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Tag: voices-of-the-industry

  • CEOs Must Take Responsibility For Data Breaches


    A rapid rise in losses from giant databases highlights the need for tougher sanctions to deter such security breaches, according to a privacy watchdog.

    The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is also calling on chief executives to take responsibility for the personal information their organisations hold.

    The number of data breaches reported to the ICO has soared to 277 in the past year.

    New figures, released today by the ICO, include 80 reported breaches by the private sector, 75 within the National Health Service and other health bodies, 28 reported by central government, 26 by local authorities and 47 by the rest of the public sector.

    The ICO is investigating 30 of the most serious cases.

    Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, said information can be a toxic liability and that accountability rests at the top.

    He said CEOs must make sure their organisations have the right policies and procedures in place.

    "It is alarming that despite high profile data losses, the threat of enforcement action, a plethora of reports on data handling and clear ICO guidance, the flow of data breaches and sloppy information handling continues," he said.

    "We have already seen examples where data loss or abuse has led to fake credit card transactions, witnesses at risk of physical harm or intimidation, offenders at risk from vigilantes, fake applications for tax credits, falsified Land Registry records and mortgage fraud.

    "Addresses of service personnel, police and prison officers and battered women have also been exposed. Sometimes lives may be at risk."

    Describing these breaches as "serious and worrying", Thomas said this was especially so because personal information is now the lifeblood of government and business.

    He said that as a result data protection has never been more important.

    "It is time for the penny to drop. The more databases that are set up and the more information exchanged from one place to another, the greater the risk of things going wrong," he said.

    "The more you centralise data collection, the greater the risk of multiple records going missing or wrong decisions about real people being made.

    "The more you lose the trust and confidence of customers and the public, the more your prosperity and standing will suffer.

    "Put simply, holding huge collections of personal data brings significant risks."

    Earlier this year, the UK Parliament decided that the ICO should have the power to impose substantial penalties for deliberate or reckless breaches.

    The ICO is working with the government to ensure this measure is implemented as soon as possible.

    It hopes that the threat and reality of substantial penalties will concentrate minds and act as a real deterrent.

  • Will Smartphones Be The Death of PNDs?

    With the market for personal navigation devices (PNDs) getting tougher and many smartphones now equipped with GPS, what does the future hold for the likes of TomTom and Garmin?


    Smartphone.biz-news.com asked Chris Jones, VP and principal analyst with Canalys, what direction mobile navigation was taking.

    Blackberry makers RIM recently predicted that GPS navigation solutions on smartphones meant death for sat-nav devices.

    The argument was that there is no need for specific devices for navigation when your mobile can do it for you.

    This received further credence from research by Strategy Analytics showing mobile navigation to be the primary service for which consumers in the US and Western Europe would be willing to pay a relatively high fee per month compared to other mobile services.

    With third quarter results out from both TomTom and Garmin this week – and forecasts being downgraded – the future is looking far from rosy.

    Chris Jones, VP and principal analyst with Canalys, said despite continued growth the PND market was tough and profitability was being squeezed as margins became increasingly tight.

    Both TomTom and Garmin are expected to benefit from aggressive price promotions to hold – and even increase – their market share at the expense of smaller competitors.

    But he said the trend was towards more sales at the lower end of the market than was the case 12 months ago.

    Chris Jones, VP and principal analyst, Canalys

    This was going to force down margins as big volume sales slipped to lower tier devices.

    As well as reducing profitability, Jones said the downside to this was that consumer perception becomes accustomed to GPS prices being lower.

    Buyers then become unwilling to pay extra for higher end products.

    "The big threat is to the margins and profitability of the PND market," he said. "Some vendors have exited the market and we will see others leave in the future."

    Smartphones Challenge PNDs

    To add to the PND industry’s woes there was increasing availability of navigation solutions on smartphones and mobile phones.

    Apple and Nokia have both done much to promote navigation services, with the Finnish giant leading the charge in Europe.

    Nokia expects to sell an estimated 35 million GPS smartphones this year, all equipped with maps and the upgrade option of navigation.

    Jones said the challenge for Nokia was to increase the activation rate.

    "Nokia has the ability to try and accelerate these rates by making it easier to do," he said. "Prices will come down and the free periods offered will lengthen."

    Hope Remains For PNDs

    However, Jones said despite the rise of smartphone navigation options, PNDs still had a future.

    He believes form is still likely to favor PND’s as the navigation device of choice in cars.

    "With smartphones you are looking at a small screen, you can’t touch the device, in many cases there’s no touchscreen or voice activation," he said. "The user interface is not ideal when you are driving.

    "The PND is better in the car but the smartphone is one device that is always with you."

    Work To Be Done With Smartphones

    Out of the car, Jones said more had to be done to inform users about when best to use GPS on smartphones.

    He said there wasn’t any great additional cost to add the technology but it had to be well implemented.

    "People need to understand when GPS will work and where they are not likely to get a fix," he said. "I think that has a lot to do with education and integrating technology into handsets – more sensitive GPS devices that work deeper indoors because invariably the fix is too long."

    Taking five minutes to get a fix – as was the case with some handsets – would do nothing to endear consumers to the technology.

    "It’s not good enough to just put GPS in a handset," he said. "It has to work well in small spaces, with the components that are in there."

    Jones said he expected all smartphones to come with GPS within three years and it would also begin to appear in more lower spec cell phones.

    Whether this, and the continued evolution of smartphone technology, will signal the death of PNDs remains to be seen.

    Please let us know your comments on where the mobile navigation market is going.

  • HD Option A Big Hit For MyToons

    MyToons only launched its high definition channel a few months ago but already it’s attracting attention from several major TV and film studios.
    Paul Ford, president of the animation website, spoke to HDTV.biz-news.com about the burgeoning HD animation community and the challenges of offering high def cartoons on the internet.

    It’s one thing to stick a home-movie onto YouTube, quite another to create animation in high definition.

    Yet just a few months after launching its HD channel the cutting-edge animation site MyToons has become the leading showcase for high def cartoons.

    Paul Ford, MyToons’ president, said the number of HD uploads was growing rapidly and he expected that to continue as increasing numbers of animators presented their work.

    He described the quality and detail of the HD creations as mind-blowing.

    "People are taking to HD like mad," he said. "It’s been very well-received by both the animators and the fans. In fact, we’ve had calls from several major TV and film studios looking to licence the technology."

    Making animations in HD presents its own challenges

    Ford said there was a big difference between making online user-created video and animated content.

    He said creating YouTube-style content – with a handy cam or camcorder – was not really that difficult to do.

    "You think up a story or a bit, run around and shoot some stuff, maybe edit it in a consumer editor like Movie Maker or iMovie, and you’re done," he said.

    But Ford believed creating animated content, on any level, was much more difficult.

    "To create animation – and I mean any kind of animation, generally – there is far more thought, and far more preparation and planning involved," he said.

    "Usually the story comes first, and that takes time to develop. Next are the dialogue and music tracks, story boards and possibly animatics (animated storyboards).
    "Finally, after a lot more work creating the final piece, you are done."

    Ford said in between was many hours of tedious work drawing in 2D, modelling in 3D, creating backgrounds and props and crafting each frame of each scene.

    "This art does take a good amount of time to create. Much longer than user-created video, for sure," he said. "Creating animation in HD really takes things up yet another notch.

    "Not only does the animator need to think about and do all of the stuff I’ve already discussed, they need computers with the horse power to do it at HD resolution. This means long render times and huge files."

    Technology Delivers Online Cartoons

    Ford described the MyToons HD player technology as "second to none", adding that it wasn’t necessary to download a proprietary player as was the case with some of the non-animation HD video sites.

    But to get to the stage of being able to stream HD via the internet MyToons first had to do some "very, very tricky things".

    "Our HD is not progressive. In other words, a person is not downloading the file first, or a portion of it, and then able to view the file," he said.

    "MyToons HD is more like real television. You hit play, and it starts right up. Our player is able to read the HD data in realtime, giving the viewer that ‘instant-on’ experience they are used to."

    Based in San Antonio, Texas, MyToons was established in 2006 as an online resource and entertainment destination for professional animators, students, artists and animation fans.

    The attraction for animators or creators of having their work on MyToons is that it offers them a robust and reliable distribution platform at the quality level they expect, according to Ford.

    "Animators are finicky when it comes to quality," he said. "That’s why many, many animators I talk to regularly simply won’t put their stuff up on places like YouTube.

    "That work is usually so personal and so carefully crafted-to-perfection – it’s really seen by the creator as a direct reflection, of sorts, of themselves – and usually a labor of love.

    "Giving animators everywhere the ability to have their work experienced as they intended and envisioned is very powerful stuff."

    HD Audience Growing

    In August, MyToons announced a global partnership to bring its animated content to Vuze’s 30 million member worldwide audience.

    Setting up such partner channels was a means of giving independent animators even greater reach and more exposure.

    "We will continue with these partnerships because they are good for our members, and we always put the animator first – what’s good for them, is good for MyToons," said Ford.

    "We think that these channels add to MyToons, and don’t take away from it. We find many people coming directly from those channels to MyToons-proper to get more of the good stuff."

  • Symbian Vows To Sweep Clear Obstacles For Developers


    Symbian’s CEO Nigel Clifford spelt out his vision for the organisation’s future under Nokia as one which would sweep away previous obstacles and attract innovative developers.

    Giving the opening keynote speech at the Smartphone Show in London, Clifford admitted that up until now developers may have been put off working with Symbian because of licensing agreements and conditions.

    He promised that would be among the “double quick” changes that would be made when the deal by Nokia to purchase Symbian goes through next year.

    “We will take a popular operating system and user interfaces and create a new platform with a new identity,” he said.

    This would solve the conundrum that, according to Clifford, people had been faced with:  " We have so far lived in an either/or world where you can either have free code but with a small footprint – or you can have very capable, proven software but at a cost.

    “With Symbian we are moving from that to both ‘and’ – proven in the market place and for free.”

    Sporting a broken arm from a cycling accident, Clifford said the result of this would be that there would no longer need to be a trade-off in developers’ minds.

    He said the cost and effort would be taken out of the development track and a unified asset created.

    “We are sweeping the hurdles away so we can get on with the job at hand,” he said.

    Earlier, David Wood, executive vice president of research at Symbian, also stressed where the organisation’s emphasis would lie once the deal with Nokia was completed.

    “There are three words that are most important for the success of the Symbian platform going forward: developers, developers and developers,” he said.

  • Flood Of Content Predicted For Real-time HDTV Video Streaming

    While more operators are beginning to offer HD video-on-demand services, live streaming video continues to pose infrastructure and bandwidth problems.

    HDTV.biz-news.com spoke to Alex Mashinsky, CEO of DigiMeld, about the challenges of streaming video – and developments that could open-up the service to millions of viewers.

    Alex Mashinsky, CEO of DigiMeld, was one of the first people to realise the internet’s great potential for voice, now he is just as excited about the possibilities it offers for video.

    He said the demand for real-time streaming of video was going to grow rapidly as high quality internet content was increasingly watched on HDTVs rather than PCs.

    “We are moving to a world where services from the internet do not look any different from cable TV,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge flood of content flowing to this environment, moving away from watching video on a laptop for five minutes at a time.”

    Alex Mashinsky, CEO DigiMeld


    Mashinsky said that while it was easy to get 16 million Americans to watch the same TV channel at the same time, it was impossible to do that with half-a-million viewers on the internet.

    “Voice was the first wave on the web. The second wave is video,” he told HDTV.biz-news.com from DigiMeld’s mid-town Manhattan headquarters. “But while everyone is focussed on it, we have not really solved the scaleability issue.

    Challenges Remain


    Video demands a lot of bandwidth and Mashinsky said traditional unicast and CDN solutions were limited in meeting the challenges on efficiency and scalability.

    He used the example of Oprah Winfrey’s attempt to stream live on her website, a move which caused the site to crash when more than 300,000 viewers logged-on.

    “We believe the only reason why we don’t have live TV on the internet is because no-one can really solve the scaleability and pricing issue,” said Mashinsky.

    “If you can address those two things, you would have linear streaming and on-demand streaming of movies and other things on a much larger scale than today.

    “Amazon, Netflix and Blockbuster have all launched streaming services but they are not launching new movies and having one million people watching at the same time. They rely on many people watching different things.”

    China Forging Ahead

    Mashinsky said China was way ahead of the US in live streaming technology, something it demonstrated during the Olympic Games when PP Live streamed live to 1.6 million concurrent online viewers.

    He said DigiMeld had used a team of former PP Live programmers to develop its grid-streaming technology that enabled massive numbers of viewers to watch content concurrently.

    It has tested the intelligent streaming solution with NASA Television, including a live internet broadcast trial of a shuttle launch to more than 100,000 live concurrent video streams.

    Essentially, the software harvests viewers’ unused uplink bandwidth to relay stream data and offload the stream traffic from the media servers. The company says this optimizes the overall load balance of the network.

    Unlike traditional CDNs or multicast network solutions, the DigiMeld solution allows each viewer in the grid-streaming network to simultaneously retrieve, view, and share streaming video data with other viewers within a safe and encrypted network.

    This approach differs from P2P file-sharing firms such as BitTorrent, which downloads an entire video file to a viewer’s hard drive.

    Mashinsky said DigiMeld only stores a portion of the streamed content in a viewer’s evanescent memory during viewing.

    This slice of video is continuously overwritten by newly-arriving streams, enhancing efficiency of network bandwidth and increasing copyright protection, including digital rights management (DRM).

    He believes grid-streaming is much more scalable because when the number of concurrent viewers explodes, the viewers will offload most data.


    Bandwidth Congestion Reduced


    Mashinsky said grid-streaming also puts less strain on media servers, while enhancing the QoS (quality of service) when the number of concurrent viewers is huge since more viewers can share data with each other.

    “Unlike BitTorrent, if you are not watching stuff, people are not using your bandwidth,” he said. “We are not over-loading the network with our requirements. It’s the opposite as we are balancing the upstream with the downstream.”

    Mashinsky said the software enabled adaptive streaming which sensed the customer’s bandwidth capacity.

    “It decides if it’s going to use HD or lower quality and links into other streams of people watching the same thing.”

    Opportunities For Content Producers

    Mashinsky stressed that DigiMeld’s grid-streaming was not a replacement for CDNs but could be leveraged within existing infrastructure to create greater benefits.

    DigiMeld was offering services ranging from those for customers that wanted to self-launch, self-publicize and self-monetize to those that relied on DigiMeld for hosting and distribution – or any mix in-between.

    The company has a self-publishing video portal, DigiMeld.tv that allows publishers to create live and on-demand video channels easily and monetize the content through subscription, paid and advertising based services.

    Mashinsky said the service was intended for clients that fell between large media companies, which typically used a CDN service such as Akamai, and peer-to-peer video typically found on YouTube.

    “We are trying to capture the middle of the tail to enable these content people to monetize their content in an easy way,” he said.

    Earlier this week, DigiMeld demonstrated grid-streaming’s worth as a video delivery platform by conducting the first feature-film broadcast over the internet simultaneously with the theatrical release of PublicScope Film’s The Third Jihad.

    Gregory Ross, of PublicScope Film, said DigiMeld TV enabled them to reach worldwide audiences with a television broadcast experience at greatly reduced costs.

    If DigiMeld can achieve that desired combination of quality and cost, there will be a lot more producers knocking on its door.

  • Strategy For HDMI Success Now Being Applied to Wireless HD

    Wireless High Definition Special: In the second of our articles looking at the competing next generation wireless high definition TV systems hdtv.biz-news.com spoke to John LeMoncheck, president and CEO of SiBEAM, and a leading member of the WirelessHD (WiHD) consortium.

    Before assuming his current role as president and CEO of SiBEAM in 2006, John LeMoncheck, was vice president of Silicon Image’s consumer electronics and PC/display business.

    In that position, he led the company’s efforts to promote the worldwide adoption of HDMI.

    Since joining SiBEAM, a high-speed wireless applications business, LeMoncheck has been at the forefront of its endeavors to develop WiHD technology it expects to transform the wireless landscape.

    He said he had adopted a similar strategy with WiHD as he had done when he pulled together the HDMI standard, which now has almost a billion installed links worldwide.

    “I called up my HDMI buddies and said let’s do this, but wirelessly,” he said.

    WiHD replaces HDMI wires with radio links and is designed to handle HDTV video streams between AV equipment.

    LeMoncheck said the need for wireless connections was becoming essential as more HDTV manufacturers produced super-thin panels for hanging on walls.

    He said WiHD had enough bandwidth – more than 4 Gbits/s – to ensure “perfect, lossless uncompressed video”.

    Picture Delays Avoided


    This meant there were no memory, compression or latency issues – essentially delays which can cause sluggishness in gaming or even when changing of channel.

    Coupled with this, the technology had a low rate back channel which enabled activities such as pictures to be moved around while still satisfying the “big pipe” to the display.

    LeMoncheck said SiBeam had taken the decision to change the fundamental frequency it worked with to 60 GHz.

    He said they had done this rather than adopting the “apple polishing tricks” of rival wireless technologies, which he said suffered from an “obvious loss of quality”.

    However, he said one factor that had limited the 60 GHz technology’s mass appeal was that it depended on a clear line of site between devices.

    Beam-steer Fixes Broken Signal

    This had been overcome by developing a technique to beam-steer the signal by bouncing it off walls.

    He said the technology was now omni-directional – allowing it to detect all available devices – and then direct data to the receiver as a tight beam of energy with only micro-second delays if the beam was interfered with.

    “If you walk in with a new device, it will get added to the network of devices,” he said. “To the user it feels like an omni-directional radio – you don’t have to position it to make sure it works.”

    As well as SiBEAM, members of the WirelessHD consortium include industry leaders such as Intel, LG, Matsushita, NEC, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba.

    But it was also important to have the confidence of Hollywood and last month WiHD announced that a content protection scheme for the transmission of wireless high definition content had been released by the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator and approved by major film studios.

    High Cost Factor

    Another problem encountered in the WiHD technology was the high cost of transceiver circuits.

    This has been tackled by using a radio frequency (RF) integrated circuit (IC) manufactured with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

    GaAs technology is commonly used in millimeter-wave transceiver circuits, making it hard to lower costs.

    The use of general-purpose CMOS technology is expected to lower costs to about the level of the costs of wireless LAN.

    SiBEAM is the key driver in chipping the CMOS RF transceiver and in January this year it announced the world’s first WiHD chipset.

    LeMoncheck said this was very small and simple to integrate.

    He said if it was possible for manufacturers to add the chip solution to, for instance HDTVs, for the same cost as a 10m cable then it was a “no-brainer”.

    “It’s a strategic gain for them as they are gaining from the cable dollars that they would not have got before,” he said.

    Potential Uses Are Vast

    LeMoncheck said future uses, once a single chip solution was perfected, would allow it to be put, for instance, on the back of a camcorder.

    He said the PC world was also very interested in wireless docking giving access to displays, printers and so on.

    “There are a lot of different devices that this can go into,” he said. “That’s our other key advantage – we are capable of working with data.”

    He said an iPod could synchronise effortlessly between devices, transferring a whole DVD file in five seconds.

    “That’s why we are working with the IEEE and looking at personal area networking,” he said.

    The WiHD consortium has entered into contracts with about 40 firms for the use of its technology and the first equipment compliant with WiHD is likely to appear in early 2009.

  • Who Said Smartphones Were Just For Fun?

    While the iPhone and Google’s HTC-made G1 may be introducing a more consumer-oriented market to the smartphone, it is still very much a business tool.



    The high-end handsets are being used to carry increasing amounts of confidential data, yet only 35 per cent of companies have a mobile device security strategy in place.



    Smartphone.biz-news.com spoke to Larry Ketchersid, chairman and CEO of Media Sourcery, about how it’s helping enterprises with mobile workforces securely distribute confidential information.

    Epitomised by RIM’s BlackBerry, with its reputation for secure email and text messaging, smartphones remain a powerful data communication tool for companies.

    Larry Ketchersid, chairman and CEO of Media Sourcery, believes that role is likely to gain in importance as more enterprises latch on to the benefits of utilising smartphone-based products.

    But security and data regulations have to be a major consideration when dealing with highly sensitive information.

    His company has developed a secure smartphone application called Mobile Data Messenger (MDM) that allows the sending and receiving of encrypted traffic.

    It securely transfers data files through a network without the need to use E-mail or FTP, or having to burning CDs or DVDs and sending them via snail mail or courier.

    Intended for use in virtually any size of organisation, it also enables companies to do away with the need for significant numbers of paper forms and provides real-time information that can be integrated directly into a data system.

    Ketchersid said the result was secure data transmission – but also increased productivity.

    “Security is great, and it’s required, but when it gets down to doing the ROI, the company and CEO are looking for simplified and improved accuracy and efficiency for their mobile workforce,” he said.

    Ketchersid said the MDM package was written in Java and was already being used by a major US healthcare company on its BlackBerries.

    “Security of patient health information is required in the US by the HIPAA regulations, and our solution solves that and other problems, such as the removal of paper forms, automation of data entry, cleaner data, mobilization of their application and so on, for our customers,” he said.

    Ketchersid said MDM wasn’t restricted to the RIM handsets or the BlackBerry encrypted enterprise server.

    Larry Ketchersid

    The package has been adapted for use on Nokia’s S60 platform at the request of the Finnish phone manufacturer.

    Media Sourcery has also just completed a request by HTC to port the application to Windows Mobile and Ketchersid said he was keeping a close watch on Android to see if it became more enterprise focussed in the future.

    “By having Symbian 60 and RIM, we have the two big ones,” he said. “So we have a pretty large market share.”

    Ketchersid said MDM was initially intended for use in heavily-regulated industries with a need for high security and audit trails.

    All transactions are encrypted and tracked for full regulatory compliance and once securely sent and succesfully received, confidential data is wiped from a smartphone’s memory.

    Simplicity Essential For High Adoption Rates

    Ketchersid said a prime example of the importance of this was in the healthcare industry, which has a mix of technically-trained staff and employees with low technical skills.

    “Our biggest customer in the US is the country’s largest hospice company,” he said.

    “We provide a user interface for healthcare workers to enter patients’ data, which is then sent back to the company’s database and automatically integrated into the back-end health information system.

    “What we have to do where the customer is not as used to smartphones as in other industries is make the application very simple.
    “We are talking about making the transfer from filling out a paper form, yet it has to be something everyone can do.”

    But Ketchersid said feedback from the client was good, adding: “They are loving it and asking us to put all the forms they have on it.”

    The MDM package is either sold as a hosted subscription service or as a software version for companies to manage themselves.

    Ketchersid said the decision on which version to adopt came down to whether IT departments wanted to have complete control of their own systems.

    MDM is also being used in the oil industry where security is an important feature, as are GPS requirements, a timestamp and automatic integration.

    “We have a customer in the oil field professional services that has to go out to remote locations,” said Ketchersid. “What they really need is an audit trail to show they were at a site and did tasks. It’s like a timesheet on steroids.”

    He said there was a growing market for MDM from companies looking for a forms package with Media Sourcery’s security built into it.

    Aside from the healthcare and oil industries, MDM is being used in the legal profession.

    Potential future uses include a law enforcement project where officers are required to record possible evidential data or prove a vehicle was stopped.

    “It’s a pretty open field. We got started in the healthcare market and will continue to have healthcare customers but are expanding out from that,” he said.

    “There are so many possibilities. It’s really going to be where the customer demand comes from.”

  • Web Sites Must Adapt For Mobile Access


    The rising popularity of smartphones and their increasing use to access the internet means web sites must be prepared for effective handheld viewing.

    With the launch of new phones from the likes of Apple, RIM and now HTC, with Google’s Android-based G1, that trend is set to accelerate.

    Chuck Sacco, CEO of mobile marketing experts PhindMe.net, said the G1 represented another step toward complete Web access for people on the go.

    “What we’ve seen with the BlackBerry and the iPhone is a shift away from cell phones to smart phones and the G1 is going to further spur that shift,” he said.

    “With Google’s Android technology also available to other cell phone manufacturers who want to develop smart phones, we anticipate a spike in the number of people using handhelds for the kind of online information they used to access while tethered to the home or office computer.”

    Sacco said most businesses had yet to investigate whether their Web site was accessible to handheld users.

    But an M:Metrics survey showed that 85 per cent of iPhone users accessed the Web for information and were 10 times more likely to search the mobile Web than cell phone owners.

    Jon Cooper, CMO of PhindMe.net, said companies spentd a lot of resources on intricate Web sites that simply didn’t translate to the small screen.

    He said that with the market transitioning toward smart phones, businesses were missing an important opportunity if they didn’t create streamlined versions of their sites that were both accessible to handheld phones and provided information that people on-the-go actually need.

    “Someone looking for lunch isn’t going to care about the history of your restaurant –they need timely information such as where you are and how to get there, what’s on your menu and what’s on special,” he said.

    “You should make that information accessible on their phone to maximize your marketing opportunities.”

  • Skype accused of hypocrisy by Gizmo

    Skype’s Christopher Libertelli recently questioned the major US wireless carriers’ commitment to open networks.


    Today voip.biz-news.com has the response from Gizmo Project’s CEO, Michael Robertson, who accuses Skype of hypocrisy for wanting others to open their networks while refusing to open its own.

    Robertson has written to Libertelli challenging Skype to enable other networks such as Gizmo5 to call Skype users in an official and supported capacity.

    “Mr Libertelli, I recently saw your letter to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin demanding that wireless companies open their networks.

    While I concur this would be beneficial for consumers, Skype’s actions do not mirror their words to the commission which diminishes credibility for Skype to demand openness.

    I am CEO of Gizmo5, a standards based VOIP and IM network. We invite other networks to connect to our users and currently route calls to and from more than 500 networks big and small on the Internet. We cannot route calls to Skype users in spite of the fact that consumers would like to do this because Skype has a closed network.

    The wireless companies you chastise in your letter to commissioner Martin allow me to send and receive calls to the networks they operate but Skype does not.

    Skype operates the largest closed calling network on the planet.

    We have requested peering information from Skype in the past on multiple occasions and our requests have been ignored. Skype continues to deny Gizmo5 and others in the internet calling world the information and access to allow calls to flow to and from your network.

    It appears that when it is convenient for Skype’s business objectives Skype waves the flag of openness, at the same time conveniently ignoring competitors requests for openness.

    It is disingenuous for Skype to demand mobile operators open their networks so that Skype can infiltrate their systems with their proprietary, closed calling scheme which locks out all others.

    If Skype truly believes there should be open competition then they should start by enabling other networks such as Gizmo5 to call Skype users in an official and supported capacity.

    Until you remove the padlock from your own front door you would seem to have no right to demand that others adopt an open door strategy.

    I’m open to discuss and implement an open peering relationship which will demonstrates Skype true commitment to open networks and make your actions match your words. Contact me anytime at [email protected] .”

    Michael Robertson
    MP3 Tunes – Your Music Everywhere
    Gizmo5 – IM/VOIP/SMS from PC and phone

  • VOD Will Reach Blu-ray Quality – And Beyond

    hdtv.biz-news.com spoke to Mark Horchler, corporate marketing director with video compression provider ATEME, about its plans to deliver video of Blu-ray quality and beyond.

    The Blu-ray Disc Association doesn’t take kindly to satellite and cable providers claiming their products deliver high definition picture and sound “equal” to that delivered by Blu-ray Disc.

    The trade body recently described just such assertions of equality as irresponsible and misleading to the consumer.

    Yet if the noises coming out of video compression provider ATEME are anything to go by, the BDA might have to get used to it.

    ATEME is a leading provider of MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 video compression technology.

    Its offline and streaming encoders power numerous high-end digital video applications, including mobile TV, Video on Demand (VOD) and IPTV.

    These solutions support both standard and HD content, deployed across any platform – from mobile to Ultra HD.

    Mark Horchler, corporate marketing director with ATEME, said there was room for continued improvement with H.264.
    He said the 3rd generation of the codec had just been released and was 25 per cent more efficient.

    “I think we are reaching near Blu-ray quality,” he said. “I have not made a set by set comparison but we are there.”

    Horchler said image quality was continually improving and the company was experimenting with Ultra High Definition video.

    “That’s the future of high definition,” he said. “H.264 will take us to Blu-ray quality and beyond. Blu-ray is largely based on H.264 technology.”

    France, where ATEME was founded in 1991 and has its head office at Bièvres near Paris, is a strong market for the company.

    It recently announced that its H.264 encoding solutions were now serving over one million French IPTV customers in HD.

    This was as a result of major French broadcasters using the encoders to provide HD video over low bitrates.

    IPTV has reached mass market status in France, largely because of its strong ADSL subscriber base of over 15 million customers, value for money offered by triple play services and healthy competition amongst ISPs.

    By the end of this year, France is expected to have up to six million IPTV subscribers, with a quarter having access to HD channels such as France 2 and M6 that use ATEME’s H.264 encoders.

    “France is a leading market for IPTV and is miles ahead of any other country in Europe, if not the world,” said Horchler.

    However, he said that while there was a lack of HD content in some markets, it was only a matter of time before that changed.

    “The potential for HDTV is huge. We are only at the beginning,” he said.

    “As more and more people adopt HD equipment, flat-screen TVs and so on, there will be a snowball effect. People will ask for more HD content.”

    Every market is different

    While IPTV is particularly strong in France, Horchler said that in other countries the infrastructure favored cable or satellite.

    In the US, where the cable market uses MPEG-2, he said there was a strong argument for using H.264 and he believed cable providers would start adopting it.

    “Our solutions carry over all these platforms,” he said.

    Another area where ATEME saw potential for H.264 was the mobile market, something that fitted well with its partnership agreement with Adobe.

    Horchler said the codec could adapt to various sizes and shapes of media device and had a scaleability that allowed the same video to be broadcast on HDTV or a mobile phone, for instance.

    This was a feature that would fit well with the live broadcast of sporting events.

    The internet offers immense possibilities for video and Horchler said he was confident that H.264 would be able to adapt to new opportunities as they emerged.

    He said there were many interesting applications, such as bundling video with advertising services, that were just beginning to take shape.

    “We are in that space. We work with Adobe Flash and this is compatible with 90 per cent of PCs out there,” he said. “I am sure by next year there will be some crazy idea for a business.

    “But the codec will adapt to the business model. It’s so flexible.”