A final push to get the code into beta and Project V will be a commercial goer.

As much as I enjoy product development, the real fun begins for me when you hit the market for the first time.

Time was you beavered away and then called a press conference. These days you work in stealth, do an alpha trial with a study group, then an invitational beta and then a beta launch and then, many years later the word ‘beta’ quietly disappears. In the meantime you hope that the blogshphere (and the press) will have cottoned on to what you’re doing with bated breath and will be speculating like crazy.

But if you’re not going directly public (or ‘B2C’) things are a bit more straightforward. Project V will not be available to the public – it is what they call a B2B product, so the marketing comes down to preparing promotional and marketing materials and searching out the right partners to work with around the world.

Product, price, promotion and place (in this case resellers) was how I was taught marketing, and very little has changed. Soon we’ll see if I’ve got all four right.

Originally posted here:
Project V – The Fun Begins

I’ve just found that, perhaps due to the advent of mobile broadband, my local Starbucks has disabled the plugs in its public areas just as I’m working there (well, watching the Tae Kwon Do…). But what they don’t know is that I have a battery that lasts for

More here:
SIgn Of The Times ?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not big on CDN company Limelight. Performance, management and IP issues make me cynical. But, you can’t dispute pure stats and they’re walking all over Akamai and the other incumbents at present thanks to an aggressive sales team as recent sales figures show. Their serving of the Olympics for NBC have also moved them on a notch after some live streaming disasters.

Part of Akamai’s problems are its prissyness – an unwillingness to handle gambling outside of the US, and an unwillingness to be realistic about pricing, linked with a general arrogance about its service (which is superior imho) are really hitting its bottom line.

Boy, with the advent of technologies from companies like Edgeware and new pricing from network companies like Level 3 and AT&T, this market is due for a major shake up. If you’re willing to invest £30k or so, expect prices of 5p/GB for sub 20TB and 4p/GB for higher bandwidths very soon – under a quarter of current rates….

However, at the moment, I’d still rather trust my major live event with Akamai over Limelight any day…

Read more here:
In The Limelight

Setting up a new company can’t be so different to becoming a father. The idea that you have an entity that you are responsible for – totally responsible for – is not dissimilar.

Of course, egotistically, you believe that it will grow in your mould, it will share your visions, ideals, behaviours and mores.

But, inevitably, it takes on a life of its own. Others have greater influence. Your idea comes home one day and is a pale reflection of what you had in mind now that the real world has got to it. You realise that you are not omnipotent, even in a company you wholly own and control, with an idea you gave birth to. You have to adapt, rationalise and accept.

Project V is getting to the point where it will soon stop gestating and will become a reality, with all of the threats and possibilities that brings with it. Feeling scared and elated at the same time is a curious experience.

See the original post:
Project V – Fatherhood

As predicted in this blog some time ago, the joint BBC/Channel 4/ITV internet TV joint venture, Kangaroo, has fallen foul of regulators and is unlikely to appear until later in 2009, if at all.

I think that it is fair an right that this has been referred. It will, without doubt, be the pre-eminent internet TV service in the UK and will therefore have leverage with advertisers, but more than anything will have ‘discover’ tied up. To gain any kind of audience channel operators will need to be on this service, which will in turn add to the influence of Kangaroo.

The overall landscape of television in the UK is up in the air with OFCOM clearly about to take some of the BBC’s tax money and use it to fund other public service broadcasting initiatives, although this, at the moment, largely seems to mean subsidising the channel that broadcasts Big Brother.

The problem, and the opportunity, with this impasse is that it allows others to make a move and take a part of the marketplace. But who is in a position to take the opportunity. Perhaps Blinkx‘ purchase of online ad engine Miva is an indication. And in all of this, the long tail is being neglected.

See the rest here:
Bounced