Google has revealed the results of their work to re-architect their internal network infrastructure around OpenFlow.
Google’s network, which is described as equivalent to “the second largest ISP in the world,” consists of a user-facing network and a second network that interconnects its worldwide data centers.
OpenFlow is a key part of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach that separates network equipment from the overall management. The result is the capability to manage the network fabric as a whole and dramatically increase its efficiency.
Moreover, Google which began working on an OpenFlow network in 2010 has actually been designing and building its own network gear as it was not yet available.
The result is a network that operates at almost 100 percent utilization, rather than the 30-40 percent of other networks.
Google is revealing their OpenFlow work with hopes that equipment vendors will begin manufacturing gear that supports it. Google is a member of the Open Networking Foundation, which promotes OpenFlow. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom, and Nicira.
Software Defined Networking as represented by OpenFlow is a fundamental change in thinking of complex digital networks that promises to remake the entire network industry, impact how companies and governments manage their networks, and enable new kinds of network applications.
T3 Motion at NAB this week announced the launch of two new trailer systems designed specifically for film production.
The T3MT and T41 systems eliminate the need for tracks during shooting. The camera attaches to the vehicle rather than the camera operator.
The battery-powered vehicles go forward and reverse and include a cameraman seat, Steadicam and Glidecam mounting posts, and 7-inch HD monitor.
“Few products on the market facilitate tracking camerawork from 0-15 miles per hour — tracking shots at low speeds can be arduous and difficult to manage. Our T3 Motion broadcasting products provide a tracking platform that allow for a uniquely clean and efficient production process, facilitating tracking shots without operator fatigue,” stated T3 Motion CTO Ki Nam in a press release.
The T3MT and T41 Trailer packages start at $10,000.
At the NAB Show in Las Vegas this week, Adobe demonstrated its new version of Creative Suite 6 (CS6).
Pricing has not been announced, and the company was vague about the release date, other than to say it would be ready during the first half of 2012.
The suite includes Premiere Pro video editor, After Effects motion graphics effect generator, Photoshop image editor, Audition sound editor and mixer, and additional tools for disc authoring, media encoding, script development, production scheduling, color grading and more.
“The biggest updates to existing apps come to Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop,” reports PCMag. “CS6 Premiere Pro gets a redesigned and simplified user interface, with large view for the source and preview video at top left and right. The interface is still highly customizable, and you can even switch back to its previous layout and add and remove buttons to taste.”
“Clips can now be skimmed through with the cursor, a la Apple’s iMovie, and you can mark rough in and out edits right in the clip thumbnails,” explains the article. “Markers also get more power, with color coding; comments and durations can now be assigned to them, as well. A new trim mode shows both the outgoing and incoming frames, and there’s lots more keyboard shortcut support (10 assignable) for trims and trim modes. Effects can now be applied to multiple clips using layers and masks, not unlike in Photoshop.”
At NAB, Dolby 3D, a glasses-free display standard, was being shown on a smartphone, tablet, and a prototype 4K 56-inch display.
Interestingly, viewers can adjust the 3D depth to suit their preferences. While side viewing is possible, the 3D effect is most pronounced when viewing near the center.
“Best known for its audio technologies, the company just launched its own 3D standard in cooperation with Philips, called Dolby 3D,” reports Engadget. “The platform-agnostic solution is far from ready to make its way into your living room, but it’s conceptually sound, and the prototype 4K 3D TV and mobile versions being demonstrated at Dolby’s NAB booth make us hopeful for the future.”
“As with all displays — especially those that support 3D — you’ll really need to see to believe, but we had an opportunity to do just that, and walked away very impressed,” comments Engadget.
The post includes a 3-minute video report from the show floor.
Google announced its new Brand Activate initiative for advertising at the Ad Age Digital Conference on Wednesday.
As part of the initiative, two new services rolled out for advertisers this week: Active View and Active GRP.
Active View will measure how long an ad remains on a user’s screen and how much of it is viewed. “If at least 50 percent of it is viewable for at least one second it’s counted as an viewed impression,” explains Engadget. “Active View is something that Google hopes will become a standard for all online advertising.”
In a related report, Yahoo! News describes Active GRP as “the online equivalent of the Gross Rating Point, a metric used by the television industry to estimate how many people saw a given ad. Active GRP is a digital version that will calculate the reach and frequency of a campaign, but — unlike standard GRPs — lets advertisers react in real time. (Hence the ‘active.’)”
The post includes a 2-minute video from Google outlining the initiative.
A survey of 1,000 TV viewers by Accenture offers insights into advertising via Facebook and Twitter, finding that about one-third have tweeted about the brand or show or “liked” their Facebook page after seeing the social media logos.
“The most common action for those who did interact with a show or ad while watching TV was liking its page on Facebook (20 percent). About 7 percent of viewers searched for a show’s hashtag on Twitter and 5 percent used Shazam while sitting on their couch,” TechCrunch reports.
“Surprisingly, the survey also found that 11 percent of viewers scanned a QR code while watching TV. That’s a rather large number, given that QR codes are still far from mainstream,” suggests the post.
However, those polled were less interested in being social or connecting with people of similar interests; rather, about a third of participants wanted to get coupons and others wanted to enter sweepstakes.
The survey also found that the majority of viewers who received content from these social media symbols were generally satisfied with what they found.
Panasonic, Olympus and Sony are designing mirrorless cameras to compete with Canon and Nikon in the high-end SLR market.
IDC forecasts that global shipments of mirrorless cameras will grow 60 percent this year to 6.43 million units, compared to an 18 percent growth rate for SLRs.
“The challengers are hoping to gain market share from an emerging type of camera that packs high-end features into a compact design,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
“Like SLRs, these cameras come with large sensors and interchangeable lenses that produce high-quality images. But they don’t have the conventional mirror-based viewfinders that reflect the image to the photographer’s eye. Instead, the image is digitized, allowing for a more compact body,” explains the article.
Additionally, the mirrorless models are generally more affordable than digital SLRs.
Advertisers are starting to reach out to consumers where they are spending their time: on their devices. A new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau found online advertising in the U.S. reached $31 billion last year, increasing 22 percent from 2010.
“Mobile grew the most of all categories — 149 percent — but still represents a puny share of the overall market — $1.6 billion — according to the report issued on Wednesday. Digital video also rose 29 percent to $1.8 billion, search was up about 27 percent to $11.7 billion and display advertising jumped 15 percent to $11.1 billion, or 35 percent of all revenues. Search is still the largest category with 47 percent share,” reports Mashable.
Retail remains dominant in terms of ad spending, making up 22 percent of the overall total. Telecom and travel/leisure followed at 12 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
Internet ad spending still trails that of TV — which amounted to $38.5 billion in 2011 — but the increase shows the gap could be narrowing.
For its coverage of the 2012 Olympics in London, NBC Sports announced it will stream live video of all 32 sports via nbcolympics.com.
“The broadcaster, which launched its official Olympics website today, will offer access to the sports in real-time — before the time-delayed coverage that airs on the traditional TV stations in America. The site will also provide users with lots of archived content, stats, and other supplementary material,” VentureBeat reports.
The videos will be archived online shortly thereafter and then there’s the traditional TV broadcasts, which NBC doesn’t expect to be negatively impacted by the online offering.
“We’re not scared of cannibalization… Anytime you have a great event that happens before it shows on the air, it increases ratings and generates buzz,” Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media told The New York Times.
Following an article about his views on Internet censorship, Google co-founder Sergey Brin issued a clarification. Some believed Brin was equating the “walled gardens” of Facebook and Apple to the Internet censorship of totalitarian regimes.
“So to clarify, I certainly do not think this issue is on a par with government based censorship. Moreover, I have much admiration for two of the companies we discussed — Apple and Facebook. I have always admired Apple’s products,” Brin wrote in a Google+ post.
“Likewise, Facebook has helped to connect hundreds of millions of people, has been a key tool for political expression and has been instrumental to the Arab Spring. Both have made key contributions to the free flow of information around the world,” he added.
Although Brin approved of the original Guardian piece in which he was quoted, it only included a small part of a month-long conversation. Additionally, he suggests secondary reports of the interview did not accurately interpret his comments.
“But regardless of how you feel about digital ecosystems or about Google, please do not take the free and open Internet for granted from government intervention,” Brin wrote. “To the extent that free flow of information threatens the powerful, those in power will seek to suppress it.”
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) hopes to fight potential cyberattacks by enabling companies and the federal government to share cyber threat intelligence with each other.
Although the bill has been supported by many big Internet players, the Obama administration is now expressing some hesitation, suggesting CISPA “fails to adequately protect critical national infrastructure, such as electrical grids and water supplies, and could threaten individual privacy and civil liberties,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Caitlyn Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, cybersecurity legislation requires strong safeguards. “Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation’s urgent needs,” she said in a statement.
Some civil liberty and privacy advocates criticize the bill’s broad language, which could “allow companies to hand over private information about their customers and users to the federal government without sufficient oversight or consequences for mishandling the data,” explains the article.
The “Stop Cyber Spying” campaign against CISPA also raises concerns that the shared information could be given to spy agencies with little public oversight.
Although the White House has not made any plan to veto the bill, there is definitely some question as to whether the proposed legislation will do much to protect against cyberattacks.
Despite the economic downturn, television is experiencing a new “golden age” in both creative and business terms, according to Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros. Television Group.
“Revenue from international has improved dramatically. The domestic broadcast, cable and syndication businesses are at a high point, and there are new buyers” such as Netflix and Hulu, Rosenblum noted during an NAB Show industry discussion group.
Rosenblum explained that international markets currently comprise almost one-third of their revenue. He said that revenue “from international more than covers the production costs of our entire sales of 26 shows.”
He noted that streaming services are becoming useful for library product and new shows, adding that Hulu and Netflix deals for CW content may have “saved the network.”
Rosenblum also stressed the growing importance of social media: “Where Facebook and Twitter can help is when you have shows that are on bubble. Several shows have gotten renewed [in recent years] because networks were aware of how much chatter was out there.”
At the NAB Show in Las Vegas, Netflix took the stage to talk about the variety of original programming it is currently working on. If the shows prove successful, this could be a new direction for the streaming service that has devoted a lot of time and resources to acquiring licensing deals.
“The freedom to make interesting shows — without a network controlling the process or the output — seemed to be an underlying theme, though I don’t think anyone actually came out and said it,” comments GigaOM writer Ryan Lawler. “In that respect, Netflix could use its newcomer status as a way to recruit more talented content creators who are frustrated by the usual network system.”
Jenji Kohan, the creator of “Weeds” and the head of Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” series, said working for Netflix on original content is a great new business model and provides opportunities that might not be available at a traditional TV network.
Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos acknowledged that delving into content creation does put the company in competition with the same people they try so hard to get licensing deals from.
“But if Netflix ends up competing for a greater share of viewers’ attention with its streaming offering, it’s only fair, Sarandos posited. After all, the increasing number of TV Everywhere apps and services are starting to encroach on its turf,” reports GigaOM.
Google is expected to release its Dropbox competitor, Google Drive, by next week.
Draft specs for the new cloud storage service have leaked. Google Drive will reportedly include 5GB free storage, will work in desktop folders on Mac and Windows systems, and will be available via http://drive.google.com.
TheNextWeb predicts that the service will also feature in-app document editing.
“Now as for the reliability of the information? It’s not at all uncommon for big companies to launch with partners for new features,” explains the post. “When that happens, the partners will often-times have a heads up to integration and specifics, and that’s exactly what appears to have happened here as it did with the Lucidchart leak from last week.” (The earlier report showed a leaked page for linking Google Drive to online diagramming tool Lucidchart for automatically syncing documents in the cloud.)
Nicira, “the most intriguing startup in Silicon Valley” according to Wired, has created a network virtualization technology that enables companies to program their networks as they do with server virtualization.
The technology runs on top of any network hardware which is used only to move network packets. The network virtualization software provides all the intelligence allowing one to reconfigure the network infrastructure. Thus, rather than be locked into a specific network configuration, the entire network architecture can be altered in software rather than hardware to fit the current requirements.
Nicira’s Open vSwitch goes beyond OpenFlow, which requires vendors to incorporate the protocol in their hardware. It can work with any network gear, even inexpensive hardware.
Companies like Google, AT&T, eBay, NTT, Fidelity and Rackspace are already using Nicira to manage their networks.
“We have hundreds of thousands of customers, and that translates into multiple hundreds of thousands of network or network segments that customers want to create,” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, which is currently using the Nicira platform for a beta version of its cloud service. “Nicira gives us the ability to put any customer, any end point, any location on one common virtual network.”
Google is already buying inexpensive network hardware from Taiwan and China, thus bypassing more expensive options from Cisco and Juniper. Martin Casado, Nicira’s CTO, thinks over time that network hardware will become less important compared to the network software.
