Thursday, February 3, 2011

IPv6, IPv4 Address Exhaustion and Machine-to-Machine Internet

Internet address registrars will announce soon that that last set of internet addresses has been allocated, today, tomorrow or the next day. That means device addresses will be exhausted in a few months. Then begins the process of living with two address systems for some extended period of time, as new devices get assigned IPv6 addresses.

Whether this is a manageable problem, or something bigger, remains to be seen.

Viacom More Positive on Hulu Prospects

Viacom wasn't happy having "The Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" shown on Hulu, but now seems to have changed its views. Hulu’s introduction of subscription plans and increased advertising base now seem to convince Viacom that having its content on Hulu can pay off.

Hulu’s subscriber count is expected to pass one million this year and Hulu Plus as a business will have a revenue run rate north of $200 million this year, observers predict.

And Hulu now has 30 million monthly users, traffic which Viacom simply cannot ignore.

Vodafone Milestone: Data Tops SMS Revenue For First Time

Vodafone Group has hit a milestone. Vodafone's latest quarter data revenue exceeded messaging revenue for the first time. Vodafone's emphasis on sales of smartphones and associated data plans seems to have been the driver.

Vodafone, the world's biggest mobile operator by revenue, posted a 2.1 percent uptick in group service revenue, underpinned by good growth in India, Turkey, the U.K. and South Africa. It is the fifth sequential quarter of improvement.

The company said data revenue continues to drive its growth strategy and grew 27 percent on the back of "strong smartphone and mobile connectivity sales."

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

How Groupon Might Change Advertising

"Maybe you haven’t noticed, but media companies have changed their strategy of charging for advertising," says Gordon Borrell, Borrell Associates president. 'If it continues, the business model for media might change forever.'

Group deals have allowed local businesses to offload the risk of advertising onto the media company, Borrell argues. "Advertising has become 'free,' and the media company gets paid only when a sale is made.

"If this continues, it will transform media companies into marketing partners," he argues.

Clay Christensen on Local Media Prospects

Timing the shift to Ethernet in mobile backhaul - FierceTelecom

Carriers are rapidly reducing TDM's role in mobile backhaul, says Jim Theodoras, Ethernet Forum president. An April 2010 Infonetics report illustrates the change in thinking.

The firm's August 2009 survey of 18 mobile operators and transport providers indicated that 60 percent were taking a hybrid approach to backhaul that leverages both Ethernet and TDM. At that time, only 47 percent intended to commit to pure Ethernet.

Infonetics' survey in March 2010--just six months later--showed a near flip in the ratio: 45 percent hybrid, 65 percent Ethernet-only.

Android Getting In-App Billing

In-app billing is coming to the Android Market. The new service gives developers more ways to monetize their applications through new billing models including try-and-buy, virtual goods, upgrades, and more.

The In-app billing service manages billing transactions between apps and users, providing a consistent purchasing experience with familiar forms of payment across all apps. At the same time, it gives you full control over how your digital goods are purchased and tracked. You can let Android Market manage and track the purchases for you or you can integrate with your own back-end service to verify and track purchases in the way that's best for your app.

In-app billing will be available in stages. Google is now providing detailed documentation and a sample application to help developers get familiar with the service. Over the next few weeks Google will be rolling out updates to the Android Market client that will enable developers to test the apps using the service. Before the end of this quarter, the service will be live for users.

Will Generative AI Follow Development Path of the Internet?

In many ways, the development of the internet provides a model for understanding how artificial intelligence will develop and create value. ...