The blogosphere, if not the mainstream press, has been eagerly awaiting the launch of an Internet video company founded by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Previously dubbed The Venice Project, the company, now called Joost, has launched in beta mode. (Joost means nothing. It’s not a word in either Zennstrom’s or Friis’ native Swedish.)
The latest venture by the P2P VoIP pioneers, Joost promises to deliver “TV-like” programming on the Internet using P2P technology. However, unlike Kazaa, another P2P company founded by Zennstrom and Friis, Joost is trying to woo content providers as partners and plans to make video available in a manner that pleases rights holders.
The big drawing card for cable networks, studios and other big-ticket content suppliers is Joost’s ability to distribute video over the Internet in a fast, efficient and inexpensive manner, according to CEO Fredrik de Wahl. Despite the hit track record of Zennstrom and Friis, and the promise of more efficient Internet distribution, few big content suppliers have agreed to license their wares to Joost.
(The graphic above depicts a “Warner Brothers Records” channel that current runs on Joost, but most of the content consists of music videos — and Warner Music is no longer part of the Time Warner empire. It’s was spun off into a separately traded company in 2005.)
It’s hard to tell whether Joost is a game-changer, as Kazaa and Skype were. Until a user becomes a beta tester (I’ve applied!) the offerings are behind a firewall. Stay tuned.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:05 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Nothing crushes oppressive governments as much as free speech does, which is why dictatorial regimes around the globe work so hard to censor their local media. The early 20th century advent of broadcasting, which reaches listeners through the ether and across physical barriers, made censorship all that more difficult. The Internet, with its open standards and global reach, makes repressing unfavorable information all that much harder.
But the Internet hasn’t quite obviated old-fashioned broadcasts as a tool for fighting government censorship. Radio Racja (Truth), for example, functions to fight the information blackouts imposed by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. The station broadcasts from Poland into the former Soviet republic.
Among other newsgathering efforts, Radio Racja has correspondents inside Belarus under pseudonyms who record their broadcasts via MP3 and ship them back to the station via the Internet. One correspondent even broadcast from the back of a police car after being arrested for “cursing in the street.”
Although Radio Racja relies on a mix of old and new technology, a new project called Wikileaks.org aims to bring governments out into the open by allowing users to post government documents to a wiki. Not yet launched, Wikileaks hopes to provide a safe haven for people to post embarrassing government documents without leaving their fingerprints.
Purportedly founded and partially funded by dissidents, mathematicians and technologists from China, the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa, the site will rely on volunteers to scan content and make contributions. But, as open government advocate Steve Aftergood warns, sometimes too much disclosure is as bad as too little disclosure and this is one wiki with the potential to create havoc. Imagine if military plans are posted on Wikileaks, or someone decides to forge government documents with no other purpose than to harm political adversaries.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:40 PM | Print | Comments (1)This is old news already, but USA Today’s Leslie Cauley has this item today about the upcoming offers of cheap and naked DSL services from AT&T. Starting within six months, AT&T will offer lower speed (768 kbps) DSL service priced at an incomparably low $10 for new high-speed customers — that rate will apply to consumers who also purchase AT&T voice service.
In addition, the giant telco will also start selling company-wide naked DSL service, service that is sold on a stand-alone basis, not paired with AT&T’s voice service. The naked DSL option will be priced at $19.95/month, cheaper than virtually all other high-speed Internet options.
Both of these new DSL services flow from the agreement AT&T struck with the FCC in order to get its BellSouth merger approved. The real question is what impact this new pricing structure will have on AT&T’s telephone subscriptions.
Vonage thinks that the naked DSL subscriptions will give its competitive VoIP option a boost — for around $45, customers can purchase both unlimited local and long distance Vonage service plus DSL, a savings of at least $10 to $20 per month over AT&T’s existing voice plus DSL service combo.
If that’s the case, then AT&T could be looking at accelerated line losses. The telco has already lost 21.1 million local line customers since late-2000 (see chart at end) and if the naked DSL option serves to lure any additional customers to competitors, then look for the company to start losing more customers in late-2007, early-2008. The company has been losing lines at a clip of around one million per quarter (more or less) over the past year.
On the other hand, the $10 DSL service option (for new customers only — a relatively small population) could help mitigate any line losses resulting from the naked DSL option. Although cheap and naked services offerings sounds kind of, well, sexy, for AT&T they’re serious business propositions.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:17 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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