Starting a company from scratch can be a lonely experience; I’ve always worked with someone, if only as a sounding board and fellow after work drinker. So, if I was just doing Project V from my home office in the Welsh mountains I’m pretty convinced that I would drive both the cat and myself crazy very quickly.

One particularly difficult element of an online business is that there are long hiatuses whilst software is being developed.

Thankfully, I have many other commitments that get me out and about and keep me occupied. Indeed, these I take more seriously than Project V since I’m both passionate about the companies I’ve got involved with and feel a great responsibility where others are involved.

Still, I have a newfound respect for people who go out on a limb and do it all themselves from a room at home. It seems idyllic during a morning commute on a packed train, but it’s not as easy as it seems.

Project V – So Lonely

The CDN market is set for some startling changes between now and the end of the year. The Level3 and AT&T moves I’ve previously blogged about and now a new product to be launched soon by Swedish company Edgeware has me very excited indeed.

This company already provides ultra high bandwidth and low power server to the IPTV industry and are soon to launch an Internet TV box.

So, with a couple of these 1u boxes and a couple of 20GB pipes you could easily handle 50,000 concurrent connections. Power issues are minimal (one of the real problems of running a CDN) and flash storage is far more reliable than mechanical hard drives, so reliability and management time should be reduced. Basic load management is also built in.

To date, this has been an expensive and difficult industry to enter, but this latest development means that there’s a further shadow over the established players such as Akamai (AKAM), Limelight (LLNW) and Internap (INAP).

Go here to see the original:
CDN In A Box

The ICANN proposals to review the top level domains probably makes a lot of sense, and will clearly make some people a lot of money. It may hit the income of the islanders of Tuvalu as .tv competes with .tele, .epg and .media, and is unlikely to make life any easier for viewers trying to find content. It’s also a good development for Google as the unpredictability of domain names increases.

But it does make the internet a place of greater possibilities, which is to be welcomed. Now, if we can only effect the transition to IPv6.

See the original post:
Namesake

It’s good to see the infamous Internet TV ‘entrepreneur’ David McCourt returning to the roots of his dad’s company digging up roads to lay TV cable with the purchase of a company that sells cable clips.

After his sojourn in the Internet TV industry, during which he destroyed one of the pioneering companies in the sector, Narrowstep, and then sold it off in a firesale, he’s gone back to basics. Now he’s had to dish out a load of cash from the money he raised from a bunch of schmucks such as fellow Narrowstep director and ex-ESPN exec, Roger Werner, to make his next move.

Internet TV software to satellite dishes and TV cables. Not a bad idea for someone of such limited business ability and intelligence.

Yes, I have a vested interest, but business is about building something. Using your ego to destroy a business is all too easy and a sin we should all be wary of. I certainly will make sure that I never become beholden to a person of such limited ability and intellect in the future, whatever his or her bank balance.

This said, it might actually be true that there’s more money in satellite dishes and cable clips than in software that transforms TV. Maybe I’m the idiot after all…

Excerpted from:
Back To Basics

Strangely enough I had just been discussing the reliability of IP networks and the need for a fast track internet to guarantee a TV like experience when the BBC lost the picture to the Euro 2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey for some minutes.

If that happened on a PC most people, I suspect, would shrug and either reconnect or reboot.

Traditional TV is nowhere as near forgiving. I bet that the duty officer (the guy or gal who take the complaints) at the BBC’s phone is ringing like crazy just now. The medium is still the message…

So, there are advantages to Internet TV after all! (More about the fast track web to come)

Continued here:
The Unforgiven