Paul Kapustka's Blog
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September 27, 2006
VONosphere Webisode #11 -- Fall 2006 VON
Live from Fall 2006 VON, the VONosphere talks to Juniper Networks about IPTV...
Topics: IPTV; Multi-play networks; service provider and core networks.
Posted by paul at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2006
FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate -- Fall 2006 VON
More Fall 2006 VON video: Pulver.com general counsel Jonathan Askin interviews FCC commissioner Deborah Tate...
Topics: Post-disaster communications; post-Katrina reforms; Pulver-Evslin petition on post-disaster communications.
Posted by paul at 02:24 PM | Comments (1)
September 21, 2006
VONosphere Webisode #10 -- Fall 2006 VON
Webisode #10 of the VONopshere, live from Fall 2006 VON in Boston. Pulver.com general counsel Jonathan Askin interviews Robert Cresanti of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce.
Topic: Communications in a post-9/11 world.
Posted by paul at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
Stevens' net neutrality 'poll' just lobbying in disguise
Back in August, I was hopeful there might be a civil turn in the net neutrality debate after hearing industry leaders like Dick Notebaert and Tom Tauke say there's too much strident, partisan potshotting and little real exchange. I waited and watched, to see if the telco/cableco cabal would tone down their blather. Too bad -- instead of real dialogue, the big playahs are back to their old tricks of FUD, this time cloaking a pure lobbying effort in the guise of a "survey."
In the finest when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife tradition, the "survey" (which was paid for by Verizon, as Preston Gralla and others have noted) touted by no less than Senate Commerce Committe chair Ted "Tubes" Stevens finds -- imagine! -- that "an overwhelming majority of American voters favor video choice over onerous “Net Neutrality” regulations."
Well, when you ask questions like this one (from the press release of the "poll"):
Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:-- Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV
OR
-- Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee
You pretty much know the answers you're going to get.
Smackdown score of half a tube for Sen. Stevens' office in its attempt to give this "poll" legitimacy by issuing a press release from the Senator's office.
(For extra credit, find out which ex-Clinton staffer is making money by running the companies who conducted this "bipartisan" effort. Follow the money!)
I continue to be amazed at the amount of money the big telcos are willing to spend on such astroturf efforts, in the belief that they can fool enough of the people enough of the time. What's not surprising is the number of shills ready and willing to take the telco money. It is depressing, though.
UPDATE: For a more in-depth explanation of the politics behind the poll (and how they are able to call it "bipartisan" as if that somehow makes it more believable), read this item on the Huffington Post.
And Jason Miller over at WebProNews shares his outrage.
No sign of any similar debunking from the "mainstream" media, however. Just another sign that if you want depth, nuance and proper analysis, you have to turn to the blogosphere.
Posted by paul at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2006
VONosphere videos back online
Sorry for the inconvenience... there have been problems Wednesday at Brightcove, our hosting service.
If you are looking for more content please lend an ear to the pulvermedia podcasting network.
Posted by paul at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
Fall 2006 VON -- Podcast Paul
Is there no end to the content we're streaming your way from Fall VON? Here are a couple podcasts we recorded -- interviews with Stratus and the folks behind VON Italy. More to come!
For all our excellent podcasts, brilliantly engineered by the Pulvermedia Podcasting Network team, subscribe to the PPN blog (also available at iTunes).
Just another way to experience the rich content you can only get at a VON show...
Posted by paul at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)
Show webcams -- a true geek moment
I don't usually blog about personal stuff, but I have to share a true geek moment -- just watched my wife wave hello via the show-floor webcams at Interop in NYC. Thinking we could have some fun with this -- if anyone wants to wear a VON shirt to Interop tomorrow, let me know a time and we'll snap an online photo... and send you something fun for the effort.
If you want to play, send me an email to paul.kapustka (at) pulvermedia.com. See if we can pull this off.
A group of VON-shirted attendees would be even better... use your imagination!
Posted by paul at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2006
One big basket of Fall 2006 VON video
Even if you were there, our list of video reports from Fall 2006 VON keeps growing, bringing you up close and personal with the newsmakers and thought leaders from this year's show in Boston. FCC commissioner Deborah Tate, AOL's Ted Leonsis and more are all captured in Jeff Pulver's video vault.
Keep watching this space as well as our portal, VONosphere, for more more more video as our production teams crank 'em out.
Posted by paul at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)
Fall 2006 VON -- Mark Spencer video interview
Webisode #9 of the VONosphere, live from Fall 2006 VON. Our guest is Digium president Mark Spencer, talking about the Asterisk Appliance.
Topics: Asterisk Appliance PBX, Fall 2006 VON, a face for videoblogs.
Links: Digium and the Asterisk appliance
Posted by paul at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2006
Why videoblog? Because we are visual
Allow me to join the debate that has blossomed out of Fall 2006 VON on the why or why not to videoblog. Since earlier this summer, I have made a concerted effort to videoblog, and to do so with regularity (our VONosphere show posts weekly on Thursdays, more often when we are at a show like VON). Why? Because we are visual beings, and sometimes the best filter for information is no filter. Plus, it's fun.
What I mean by no filter: If you watch my report from the PFF's Aspen Summit, you get to hear what the attendees there heard -- Sumner Redstone, an old media lion showing he still has teeth and a roar. Can't accurately capture that depth in words. Or try Tuesday's report from VON. Can you capture all those voices and personalities in a text blog post?
Is videoblogging still a work in progress? You bet. Does it take time and effort? Indeed. But when you can take a standard videocam (thanks to Jeff P, mine is a bit more capable than most), a $49 piece of editing software (I use Visual Communicator 2 from Serious Magic) and start playing around, you gradually learn what works and what doesn't.
Does videoblogging work for every topic? No. As Alec says, it's hard to deliver nuance and deep thinking. [Too bad Alec and I couldn't coordinate schedules to get him on tape at VON; I could have asked him on camera to expand his thinking. :-)]
Does a videoblog need to be every day? Hard to find the time, unless you are Ze Frank. The standard figure is an hour of prep/editing for each minute of video; sometimes it takes less time but it's a good rule of thumb. Quick-hit blogs like Andy's (which dispense the titles, fades/changes, multiple topics or cameras) take considerably less time but deliver a corresponding amount of info. But I think Alec's critique of Andy's video quality is off the mark. Andy isn't trying to be a broadcast star, so why hold him to network standards? There is a lot of info to be delivered in a facial expression -- nuance -- that is much clumsier in video.
Now imagine that multiple people start videoblogging -- maybe using Sightspeed to quickly record their thoughts -- and then someone aggregates or mashes up that content with other video. All of a sudden you have an entertaining news report with multiple points of view -- try getting that out of your nightly news.
Is it the future of media? Not all of it, but it will be part of it. Until all the tools get baked, it's fun to mess around and see what happens.
[For the record, we also use the Brightcove service as our back-end for the VONosphere, though I have also posted some episodes on YouTube as well. The plan is to try as many of these services as we can, to see what works and what doesn't. So far, Brightcove gets the nod due to its flexbile, good-featured player.]
Posted by paul at 02:51 PM | Comments (1)
September 14, 2006
Digium and the Asterisk appliance
BOSTON, Mass. -- A small item attracting big attention on the Fall 2006 VON show floor is Digium's Asterisk Appliance and its companion developer kit.
We sat down with Digium leader Mark Spencer for a quick shakedown on the appliance, and the idea of making it open for developers.
Here's a clip from the press release:
The Asterisk Appliance is a standalone embedded PBX. Targeted for small to medium businesses (2-50 users), and remote branch offices of larger organizations (2-50 users per site)...
Watch this space soon for video and audio of our conversation with Mark.
Posted by paul at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)
VON Blogging -- Martin, Susan and more
BOSTON, Mass. -- While we try to catch up with the backlog of great video and audio content coming your way soon, here are a couple blog posts from VON not to miss, from Martin Geddes and Susan Crawford.
Martin, as always, had the coolest phone and was the first to spot out Truphone, who was showing real, working Wi-Fi cellular convergence. Cool stuff.
At a Wednesday panel, Susan Crawford again defended the ideas of network neutrality and an open Internet, very politely but very firmly debunking some of the blather that often passes for debate.
Susan gets the quotes-o-the-day award, too. To paraphrase:
VON is very big. In fact, it's an epic conference. ... Next time I go to Fall VON I'll take the month off to soak it all in.
And hey... look who's videoblogging! Welcome to the small screen, Andy.
Posted by paul at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2006
VONosphere Webisode #8 -- Fall 2006 VON
Live from Fall VON 2006, Webisode #8 of the VONosphere.
Topics: Highlights of speeches by Jeff Pulver, pulvermedia; Ted Leonsis, AOL; Congressman Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Bram Cohen, BitTorrent; Jeffrey Citron, Vonage.
Posted by paul at 07:52 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2006
'Video on the Net' a hit at Fall 2006 VON
BOSTON, Mass. -- The overnights are in, and the audience reaction is clear: The inaugural "Video on the Net" program at Fall 2006 VON is a smashing success, packing the house Tuesday in its studio-style conference room.
With "on the air" lights, high-definition monitors for the audience and a sound stage setting, the full day of speakers and panels included top names from the established media industry (including the Washington Post) as well as industry disrupters, including BitTorrent inventor and company CEO Bram Cohen.
In his industry perspective presentation, Cohen said that other video distribution models -- such as video-rental stores who physically stack DVDs on shelves -- "have no way of competing with IP" networks, which have no limit to the amount of content they can make available.
"In the long run, [IP] is the only way to go," Cohen said, allowing anyone who wants to distribute video or film to do it online.
"The good news is that it opens up distribution to anyone," Cohen said, paving the way for the viewing of the many independent films, documentaries or student projects that never make it into big theaters or onto mainstream broadcast networks.
Dmitry Shapiro, CEO of online video-sharing entity Veoh, predicted that many business models will emerge for the nascent industry, which has attracted plenty of interest but not that much in revenues.
"There will be lots of models to monetize content," Shapiro said, including both ad-supported (free to the viewer) as well as subscription-based services.
Cohen, who said that BitTorrent will "soon" release a tool to help people publish things like full-length films more easily, said that peer-to-peer distribution schemes like BitTorrent's will be necessary for the foreseeable future, especially as more high-definition programming surfaces.
"Right now, [the quality of] video on the Net is terrible, and there's still a ways to go for streaming video to be cheap," Cohen said.
Posted by paul at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)
Markey: Fight for net neutrality will continue
BOSTON, Mass. -- His net neutrality amendments may have been defeated, but Ed Markey's fight for better broadband is far from over, as the Congressman showed in a passionate address on the Fall 2006 VON show floor Tuesday afternoon.
"There's just too much at stake to abandon the Internet to the cable and phone companies," said Massachussetts' Markey, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has telecom matters under its purview.
Speaking to a packed house in the VON Theater on the Expo show floor, Markey said his attempts to add net neutrality amendments to telecom legislation this summer were made to ensure that the benefits of broadband are available to all, and not just to those who are able to pay higher tariffs for access or for preferential treatment of their business' Web traffic.
Markey said the Republican-backed bills currently under debate in the House and Senate, which do not include strong network neutrality components, are mainly efforts by the big service providers -- cable and telephone companies -- to rework rules so they can "call their own balls and strikes."
Abandoning traditional regulatory requirements (such as full buildouts of services in geographic regions) will only result in a widening of the digital divide in our country, Markey said, keeping many Americans from learning the skills they need to compete in a global, digital economy.
Whether or not his opitimism about Democratic chances in this Fall's upcoming elections ("In eight more weeks, the Democrats will take control of Congress") proves correct, Markey said he will keep fighting for net neutrality rules, and to "assure every American access to affordable choices" in Internet access.
"We cannot afford not to have a plan," he added.
Posted by paul at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)
Vonage alive and well, Citron says
BOSTON, Mass. -- Rumors of Vonage's demise continue to be just rumors, no matter how many times company chairman Jeffrey Citron hears them.
"We're still the leading national [VoIP] provider," said Citron Tuesday at Fall 2006 VON, in a well-attended industry perspective presentation. In a brief tongue-in-cheek opening to his talk, Citron provided a timeline of predictions of Vonage's demise or its assured destruction, ending with the company's recent announcement of its reaching the 2 million user mark.
Though Vonage's business model and performance have come under more focused attack lately -- sometimes reflected in the company's poor public-market stock-price performance -- Citron said that getting bigger is helping Vonage achieve economies of scale, and might allow profitable operations in the next couple years.
"It's extremely important to achieve scale," said Citron, noting that Vonage is now paying less per user in backbone fees because it can negotiate better deals. But there are growing pains as well, such as the company-declared breakdown in customer service earlier this year, something Citron said was caused in part by adding almost 800,000 new customers in less than six months.
Citron also said that Vonage no longer needs to spend inordinate amounts of its cash on marketing, because it has achieved its goal of establishing a national (or global) brand.
"You can walk into any room, do the 'Woo-Hoo' song and people know it's Vonage," Citron said.
To grow, the VoIP industry must continue to innovate its offerings, Citron said, doing more to make things like one phone number for multiple devices an easier nirvana to reach. "For the future of Vonage, you're going to see a lot more personalization and customization," he said.
Posted by paul at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
AOL will have TV-based Web search next week
BOSTON, Mass. -- Both visionaries who champion the startup and big-media moguls can agree: Video on the Net is going to be a big, big part of the IP communications economy, sooner than you may think.
In back-to-back keynotes Tuesday morning that showed both the potential of enabled entrepreneurs as well as the might of a popular entertainment entity, VON's Jeff Pulver and AOL's Ted Leonsis gave the Fall VON 2006 audience a glimpse of what their online video experiences of the near future might be, ranging from virtual speeches in imaginary worlds to a wide array of user-selected prime-time-quality content.
Pulver, the founder and chairman of show producer pulvermedia, said he is looking for the "Vonage of video" to emerge soon, taking advantage of price decreases that have made powerful technologies -- like advanced digital cameras and online production platforms -- affordable to small startups or even individuals.
Following Pulver's demonstrations of some cutting-edge technology -- including a motion-picture quality Web video viewer and a "virtual" Webcast of his speech on the Second Life platform -- was AOL veteran Leonsis, who gave the standing-room-only crowd an early announcement of AOL's "10-foot user interface," a Web search screen for televisions that the company will formally unveil next week.
Layered atop AOL's already exhaustive offerings of repurposed broadcast content (like old TV shows), custom Internet programming (its "Sessions" music-video series) and soon-to-come user-contributed video (a YouTube-like service planned for October release), AOL's new Web video offerings are all meant to make it easier for consumers to control their viewing experiences, Leonsis said.
"The Web has truly put the steering wheel in the consumers' hands, and they ain't giving it back," said Leonsis.
AOL also plans to do as much as it can to open up its platforms to make them more accessible to users and developers, Leonsis said, pointing toward the recent announcement of APIs and a developers' program for AIM Phoneline as just a start.
Openness, Leonsis said, is one of the keys to being successful in the Web 2.0 world, which is finally reaching critical mass of advertisers and end users.
"Spring training is over, and the real season has started," Leonsis said. "Now it's our job to make consumers happy."
Posted by paul at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2006
VONosphere Webisode #7 -- Fall 2006 VON
Webisode #7 of the VONosphere comes to you live from Fall 2006 VON in Boston, Mass.
Topics: VON setup day; Tim Wu on net neutrality and innovation; Jeff Pulver welcome; remembering 9/11.
Posted by paul at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)
Tim Wu: Net neutrality needed to ensure Internet innovation
BOSTON, Mass. -- To ensure that future Skypes and YouTubes have a chance to emerge, the Internet needs to remain as neutral as possible, said Columbia law professor Tim Wu.
In his Monday morning keynote that opened the Fall 2006 VON communications policy summit, Wu noted that most of the Internet's innovation over the past five years has come from the network's edges and ends -- and that the current "network neutrality" debate is, in fact, a question about whether the networks will continue to be open enough to allow such innovation to continue without permission from the service providers who rule the network's core.
"The edge-core war" will be one of the main industry debates for the next five years, predicted Wu, who noted that five years ago, most people were asking when the large telecom service providers would unleash IP innovations.
"Turns out that they didn't," Wu said. Instead, "names like Vonage and Skype came out of nowhere."
Given the large numbers of participants at the Internet's edge -- versus the small group of players at the network's core -- Wu expects innovation to continue to emerge first from the edges and ends, provided that those companies or inventors don't have to cut special deals to ensure speedy access for their applications and customers.
"There are a lot more possibilities of innovation coming from the edge, like two dudes from Sweden deciding to use peer-to-peer technology for VoIP," Wu said. "What will be interesting to watch going forward is whether startups like YouTube can get independent funding, or whether the need to have a partnership with an AT&T or some other joint venture to get financing."
Posted by paul at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
Fall 2006 VON Daily Coverage starts today!
Watch this space for ongoing coverage of the Fall 2006 VON show in Boston, including daily video highlights and blog posts.
Coming today: Coverage of Columbia law professor Tim Wu's keynote speech, and reports from the Telephony IPTV summit as well as the service provider summit. And the Jeff Pulver blog and more...
Posted by paul at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2006
Jeff Pulver on Rocketboom: A good history
If you're wondering how Jeff Pulver got his start in the VoIP industry or why he started forming communities of interest, watch the excerpt of his interview with Joanne Colan over at Rocketboom.
Great stuff even in the excerpt, about how Jeff started what became Vonage, and how the VON coalition came into being. Lots of extra clips too, follow the links below the main video window.
Posted by paul at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
VONosphere Webisode #6
Webisode #6 of the VONosphere, our weekly take on all things IP communications, including voice and video on the Net.
Topics: Labor Day weekend, Fall 2006 VON and Video on the Net, Jeff Pulver on Rocketboom, Ed Markey to speak at Fall 2006 VON, fetch the ball doggie.
Links:
Ed Markey to speak at Fall 2006 VON
Posted by paul at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2006
Ed Markey to speak at Fall 2006 VON
If you need another reason to attend next week's Fall 2006 VON show in Boston, maybe it's to hear Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., speak on Tuesday, Sept. 12. The scheduled 2 p.m. appearance of Congressman Markey, a staunch defender of the ideas of network neutrality, will be open to all attendees of the show.
No matter which side of the net neutrality debate you are on, it's worth your while to lend an ear to Congressman Markey, one of the most well-informed members of Congress on matters Internet.
Posted by paul at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)