Hulu, the joint venture site of NBC Universal and News Corporation's online video launched today. As listed on their blog, "Today we are excited to leave our private beta and open Hulu.com to everyone in the U.S."

So what is the Hulu experience? That depends on your expectations and starting point. I'm going to start with the technical experience since that is how I approached deconstructing the site.

The slide deck below (click on first slide), illustrates there is a fair amount of distance between the user and the media, 12 hops with an average of 168 ms in my ping test.

I emailed Jason kilar, CEO of Hulu to inquire if they are using edge servers or any form of P2P network (since they are good at moving large files) however, he did not respond.

Eric Feng, CTO of Hulu replied today, Saturday March 15th with the following comments:

1. "We are not using p2p. We use Akamai as our CDN to distribute our
vides. Akamai's technology does utilize edge servers to find servers in
close physical proximity to the user to reduce network latency."

2. "We are not encoding to VC1. We primarily encode using the On2 VP6 and
H.264 codecs. Our videos are all encoded at 480Kbps (512px by 288px)and
700Kbps (640px by 360px), but we also offer a select number of videos in
1.0Mbps (480p) and 2.5Mbps (720p)."

The speed tests I ran (East Coast, West Coast and that Middle part :-) at 6:00am shows my bandwidth is not constrained which has me wondering why the 1280x720 HD delivery would not play without stuttering? The smaller size (360 or 480p) played without any problems. According to that part of the site, Flash 9 and a 2.5MB connection are the minimum requirements; processor/memory is not an issue with my workstation and I used FireFox 2.0 in my tests.

(Click on slide below to advance deck)

Guy Kawasaki sat down with Steve Ballmer at Mix 2008 conference and asked the soft ball, why Microsoft wanted to purchase Yahoo!. Ballmer said it was a zero sum game and that on-line advertising is key and search is part of that equation, hence the need to accelerate the process of their underdog status in that space.

In addition, Ballmer spoke about Facebook, the pitch for getting people to work at Microsoft and other parts of the company. There was also a Q&A portion.

Watch Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki Keynote

With the news last month that Ensequence signed a ten year deal with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (SPHE) following the recent win of Blue-ray over the HD DVD format, the company is in a hot position to extend their on-Q Create suite for Blu-ray Java (BD-J) for platform development.

While the Java (no pun) portion of BD-J offers increased interactivity options for developers, the learning curve could pose an obstacle for some and slow roll-out of platforms. Ensequence claims to have removed this hurtle with their software authoring tool which affords a drag and drop metaphor and is fully compatible with Photoshop, the industry standard for graphics development.

"The Ensequence on-Q Create suite has drastically reduced the complexity of authoring Java content on Blu-ray Disc titles, enabling content developers to create compelling, rich and dynamic interactive experiences in a WYSIWYG environment - and in drastically reduced timeframes," said Don Eklund, SPHE's EVP of Advanced Technology.

With the different Blu-ray players on the market, compatibility of the BD-J implementation is vital. According to the company, their on-Q suite enables a seamless integration of next-gen features such as;

• Advanced picture-in-picture functionality (e.g. director's commentaries overlaid on top of the video)
• Purchase functionality
• Bonus content, notification about sequels and more

As a long time user of Vegas Pro and Sound Forge, both now SONY products, I would be curious if that NLE and audio editor will have hooks out to the on-Q suite in future releases for a total production solution?

authoring environment

Another question will be the price point for the on-Q suite which I hope will be affordable for smaller content producers to leverage new and existing content. Unlike Neulion which, requires their own proprearty set-top box, the Ensequence solutions are platform agnostic which is the only sane approach in what is already a confusion time for producers not to mention consumers.

To road test the SONY / on-Q Create®, go to the Trial Request page

With all the turmoil going on with Yahoo! and if/should they become part of Microsoft, one area should not be overlooked for interesting content, Tech Ticker.

Part of their comprehensive Finance section, Tech Ticker is a video channel of interviews and stories relating to the topic. There are a few users tools for voting (their version of Digg) as well as the embed code, IM, bookmark features.

For those not familiar Tech Ticker is the re-birth of their innovative FinanceVision platform of 2000 which, was the first ITV live newscast of its day, see image below.

FinanceVision 2000

Also see: http://www.iptvevangelist.com/2006/02/do_you_remember_yahoo_financevision.html

In a long anticipated move Apple computers made their iPhone platform available for third-party development, with the SDK available for a $99.00 fee for those creating "free" and commercial applications for the public. Enterprise developers will pay $299.00 for the ability to create proprietary, in-house applications. Personally, if I am spending $100.00 to develop an application, I am not going to create something free, but that is just me.

Users will be able to obtain applications exclusively through a new service on all iPhones called the Apps Store. Apple will also charge 30% of the sale price, a move that may discourage some developers of smaller or niche apps.

Mr. Jobs said that Apple would offer only those programs that it approves, rejecting pornography, for example, and programs that might not provide adequate security for users.

Ok, so that statement is as wide as an ocean, what are the criteria between pornography and something that Apple may determine as meeting their approval process?

Jobs argued that developers would benefit from Apple's being the sole distributor because only Apple could give third-party programs such wide exposure to customers, so does mean companies such as market leading Handango which supplies third-party applications for PDA's and Smartphones will be locked out of a potential opportunity?

"We can track the developers and we can tell their parents," Mr. Jobs said, joking about the demographic profile of many Apple entrepreneurs. Yeah, well it's No Joke.

The other part of the announcement indicated that Apple will be be embraced by corporate America now that it is compatible with Microsoft's Exchange server.

"The majority of the objections I.T. managers have had about the iPhone have been addressed today," said Van L. Baker, an analyst with Gartner Inc., referring to corporate information technology managers. "It's a very valid and robust device, and for that reason it's a viable platform for the enterprise in competition with the Blackberry and others."

Optimistic, while the iPhone will see increased traction now that it has made a concession to the pc, the platform of choice in corporate America, I am not going to trade my Curve in with it's easy to use QWERTY keypad for hunt and peck, the BB does what it does better then any other platform.

So, "For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear."
™. The Outerlimits