Starting at 6:30pm tonight, Ultra Light Startups will be hosting a live webcast from NYU, here in New York City.

Moderator:

* Graham Lawlor, Founder of Ultra Light Startups

Panelists (alphabetic order):

* Greg Galant, CEO of Sawhorse Media
* Adam Pennenberg, Professor of Journalism at NYU, Author of Viral Loop
* Jonah Peretti, Co-Founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post
* Michael Yavonditte, Founder & CEO of Hashable and Tracked.com

Topics include:

* What does it mean for media to be viral?
* Why does certain content "go viral" while other content does not?
* Can virality be deliberately "engineered" into a website or does it only happen by chance?
* What are the essential principles of user behavior, media, and technology for making content viral?
* How is virality measured? What metrics are worth tracking?
* Examples of startups successfully "engineered" to go viral
* Which social networks, API's and services are most useful in engineering virality?
* And much more...

Online TV Shows by Ustream

Do you regard your Facebook personal messages as private?  Did you know that other members of your office or coffee shop can easily monitor your communication and gain access to your personal accounts of several common social media platforms? Banks and more secure applications have always coded additional hurdles in to avoid this kind of attack but social media platforms tend not to have bothered. This includes Facebook, Twitter and others.

Wireless communication, though convenient, has the disadvantage of being more easily eves dropped on due its broadcast nature.

Encryption can be used to make the broadcast information less easily monitored but WiFi hotspots in many locations use no encryption or operate with a key that is known to everybody in the location. As a result all those connected to the network are able to monitor it. A similar situation also exists with wired networks. This is particularly problematic if the data should be private not just form other companies but also from other members of the physical network. Your Facebook data is genuinely personal so you may not want to be using the site while on your office network.

1. Why are mainstream media outlets not covering this story?
2. Why are companies who's sites encourage use, either as free or paid services not protecting their customers by advising them of the risks?
3. Why are WiFi hotposts not advising their customers of the risk?

It took less then five minutes for everyone on-line to appear in the FireSheep side bar application.

Normally your laptop, or other device, receives all the messages for anybody on the network and discards those which were not intended for it. Many chip sets and operating systems also have a promiscuous mode, designed for diagnosis, which allows you to monitor all traffic on the network. Firesheep, a recently released Firefox sidebar, illustrates how this promiscuous mode can be used to monitor the traffic of a network and in this case captures the cookies which your browser sends to identify you whenever you direct the browser to a URL. If the connection is a http connection the browser immediately sends the cookies in plain text and the ID numbers revealed in these cookies can be used to allow the evesdropper to gain access to your account in the same way as you do when you return to the site without logging in.

The only way to reliably protect yourself is to make sure that you logout of the insecure site prior to connecting via a shared network or to guarantee that you are connected through a VPN tunnel prior to opening your browser. A VPN tunnel provides a personal encrypted connection between you and a server on a better protected network. It would also reduce the risk if Facebook and twitter, like the GMail service or your bank, implemented timeouts and required logins for sensitive parts of their site whenever the session connects from a different network. Like many security steps this is inconvenient which is an additional reason why frequently used social media
platforms haven't implemented this.

There are network technologies which can use shared keys to provide individually encrypted channels. A technically similar solution to setting up your own VPN software. These are provided on many routers but additionally tax the CPU of a laptop and in many cases can not be used reliably while on battery power.

A sophisticated and resourced individual can break even these encryption techniques by fooling your laptop into connecting with them or by using extreme effort to analyze the communication. It is the simplicity of tools like Firesheep which change the game and make it far more likely that the person on the other side of
the cafe is reading your personal Facebook messages or adding comments to your photo album.


   


NOTE:
While other people's site or name information were visible, only as part of the Firesheep sidebar (as part of the software's normal operation) no manual or automated entry was made to any website or personal information other then my own.  All reasonable and technical efforts were made to conceal other person's identities in the making of this video...

Other Articles:
Schneier on Security

Tech Crunch
How To Protect Your Login Information From Firesheep

Vidar Brekke, Emerging Media Strategist at DefinedLogic and I attended the NYC Cross Media Conference in New York City, this past week. The conference, held at the Scolastic companies offices in New York City was organized to bridge the gap between different media sectors, share information and provide a forum for people to meet and network. Among notable presenters and topics covered, Vidar and I had the opportunity to talk with and interview Jeff Gomez, CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment. Jeff, who is not only a compelling person to talk with about technology but also a sought after expert on the emerging field of transmedia storytelling.

Transmedia storytelling is the art and process of telling a story in pieces or segments across multible technology platforms. On the consumer side, it is a way to extend a companies brand and engauge the audience over time and across platforms. Additionally, it may be an opportunity for Indie filmmakers and other smaller media creatives who thus far have had a hard time gaining traction with their work on-line. As Jeff said, "The Internet is not Television" This is an important point I think many people, from Indies to major media outlets do not get or practice specific to how they develop their project for what is a two-way communication medium and not just a platform, or pipe for delivering content.

Reviewed this past year are the Netflix Roku and Vudu streaming boxes which have seen hundreds of hours logged to date and without any technical problems specific to the units.

The Vudu has a sturdier form factor and nicer remote in addition to a USB port however, the Roku is less expensive (Vudu box costs $149.00 verses $100.00 for the Roku) The Vudu did come with a better compliment of cables, such as an HDMI standard, with the Roku its extra which could get you up to the cost of the Vudu.

As both will stream content depending on quality level (Vudu HDX content requires a long download period) the Roku was faster* of course depending on your downstream speed (see below).

As to operating costs its six of one half dozen of another: While the Roku requires the $8.00 level of monthly membership with Netflix if you want to utilize its primary mission, the Vudu does not have such an arrangement with say Blockbuster and while it has Vudu labs I really do not care about YouTube on my BoobTube, but that's me.

The UI's they are about equal (maybe a bit slicker on the Vudu) from my perspective however, this is a soft topic and open to personal tastes. As to content I'd have to give the nod the the Roku however, this again is from my perspective and tastes. Both companies are adding new content and building new strategic relationship with other providers.

I spoke with Mike Glickenhaus, the President and CEO of VMIX, a company in the SaaS, software as a service space.
VMIX, headquartered in San Diego recently opened a New York City office and Mike and I met last week before the Nor'easter to discuss his company, the iTV space and how VMIX has seen growth year over year since inception, the company forecasts profitability in Q4 of this year.

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Company Site: VMIX

Recently I spoke with Imad Mouline, CTO of Gomez, Inc. Gomez is involved in the software as a service testing for Internet traffic and more recently streaming media. Imad outlined the company's products and testing capabilities for the iTV on-demand space using their Active Streaming XF product. In a follow up article I will flesh out our results and experiences using Active Streaming XF.

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Gomez Active Streaming XF Demo: Active Streaming XF

I spoke with Dakota Sullivan, the Vice President of Marketing at Adap.TV. Adap.TV is a new breed of video advertising platform designed to leverage different ad networks for Publishers as well as Ad networks to reach their target audience. One of the most well know placement is an in-stream banner overlay (max 468x66) which appears with a corresponding contextual link to an advertiser.

Company Site: Adap.tv

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I spoke with David Frigeri, General Manager & VP for Content Delivery at Internap about their CDN and managed hosting business. In addition to our conversation, I've listed some thoughts and issues in the marketplace also worth noting.
 

Adaptive Video Delivery seems to be an important trend for video distribution with next generation broadband video solutions and how it stacks up against true peer to peer delivery

Ad insertion models for media distribution are becoming vital, although there does not seem to be a lot of effort to target ads based on customer demographics

Recent activity in the CDN marketplace and who owns what intellectual property

Forward and store video is something CDN's do not seem to be talking about

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Please note: there may be an issue with this player when using I.E. 6 on the pc, if so please use FireFox or I.E. 7, thank you.

   
Recently I spoke to John Edwards, President and CEO of Move Networks. We spoke about a variety of topics including the companies business focus, why he considers their delivery network superior to tradition open networks, why the company is not a tradition CDN or P2P company, but a vertical in the end too end content delivery space, plus other topics.

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I spoke with Diane Galligan, Executive Producer Yahoo! tech ticker about their video platform for delivering financial news along with user comments. "Tech ticker has its roots in efforts like their Finance Vision platform from 2000 however, they point out their scrolling text field is an innovative design which keeps the video in front of the viewer."

Referring to FinanceVision, Stephanie Arnoldy of tech ticker said "Even now, with broadband far more common, we don't feel users need or want this kind of full live coverage online. We have taken a far more targeted approach, offering discreet single-topic clips that are timely but not live, paired with real-time blogging."

In addition, user comments are seen by Diane as a plus since they are starting a conversation with the audience which increases site stickiness. They do not use pre or post rolls for ad placement.

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Interview with Rob Angelino about Beauty TV. Beauty TV is a 24/7 beauty network and is in pre-production on a daily hybrid syndicated show for traditional broadcast television. Content is focused on beauty tips, hair, skin, nails, cosmetic surgery, spas, health, fitness, insider interviews, beauty news, product reviews and trends. Current advisory board members include John Paul DeJoria, founder of Paul Mitchell Systems and Patron Tequila and former executives from EXTRA TV, 'E!" Entertainment, Sony Television and AOL.

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A recent interview with Ken Lowe, VP of Strategic Marketing for Sigma Designs. Ken addressed a variety of topics concerning Blu-ray, the IPTV marketplace over the next couple of years as well as competition from Broadcom, IP and the companies recent financial performance.

Sigma Designs, Inc.

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Interview with Gary Croke, Director of marketing, for Symmetricom's QoE Assurance Division. Gary spoke to the test measurement market specific to IPTV content delivery and quality issues facing Telco's and Cable operator's.

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Anthony C. Naughtin, President and CEO of GridNetworks spoke about his company which is a hybrid between a traditional peer-to-peer and CDN provider. If the company is going to scale to "Nielsen-sized audiences," as Tony has alluded to, the company will need to move swiftly to embed in devices while pushing the limits of HD, i.e. beyond 720p to the home.
 

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