Daily Archives: July 10, 2006

Netcore in Express Computer

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Express Computer has a story on us and our bet on Linux:

From e-mail to VPN, firewalls to bandwidth management, virus protection to spam filtering, Netcores products are providing solutions to build the back-end infrastructure in large enterprises and small-and medium-sized businesses alike.

The company also offers products such as BlogStreet, Indias first portal on blogs providing analytics, search and directory services. Emergic CleanMail is a hosted anti-virus and anti-spam solution and messaging service that is used by organisations in the banking, logistics, finance and other industry verticals in India and other developing countries. Emergic FlexiMail is a mail hosting component where mail space can be offered to customers. The Emergic Mail Server, a new product, is a Linux-based messaging and security suite. It has a proxy server, mail server, firewall and anti-virus solution built into it.
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Right from the IndiaWorld days, Netcores focus has been to develop and market affordable software solutions. The company has been providing Linux-based solutions. Rajesh Jains first endeavour, IndiaWorld, was an early user of Linux. Since then all the development of the company has been done on Linux.

Cringely on WiMax

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Robert Cringely writes in the context of Intel’s $600 million investment into Clearwire, which is building a WiMax network in the US:

WiMax, like most wireless networking technologies, is either-or. You can either have lots of bandwidth or you can have long range. There are exceptions to this rule if you have line-of-sight transmission and can use a matched set of high-gain antennas. Then, sure, WiMax can send those 70+ megabits per second for 30 miles and more — sometimes a LOT more. But the way most of us envision using WiMax is with lower gain antennas, often without line of sight, and possibly even while moving from place to place, so the trade-off of bandwidth for distance is pretty severe. Most WiMax users will find that they can’t get the target 70 megabits per second at 30 miles. They’ll be lucky to get even one megabit per second at 30 miles. Possibly a LOT less, as WiMax’s adaptive modulation slows transmission and throws on lots of forward error correction to make sure the signal gets through, however sluggishly.

If your WiMax or 3G connection syncs at, say, 100 kbps, does it still qualify as broadband?

Flash Memory in PCs

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Forbes writes:

Flash-based computers have been around for a decade now, but steep prices have kept them in niche markets, such as industrial and military users, who need a machine that can withstand abuse. Alan Niebel at Web-Feet Research estimates flash drive makers will generate $500 million selling to PC makers this year.

But now, tech observers predict that a steep drop in memory prices will make flash-based PCs and laptops a mass-market item. A more realistic bet: Look for more hybrid machines that combine the best attributes of hard disks and flash memory–and at a fraction of the cost of an entirely flash-based drive.

Flash prices are dropping–at a rate of about 40% a year–but hard drive prices are moving at the same pace, according to Semico Research. That means even as flash drives become more prevalent, hard disks will remain an attractive storage medium.

Online Ad Inventory Crunch

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[via Ashish Sinha] The McKinsey Quarterly writes:

Internet advertising has recaptured the imagination of marketers, who see an enormous potential to raise the profile of their brands through vehicles such as paid search and online video. But the fact that scarcity is an issue for digital-advertising often gets lost in the enthusiasm. McKinsey research finds that bottlenecks in supply could limit the pace of online ad growth and raise prices over the next 24 months. The study also suggests that a dearth of ad agencies that can manage both traditional and digital campaigns could further slow the shift in spending to online ads.

Mobile Search

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The Pondering Primate writes:

There will come a point when there is more internet traffic from mobile devices than PCs. What happens to search engines then? What happens to the Golden Goose of advertising when people wont be using a search engine to do their surfing?

That screen on your cellphone will be the most coveted piece of real estate to advertisers. People wont be using search engines on their phones.

What replaces the keywords model for the advertising dollars?

Physical World Hyperlinks.

TECH TALK: Video on the Internet: Tomorrows TV (Part 2)

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News.com captured the essence of the future in an article last November:

Imagine a day when you would be in total control of creating your own TV channel lineup.

Instead of subscribing to a service from a cable, satellite or phone company that might offer you hundreds of channels you’ll never watch, you would be able to select what you want and watch it on your own schedule.

That day might not be so far away. Slowly but surely, content that’s broadcast over cable networks and through satellite providers is being distributed through the public Internet.
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“Producers of content want as many forms of distribution as they can get to reach their audience,” said Vito Palermo, founder of a start-up called Portola Networks, which is in the early days of developing technology for content providers to manage the distribution of their content over the Web. “They would love to cut out the middlemen, but the economics must be compelling. Technology is an enabler, but there are a lot of other dynamics around consumer behavior and the business model that need to be in place first.”

Much of the infrastructure to provide broadcast quality video directly over the public Internet is now available. Companies, such as Kontiki and EdgeStream, have already developed software to secure content and ensure the quality of streaming video.

Jeff Jarvis had this to say in a column for the Guardian last September entitled Exploding TV:

TV networks will not die. But neither will they grow – and in business, isnt that as good as dying? Their audiences have been steadily falling away for a decade. Network ad revenue is now flat and a host of new gadgets compete for viewers attention.

Yet its not technology that ultimately will challenge big medias monopoly. Its the audience who will do that, for now they – or rather, we – can produce, distribute, and market our own content at a cost media giants cannot beat. Three important developments come together now to make this possible:

  • Thanks to new tools, anyone can make a show. Just as blogging liberated publishing, cheap gadgets and ever- easier software can turn anyone into a broadcaster. For example, Audacity – a free tool that makes editing audio as easy as cutting-and-pasting – lets us produce podcasts, the radio shows of the people. And even I, a child of print-and-paper, can make TV using a tool called Visual Communicator, which lets me write a script for a teleprompter on my computer screen and then drag-and-drop inserts of graphics and video on to the script so it is all recorded at once – no editing necessary. (To see a demonstration, go to buzzmachine.com/rtnda.)
  • The internet enables us to distribute what we make to the world. No longer do we have to beg the guy who owns the broadcast tower for time.
  • We can now market via links. That is how some blogs have built audiences the size of midsize newspapers. That is how podcasts and vlogs (video blogs) will grow.

    There is the real revolution in media: The one-way pipe that was broadcasting is giving way to an open pool that everyone owns, where anyone can play. The end of the network era isnt just about losing audience or revenue or profits. Its really about losing control.

    • One of the themes that has been mentioned around video on the Internet is the ability to target smaller audiences. We will examine this more closely.

    Tomorrow: Niche Audiences

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