Larry Kless' Weblog

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Kyte Releases Kyte LivePro Unwired, Live Mobile Broadcasting Backpack

Online video, mobile and social platform Kyte has announced the upcoming release of a new product today called Kyte LivePro Unwired that enables high quality live video streaming from a battery-operated wireless backpack. The San Francisco-based company has teamed up with LiveU, makers of hand-held video uplink devices, to offer this as an add-on component to the Kyte Platform. The product is identical to the Livepack which was launched by Livestream last September also through a partnership with LiveU – aimed at replacing expensive satellite trucks with a mobile broadcast solution.

Kyte LivePro Unwired is a portable device small enough to fit into a backpack and includes six load-balanced 3G/EVDO modems for redundancy over three carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint) with data plans are that covered within the price. It allows you to go anywhere with a complete roaming camera setup with data rates at 700-1000 Kbps. Any video camera with a FireWire (IEEE 1394) output can be used and video can be live-streamed directly to any online Kyte Player and also available for on-demand online and mobile viewing.

In this video, Kyte CEO Daniel Graf demonstrates the new product to Techcrunch editor Erick Schonfeld. Kyte will be debuting Kyte LivePro Unwired at SXSW this weekend and in conjunction with the launch, SPIN Magazine will be using the technology for live coverage and behind the scenes from SXSW music. Graf says that most mobile video solutions can only acheive 200 Kbps and Kyte LivePro Unwired offers TV quailty with streams up to 1 Mbps.

In the press release Graf added:
“As we’ve seen with a number of recent news events, the cycle of reporting is getting smaller and the public is thirsty for footage from places that would be impossible or costly to access through traditional broadcast means. Kyte LivePro Unwired gives content producers an edge over the competition by making it easy and cost effective to broadcast high quality live video to online audiences."

Graf added that the product ideal for for brands, agencies and media companies.

No release of costs yet, but Livestream's similar offering has a month-to-month rental without commitment of $2,500 per month, and yearly rental is $1,500 per month plus shipping.

For more information about Kyte LivePro Unwired, go to: http://www.kyte.com/livepro
See the press release: Kyte First Online Video Platform to Enable Wireless High Quality Live Broadcasting | Business Wire

About Kyte
Kyte is the online, mobile and social video platform for live and on-demand content. The Kyte Platform enables media companies, brands and organizations to deeply engage audiences through 360 degree social video experiences. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, London, Hamburg and Zurich. Customers include ABC, Armani Exchange, Clear Channel, ESPN, Fox News, HomeAway, MTV, Monster Energy, NATO, NBA Digital, Nokia, Tyra Banks, and others

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Seawell Announces $7 Million in Series A Funding, for "Next Generation" H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC)

I had an opportunity to speak with Seawell Networks CEO Brian Collie the other day about how his company is coming out of stealth mode and ready to make a splash in the online video market – starting today with their first public announcement of a $7 million Series A round of investment, including the conversion of seed funding. The Toronto, Canada-based software company was founded in 2008 and provides Internet video delivery products for content producers and their content delivery partner organizations. SeaWell leverages video compression standard, H.264 scalable video coding (SVC), which they see as the next generation of video streaming.

H.264 SVC is standards‐based technology that enables adaptive distribution of multiple streams to a range of target platforms with much greater efficiency and granularity. Instead of producing separate streams, the SVC encoder converts the source into layers in an "encode once serve many" model. The SVC stream is comprised of Base, Clarity and Size layers and each layer adds information to the lower layers, rather than just duplicating information into multiple bit rates. This allows multiple bit rates to be derived from a single file with a little headroom of only 10 to 20% larger than the highest bit rate required, and up to 1024 unique layers are allowed within the standard.

H.264 SVC been applied to the videoconferencing and surveillance industries and as Brian Collie noted, his company saw it as a perfect fit for dealing with the issues of video delivery to multiple platforms. Seawell has a 5-page white paper, "The Next Generation of Adaptive Streaming on H.264 SVC" on the benefits of H.264 SVC which you can request here.

Brian Collie is a self-described serial entrepreneur with previous successful startups, and he believes that his company's technology is a game-changing innovation. While he couldn't name any names due to Non-Disclosure Agreements, he said that they are working with some of the biggest content producers in North America, and CDNs and Telcos are also looking at the technology. Those announcements will be made later in the year, not necessarily as endorsements for Seawell, as Collie noted, but as endorsements for this new way of thinking about what they call "next generation adaptive streaming."

Since Seawell is not an online video platform or CDN, they are not trying to compete within the space – and while Collie says he's not naive to think that they will be the only one in the space – to his knowledge they are the first to pioneer this technology for optimizing and delivering Internet-ready video content with TV-like viewing experiences across platforms.

Online video veteran Andy Beach, author of Real World Video Compression, has joined Seawell as Chief Evangelist and Kris Alexander from Akamai and Richard Mavrogeanes founder of VBrick Systems, Inc. have both joined Seawell's advisory team. The company has some great momentum, according to Collie, who says that we're seeing just the tip of the iceberg right now in adaptive streaming and that typically ever two or three years there is a breakthrough. He predicted that many of the players within the video space that have adopted H.264 AVC will embrace H.264 SVC for its scalable platform.

Seawell's funding was led by BDC Venture Capital, the round also included Northwater Intellectual Property Fund and Ontario Centres of Excellence. SeaWell will use the funds to expand business development and marketing efforts. Seawell will be making more announcements in the coming months and will be demonstrating their technology at the NAB show next month and at Streaming Media East in May.

Related:

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Duarte Design's Five Rules for Making Presentations that Don't Suck

Everyone on some level must hate PowerPoint, because it evokes the image of endless hours slide boredom and train wreck presentations. PowerPoint first appeared in the mid-1980s and became the De facto standard for business presentations competing against early players like Aldus Persuasion and Harvard Graphics. Over the years it's become one of the most abused pieces of software because, in essence, it's a design tool for presentations and not everyone is good designer. But there are people out there who are trying to make a change and save the world from "Death by Powerpoint". Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte are two that come right mind as they have built their businesses and brands on creating inspirational presentation designs.

Nancy Duarte is author of slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, and CEO of Duarte Design, the firm that was created Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation. This video, Duarte’s Five Rules for Creating World-Changing Presentations, expands on the trailer that was included in the release of Microsoft Office 2010 Public Beta last fall and was created using PowerPoint 2010.

Rather than look at this video as a marketing tool for Duarte Designs (which it does a great job at doing) – consider this as a public service announcement.

Nancy Duarte shared the 5 Rules in a guest post, 5 Tips on Getting PowerPoint to Sing! on the The PowerPoint Team Blog:

"The foundation of the script came from the Manifesto: The Five Theses of the Power of a Presentation from our book slide:ology which are:
Treat Your Audience as King: They didn’t come to your presentation to see you. They came to find out what you can do for them. Make it clear what they are to do.
Spread Ideas and Move people: Communicate your ideas with strong visual grammar to engage all their senses and they will adopt the ideas as their own.
Help The Audience See What You’re Saying: Guide your audience through ideas in a way that helps, not hinders their comprehension. Appeal not only to their verbal senses, but to their visual senses as well.
Practice design, Not Decoration: Don’t just make pretty talking point. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear.
Cultivate Healthy Relationships: Display information in the best way possible for comprehension rather than using slides as a crutch." - from The PowerPoint Team Blog : 5 Tips on Getting PowerPoint to Sing!

Online Video Platforms Roundtable with Delve Networks, Kaltura, Kyte and Ooyala, Streaming Media Webinar on March 11, 2010

It was almost a year ago that Streaming Media magazine and StreamingMedia.com hosted their first Online Video Platform Roundtable, and since then the number online video platform providers have grown, along with the exponential growth of online video ecosysem. Over the last few years, online video platforms have evolved to provide a wide array of capabilities for businesses as an outsourced video solution for content management, encoding, advertising, syndication and monetization. According to the The Forrester Wave™: US Online Video Platforms, Q4 2009, an evaluation of six leading online video platform vendors, "71% of the US online audience watches video on the Internet, and the number of streams consumed should more than double by 2013", so whether you're a large media publisher or a small retailer, every organization needs a video strategy and online video platforms power video for an organization.

For many businesses, launching an online video portal can be challenging when you don't know what you need to power your video. You may have existing assets and infrastructure, databases, tracking methods, proprietary builds, or you may be starting from scratch. Most companies don't have in-house creative or technical teams, and are faced with the question of build vs. buy vs. free online video solutions. The Online Video Platform Summit addressed many of the needs of the growing population of video publishers looking for solutions to publish their online video content. It's interesting to note that three of the four presenters on this webinar, Alex Castro, Bismarck Lepe and Ron Yekutiel, were also speakers on our opening Online Video Platform Summit session, Defining Online Video Platforms, which was also moderated by Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen. Additionally, all four companies on this webinar presented their platforms as part of the two Online Video Platform Showcases.

Last month, I covered the Online Video Platform Summit in depth with a series of posts that included videos from each session and related commentary. I listed links to those posts below the announcement for this upcoming free webinar, which is an event you'll not want to miss.

Online video platforms are moving towards the center of the video universe. But with so many on the market, it can be difficult to determine what features you need and which platform will work best for you.

This roundtable will help you make an informed decision based on your organization's needs, whether you're a small business, independent content creator, educational institution, enterprise, large media organization, or anywhere in between. Speakers will address a wide range of topics including user experience, customization, monetization, syndication, metrics, and live vs. on-demand video. Most importantly, they'll take attendee questions so you can get the answers you need to make the right purchasing and deployment decisions.

Join this Roundtable Webcast to learn about:

Use of video for internal, B2B, and B2C communications
Real-world examples of successful video use cases
Increasing viewer engagement with interactivity and social media
The pros and cons of live vs. on-demand video
Using video for marketing, branding, ecommerce, education, training, and more
Delivering video to mobile devices

Reserve quickly —space is limited. Audio is streamed over the Internet, so turn up your computer speakers!

MODERATOR

Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen
Editor
Streaming Media

PRESENTERS

Alex Castro
CEO and Co-founder
Delve Networks

Gannon Hall
Chief Operating Officer
Kyte

Bismark Lepe
Co-founder and President of Products
Ooyala

Ron Yekutiel
Chairman and CEO
Kaltura

Update: Be sure to check out Jan Ozer's new article on Streamingmedia.com

Choose Wisely: Selecting An Online Video Platform - Today, if streaming video is at all integral to your enterprise, and if you're currently hosting your own videos or posting them to user-generated content (UGC) sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, it's time to consider using an online video platform. - Thurs., Feb. 25, by Jan Ozer

Online Video Platform Summit posts:

Monday, March 1, 2010

And the Nominees Are... The 2nd Annual Streamy Awards Nominees Announced Today

The 2nd annual Streamy Awards, celebrating the best in web television from 2009, announced their official nominees this morning in a live webcast via Ustream. Now in its second year, the Streamy Awards includes a total of 35 categories of web series honoring overall series, directing, writing, acting and craft awards. 12 new Streamy Awards categories reflecting technology advancements and creative innovations embraced by the web television community this past year have been added to the 2010 program – including awards for Live Production, Foreign Series, Vlogging, Interactive Experience, Branded Entertainment, and Mobile Experience. The nominees were selected by the Academy of Web Television (IAWTV), a member-run non-profit organization comprised of leaders and stakeholders within the growing web television industry, and the official presenting body behind the Streamy Awards.

According to Marc Hustvedt, Tubefilter News Editor and Streamy Awards Executive Producer, Academy voters had their hands full this year in pairing down the submission of some 2,000 web shows from over 100 different countries. Last year’s inaugural Streamy Awards received over 100,000 unique public submissions from over 89 countries, hundreds of thousands of votes for 10 Audience Choice Award Finalists, and a groundswell of support from both the traditional and new media communities. See Marc's post on Tubefilter News for a summary of this years nominees.

While many of the nominees were predictable based on both the star power and popularity, with returning nominees like The Guild and Legend of Neil, I was glad to see that two of my favorite web series, Safety Geeks: SVI and The Web.Files each made it into a category. Liz Shannon Miller noted that this years nominees included celebrities, underdogs and our very own Avatar in the form of The Bannen Way from the Sony Pictures' web television network Crackle. She pointed out the dilemma that The Streamy Awards will probably always have:

"to find the right balance between celebrating homegrown heroes, helping lesser-known talent get new recognition, and honoring the Hollywood influx that has increased the medium’s profile. But that very dilemma is itself a larger metaphor for the current state of this industry. The intrusion of old media into new media is an issue we all go back and forth on, I think."

The live Awards Ceremony will be live broadcast online on Sunday, April 11, 2010 at 7:30 PM at www.streamys.org. The newly formed 90-member International Academy of Web Television completed the first round of selections of nominees in 24 categories. The video in this post is a replay of today's announcement with Shira Lazar and Jim Festante who announced 10 of the 35 categories of official nominees for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards, that included:

Best Comedy Web Series
Best Drama Web Series
Best Hosted Web Series
Best News or Documentary Web Series
Best Companion Web Series
Best Male Actor in a Drama Web Series
Best Female Actor in a Drama Web Series
Best Male Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Best Female Actor in a Comedy Web Series
Best Guest Star in a Web Series

Click here for the full list of Streamy Award nominees

Congratulations to all the nominees!

About The Streamy Awards
Presented by the International Academy of Web Television, the Streamy Awards recognize excellence in global web television programming for broadband distribution across 35 creative categories, from acting and directing, to editing and special effects. Members of the International Academy of Web Television review shows submitted through a free, public submissions process and vote on the final nominees and winners for each category. The Audience Choice Award for Best Web Television Series is selected by members of the public. Winners of the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards will be announced on April 11, 2010 at the Streamy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, CA. Founded in 2009, the Streamy Awards are co-hosted by a consortium of new media companies including Tubefilter Inc.(www.tubefilterinc.com) and NewTeeVee (www.newteevee.com). For more information, visit www.streamys.org, follow @streamyawards on Twitter and become a Fan at www.facebook.com/streamys.