Roku is running a Black Friday sale on their HD-XR Streamer. Good luck getting thought however, as the site timed out right at 11am EST when I attempted to access - the site came down for a while, now (11:45am EST) they are back to another offer.

According to their original site message: "Please note: because of the extreme nature of this offer, it is possible our web site might overload. If this happens, you could receive an error message. It could be frustrating, but we hope you're successful! "

I had better luck getting Allman Brothers tickets at the Beacon Theater in NYC when they went on sale - if Roku was expecting a surge of stampeding purchasers they should have ramped up their server load/added edge capacity, I sent out the email release to a hundred people and feel Roku let their customers down. Seriously, for a company selling a solution for streaming video content, i.e. high bandwidth content it does not look good if they can not keep a simple transaction site up even if there were 100,000 or more hits...

Check out our review of both the Roku and Vudu streamer solutions on the right column of the site however, if you have a Tivo, you can link either you NetFlix or Blockbuster account to your existing DVR and avoid having another box...

Adam Black is on a mission to bring wireless access to all parts of New York City and ideally all metropolitan areas - hey if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere! As the company tag line reads: 3 clicks & you're good to go! - Unlocking hotspots near you.

Since Net Neutrality is and will become an even more important issue for the average user of the Internet, a public resource, Adam's new company is positioning itself to address some of the challenges facing users as they become more mobile.

According to Adam:
KeyWifi is a new service based on a simple but highly innovative, scalable technology with enormous benefits for all.

- Users with Internet Wi-Fi Access can share it, earning money as they do...
- Users without Wi-Fi Access can access it at a fraction of what they'd pay for an Internet connection of their own...

KeyWifi enables increased Internet access (locally & globally) by allowing users with wifi access to earn money through sharing that access, using a simple web-based platform. Everyone benefits from the efficiency of shared wifi access; more locations mean more mobility, significantly lowered costs, and more people online. No hardware! No contracts! Just a simple, web-based sign-up process.

KeyWiFi's site will launch in December I am told, in the meantime you can answer some questions about your usage and contribute to the process. There is a short survey at:http://www.internetuse.tk/

KeyWiFi would like to add you to their mailing list to get special bonuses & discounts, for early adopters. They are also looking for alpha testers. If you blog or publish to a number of readers, either via new or old media, or manage a community of any sort, you may be interested in making money through their affiliate & referral program.

We look forward to the companies soft-launch and more specifics about revenue model, time-frame for roll out in New York City and which areas will be accessible.

For more information, please email: adam (AT) KeyWifi.com

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Additional News on Net Neutrality: Net Neutrality Debate Comes to NYC

By Peter Marra

Is the demo for iTV and Mobile the same as tradition OTA/Cable TV? Are people who watch episodic TV on their iPhones part of current Nielsen panels? Is Nielsen courting this demo, and is there any vehicle in place now or on the horizon to track usage and people place-shift content from fixed viewing experiences to a more mobile one?

Perhaps these are just a few of the questions that have the TV industry pressing Nielsen to implement Internet meters as part of their national panel as soon as possible. On October 16th in New York City, Nielsen held a meeting to get input from some of their clients and what priorities exist for on-line content viewing.

In their article, Nielsen Hears From Clients on TV Everywhere Future, Broadcasting & Cable raised some important points about tracking content in the workplace as well as different agendas on the part of different media outlets.

From our perspective - Nielsen should consider

* Perhaps existing panel members would opt-out of the TV system, why not then use different people for their Internet research?
* Understanding they want a "complete picture," there would be ways to correlate that information if they really wanted to.

Besides, it's likely that you're going to see very different behaviors with households that are more accepting of, and have been faster to adopt, non-traditional methods of watching programming. The question thus becomes:

What information is more valuable: How a traditional Nielsen family watches TV vs. Internet-based content or how the "early adopters" of Hulu, iTunes, Apple TV, etc. watch both? They might be fearing that the data would support the likelihood that there's an elephant in the room: TV advertising just isn't as valuable as it once was perceived to be (and perception is a huge issue with advertising rates).

You also can't discount the fact that Nielsen has a vested financial interest in maintaining the existing panel structure. This line is telling:

The fear is the more demands put on the existing panelists - such as tracking their Internet use - the greater the likelihood of them dropping out of the TV panel altogether.

To us, the biggest reason Nielsen would fear such a "drop-out": As opposed to the virtual monopoly they have on TV ratings, their data would then be competing with the data of Comscore, Omniture, Google, etc.

Peter Marra is a streaming media and technology specialist and has worked for companies such as Farmers' Almanac and Yahoo!