Archive for the ‘Anecdotes’ Category:
Sorry :)
Yesterday I pitched logistics to the ±200 people audience of Online Tuesday in Amsterdam, in less than 5 minutes.
I used crowdsourcing to demonstrate the limited capacity of mobile networks. I wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to disrupt a mobile network. It -uhm- worked. Sorry! :) The 5 min video is available below.
New content opportunities / Creativity / Students
Sometimes I am asked to give guest lectures at universities. Today, many universities have creative media or new media oriented study programs. Read more »
Top traveling iPhone apps (extreme mobile traffic rates)
Many years ago I had a bet that I could IRC from the beach in France. I placed my Palm and my Ericsson phone so the infra-red eyes could see each other. I dialed my ISP. 9600 Baud. I launched the IRC client and logged into my favorite channel. It was slow but fun. Until I got my phone bill…
So much has changed. Smart phones. 3G internet. Much better coverage. Great apps and services. Today I use an iPhone. These are my favorite vacation apps:
High Def
2006. I was asked to demo H.264 HD content to a crowd of broadcasters, cable operators and telecom operators.
Cable companies had just broadcasted the 2006 world soccer games in High Def. It was the first public HD broadcast. MPEG-2 over DVB-C, 19Mbps. They had been able to ship around 10000 HD set top boxes. At that time, H.264 was not that known. The industry still thought they were going to broadcast HD in MPEG-2 at around 15-20Mbps. Read more »
The iTuner
2005. Inspired by RSS and Podcasting, I began experimenting with video subscription services. Live and VOD streams via RSS. I called this VODcasting.
I was -and still am- convinced that internet video volumes are still small. The big bang is when consumers will consume high quality video streams in their homes. Sitting on their couch, eating chips, drinking cola and staring at their 52″ plasma’s or whatever, for hours.
There had been some initiatives towards internet stream based Set Top Boxes. Most really were crap. Utter total crap. If it wasn’t the hardware, it was the software. Even the Philips Streamium box sucked.
And if the boxes were OK, then they lacked a good interface, or they could only be used in a proprietary setting, with locked protocols, custom codecs and difficult middleware, exclusive content.
Pardon my French
1998. Before broadband, we had to let our live encoders use dial-up modems to upstream to our streaming servers. We had eight encoders.
The venue had a telephone system so we had to dial a ’0′ to dial outside the building. But the telephone network caused dropped links. We asked the IT manager to switch our lines to direct outside lines.
We set the encoders to auto redial every xx seconds and went for dinner. When we came back, all encoders still reported disconnects. And we had to get on air within 15 minutes…
So I called the manager but he claimed that he immediately had switched the lines. Then I heard an encoder dial in. And a very, very angry voice came out of the modem.
We had left the extra ’0′ in the dial scripts. Eight encoders had dialed to an existing number in French Guyana every few seconds, for over 1,5 hours… excusez moi! :-)
The C64
The late eighties. One day, I went to a store with some friends. They sold C64′s on their media floor, connected to a huge TV wall. I typed in some code I had written on a paper.
The computer kindly asked visitors to enter their name. And then printed their name with a lot of foul language. Visitors angry. Staff members did not know what to do.
Because we had locked all keys with peak or poke codes. We had fun.
Hot summer day
May 1999. A beautiful, hot day. We were live backstage at the Dutch Freedom Festival, an open air festival. Producing a webcast. We had cleared the rights for most of the bands.
Except for one UK band which I will not name. We saw the manager and asked him if we could get the rights to film and webcast the band’s performance.