In this issue

Internet TV - the technology

This month I want to cover the basics of the technology underlying Internet TV.  It is the same technology used by phone companies who are offering a cable TV service over their phone lines - a big business.  However we are more interested in TV distributed via the Internet - a much smaller business but very interesting.

When you open a web page the protocol is simple.

1. Your browser sends a small message to the web server asking for a particular page
   (maybe the page you selected from a google search).
2. The web server sends the page and any images on it.
3. As each piece is received it is displayed on the screen.

The big restriction here is that things like images can only be shown once the whole image file has been downloaded and unpacked.  If the web address you gave was a spreadsheet file, then (at least on Windows) the spreadsheet will open in the browser window; but only once it has all been downloaded.  The same goes for a movie, if the web address is of a movie file then it will be shown once it has all been downloaded 

As far as movies are concerned the problem is that a full-length movie is going to be hundreds of megabytes.  Downloading it first is not really an option if you are looking for instant gratification - and on the web who isn't.  So to show a movie you need to show it as it is downloaded using a special player.  This happens in one of two ways:

1. Progressive downloading.  You start the download and as soon as you have enough of it the program starts showing the movie.  While you are watching, the rest of the movie is downloading.  If you are watching a long movie faster than it can be downloaded, you may see the movie stop for a few moments every so often while it catches up.  This process is called buffering.
2. Streaming.  Progressive downloading is ok for short video clips - it is what YouTube does, but it won't do for long movies or for live TV.  For this you need to find a way of streaming continuously.  If you can't keep up, the program needs to lose stuff.  The player will do this either by physically losing segments or by transmitting at a lower resolution. Buffering still goes on, but only to absorb hiccups in the transimssion.

There are a number of players.

1. Real.  The Real player from real.com has been around a long time, first audio then video. Their problem has really been to make money out of it.   
2. Windows media Player.  No money problems here as it from Microsoft. It has developed into a very mature and very nice product.  You can watch it on a Mac, although you need to download some software. There are currently some problems with Firefox, and again there is a workaround. However as most people have a PC with Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player will reach most of your audience without any problems.  Coming soon is Silverlight - the next generation.  http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/
3. Quicktime.  Beloved of Mac users but not too many others.  Not really a serious contender.  The killer is the popup asking for money whenever you run it (on PCs anyway). This has caused many PC users to avoid it; including me.
4. Flash.  Yes our old friend is leading the pack because it is the only player mechanism available on most PCs and most Macs. The downside is you have to program your own player, the upside is that you can brand the player any way you want. 
5. Joost.  Joost is a proprietary player supporting a single service.  Technically it is quite different to the others. Whereas all the other technologies are based on a massive central server blasting out a signal on a huge internet pipe, Joost only uses the central servers to 'seed' the network. Then everyone who has Joost running (even if they are not watching it) is re-broadcasting to other users.  Each Joost user is getting a signal from up to 10 other Joost users and rarely from the central server. So the bigger the user base the stronger the network.  The distribution cost for a very large user base should be orders of magnitude less.  Because the signal is coming from multiple points, and because Joost uses a low level protocol that doesn't do any error checking (UDP), they make maximum use of whatever bandwidth you have.    In many ways Joost has the potential to leapfrog the pack in streaming TV. 

There are going to be winners and losers because the market doesn't need five technologies.  The losers won't include Microsoft, and won't include Flash.  Joost has a niche of its own and will either succeed or not. However I wouldn't lay money on Quicktime or Real surviving as leading products.

Behind these players is a whole menagerie of standard formats for video.  But let's face it - who cares.  The thing you need to know if you want to get into the video business is that you can't just stream from a regular web server.  You need software to process your video files, a streaming server and bucketloads of bandwidth.  Basically this means a specialist service.  Examples:

1. We use a company called Playstream (www.playstream.com) for small ad-hoc video hosting requirements.  They are cheap and highly automated.  Converting files to Windows Media Player or real Player format can be a bit tricky but the software to do this is free.
2. If you don't want to go through all this, you can simply put your clip on YouTube for free and embed the YouTube player on your web site. 
3. If you are really serious about a genuine TV station, then www.frontier.tv  is  working with Narrowstep - Windows Media Player  only though.

So that is a very brief overview of the technology. Next month I want to go into what an Internet TV station looks like and talk in more detail about the interesting stuff - the content.    
 

Business intelligence

Google - how do they do that?

Coming soon to Google Maps UK (I hope) is 'street view'.  Someone did this some years ago but Google have done it in spades. 

Go to maps.google.com and look for - I don't know, say, E. 51st Street New York.  Hey - that's my old apartment block.  You get a 360 degree view - how do they do that? It's amazing.  You can stroll down the street, round the corner - I see Mimi's restaurant is still there!  

It seems to be restriced to New York, Denver, Las Vegas and San Francisco at present, but it is an amazing piece of technology.

Are you ready for Verified By Visa (VBV)?

This month your ecommerce site should have implemented Verified By Visa or MasterCard SecureCode. This is a new security system to reduce the risk of online fraud. If you are buying something on a web site and you get taken to a web page with a postage-stamp-sized box in the centre of the screen with some incomprehensible text on it demanding a password - this is Verified By Visa.  I guess we will get used to it, although many customers have got very confused and even phoned the merchant thinking they had been infected with a virus.

If you are running an ecommerce site, you or your client might want to check with your bank.  This will require a change to your ecommerce system.  If you are using a hosted payment gateway this will all take place on your payment processor's website and you don't need to worry.

The initial take-up of this was rather small, but the banks gave their customers around six months to implement this earlier this year. Of course this was far too short a time for the big boys and so Visa have pretty much accepted that the deadline is likely to be breached.  As long as you tell the bank you are working on the issue an extension of the deadline should not be a problem.
 

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News from the web

A judge running the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism had a small problem.  He didn't know what a web site was.  As the web is a primary tool of terrorists, this would seem to be a bit of a problem.    The story was later clarified
 
 In an experiment someone advertised that they would infect you with a virus if you clicked on their google ad.  Lo and behold hundreds of users duly clicked.  
 
 If you want to see Mika Brzezinski shredding the Paris Hilton story - it's here.
  
Hey what do you expect - its the silly season.
 
OK something serious.  Censorship is increasing around the world as Governments wake up to the potiential of the internet.

China is not approving any more Internet Cafes and is inspecting the existing ones as they fear the Internet may be 'harming' young people.  No wonder when a young person addicted to the Internet killed his mother.   Will there be a chinese version of Reefer madness called Internet Madness?

And the news is that big business doesn't care  as Yahoo Stockholders Vote Against Anti-censorship Proposal.

Joost is signing up Creative Artists Agency to help it find talent for their Internet TV channels.

Internet advertising hit a high of 16 billion dollars in 2006 and is still going up.

And we are the busiest web users here in the UK compared to other countries in Europe. Might be something to do with most content being in English? Just a guess.

Search engine ask.com has reworked their search engine.  I quite like it, and I am starting to use it.  However somehow it doesn't seem to be quite able to read my mind the way Google does. 

The big news for Safari fans is that Apple are releasing a Windows Version