Streaming Media - May 2006 - (Page 8) 08SMME06 4/11/06 10:54 AM Page 8 the Tipping Point Editor's Note i n his 2002 bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell still images. By the end of that decade, P2P-outlaw Napster had tidily applies a concept from epidemiology to the study of made the 'net a haven for music distribution, illicit though it was. social phenomenon. The title describes the conditions And the first few years of the new millennium found both Internet under which a small outbreak of a disease rapidly turns into a radio and legitimate music downloading commonplace. full-fledged contagion; surprisingly, those conditions are less These days, however, most broadband-equipped Internet drastic than we might imagine them to be. users simply take it for granted that their online experience will include both audio and video. So while VeriSign's decision to get For instance, if one out of every 50 people in Manhattan has the flu, and that one person encounters an average of 50 into the streaming media distribution business had me scratching people a day, the disease will likely not spread beyond that my head at first, it actually makes perfect sense. Of course the one in 50 number it will spread, but will stay in what epi- Internet's leading security solutions provider needs to join forces demiologists call equilibrium. If, on the other hand, that one with a strong video content distributor. The Internet is now firmly By Eric Shumacher-Rasmussen flu carrier runs into only five more people a day, the likelihood in the video age, and the tipping point happened sometime in of the flu reaching pandemic proportions in Manhattan sky- 2005, when U.S. broadband penetration crossed the 50% mark. Which brings me to this debut issue of Streaming Media maga- rockets. That five-person differential is the Tipping Point, and it only makes a difference it only tips the scales in that 50- zine, yet another sign that online digital video technologies and to 55-person range. If the number never reaches 50, the strain the organizations that use them are growing in ways that seemed of flu carried by that person won't spread beyond equilibrium; unlikely even two years ago. Each issue we'll bring you in-depth once it's gone past 55, it's too late to stop the outbreak. features, industry news, unbiased reviews, and insightful columns, The lesson of The Tipping Point is that change is often not all meant to help you make the best decisions for your business. as gradual as it appears and that the world is a place where, I was going to write the magazine you're holding in your Gladwell writes, the unexpected becomes expected, where hands, but that very well might not be how you're reading it. In radical change is more than possibility. It is contrary to all our fact, maybe you're not reading this editorial at all, but rather expectations a certainty. Gladwell's not the first person to write watching the video version in the digital edition of the magazine. about the Tipping Point, but he was the first to bring it to a mass In addition to our mission of bringing you the most complete and audience. The book has become required reading in any field insightful coverage of online digital video and audio in both the advertising, sales, political activism where people hope to enterprise and entertainment verticals, we're also make something catch on, be it a brand, a product, or an idea. committed to bringing it to you in formats that Tipping point has become part of the parlance of our times. make the most of the multimedia tools at our dis- I first read the book soon after its release, but recently had posal and yours. cause to seek it out again. The clerk at the local bookstore In other words, it's part of our mission to walk directed me toward the sociology section, which kind of sur- the walk as well as talk the talk. To that end, we've prised me. Then again, I recalled something a college room- also relaunched StreamingMedia.com. In addition mate once said when he came home from class, frustrated at to an easier-to-navigate interface, with blogs from what he perceived to be the discipline's tendency to exalt the Dan Rayburn and Steve Safran, and the Streaming patently obvious as if it were something newly discovered: Man, Media Global section, which is devoted entirely to sociology is just a bunch of academics thinking up fancy names streaming news from Europe, Asia, and elsewhere for things that intelligent people take for granted every day. outside the U.S., the site now puts more audio and VeriSign's recent $62 million acquisition of Kontiki brought video at your fingertips. Our AV Portal offers easy to mind both Malcolm Gladwell's book and my old college access to hundreds of hours of footage from past roommate's assessment of sociology. VeriSign has long been Streaming Media shows, and the Dan Rayburn a leading supplier of Internet and mobile security and micro- Radio Show presents podcast-ready interviews payment processing services, providing secure transactions with the people on the cutting edge of our industry. for more than 3,000 enterprises worldwide from eBay to In coming months, watch for even more video Microsoft. Kontiki has gone from shaky startup to the frontlines content, including Webcasts and software and hardware tutorials. of content distribution, its P2P-based Grid Delivery Technology And we hope you'll take it for granted that this magazine and StreamingMedia.com are the places to turn for all things streaming. embraced by CNET, the BBC, and most recently AOL's Hi-Q video service. What makes the deal so significant is what it says about the Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen erics@streamingmedia.com is editor of Streaming very nature of the Internet and what we take for granted about Media and StreamingMedia.com. it. In the early 1990s, about all you could assume was that it was Comments? Email us at letters@streamingmedia.com, or check the masthead for a means to access and distribute text and, if you were lucky, other ways to contact us. 8 STREAMING MEDIA May 2006 www.streamingmedia.com http://www.nxtbook.com/audio/streamingmedia/0506/2485-TippingPoint.mp3 http://StreamingMedia.com http://StreamingMedia.com http://StreamingMedia.com http://www.streamingmedia.com Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - May 2006 Contents The Tipping Point Open the Pod Door Adobe Looks to the Future at Flashforward 2006 Commentary Mobile DTV Alliance Formed to Promote Best Practices for DVB-H Standard News Bytes The Great Telecom Debate Asleep at the Wheel Technology and Business Trends Game On Perfect Pitch If You Webcast It, How Many Will Come? Cool Tools The Three C's of Convergence: Consumers, Convenience, and Content Mission Control Is There Anybody Out There? How We Got Here . . . Where We?re Going: RayCaster 1.6 Macromedia Captivate by Adobe and TechSmith Camtasia Autodesk Cleaner Ball of Confusion Streaming Media - May 2006 http://www.nxtbookMEDIA.com
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