Friday Funny iFilm
I ordinarily don’t post virals like this, but seeing as though I mentioned that all my contemporaries want a PS3, I guess they (and I!) have to come to grips with what that might mean.
Mildly, mildly NSFW.
Archive for it
CableCARDs cable can’t?
Promising so much since I began looking at the technology at IBC2004, CableCARD hasn’t delivered anything yet into the Asia-Pacific/Pacific Rim region I work in.
Combined with Common Interface Conditional Access Modules, CableCARD could allow an interoperability landscape to flourish amongst HDTVs, Set Top Boxes, media centres and content services.
Do we know what The Next Great Standard for TV is? No, and I’d never pretend anything different.
But the two standards mentioned above exist now, and if used in combination by an end user (such as an HDTV with a CableCARD in Slot 1, and a Neotion CAM in Slot 2) could create a display with aftermarket, yet built-in, IPTV, smartcard-based decryption and MPEG4.
The Way Of Sony
Naturally, it’s first-generation, and may be enabled only for the Sony branded parts of your livingroom and jacket-pocket.
But free content downloads as 8Mbps MPEG-4 (H.264/AVC) should yield great HD results: I have done tests at those rates and have had only positive reviews so far.
Imagineering the approach Sony may take, I can see harmonious, elegant and profitable integration amongst the Sony properties of:
- So-net
- Walkman
- Playstation Portable
- Wega and Bravia
- SonyEricsson
There’s no shortage of commentators ready and willing to pile scorn on Sony’s choices based on a creative set of interpretations of Sony’s failures and shortcomings.
FreshBooks’ Fresh Looks with Deft Hooks
To simplify invoicing, I had a few choices to pick from when I restructured Crixa some years ago:
- Outsource to an accountant
- Insource to MYOB
- Keep with the status-quo of using Illustrator and Photoshop to create PDFs. Yes, really.
While I aspired towards #2, Crixa ended up actually only doing #3.
2006 was to be different: I switched to FreshBooks (referral link) and haven’t looked back.
- Crixa does get paid faster.
- Clients do find it far easier to pay via PayPal, rather than direct debit, cheque or stone money.
- And it works. It’s Really Quite Good For You, even.
They have also experienced a variant of unintended use cases in their discussion fora: the Structure Makes It Worse use-case.
“I’m all in. You diversify the categories too much and there is no center of mass for everyone to hang and talk about issues, they end up using their time jumping back and forth and leave without adding anything to the discussion. Let’s do it.”
This type of issue is what convinced me to make gkoya post categories on the fly, and reshape/reform them as usage changes.
(gkoya/Crixa has no affiliation to FreshBooks, except as a satisfied customer)
ECI Telecom consortium to push for next-gen DSL
Om Malik wrote some editorial a few days ago about the recent announcement by ECI Telecom.
Mostly though, he does a profile of Professor John Cioffi. And although his track record is impressive, the world has not suddenly been delivered a magic bullet for hyperspeed broadband access.
ECI noted that:
DSM [Dynamic Spectrum Management] is a promising technology expected to provide reliable, fiber-optic-like rates over the existing copper infrastructure. DSM is expected to have a significant impact on the market, as the DSL industry is looking for solutions beyond VDSL2 to increase subscriber broadband rates.
The establishment of this multi-disciplinary consortium, funded for three years, and effectively underwritten by the Israeli Government stands the commercial development of the technologies in very good stead; rather than remaining “slideware”, a commitment has been made to push for new FTTC-based last mile platforms and in a very public way. ECI presented a discussion on DSM and the partnership at Broadband World Forum in Paris, the proceedings of which I have not yet seen released.
Integrating three tertiary institutions into a commercial consortium will be no mean feat. Many a telco research initiative in this country between universities and businesses has hit structural roadblocks, and technologies commercialised out of university research make a big bang at press release time, but fade into unrecognisable-by-the-public consolidation. In 2000, I watched as Radiata took USD$295m from Cisco and have been waiting ever since to see the “leading semiconductor technology” reappear proudly as Powered By Radiata (TM).
So why do we often latch onto The Next Great Thing and the Way Of The Future technology or innovation? I believe it’s human nature to engage with the fruits of clever endeavour, but it could be a result of a disbelief in scientific principles. That is, if we have a problem today, never fear: the solution is “Coming Soon!”; physics can be beaten into submission by new technologies via science.
I hear very similar comments The Next Greatest Thing made by broadband and telco companies in Australia, but they are usually referring to one or more of:
- New vendor product release that bests the industry leader by “blah” percent
- ADSL 2, 2+, VDSL2, or acronym-next access technology
- Proprietary, patent-pending, announced today solution to worldwide problem
Yes, the emerging and developing technologies of “soon” can help new business become viable: but shouldn’t genuinely-sturdy propositions for customers be able to be deployed on “Network Any”?
