Techization

British Airways is in the midst of a strike by its crew members causing major havoc for the major airline .  Just in case you are still in the dark, here is a short passage from the Sydney Morning Herald on the current situation.

British Airways cabin crew enter the final stage of a three-day strike Monday, in a dispute over planned changes to pay and conditions that has caused travel misery for thousands of passengers.

After a weekend marked by fierce disagreement over the strike’s effects between the airline and the Unite union, which represents its 12,000 cabin crew, the workers staged a final day of industrial action.

And unless a solution is found to the standoff over attempts by loss-making BA to downgrade its employees’ pay and perks packages, among the most lucrative in the industry, the staff will walk out again for four days from March 27.

Now the chief executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, came out on YouTube expressing his stance on the strike.  Now what made this move such a great one for British Airways?  Let me explain…

People have great bull sh** detectors built-in.  We as people are not stupid and can read people and situations quite well.  Genuine thoughts and feelings come through and people can sense that.  British Airways could have just issued an official statement and left it at that .  Howver, it would have been carefully crafted by the BA public relations office and consumers would have just ignored it after the first sentence or two, and not given one thought to British Airways stance.  People would have said,”Well they must be doing something unfair to their employees, they are scared to even address head on?!”

Instead of this approach BA came out with a YouTube video showing chief executive Willie Walsh standing in a casual office setting.  No script, no carefully worded sentences.  The video showed Willie’s stance and what the companies feelings are towards the situation.  People want to interact and feel personally connected with their brands.  This is a great example of British Airways personally connecting with their consumers and critics during a rough time.

Great move British Airways,  great move.

So much attention is given to new media and websites like YouTube, Hulu and Ustream.  Nielsen, the leading ratings company, released a report putting things back in perspective.  The numbers of mobile video viewers has risen, time spent watching videos online has jumped, but television still overwhelmingly dominates as the medium of choice.

2008

116 Million Internet video viewers averaging 2 hours per month.

9 Million mobile phone subscribers (viewing hours not rated)

2009

131 Million Internet video viewers averaging 3 hours per month

13 Million mobile phone subscribers averaging 3.5 hours per month

Each statistic is quite a substantial upward trend.  Many logical factors can explain the increases.  Video capable mobile devices like the Blackberry Storm and iPhone are becoming more widespread.  I’ve personally noticed this trend first hand.  Being the tech geek I am, in high school (2000-2004) I was one of very few kids who toted a ‘smart phone’.  Most of my friends had your typical Motorola flip phone or Nokia candy bar.  Now it seems all my friends and younger kids I know own Blackberry’s, iPhone’s and Sidekicks.  This shift towards mobile convergence devices is being fed by the Internet and affinity to social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Internet viewing hours will continue to rise as President Obama pushes for nationwide broadband access and Hulu and YouTube continue to get more mainstream press.  A perfect example is the Discovery Channel show ‘Mythbusters’.  Earlier this year they had a ‘YouTube’ episode with user-generated content and myths.  Take a look at this graph about YouTube’s hit count comparing April 2008 vs. April 2009.

264,710,806 in 2008… up to 440,273,651 in 2009.  That’s nearly double the amount of hits in a year.

All these statistics are fine and good, but now lets unveil the ‘big momma’ in video viewing.

Television still overwhelmingly dominates as the medium of choice.  Respondents report viewing over 153 hours of video on the television each month.

I can stream movies on Hulu via my laptop and watch YouTube on my iPhone.  However, neither option beats watching a Blu-Ray movie on my 46″ 1080p television!  Comfort still beats convenience, at least right now.

Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) has been a identifiable illness that has affected hundreds of thousands across the globe.  How do you know if your’re an Internet addict?  Here are some things to watch for to tell if you or someone you know is a interwebs addict!

1. You wake up from terrible nightmares screaming ‘Bill Gates’
2. You have more Facebook and MySpace friends than you do actual friends in reality to the 5th power.
3. You have lost a significant other because you tried introducing them to ‘Layla Tonners’, your Second Life sex mate.  You lost them at the point of explaining they could co-exist in your life.
4. You post more Facebook comments per day than you have real conversations.
5. When writing letters or memos, you begin to refer to people with an @ before their name.
6. You own a t-shirt stating ‘I Facebooked Your Mom’.
7. You refuse to vacation in a location that has no Internet access
8. You finally give in and decide to vacation in a location with no Internet access, but only after purchasing a satellite modem for your laptop.
9. You place a vinyl ‘YouTube’ sticker in the bottom right corner of your new 52″ HDTV so it feels more like YouTube.
10. You asked your local librarian where they keep the wikipedias.

The Internet has come a long way.  Remember when it use to be like this?  I think I do, I was about four at the time!

Late 1980′s news piece about the upcoming phenomenon known as the ‘Internet’.

Time Warner Cable is under fire as they continue to roll out a 40GB cap to customers in various markets.  They are not the only Internet Service Provider doing these restrictions, but they are the most conservative at 40 gigabytes.

• Charter Communications – Connections less than 15mbps (Most households) – 100GB Cap
• Comcast – 250GB Cap
• AT&T – 150 Cap

“A mere 5 percent of our subscriber base is responsible for requiring half of the available capacity through local cable lines.” said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable’s executive vice president of advanced technology

Nearly all these companies will charge $1 per extra gigabyte your go over the cap in a billing period.  This could leave some families in the red when their cable bill comes.

Companies in markets that Time Warner Cable is testing the new capped system are already jumping on the offensive.  Frontier Communications in Rochester, NY have publicly released they will not place any caps on their DSL service in that market.  Frontier has also stated they will deploy an aggressive marketing campaign to steal customers away from Time Warner.

A recent report from Sanford C. Bernstein supplied by Business Week suggests that a family on the 40 GB plan that streams 7.25 hours of online video a week (a fraction of the 60 hours Americans spend watching TV in a week) could end up spending $200 per month on broadband usage fees. And that’s just for video viewing, before factoring in such Internet activities as music downloads and photo sharing.

“To put it mildly,” says Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, “the decision to limit data consumption can be expected to have profound implications for [consumer] behavior.”

I wonder how ISP’s like Comcast can feel they will remain competitive by capping bandwidth.  File sizes and quality continues to rise, but with data caps consumers may be hesitant to use the new technology.  The perfect example comes in the form of high definition video.  If you were to download an HD movie, (from a legal source!) it would eat up about 8GB of your bandwidth.  That’s nearly a quarter gone from one machine.  Let’s not even delve into the prevalence of routers and most homes now having two or three personal computers on a network.

These data caps are just another effort to ward off P2P illegal file sharing users.  Comcast thought it had the answer until it got slapped by the FCC for violating principles of network management.  The large ISP’s need another way to put a kink in illegal file sharing, only difference now is they are willing to jerk around their entire subscriber base since they can’t single out file sharing users by throttling their traffic.

It just does not seem logical.  I would hate to see something like this stifle technological advances in quality of content.  I think this again strangles the United States in becoming competitive in the broadband race.  Japan has ran away with the title with this move by domestic ISP’s. But let me make one thing clear, I’m not 100% against capping, but 40GB is down right outrageous.

Speaking of Japan, 1GB bandwidth with no cap sounds good to me.

Here is a graph showing the average advertising broadband speed from countries around the world:

Phone call from Time Warner Cable warning about bandwidth usage

This second video is from a guy named ‘Joe’ who was threatened by Comcast Cable a few years ago.  There are a few obscenities so watch it at your own discretion if your at work.

AT&T announced that it is scurrying to upgrade its mobile network in anticipation for the new iPhone hardware that will hit shelves in June.

“We have the infrastructure capability to go to 7.2 [Mbit/s], and we’ll have the capability to go 14.4 and 20 in the next couple of years, so I think there’s coverage we’re going to improve, there’s quality we’re going to improve, and there’s speed that’s also going to get improved.” – AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega

Reports revealed that half of the mobile data that AT&T routes is attributed to the iPhone, and Net Applications is reporting that more than two thirds of all mobile web data is linked to the widely popular mobile hardware.  AT&T has stated it is expecting a ten-fold increase in mobile data traffic on its network with the release of the new iPhone this summer.

The network upgrade was obvious when AT&T purchased a large batch of Juniper routers, which has been confirmed by AppleInsider.  The routers are optimized to handle streaming video and mobile broadcasting solutions like those being offered by Ustream.tv and their ‘mobile stream’ iPhone application.  Apple has reportedly set a strict deadline that asks AT&T to complete the upgrade, quality test it, and have it ready to go live no later than May 31st, 2009.

AT&T is also working hard on upgrading their coverage and service to their customers.  They are transitioning their 3G network to new frequencies (850Mhz) .  The longer wavelength, lower frequency 850MHz band has been growing in popularity among mobile providers because it provides greater coverage area using fewer towers and better penetration through walls and other barriers, such as foliage.

I will take this snarky mood I’m in to discuss the recent trends of Ustream.  I first found out about Ustream about one year ago and have been using it weekly since.  I have found lots of engaging and insightful streams.  Anything from a Lil’ Wayne concert to Chris Pirillo and even some live amateur ghost hunters.

Those folks who are big Ustream fans must have seen the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam by now right?  If you haven’t, I assume you either aren’t a regular user of Ustream, or you have been living in a cave.  Yes I will agree, they are cute for about 30 seconds.  Yes, 30 seconds.  I have seen users who sit on that channel for hours commenting on what the puppies are doing from minute to minute.  I mean, really?!   These cute little puppies have inspired a groundswell on Ustream with other pet owners trying to ‘e-pimp’ their pets cuteness online.

Top 4 Highest Rated Channels – 3/13/09

• Bizkit (Gaming related)
• Broomeacres German Shepherds
• Ketches Chocolate Lab Litter
• Shayla & her Golden Retriever puppies

The list goes on and on, a majority (well over half) are pet cams.  These live ‘webcams’ feature dogs, cats, fish and ferrets.  When I view these webcams, and I will call them that because I don’t believe they fall under what I classify as a channel, they remind me of EarthCam.

Personally I’m just not very thrilled with watching someones dog or cat run around a pen.   I have my own dog to gain personal enjoyment and pleasure from.  Why is it such a hit on Ustream?  Are these all apartment dwelling net geeks who are not allowed pets?  Are these Ustream channels rapidly becoming the online version of a Tamagotchi?  It’s hard to say.

Ustream while popular is not mainstream by any means.  It’s Alexa traffic rank does not even put it in the top 1000 websites on the Interwebs.

Therefore, these newer type of start-ups are often frequented by us Internet savvy geek users, not mainstream a-typical users.

I don’t know about you, but I’m keeping my puppy far away from my webcam

Most have heard about Boxee with it’s recent spat with Hulu.  Boxee holds vast potential to be the ‘next bigthing’ in media consumption online.  Boxee is a piece of open source freeware that has socialized the popular XBMC (Xbox Media Connect) platform.  It allows users to rate, share and recommend content with their friends through various social media tools.  

With much anticipation, Boxee has released an Alpha version of their popular platform, but there’s a hitch. The release is only available by private invitation at the current time.  I myself have been one of the lucky alpha testers.  This is my first experience with Boxee and I must say that I’m quite impressed.  Television and video is a deeply rooted piece of our culture.  We find ourselves huddled around the water color talking about last night’s episode of ‘The Office’ or ‘Grey’s Anatomy’.  Boxee now allows for easy sharing and ability to say, “Hey man!  You’ve got to check out last nights episode!”  

While the Alpha has a long way to come, there are quite a few glitches, this should make Windows geek’s happy as Boxee is showing their commitment to both Mac and PC’s.  

Boxee said in 2009 it is planning to release its own dedicated hardware for Boxee, and also plans to license its Boxee media center and social networking service as a third-party software component to other companies for them to use the Boxee software in their hardware, such as set-top boxes from cable providers.  Boxee has also stated that their goal is to have Boxee run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible.  - Wikipedia

Why Hulu Is Choking Itself

Hulu has harshly stopped every attempt by Boxee to pull Hulu content onto its platform.  Why you ask?  Hulu is owned by NBC, a television network.  They want Hulu content to be viewed strictly on computer screens and not on televisions that are wired to a PC.  Why?  If you can start watching your Saturday night COPS episodes with only two or three commercials, what incentive is there for you to keep your cable?  Hulu doesn’t want to foster a delivery method like Boxee (caters to users who display video on their television via their PC) which could ultimately kill its parent company.  Hulu is hurting itself by boxing out Boxee, pun certainly intended!  They don’t hold the market and if they won’t deliver the goods, someone else will.  

Ignoring the fact of who owns Hulu, the company shouldn’t care whether their advertising is seen on a television or a computer screen.  They both display a picture and are one in the same.  

Will this bickering ever end?