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Company earns high
praise for net-tv convergence Company
earns high praise for net-tv convergence Internet Broadcasting Systems (IBS) has drawn praise from a recent study by Cahners In-Stat Group, for a business model that combines local television news networks and the Internet. IBS began putting local news stations online in February 1996 with the launch of Channel 4000, the online arm of WCCO-TV and WCCO Radio in Minneapolis. Sites connected to KCBS-TV in Los Angeles; KOIN-TV in Portland, Ore; WISC-TV in Madison, Wis.; and WEWS-TV in Cleveland, gradually were brought online afterward. WEWS is an ABC affiliate, the other four are CBS affiliates. It took the company nearly four years to launch its five "legacy" stations, as IBS calls them. But the company recently has begun a rapid expansion. Gerry Kaufhold of Cahners In-Stat Group authored a report entitled "Streaming Media Done Right: Internet Broadcasting Systems." Kaufhold's report said the emergence of streaming media on Web sites is an important trend to watch, adding that IBS has a unique business model for the marketplace.
Not all musicians are complaining about Internet freeloaders. In fact, one British rock band is thanking Net users for giving it something record companies never could: total artistic freedom. Fans of progressive rock band Marillion are financing the production of the band's 12th album. Marillion, which has been playing for 18 years, had some offers from record companies but decided to try the Net first. It sent an e-mail to more than 30,000 fans last month asking if they'd be willing to buy its next album in advance. So far, 8,000 fans have sent about $24 each, giving them well over the $140,000 needed to produce the album. That means the band retains rights to its music. (EMI will license and distribute.) Fans who prepaid will get albums first; many will be thanked personally in sleeve notes.
The Commission has approved the General Tariffs of Clearnet
and Microcell
on an interim basis, with modifications. As CLECs, the two companies must
provide equal access to LD carriers and will participate in the local number
portability system. Mobile phone giant Nokia and Compaq Computer said today that they would join business-focused mobile data infrastructure efforts. In a separate announcement, a group of 10 companies including Intel, Dell Computer, France Telecom, Motorola and others said they have created a new body designed to create standards for the wireless Net. The agreements, and other recent deals like them, help outline the corporate power blocs that are developing as the wireless industry runs headlong into the traditional computing business. Companies on both sides see a potentially huge new market, and in it the ability to extend their dominance or create the seeds of a new technology powerhouse. But because each side brings only part of the puzzle, they need each other, at least for now, to create the seeds of a new Cisco Systems or Microsoft. Already, Motorola and Ericsson have partnered with Cisco to
create similar wireless data infrastructure technology. Today, Ericsson and
Microsoft announced they have created a joint venture focused on wireless email
systems. Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia said September 8 it is bringing the Internet to the living room with the launch of its Media Terminal, the first in a range of products it is introducing for the "connected home." The new Linux-based product combines Internet media and digital broadcasting technologies that give people access to entertainment on the Net through any home display device. It will be available in the second quarter of 2001, Nokia said. Consumers can watch digital TV and record programs on an integrated hard disk, play games, order video on demand, send and receive email, listen and store MP3 files, and connect printers, digital cameras or other devices, it said.
Source: digitalmass Corning Lasertron says it has picked a 56-acre site in Nashua for a new $225 million, 850-employee optical telecommunications component factory aimed at meeting insatiable demand for optical gear. The site, at the Westwood Industrial Park off Route 101A in northwest Nashua, will triple Lasertron's capacity for making devices such as lasers and receivers used to transmit data and voice calls over optical networks. While demand is exploding among phone companies for new
optical transmission devices to support booming Internet traffic, growth has
been constrained by short supply of optical components, including lasers as
small as pinheads that require painstaking, labor-intensive fabrication. RSA's
patent expiration may spur competition RSA SECURITY INC. (Bedford, Mass.) is stealing some of its competitors' thunder by releasing its encryption algorithm to the public domain two weeks early. RSA Security's public key encryption algorithm, represented by the equation "c = me mod n," has been used for encryption for almost two decades and is the most widely used digital certificate in security. It's found in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator for implementing Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), in e-mail applications for signing and encrypting messages, and within the bulk of payment systems and virtual private networks (VPNs). Vendors race to put cameras in cell phones Source: teledotcom Makers of CMOS imaging devices are looking to sweeten emerging design slots in cell phones with camera modules the size of a sugar cube. The prize sought for the tiny cameras, which will each pack a lens, sensor, and processor, is a potential market of unprecedented scale for CMOS imagers. Key industry players predict that by 2004, camera-enabled handsets will account for 20 percent to 50 percent of the global mobile phone market. Handset manufacturers and sensor companies are preparing for that day now by quietly conducting joint design and engineering projects. Some of those programs are near completion; others are still in the product definition phase. Early image-capture-enabled cell phones will roll from major OEMs over the next nine months; until then most of the collaborations are being kept under wraps.
The last of the major record labels announced its plans to begin selling music online. On Monday, the Warner Music Group said it
would begin selling a handful of singles and Internet-only tracks from artists
such as the Barenaked Ladies, Matchbox Twenty, and Paul Simon when its service
launches this November. Warner Music eventually plans to expand its catalogue to
over 1,000 tracks and albums. Websense, which compiles lists of specific URLs to block for its hundreds of corporate clients, claims the number of gambling sites has mushroomed 169 percent in the last six months, with the total number of sites now topping 21,000. That, the company says, makes Net gambling the fastest growing industry on the Web, based on raw page growth. The figures likely won't come as welcome news to several U.S. lawmakers pushing bills that would ban Net gambling in the United States. Three separate bills working their way through Congress would, if passed, rely on Internet service providers to enforce the ban by blocking access to gambling sites. As the number of sites explodes, however, the task of blocking them becomes increasingly unrealistic. In the last six months, a number of Net gambling companies have started "franchising" operations, in which they give individual Web surfers the tools to set up their own gaming sites in exchange for a big cut of the sites' subsequent revenues. Many gambling sites also buy dozens and dozens of different URLs that all lead back to the same servers. It is estimated that there are fewer than 350 distinct Net gaming companies. Nevertheless there's no mistaking the Net
gambling boom. Christiansen Capital expects Net casinos to take in $2.2 billion
in bets this year, compared to last year's $1.1 billion. IBM
introduces new era in bandwidth allocation
With network equipment providers desperate to respond to the
service market's demands for more speed, IBM has introduced
network-processing technology that analysts say could signal a major leap in
the ability of service providers to allocate network bandwidth. The
combination of IBM's PowerNP network processor chip and its bandwidth
allocation technology (BAT) software is expected to let Internet and
application service providers slash network-management costs, increase
revenue, and deliver a wider array of services.
Tim Ward, director of product marketing for IBM's network processing business line, says the PowerNP/BAT combination essentially hides complex algorithms in a relatively simple graphical user interface to let network administrators more effectively allocate bandwidth. For instance, Ward says, an ISP could easily offer its customers a variety of service plans to create a bandwidth-on-demand environment. Ward says IBM has been demonstrating the technology to network equipment vendors for months, and they're eager to incorporate it into their new products. Ward declined to name potential customers, but he did say he wouldn't be surprised if Cisco Systems proved to be one of the early adopters. Pricing for a package of development tools and software starts at about $10,000, and IBM expects to be able to bundle the software onto its PowerNP chip later this year.
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