Interview with Brad Hunstable on Politics and Technology

Chances are, you're here for the GPhone story. While you're around, though, stick around for this post, since it's tre interessant, especially with the campaign heating up almost as much as the market for online video.

Brad Hunstable, one of the principals and founders of UStream.tv dropped by the show again today to speak a bit about some major political events going on at his site this week.

His commentary on the future role of technologies like UStream in politics were particularly interesting. We'll comment a bit on that the show today (Episode 116).

Click here to download the interview.



Here's the roundup of what's actually going down there at UStream.

3pm PST today:

Darcy Burner Virtual Town Hall To Counter Bush LIVE on Ustream.TV ( more info here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/archives/120620.asp)

12pm PST today:
Five presidential candidates confirmed they will take part in discussions of key domestic issues before more than 600 representatives of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) on August 27 and 28 at the Disney Yacht and Beach Club in Orlando, FL.

The schedule for the IAM's Conversation with the Candidates is as
follows:

Mon. Aug. 27, 3:30 pm New York Sen. Hillary Clinton
Mon. Aug. 27, 7:30 pm California Rep. Duncan Hunter and
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee
Tue. Aug. 28, 7:30 pm Former North Carolina Sen. John
Edwards and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich

The candidate conversations will be moderated by Erin Moriarty of CBS
News.

The event will be streamed, live, via uStream.

/rizzn

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GPhone - It's Confirmed

Update: 9:36 AM CST (10/02/207): This is where the update on all the new gPhone confirmations are.

Update 5:36 PM CST (8/27/2007): 211 Blog Reactions to the story, according to Technorati. Apparently I struck a chord talking about the what people seemed to have now dubbed it, the "gPhone" (notice the iPhone-style capitalization). At any rate, I encourage you to check out the podcast discussion over at Podango to get the full sense of context of the conversation. It's around 7-10 minutes into the show or so, but the first story off the top. Since it's such a big deal and everyone is talking about it now, I'm going to check again with my friend and see if he or someone at the company will make a statement on it. He had mentioned a name (that presently escapes me) that had demo'ed it in the past and that might be willing to speak about it. My goal is to track him down or be given a good reason why he can't (or won't) speak to it now.

Update 11:33 PM CST (8/27/2007): I spoke to my friend again this evening and told him about everyone's linking and talking about the story. He was moderately amused, but ask for re-assurance I wouldn't use his name, which I told him. He gave me the name of the fellow that's the lead programmer/designer on the gPhone. He's set to speak with him in the near future, and he's going to try to casually ask whether or not he was actually supposed to say something about this or not. To re-iterate: my source re-assured me there is a gPhone, but wasn't for certain whether or not he was allowed to say that.

Also (to answer some of the emails I've been getting), the picture below is not a confirmed image of the actual gPhone, but an image I found on Engadget and about a hundred other blogs that seems to be used every time the gPhone is mentioned.

Regarding the $100 laptop strategy, he clarified that it's more of a long term possibility (based on functionality) of this device rather than an original design strategy. Development on this began, as I understand it, before both the $100 Laptop and the iPhone hit the market. Regardless, as Google's primary source of revenue continues to be advertising, I can still easily see them subsidizing purchase of the phone and attempting to recoup investment off ad revenue.

Last Update Here 2:59 PM CST (8/28/2007): Further gPhone commentary will be found here for the time being.

---{Original Post Below]===>

I'm going to talk about this on the show today, so don't miss Episode 116 of RizWords.

I talked to one of my inside sources at Google today. He spoke on conditions of anonymity, but the guy is someone I trust implicitly. He said that he was baffled at Google's apparent internal confusion on the GPhone issue - that they've actually demo'ed the thing in public before.

He said that the Google (applications) Suite is going to play a huge role in the usability of the GPhone, and the thought process behind it's functionality is less about beating the iPhone and more about beating the $100 Laptop, which provides a huge clue behind what will be the pricing structure on this.

This is my analysis based on what he told me: It'll probably be sold at a loss or sold as a loss leader to increase ad-monetized content viewing. Just a guess though.

When he was telling me about all the nuances of what he's seen the thing do, I couldn't help but audibly remark about the FCC bid for the 700mhz spectrum making a whole lot more sense. He didn't come out and say it, but I got the impression that they were gunning for the spectrum with a vengeance.

Essentially, this is a post to say that this is a solid confirmation on the GPhone - regarding the two week timetable on it's release, he said he could not confirm that part of the story. I suggested a theory that perhaps they'll show a version of the phone in two weeks (or a press conference about it), but it might not be available for American release until later, and he seemed to think that was a reasonable theory.

Other tidbits that I'm trying to recall based on questions I've received from readers:

• It's a modified Linux kernel
• There is integrated GPS and GoogleMaps

I couldn't get much more out of him than that, and he wouldn't put anything on the record, due to his unique position at the company he wasn't sure what exactly he was allowed to say, but his exuberance and confidence was quite clear when he talked about the GPhone.

We'll analyze this on the show today (Episode 116), so don't miss it.

/rizzn

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Badware: 1700 Posts that No One Will Read

According to Google, rizzn.com is a site that "may hurt your computer." Don't you just feel dangerous as heck reading this right now?

I'm not exactly sure why, although I was sent an email from a business associate last week:

When I empty my cache, and visit your site,

my Computer Associates anti-virus reports

the Microsoft Data Access pop-up there,

is infected with the JS/Petch virus.

I ignored it when it first happened Wednesday,

thinking it was just an ant-virus hiccup;

and it didn't re-occur until I cleaned out my

IE cache, and re-visited you today.

I checked the server, and all the domains with a virus scanner on the system, but found nothing. I chalked it up to a random error, until just now, when I discovered that virtually all my Google traffic has disappeared. Below any link from Google to rizzn.com, appears the following warning message: "This site may harm your computer."

This is very disconcerting for me. I went through the Google webmaster tools and requested a 'review.' I'll let you know how things turn out. All recent virus scans of the domain and web pages show no infections. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the infection came from a GoogleAd - I heard on Buzz Out Loud a while back that there were some worms that were launched through GoogleAds. I haven't confirmed this to be the source, but call it a hunch. We have a bunch of virus protection on the server, I've personally verified that. I can't imagine that a virus has penetrated that many layers of protection there.

At any rate, stay tuned for tomorrow or Monday. I've got a piece on Facebook Applications I'm working on that I hope to release here soon.

/rizzn

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Around the House

A few more pictures from around the house. I promise, normal postings will resume this week... I've been deep into some research projects lately.



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New Pictures of Jacob Li and family.

Hey folks. We got a new digital cam this weekend. Here are some photos from it.
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Joe Dan Thomas: In Memoriam

Hey Rizzn-ites,

This is very narrowcasting considering my fairly wide audience these days, but I need to put something up online so that friends near and far from the Tyler and East Texas area can find out about a dear friend of ours that has recently passed.

Joe Dan Thomas, known online as XVbladeloveVX and the producer of the Mark and Darrell Show, has recently passed due to respiratory complications stemming from a heart attack. Keep in mind I just found out yesterday about the news of his death, and I received the news second-hand, but here's the story as I recall it...

Joe, as most of his friends know, has been on kidney dialysis for several years now, and his health has been in flux for a while. He recently had some cardiac problems, and ended up needing a pacemaker. Shortly after he returned home after recieving the pacemaker, his home healthcare worker found him collapsed on the floor. He was rushed to the hospital and revived, but remained comatose.

His father, who has been absent for the vast majority of Joe's life, was named as his next of kin, and immediately had him removed from life support. Friends and other family rushed in and convinced doctors and Joe's father to put him back on life support. Over the next week, friends and family were just learning of his condition, but by week's end, despite Joe's improved responsiveness and health, his father removed life support again.

The official cause of death was named respiratory failure.

Joe's dear friend Doug was set to give the eulogy at his funeral, which was yesterday at 2:00 PM (which I learned about too late to attend, unfortunately), but for some reason none of his friends were allowed to speak for him, including Doug. In my friend Ronnie's words, "the funeral was in no way what Joe would have wanted."

Ronnie and several others are trying to organise a graveside memorial more fitting Joe, a man whom most of us remember when we think of our good times back in the post high-school days in the late 90's. This is set to take place in the next couple of weeks, and I encourage all of you to use the comments section to communicate with one another to try to find times that will work for all of us.

For those of you outside the Tyler enclave, if you're a long-time Rizzn-ite, you may remember Joe as the narcoleptic producer of the Mark and Darrell show for most of it's several year run.

Joe - you will be missed not just by me, but by many, many of your friends. I can only pray that you rest in God's merciful hands now, and know a measure of peace and comfort that you were ill-afforded in your all-too-short life on this plant.

/rizzn

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Monetizing Online Video: The Investigation Continues

Your monumental response! It's flattering and helpful all at once!

I really wanna take a second to express appreciation for all of you who wrote in on the last post about video monetization. I'm far from done with my research, but I have a whole load of links and companies to investigate now. I've also had an opportunity to speak with heads and representatives of a lot of the top ad monetization groups out there. I'll disclose a bit of what I've found, but I'm saving the bulk of what I'm coming across for a special episode of RizWords and a very special blog post here on this site.

I spoke with a fellow named Chris over at Brightcove (the company currently serving up video for the site) on the ad monetization opportunities with his organisation. As it turns out, BrightCove's much lauded monetization program performs way below my expectations. Let's chat about my expectations for a second, and then we'll get into what the internet ad world is shaping up to be.

I must admit that when it comes to video content, it's not my original home. My new media experience starts out in the text space (blogging), then moving into streaming audio, then to podcasting, and then to video. I'm not a neophyte to the industry, though, by any means. Last year, I produced the successful video podcasts NewsCube (with J. Douglas Barker) and RunTime with Luke and Laney over on the PoddedMeat Network. We had a good run with those shows, and at our peak viewership reached around 60,000 folks per episode.

The problem was, at the time, there were no real avenues for easy monetization. This is chief amongst the reasons I've gone back to audio podcast production with Art this year. In the audio space, the industry average you should get in monetization is around $30 CPM. In reality, your mileage may vary between $10 CPM up to as high as $60 CPM. Given the much greater power of videos to convert to sales and exposure, I would say that doubling those CPM's should not be outside the realm of possibility.

Now there is. Back then: too bleeding edge. Now: not so much. A cursory web search pulls up around 10 or 15 companies that monetize video content, and a deeper search through industry blogs turn up about 5 or 6 more.

My initial research, though, which is what you're reading through this tripe to find out about, focused on the two biggest names in video monetization: Revver and BrightCove. BrightCove is broadly lauded around the blogosphere as one of the most advanced video sharing players that offers monetization, which is what attracted me to it in the beginning. It's ability to create channels and autoplaying embedded videos, not to mention the detailed reporting features, are what attracted me to it in the first place. Indeed, all of those features definitely live up to the hype.

However, after speaking with their ad department (a notoriously difficult department to get a hold of), I was somewhat less pleased with the options available to me. Here's what I found:

• If your ad traffic is less than 10,000 title plays per month, your content should be monetized by CPC.
• If your ad traffic is greater than 10,000 title plays per month, your content is monetized at $8.00 CPM with Pre-Roll and Post-Roll ads.
• Stats are calculated once a quarter, and payment is recieved within 30 days of stats calculation.

Understandably, these statistics disappointed me. And episode of RunTime from last year was at least a five-person operation, and involved about 13 hours of pre, actual, and post production a week. At our peak traffic level we'd be receiving around $480 per episode. Granted, that's real dollars, but for the amount of work and people involved, per person take home would be in the neighborhood of $100. I'm not sure about you, but I can't live off $100 a week.

So, I turned my lonely eyes to Revver. They promise, in their press releases, around a $30 CPM. I've contacted the company a few times to get more information, and in so doing was less than successful. Finally, I uploaded an clip of Iris and I singing Love Shack at some karaoke night a few months ago in an attempt to manually test their monetization. It didn't make it past their censors, even though all ASCAP fees had been paid by the karaoke purveyor, they weren't comfortable putting it up on the site. But, I did get a response from a real human being, and I'm using that open line of dialog to work my way up the chain of command till I get to speak to someone in charge of monetization.

That's where I'm at currently with those two, but I do have about 20 other companies I'll be posting a review of next week, so stay tuned for that. Thanks for all your help, folks!

If you have any other input on the matter, send me an email. Elsewise, I'll see you on the big episode 100 tomorrow on RizWords!

/rizzn

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