centric sector of the TV world... the IP is just a medium in this case. See my prior blog to distinguish this from Internet enabled TV.
Wireless World Forum : interesting discussions on some very ground level issues facing monetization of mobile.
Linked In : I was pretty skeptical of these, but find it useful to have some link to my prior lives. If you take your profession seriously, you will find the respect and support of current and past associates is critical to your ongoing success.
http://www.tvover.net/default.aspx : This was the first place is saw the "Internet TV" differentiated from IPTV. Good info site.
Periodicals
EETimes : its free and its good... there is quite a bit of ancillary (for my purposes) discussion on masks, semi developments, and the latest nanoscale burn a wicked small channel and fill it with conductor whosamawhatsit, but that stuff is cool too. They also regularly rip apart the latest gear and analyze the components. Can't get much cooler than that.
Portable Technology : Interesting insight into the latest power management techniques, upcoming portable developments, latest chipsets... this gives you an idea of what to expect in about a1 year in terms of hardware capabilities.
Must See Sites
facebook - check out their development toolkit... these guys are thinking third party software.
myspace - ignore at your peril... 60E6 18-25 year olds are wallowing in this
youtube - this is remarkable... I had given up on finding vintage Stone Roses footage and Thundarr episodes.
That's about it. I am going to attach my video at this point because its cool.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Ramping up on the competitive space
It is interesting to survey this space since the permutations are virtually exploding.
A couple of interesting ones are:
kyte.tv
videoegg.com
crushorflush.com
http://www.vuze.com/app (OK not strictly a mobile TV station)
joost.com (of course)
akimbo.com
att.mobitv.com
mobitv.com
broadcaster.com
http://video.tvguide.com/
Each of the entrants has taken a different slant on the opportunity.
It may be worthwhile to segment the space a bit more as well, in order, to categorize the "entrants" into the space:
IPTV - Set top box integration, replacing cable infrastructure, think competitor to DOCSIS 3.0 that Comcast recently announced. U-Verse is the largest effort and is based on Microsoft's IPTV project. I have spoken to people involved on the project and the tangle of MSSQL and IIS's that this entails is rather intimidating given my past experience (albeit that was several years ago)
Internet TV - Ability to view streams via HTTP often facilitated via HTML pages containing RTSP streaming content, downloads, sometime peer to peer, some proprietary RTSP clients (aka Real, Windows), some open standards (aka Darwin Streaming Server). There is a lot of activity here with little real "winner". Arguably, this has been around for quite some time (think porn), but it has only recently gathered attention. These are a combination of link aggregators (TV Guide), premium purchase (Akimbo), peer to peer aggregators (Joost and Vuze), and subscription content (att.mobitv.com). It looks like free will win the day in this place so determining a way to make sufficient money to pay for your bandwidth is key. Most of the services cannot, so there will be an inevitable shakeout.
Mobile TV - Ability to view streams of content via carrier or carrier-partnered suppliers. In the US, the carriers own this relationship and hold on tight. They need to use their available bandwidth without degrading the service of the voice and non-video data users (which are where the real money is coming from). Here is a good high level link http://www.mobilehandsetdesignline.com/GLOBAL/electronics/designline/shared/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=193100051&pgno=1
that pretty much covers this space.
Video-based Services - This is the interesting place where convergence of Web 2.0 type capabilities with increasing bandwidth leads to interesting intersections. Check out videoegg.com and kyte.tv to see what I mean. It is not clear what means of leveraging video content with social capabilities will mean... but I would really like to determine what a video Personals combined with LBS on a mobile phone would look like... enter crushorflush.com If you are not familiar with hotornot.com, get out from under your rock and check it out. This is a clear place to satisfy your low self-esteem, calibrate your self-assessment, or just amuse yourself in the same way high school cheerleaders do in picking their squad.
More on the companies themselves later... at this point I am pretty happy with creating the categories.
A couple of interesting ones are:
kyte.tv
videoegg.com
crushorflush.com
http://www.vuze.com/app (OK not strictly a mobile TV station)
joost.com (of course)
akimbo.com
att.mobitv.com
mobitv.com
broadcaster.com
http://video.tvguide.com/
Each of the entrants has taken a different slant on the opportunity.
It may be worthwhile to segment the space a bit more as well, in order, to categorize the "entrants" into the space:
IPTV - Set top box integration, replacing cable infrastructure, think competitor to DOCSIS 3.0 that Comcast recently announced. U-Verse is the largest effort and is based on Microsoft's IPTV project. I have spoken to people involved on the project and the tangle of MSSQL and IIS's that this entails is rather intimidating given my past experience (albeit that was several years ago)
Internet TV - Ability to view streams via HTTP often facilitated via HTML pages containing RTSP streaming content, downloads, sometime peer to peer, some proprietary RTSP clients (aka Real, Windows), some open standards (aka Darwin Streaming Server). There is a lot of activity here with little real "winner". Arguably, this has been around for quite some time (think porn), but it has only recently gathered attention. These are a combination of link aggregators (TV Guide), premium purchase (Akimbo), peer to peer aggregators (Joost and Vuze), and subscription content (att.mobitv.com). It looks like free will win the day in this place so determining a way to make sufficient money to pay for your bandwidth is key. Most of the services cannot, so there will be an inevitable shakeout.
Mobile TV - Ability to view streams of content via carrier or carrier-partnered suppliers. In the US, the carriers own this relationship and hold on tight. They need to use their available bandwidth without degrading the service of the voice and non-video data users (which are where the real money is coming from). Here is a good high level link http://www.mobilehandsetdesignline.com/GLOBAL/electronics/designline/shared/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=193100051&pgno=1
that pretty much covers this space.
Video-based Services - This is the interesting place where convergence of Web 2.0 type capabilities with increasing bandwidth leads to interesting intersections. Check out videoegg.com and kyte.tv to see what I mean. It is not clear what means of leveraging video content with social capabilities will mean... but I would really like to determine what a video Personals combined with LBS on a mobile phone would look like... enter crushorflush.com If you are not familiar with hotornot.com, get out from under your rock and check it out. This is a clear place to satisfy your low self-esteem, calibrate your self-assessment, or just amuse yourself in the same way high school cheerleaders do in picking their squad.
More on the companies themselves later... at this point I am pretty happy with creating the categories.
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