TekTidbits

IPTV- The Future of Television

Now that traditional telephony is seriously challenged by inexpensive and high quality VoIP carriers, the next arena for change is television.  IPTV has become the hottest area for investments, innovation, and unfortunately market hype! 

Will it become reality?  Most definitely, however, there are challenges facing this fledgling industry not unlike the challenges faced by the VoIP crowd in the late 90s. 

IPTV will allow a consumer to receive TV through their Internet connection via a settop box - in the same manner that they now receive VoIP.  The benefits are clear - fully interactive, on-demand TV will become a reality, polling will be made easy, and integration with the Internet complete. 

The biggest challenge faced by these fledgling IPTV companies will be opposition by the traditional cable and satellite TV providers as they first resist change, then violently fight their competitors, and finally relent to embrace the new technology and bring it to market themselves.  AT&T lost considerable marketshare - almost all its long distance market - to VoIP before reaching the final stage of this acceptance process.  Will Comcast follow suit?

Two big players, Cisco and Microsoft, are behind the push for IPTV.   The demo of this technology presented by Nortel at a recent trade show left me speechless, as the quality, picture, and colors were so stunning. 

There is no doubt in my mind that IPTV will prevail.   I just hope it follows a shorter, faster path than VoIP to my living room. 

technorati tags: IPTV, Microsoft, Cisco, VoIP, Internet TV, television, technology, television's future, TV in the future
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Will Web 2.0 Office Suites Make MS Office Obsolete?

The process of creating, PDF'ing, and emailing a spreadsheet or Word document is as ingrained in business culture as is the speaker phone - however, you have to admit it is a cumbersome process.

Web 2.0 based applications promise to free us from this multistep process by allowing web-based applications to create documents that live on the web, not email.

These applications are in their infancy right now so I don't think this will happen soon.

But when it does, the Mighty Microsoft will have to adapt or go the way of the horse and buggy manufacturers of yesteryear.

For example, Intel has just announced a new Web 2.0 Office based suite, called SuiteTwo, that will feature blogging, RSS feeds from Newsgator, a Wiki, and search tools.  The Early Stage VC blog announces that Ajax based office products are everywhere, and that web based applications make more sense as we are not desktop bound workers anymore.  Aptly named Thinkfree has a full suite of online Microsoft compatible office products available now as well. They offer a free teaser of 1Gb storage. 

Zimbra has been profiled in many blogs, and is also gaining ground with their office suite that includes VoIP, email, and web-based document creation and sharing.

Microsoft, the writing is on the wall....er, should I say Window?

technorati tags: zimbra, thinkfree, intel, microsoft, Microsoft Office, Web 2.0, online office suites, online office suite, free office suite, alternatives to MS Office
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Bob Pease, Halloween Revisited, and Analog Reality TV

I stand corrected.  My friend and former Halloween party co-host sent me a picture of what he thinks was the most creative Halloween party costume conceived by the immortal Mr. Pease - and here it is:

RAP is - you guessed it - the Abdominal Snowman!!! Yes, he was the life of the party and still is.  I haven't seen him for years, so did a Google search to see what he is up to now. 

I found the Analog Design Reality TV show with new video clips added every month. I watched a few of them, they are just jam packed with knowledge that you just can't get in a book. 

RAP is truly the smartest person I know - I still remember having a noisy oscillating op amp that calmed down after RAP explained that I needed to add 100-200 mV of positive feedback to it.  And he came to my rescue when Bonnie Baker of Burr-Brown and I were presenting the San Jose Applications Seminar and our slide projector stick.  RAP fixed it with a butter knife from the kitchen.

RAP, I hope you come across this post and find your picture!

technorati tags: Bob Pease, Analog Design Reality Show, National Semiconductor, Halloween, Halloween costumes, RAP, technology, analog design
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