Category Archives: News

Politkovskaya killer “known”

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“The killer of dissident reporter Anna Politkovskaya is known to Russian authorities but has not yet been charged…”. That’s the statement of the chief investigator on the case that appeared in an interview on Monday. Here’s a bit more from Reuters:

“We have so far not charged the killer but we know who he is,” Garibyan told Novaya Gazeta in an interview. Gabriyan did not say if the person was in custody, or why he had not yet been charged.

His comments are likely to strengthen suspicions among Politkovskaya’s family and colleagues that the case is not as close to being solved as Chaika had suggested.

They have accused the Prosecutor-General of rushing to trumpet a breakthrough to score political points. Since Chaika announced arrests in the case in August, two suspects have released for lack of evidence.

I’ll file that in the folder “Russian SNAFU”.

Flash Media Server 3 announced

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Adobe announced a new version of the Flash Media Server (FMS) at IBC at Amsterdam. According to the press release some of the key features of the new version will be:

  • Improved performance and scalability
  • Streaming upport for H.264 and AAC (following Flash player’s support for H.264)
  • Secure streaming
  • Flash Lite 3 support (i.e mobile video delivery to your mobile)

Considering the competition, Adobe is facing from RED 5 (an open-source server) and Wowza (a commercial but significantly cheaper version), they’ll need to work on the price point too. $4,500 per 100 or so connections is very expensive.

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Next-gen Flash to support H.264 Video

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Stefan Richter at Flashcomgurus and a host of other Flash enthusiasts are excited by Adobe’s announcement that the next generation of Flash will support H.264 Video. This bit from Stefan:

The bottom line: a huge step forward for web video. The Flash Player will incorporate what is arguably the most versatile and most widely adopted video codec around (it’s used for much more than just web video), and it’s an open standard at that with a huge eco system of encoders and tools to boot. Let it sink in and expect some big waves from this. You will be able to test this out via progressive download (I know I will) once Flash Player Beta Update 3 hits the streets later today on labs. Both Flash Media Server and Flash Media Encoder will support the codec in upcoming versions.

I think Adobe’s moving in the right direction at least in part because of the competitive pressure from Microsoft’s Silverlight.

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Ira Glass on Storytelling

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Ira Glass is creator, host and executive producer of This American Life. Here’s a segment of his interview where he talks about the common pitfalls when doing a talk show for broadcast.

Update: You can view more videos on storytelling at current.tv

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YouTube advertising ignores UGC

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When Google introduced its ad model for YouTube, one could’ve expected that ads will show up in ALL cat-and-dog fighting videos (a.k.a. user-generated content or UGC). Instead, it appears that Google’s video ads will only show on videos supplied by the 3,000 professional content providers and 70 independent partner channels.

This quote from TVWeek:

Considering that giant Google spent $1.6 billion for YouTube primarily for its user-generated content, that might come as a bit of a shock. But given that even smaller sites such as ManiaTV have begun to eschew free-for-all user-generated video, it seems to add up to an admission that, while your cousin Joe’s video may draw a lot of eyeballs, it will never draw a lot of paying advertisers.

“There’s a huge audience built around user-generated content but no evidence that it is a profitable business,” said Peter Hoskins, who recently succeeded ManiaTV’s founder, Drew Massey, as CEO.

Hmm, I’ve seen plenty of advertising in shows like the “Funniest Animals” which rely SOLELY on user-generated content. So there HAS to be some money in cat-and-dog fighting videos…

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The “Anna” Conspiracy

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Russia and free speech have been one of the topics of this blog ever since Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow.

It looks like Russain prosectors have charged ten people with her murder.

Russian prosecutors have arrested 10 people in connection with the murder of investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya and will soon charge them, the country’s chief prosecutor said on Monday.

Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika said the suspects were part of an organized crime group that might also be linked to the 2004 murder in Moscow of U.S. reporter Paul Klebnikov and central bank deputy chief Andrei Kozlov.

It looks like there’s just one crime group in the whole of Russia and any (all) murders in the 2004-2007 period will be “connected” to it. Needless to say, even Russian media are sceptic about this.

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CNBC Plus review

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CNBC Plus is a relatively new service from CNBC. The compelling reason to subscribe to this service is that you get access to over 30,000 videos.

CNBC PlusThere are two sections: On Demand and Live streaming. The live streaming is pretty self-explanatory – you tune in to CNBC as if you’re using a TV. (click to view the whole screen)

The “On demand” section provides you with access to shows you’ve missed. Or at least, that’s the theory. In practice, I wasn’t able to find a particular show I wanted to see again. It could be a search issue – the search is a FAR cry from Google Video.

The search results seem totally irrelevant - probably for lack of good meta data describing the video. You can still select from 10 or topical channels like Global stories, US stories, Europe stories, etc.

Is it worth $14 a month? I’d say it depends if you have easy access to CNBC or not. The videos are a bit slow and you’ll have a hard time to find a specific show you’ve missed. Till the end of June, CBNC has a special offer – $9.99 per month, so if it sounds like a deal – hurry up.

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Flash Player Update 3

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I’ve recently subscribed to Fabio’s blog and I’m not disappointed. Fabio’s keeping me up-to-date on all things Flash.

It looks like the Flash player just got a boost in the video deparment. Here’s the feature list (from Fabio):

  • Multi-threaded video decoding. The VP6 video decoding will now be performed in a separate thread if a multi-core system is detected while the main thread does rendering and post processing of the video. 1080p video decoding is now possible on dual core machines.
  • Full screen video decoding will leverage hardware scaling. Wonderful! why to scale a 640×480 video to 1280×1024 using the main processor when all the computer video cards today have video scaling technology? I think this is really a must for the definitive consacration of Flash Video Technology. I’ll post as soon as possible a test of this feature.
  • VBL in fullscreen. The player is now capable to syncronize the rendering in fullscreen to the “vertical blank” for a smooth playback of flash movies.
  • Automatic Mipmap for scaled videos and picture. Optimal for video thumbs
  • Faster Vp6 entropy decoding and improved deblocking filter.

I think some competitive pressure from Microsoft’s Silverlight is more then welcome!

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