Bencredible

2010 may not be a great year for AT&T. While they have seen fantastic growth since the release of the iPhone, I believe their exclusive contract expires this year. Of course another hot phone consumers want and AT&T has is the… uh… nothing.

Today Google announced the Nexus One which will work on T-Mobile and soon Verizon. While you can get voice and EDGE access on AT&T there is no subsidized price and no 3G access for AT&T users. All the cool phones are going to Verizon and T-Mobile!

While all cell phone carriers are terrible, AT&T has some serious issues on the coasts where user density is highest. I was recently in California and needed to browse the web on my iPhone. Let me tell you what wasn’t working. Oh sure, I had full bars but there was no bandwidth to be had. It was the most painful experience I have ever had on a mobile device. So painful that I went to a Verizon store and purchased a MiFi so I could have working WiFi access. I actually kept that MiFi (a device that AT&T also does not carry) and we use it for remote Spacevidcast shoots at KSC and Space View Park. You can bet that many users on the coasts are with AT&T because they want the cool phone. But what happens when that cool phone is no longer locked to AT&T or worse yet not even available on AT&T?

I think 2010 will be the year that users flee AT&T en masse for other providers. They have been riding off the iPhone success for too long and not been able to keep up with demand. In the end I think the iPhone will have ended up hurting AT&T more than helping them. They now have a reputation that is soiled and it will take a miracle or two to put them back on top.

I’m considering dumping AT&T for a T-Mobile Nexus One. I’m concerned about T-Mobiles terrible 3G maps though. What do you think? I already have a AT&T account and a Verizon account… Maybe adding T-Mobile isn’t a bad idea. I do utilize each network quite a bit as I am a bleeding edge adopter. I used to have a Sprint account, but, well they can’t seem to do anything right anymore.

Comments?

I recently heard something along the lines of, “Internet television and traditional television are the same thing, but with a different pipe.” This caught me a bit off guard as I have never viewed Internet video and television to really be the same thing. There are a few reasons why video produced for your television is and should be very, very different than video produced for the Internet.  Not only does this change how we view our content, but it also changes how we, as content creators, monetize. Allow me to explain.

The Medium Matters
When compared to television, Internet video has much more constrained bandwidth. This means that fast moving pictures, large and beautiful frames and motion in general will get squashed by the compression for the Internet. The end result is a smaller picture, lower frame rates and a much blockier image than what you would get on TV. In addition every bit matters online. If you have 10,000 people watching a television broadcast there is no more load on the TV tower than if 5 people were watching. In fact TV broadcasts can scale to an indefinite amount so long as everyone is within range of the tower. Internet video on the other hand has to serve a unique stream to each viewer which means that 5 people watching a video is 5x harder than 1 person watching a video. 10,000 people watching takes 10,000x more bandwidth, more server power and more resources than is 1 person is watching. However, unlike television the viewer of my Internet content can be just about anywhere in the world. There is no need to be within range of a powerful and expensive broadcasting antennae.

While both TV and the Internet are using digital information to transmit the data, that’s about where the similarity ends. Not only can a TV station broadcast to more users easier (although with a much smaller footprint), they also have a lot more bandwidth to work with. Today Spacevidcast targets around 1Mbps for our 720p video, which is about as large as we can make it before users stop being able to see it due to Internet congestion. Television on the other hand has around 20x more available bandwidth. To this end they can simply push out a better picture and not have to worry if the end user will have a fast enough computer, a fast enough connection or the proper plugins installed.

All of this technical stuff adds up to a difference in how the content is produced. Internet content generally allots for the smaller distribution pipe whereas TV does not. This directly impacts what the video looks like, how many shots are moving, etc., etc. The very feel of Internet video is completely different than that of traditional TV.

The Mindset Matters
I refer to television content as ‘lean back’ or sometimes ‘brain off’ content. That is to say television is not a participatory event. You watch television to be entertained, not to interact. You will generally lean back in your chair, turn off your brain and relax. There is nothing wrong with this (so long as it is done in moderation) but it is very different than what you would do on a computer.

A computer and more specifically the Internet is a very different mindset. This is what I call ‘lean forward’ or ‘brain on’ content. You generally use your computer to accomplish a task. You’re there to look something up, engage with someone, chat on Facebook, Tweet, or actively do something. You’re leaning forward, typing on your keyboard and using your brain. What you’re looking to do on your computer is very different than what you’re looking to do with your Television.

What this all means
When you combine the medium and the mindset you get a very different picture of how video works online vs offline. Online videos are often short and creative (or at least viral) because many of them are watched at work during a few minutes of downtime before the user has to go back off to make money (read: stop screwing around on YouTube). When that same person gets home they are not looking to search for a bunch of clips, create a playlist and watch TV that way. Rather, that user would like the content to be sent to them in longer chunks so they can sit back and relax. The content is very, very different, the mindset is very, very different.

So what then of Spacevidcast, TWiT and other long form shows on the Internet? These shows seem to fly in the face of this entire post. TWiT is a very successful radio podcast turned videocast. You’ll note that even Leo states that today the Podcast portion is where the money is all made but it is slowly moving to video. Spacevidcast Live is an hour long video show, far too long to watch at work. What gives?

This is where understanding that the Internet is not just another pipe is critical. Spacevidcast is a live, interactive and worldwide show. We won’t have the viewership of traditional TV because of technology limitations as well as the fact that we’re a more focused niche. We will be available to anyone on the planet that has an Internet connection and flash plugin. Traditional television won’t be able to easily accomplish this and certainly can’t accomplish it at the low price point we’re able to do Spacevidcast at. If we just look at Spacevidcast as another TV show that will use traditional advertising to fund everything, then we’re already dead. We are not traditional TV. Someday you may find us on TV, but it may be a slightly different beast than what you see today. What makes us different, unique and better than traditional television is our ability to do real time stories, streamed around the world, with audience interaction that can all be viewed on-demand at any time of the viewers liking. None of these things can be done with traditional television.

You’ll note that Spacevidcast really has 3 different shows: Live, Daily and Podcast. Each one serves a purpose. Live is a long form show that is fully interactive with interviews, community involvement and launch events (dare I say some of the best launch coverage in the world). Daily is a 2 to 5 minute clip designed to allow you to get your fix of space at work via YouTube. Podcasts are designed to let you listen in your car, while you’re working out or whenever you’re on the go and can’t sit to watch but can listen. We know what the Internet allows for and have created a show that fits each category. Something you simply won’t see traditional media doing. And just as the Internet is not just another form of TV, it also is not going to make money the same way as traditional television.

Monetization
Either make money or the show will die. Sounds harsh, but an Internet show can be self funded for only so long. The problem is that traditional advertising as seen on TV is not really working on the Internet. I can point to maybe 5 shows online that have been able to successfully bring this ad supported model over. The problem isn’t just the Internet but a shift in mentality when TiVo was introduced. Users are used to being able to fast forward through ads and don’t have the patience to sit through them much anymore. For traditional TV it is no problem since that is really hard to measure. For Internet TV we can see exactly how many people viewed the ad, how many skipped it and how many converted to sales. This is both a blessing and a curse! Great for the advertiser, terrible for the ad agency selling the ad. Alas it is also bad for shows like Spacevidcast that have a very tech savvy audience who have become immune to online ads. Add in that the Internet shows generally have a much, much smaller viewer base and, well, you don’t have a winning recipe.

So what is the solution? Oh how I wish I knew. I would be worth billions! In the end I think it is understanding that these mediums, while both use moving visuals, are inherently different. What works on one may not work on the other. Hulu looks to be suffering pretty badly this last year whereas TWiT is doing fantastic! People are not afraid to pay for their content. Apple has this figured out with iTunes. I believe that the future of online media won’t be one outlet like advertising but rather many outlets. A little bit of ad revenue, a lot more subscribers to a freemium option (in our case Spacevidcast epic), merchandise sales and even things that have not been thought up yet! The key here isn’t that advertising online won’t work. In fact it will, just not to the levels we had seen before. The point to take home is that advertising is just one small piece of the much larger monetization puzzle.

Crossovers
Generally you don’t see radio on TV, but there are a few exceptions. Howard Stern is one of them. In much the same way, there are Television to Internet crossovers as well. These are the exception to the rule and as of yet are generally not as successful.

Advertising and older methods of monetization will cross over as well. The irony of all this is that TWiT is an advertising based show that has been doing so well that the only paycheck Leo will take home is that of donations from the community. Lets not forget that TWiT is the ultimate crossover… A radio show on the Internet in the form of video. Makes my head spin a bit. But TWiT is one of the 5 shows I can count that are really making the traditional model work. I have a feeling that new models will also be introduced in TWiT and eventually could even replace the ad revenue they see today. Only time will tell.

The best Internet shows seem to be those where the talent came from a traditional media spot and already had a following. TWiT is a great example of that and I’m pretty sure This Week in Space will be another. These are brilliant people who are leveraging their own personal brand to gain market share on the Internet. It seems to work well, but these people are also a finite resource. Miles O’Brien and Leo Laporte are, in my opinion, the diamonds in the rough. Eventually we will run out of these personalities and we’ll all have to build our online shows from scratch. I am all too familiar with this process through Spacevidcast. It is emotional, irritating, expensive and insanely fun.

Conclusion
So why write this mini novel about TV vs Internet video? On the last epicsode of Spacevidcast during post show we debated the chat room being burned on the screen. A long portion of that debate revolved around the idea that it may scare advertisers off in the future. In traditional television it would. Some day we’ll grow past the chat room and we simply won’t be able to have it on the screen anymore, the text will scroll by so fast it won’t be useful at all. Until then, building our show around what advertisers would want will be the instant death of Spacevidcast, and if you have an Internet show, then the death of your show too!  Advertising revenue will be one of many different areas that money will come in. Don’t be afraid to be true to your community. Work and build a product that is right for them, not designed around your (yet to be) advertisers and what they want. Once you have that, then money will come in via many different avenues. I do believe epic will work without the need for advertisers. I also think we’ll bring on advertisers as soon as it makes sense. We will do many things, but we won’t change the show, our Internet show, to do what would work on Television. The medium matters, the medium changes things and Internet TV is nothing like traditional Television. For better or for worse.

Be true to your show, your community and your passion. The rest will fall in to place.

With the recent time zone change (and the confusion that always accompanies daylight savings time) it got me to think about time zones, daylight savings and coordinated universal time.

At times I am still amazed at how few people understand UTC or Coordinated Universal Time, even those people who live in that exact time zone! Throw daylight savings time in there and I’m pretty sure heads explode. Back in the days when getting a message across the planet took weeks this may have made some sense. When the industrial revolution came around there really was no time standard, so when a train would leave one city and go to the next it was entirely possible that you would arrive before you left… Well according to the city time at least. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted in 1847 by the Railway Clearing House to help eliminate this issue. If all of the train stations used the same general time, then you could no longer arrive before you left. This was a great invention 150 years ago, but times have changed and the world is a lot smaller now.

In 1972 GMT was abolished. Ok, not really abolished per say, but it was replaced in most regions by UTC or Coordinated Universal Time and should have been abolished. When someone says ‘GMT’ today they are actually referring to UTC and just don’t know it. Same with Z or Zulu time. Coordinated Universal Time is the most accurate clock the planet has which is based on atomic time. In fact you probably use it every day and don’t even know it! GPS uses UTC to keep the satellites in sync, so if you’re ever on a boat cruise, flying on an airplane, launching a missile at an enemy country, or driving your car with GPS nav you’re using UTC. In 1972 it was enough just to make the clocks of the world scary accurate, but there was no need to touch daylight savings time or time zones in general, so they didn’t. UTC follows the same offset as GMT did.

As we approach 2010 I think it is time to take UTC to the next level and create WUT or Worldwide Universal Time.  In my proposal we would continue to use the scary accurate atomic clocks that UTC is based off of, but the entire concept of daylight savings time would be gone. You would never, ever, ever change your clocks forward or backward an hour again. In addition (and just to make me sound super loony) the concept of time zones should be removed as well. We live in a world where real-time communications can happen at any hour of any day on any place on the planet or even in space! Why then do we cling to the idea that 12:00 noon must be when the sun is directly overhead? Who cares where the sun is at any moment in time anymore! That’s why lights were invented. Move to a 24 hour time and make it a universal time across the planet, right at the current offset of 0. In my proposed scenario the sun would be directly over my head at what I call noon today at 1800 hours WUT. What difference does it really make? The entire planet can work on whatever time is correct for that region and we would all have our watches set to the exact same time, accurate to the sub-sub-sub second. When you schedule that conference call between Japan and New York everyone would know exactly how the meeting time would affect them.

Yeah, radical idea that will probably never happen. As we reach more and more to the stars and as the world becomes smaller and smaller clinging on to this legacy time system will become harder and harder. Lets just make everyones life easier, come together as a planet and accept WUT as the new universal time that everyone will use.

kthxbai

I am currently pissed at Apple and the iPhone, more specifically the inability to get Google Voice on my iPhone and the lame App Store policies.  My next phone? I’m going to have to guess… oh, I don’t know… THIS ONE!!!

This is a great 40 minute video.  I just now had time to watch it and should have made time earlier.  The interesting thing is that Leo and I are starting from opposite ends.  Spacevidcast started with a live 24×7 channel and is working backwards to on-demand options and podcasts whereas he started with podcasts and is working up to a live 24×7 channel.  The good news is that he is starting to see some traction on his live channel, so there is hope for us yet!  Of course we’re starting to see traction too, but probably not to the same level that Leo has.

The promise of satellite phones to replace cellular phones has been around for years and has never come to fruition. There are many issues with satellite phones that make the cellular network a better idea, the biggest of which is capacity. On a cell network all I need to do is add an additional tower and I add a bunch of capacity. With satellite when I run out of capacity, I’m screwed.

Nevertheless I still believe that satellite telecom has its place and could eventually overtake terrestrial cell towers. Satellite has a huge advantage over cell which is coverage. One satellite can cover an entire continent whereas one cell tower only covers around 20 miles or so. I could drive coast to coast with a Satellite phone, but not with a cell phone.

How many users need to drive coast to coast? Not very many. But you may notice that your service varies greatly even in your own city as you drive around and bounce from tower to tower. This is where satellite phone service can revolutionize mobile phone service. No matter where you go you would always have full bars, so long as you never go indoors.

So why don’t we have satellite phones everywhere today? Well, several reasons. The phones are large and bulky. The antennae is amazingly huge and ugly. The cost is extremely high to make a single phone call. The devices don’t work indoors. It just is not as refined a technology as cellular. At this point satellite won’t be a viable option for, well, much of anyone.

Enter TerreStar.

TerreStar is getting ready to launch their next generation satellite phone network. Much like how the Globalstar network was designed, the TerreStar network is not just satellite but a combination of satellite and cellular. In the US if you have AT&T service the phone will connect to that and make the call there. If you’re out of AT&T range or need a little love the TerreStar phone will connect to the satellite network. This is all great, but as I mentioned Globalstar already did this (with Verizon rather than AT&T.) Where TerreStar differs is that their phone looks like any other smartphone. No huge ugly antennae.

Will this service trump current cellular service?  At first, no. Satellite needs to be priced properly and add enough advantage to overtake cellular. As the service is proven it could supplement traditional cell service. If TerreStar is able to find a way to penetrate buildings, we could have a complete replacement to cellular on the horizon here. Just as people moved from telegraph to corded phones then to wireless phones and on to cell phones, it is completely possible they will move from cell phones to satellite phones.

That’s not what excites me though. Imagine a global network in which Apple can control the entire experience. The device works anywhere on  the planet except the poles. Indoors, outdoors. No roaming, no long distance. A universal smartphone, an iPhone, that works anywhere on the device manufacturers terms. The only thing missing is the bandwidth which as I understand it is around 600Kbps. Very fast for satellite but a far cry from the 7.2Mbps next generation network AT&T is installing.

It is possible we’re witnessing a complete revolution in wireless phone technology. How cool is that?

Oh Qwest.  I want to buy services from you. I want to be able to recommend you to my family and friends. I want to believe that you understand this market. When you released fiber to the home in Minnesota I thought that you finally understood.  Alas poor Qwest, you are still a fool.

While Qwest does offer fiber to the home, they cap the upstream bandwidth at less than 1Mbps. That’s right, you have FIBER TO THE HOME with less than 1Mbps upload speed.

$45.00 a month is not too bad for bandwidth in this region. Problem is that Upstream bandwidth is just as critical as downstream bandwidth. I think that Qwest assumes that all consumers are stupid and will only look at the bigger ‘20Mbps’ number and the price. Well that’s why I’m writing this post. If you don’t know what the numbers mean, let me just say that when it comes to bandwidth *all* of the numbers are important! You want a high download speed, a high upload speed and low latency. All of these things combined will get you a good Internet connection. While I’m at it allow me to suggest using OpenDNS.com as well. You would be surprised at how much a slow DNS server will impact your browsing experience and OpenDNS is very fast and very free.

For those who have a choice between Comcast and Qwest fiber in the Minneapolis area, allow me to guide you towards Comcast. No, I don’t work for them nor do I get a kickback in any way. I’m just sick of Qwest completely and totally missing the mark when it comes to bandwidth. While more expensive, Comcast does offer a 30Mbps down, 5Mbps up service for $63.00 a month with other Comcast services. Now that is a lot more than most people want to spend and I still take issue at the upload speeds, but it is at least a step in the right direction.  Many people will go for the $55.00/mo package which is 20Mbps down and 4Mbps up.  Notice that it almost the same price as the Qwest unbundled package, same download speed but over 4x the upload speed (comparing apples to apples it would be $45.00/mo from Qwest with a bundle and $55.00/mo from Comcast with a bundle).

I can say with confidence that the Comcast bandwidth BLOWS AWAY the Qwest bandwidth from every angle. While Comcast claims 20/4 service in reality I have seen more like 20/6 which means that I can upload at around 6Mbps.  They seem to under promise and over deliver, at least in this market.

I know that every Comcast market is different and your experience may vary, this is just my experience with Comcast in the SW metro area of Minneapolis. I just hope that Qwest gets on the bandwidth bandwagon soon and starts offering competitive service to Comcast. I would love to get 50/50 service in my home via Fiber so I can start using next generation Internet applications. Qwest, you have a golden opportunity to convert a large amount of users to your service.  Start showing some initiative!

896Kbps upstream.  Qwest, I’m actually insulted you think I’m that stupid.

For anyone who knows me, you have probably heard me complain about e-mail. The concept of e-mail is over 40 years old now and was never, ever designed to make it do what we’re doing. The entire analogy is based on snail mail, which is completely wrong today. E-mail needs to be reinvented from the ground up.

Until recently I have not seen any plan that I thought could gain enough traction to offset the worldwide dominance that is e-mail. Then I saw this presentation on Google Wave:

Google is trying to create, in my opinion, not just a replacement for e-mail but a whole new way to communicate and collaborate online. While Wave won’t offset the dominance that e-mail has overnight it certain can become a new and vital communications standard in the next 10 to 15 years. This is a very cool product that I think deserves a lot of attention.

I’m not sure I care if it is Google Wave or not, but someone, ANYONE needs to come up with something to replace the horrid system that is POP/IMAP/SMTP. Maybe that is something simpler than Wave, maybe that new communications platform is Facebook? Doubtful.