Streaming Media - April/May 2008 - (Page 37)

It’s interesting to look back at those “dry years” for the website, since the articles—while fewer than before or since—really were focused and appealing. One of the interesting things about writing now versus writing then is that the sheer number of article views (the number of times an article is read) only just recently reached the level of articles from the early days. For instance, there are only four articles from 2005 and 2006 that made it into the Streaming Media Top 25 most viewed articles. Up until just recently, the top viewed article was titled “RealPlayer 8: Bells, Whistles, and Canned Content” from back in June 2000. Even with the upper levels of articles being dominated from pre-2004, the types of articles that make the top 25, or even the top 100, tend to be about formats and codecs. For instance, the No. 3 viewed article of all time is titled “Quality Comparison: RealVideo, Windows Media Video, and Sorenson Video,” from 2001, followed by “Darwin Streaming Server: Open, Functional and Free” (also 2001), and then followed by two of my favorites: “Choosing a Codec” and “Streaming vs. Downloading Video: Understanding The Differences” (Jan Ozer, 2006, and Larry Bouthillier, 2003, respectively). Recently, as a gauge of just how popular some of the new technologies are, we’ve found that simply having the word “Flash” in the title guarantees a big readership boost. Podcasts are also making a comeback for the third time, although some of you might remember that the first time around they were called webcasts (remember, that was before RSS feeds). Readers and show attendees appreciate being able to hear analysis and interviews with key C-level industry players, and the podcasting tool has proven popular in describing content and concepts that can’t be put into words easily. And these tools let us do what we tout, using streaming and progressive downloads to educate and inform our audiences. It’s actually fun to do an audio recording these days, since the process of editing, mixing, and distributing a podcast takes significantly less time than when I began editing sound for film. The Schwag But the biggest draw of all isn’t the website articles, podcasts, or even the blogs or job board; it’s the conferences. What started with First Conferences and grew into something that had more than 7,700 attendees in 1999, was almost killed by Penton’s acquisition and uncertainty of how to market the show alongside its Internet World shows, has been reborn stunningly as Dan Rayburn has managed to grow the show continuously while keeping the price of a full delegate package relatively low compared to other technology trade shows and conferences. This feature of Streaming Media is by far WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM 37 http://www.digital-rapids.com http://www.digital-rapids.com http://WWW.STREAMINGMEDIA.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - April/May 2008

Streaming Media - April/May 2008 Table of Contents Beyond the Bottom Line Technology and Business Trends by the Numbers (Not So) Instant Karma MSN Autos Revs Up Video Production Dow Finds the Right Streaming Chemistry Why Video Is Changing the World A Decade of StreamingMedia.com What's Your Digital Media Strategy? Blasts From the Past: A Decade (Almost) of StreamingMedia.com Headlines Analyze That A League of Their Own: Streaming Media All-Stars Where Are They Now? Wanted: Sexy HDTV That Connects to the Internet and Services All DVRs Anystream Agility Inlet Technologies Spinnaker S3000

Streaming Media - April/May 2008

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