Author: Lynne

CEO Pitches, Bows and Optimism

Well, a few weeks back I got to participate in two events. One was watching Rick Bentley, CEO of Connexxed, do his elevator pitch – not in an office, but in front of a plane at the Palo Alto Airport. The second was attending the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs farewell party to Susan Hailey, their retiring CEO, after a successful tenure.

What was neat is that both events were captured with video service (“MinutePitch – Your Video Screen on the Web!“) simply and easily. Rick’s pitch is simply great. There’s nothing like watching a second-time CEO take the helm.

It was so easy to take a digital camera and capture Susan’s farewell captured in Kick-off to Fall (“Forum for Women Entrepreneurs – Bay Area Chapter“).

Fun Friday – Read a Book and Shun the Web

Well, I was chatting with Karl Schoenberger of the Merc about the dismal state of the industry, and he had a great line I just had to pass on: “I am among the 0.35 percent of Americans between 50-54 who are shunning the Internet and re-reading Raymond Chandler novels. No, we don’t have a chat room or blog about it either.”

Lest people think I never have time to read books, actually I do read books – all the time. Give up random TV sessions – the great time waster – and you’ll have plenty of time to use the Internet, read. and even work in media.

I take my kids to the library weekly and we go through about 5 books apiece. I just finished “The Birth of Venus”, a 2003 best seller, noticed today they have a new Sharpe’s rifles book and a prequel to the Mist of Avalon, along with a new Skolian series book (the author is a Harvard physicist, and I always read books by physicists, esp. women, even though Berkeley physics is better since it’s my alma mater).

But that’s not all. My husband William has a large collection of classic scifi from the 30’s-50’s as well, if you’re into unique short stories. Look up “A Logic Named Joe” by Leister if you’re down on the Internet. Totally predicts the craziness (it’s a funny story) and it was writtten in 1946 (appeared in Astounding).

Finally, I also do video commentaries as well. It’s quite different to speak an opinion piece than write one. Good exercise for the mind of a writer and a reader.

So, since it’s Friday, read a book. You’ve got the weekend to enjoy it.

Credibility and the Web – What is Video’s Influence?

Well, I was discussing David Danielson of Stanford University and his upcoming talk on “web credibility” with the VP Marketing / Branding of a client company. Basically, web credibility has to do with how information is arranged on a site to make it “trusted” to the customer – something both good security and marketing people know implicitly. So what did a hot-shot marketing guy say about an academic’s work on this topic? Plenty.

He noted that those studies on credibility did not properly address Internet video commercials and rapid turnover branded video, yet they’re finding a dramatic change in the last two years with their 18-34 age demographic in view / use of video for the buying decision.

Automation Makes or Breaks Internet Startups

I’ve been hearing a lot about costs of running a datacenter these days, and how important it is to outsource even though administration and overhead of international contracts is not cheap either. I’ve been hearing about projects that were transferred out of the US only to die in a foreign land. Seems it would be cheaper to just abandon those projects, rather than slowly kill them.

But there are other ways to reduce the costs – especially for startups – you automate and use the Internet. As Tony Perkins says, “the costs of launching an Internet company have never been lower”. You’ve got customer acceptance, branding is cost-effective, and now over 50% of the domestic US Internet customer base is on broadband. It’s all about the service, and ease of use.

SiliconTCP, EtherSAN, and Scalability

Everyone says I was amazingly ahead of my time. As Rick Merritt, EE Times writes about the possibility of using storage interconnects concluding “Competitors such as Broadcom Corp., which have existing 1-Gbit R-NICs, will not be able to scale to the greater bandwidth because they lack the ASIC state machine architecture…”.

Well, now I’m pleased that I wrote a paper for the global storage network workshop last MayAll You Need is TCP: EtherSAN and Storage Networks, and even more grateful for the feedback I received from people like Jim Grey of Microsoft, John Wakerly of Cisco, and Greg Pfister of IBM. Gordon Bell was an earlier advocate of the InterProphet technology and urged Chuck Thacker to take a look at it several years ago. So it appears this is finally becoming a topic of serious consideration – although I’ve been seeing it coming for many years.

The fundamental scalable state machine architecture patent (“TCP/IP network accelerator system and method which identifies classes of packet traffic for predictable protocols“) was filed in 1997 and granted 2000. A term memory patent (“Term Addressable Memory of an Accelerator System and Method was independently filed and granted July of 2004. It’s a better memory approach that hand-in-glove with a state machine architecture that deals with certain flaws.

It’s an Inside Pitch on a Fast Ball…

One of the neater things that you can do with MinutePitch is to capture top startup CEO’s strut their stuff and compete for funding with a click of a button. I’ve been to a number of Pitch Competitions over the years, where I’ve watched the room gyrate like a whirling dirvish when a CEO hits a home run. I’ve always thought “Wow, I wish I could see that again in instant replay”. But the moment is lost, and everyone slumps back in their chairs. Sometimes, that CEO doesn’t even get a follow-on, because the next pitch is sooo boring it drives out everything else, including that great pitch just before.

So I was lucky enough to be off with my friend and fellow Berkeley physics alum Rick Bentley this weekend as they were shooting his company’s first pitch. And was it ever fun. He did it on the spot, on location, at the airport between flights. Why the airport? Because he’s serious about security and he’s a pilot. This is absolutely cool, and definitely the way pitches should be done – so you can capture the moment and make it last.

Free Culture and the Internet by Lynne Jolitz in Dr. Dobbs Journal

Well, my book review Free Culture And the Internet discussing Larry Lessig’s latest book is now on the newstand in Dr. Dobbs Journal. After I had Coffee with Larry Lessig back in April of this year, he kindly had a copy sent to me.

My background in this area is most extensive – in fact, it predates Dr. Lessig’s professional interest by a bit. Even in the 1980’s I was wrestling with the issues of royalties and copyrights and license agreements as part of the staff of Symmetric Computer Systems, and used that experience to great advantage later with days, as I write in my backgrounder of the review, also entitled Free Culture and the Internet.

If you enjoy the review, let the editor of DDJ know so we can keep them coming. And if you like the review enough to read the book, let me and the author know what you think. Books are meant to be shared.

In the DataCenter – ISP’s and Video Stream Revenues Part II

Continuing on the discussion of evaluating the vanishing value of video streams, Dan and I broaden the discussion to encompass other companies, not just ISP’s, who are dependent on moving more bits across that wire.

How much value a video stream provides is not only important for a datacenter group debating this issue to understand. It is also important to companies like Cisco. According to some of the “M&A” guys I chat with, Cisco’s entire acquisition strategy right now is predicated on delivery of VOIP/VOD/MMP – and massive video production aka MVP (“Massive Video Production Debut“) fits right in. It’s all about end-to-end quality from the tech perspective, and building service models that deliver value from the business perspective.

So what does Dan Kusnetzky, Program Vice President, System Software at IDC say about this…

With Every Photo, There’s a Blast

A news photographer got a bit too close to the demolition of a bridge on the Mississippi. Well actually, he did want to get further away, but his remote setup didn’t work. So he got close in and manually handled the cameras from behind some construction equipment. Not a good idea. The blast knocked him down and destroyed all his equipment, but not the CF card.

Fascinating photos of the bridge and the camera moments after the blast.

Film would have probably been too damaged, as the camera itself was ripped open. But the images survived on a CF card. Anyone want to argue about the hardiness of digital storage now?

In the DataCenter – ISP’s and Video Stream Revenues

A debate recently arose among the datacenter staff. The oldsters think the cost per stream is more than the value per stream right now, because the cost of media is high and everyone looks at things single (one at a time). But the youngsters have noticed that a lot of new content creators are coming online wanting lower cost deployment of media, and some even lower the production time/cost itself through use of services like . They worry that the value per stream is eroding fast, and that’s a lot of ISP’s bread and butter.

So even if the value per stream is currently high, as you increase the number of media creators, what does it do to the revenues of the service providers? Does it increase their value per stream?

I asked Dan Kusnetzky, Program Vice President, System Software at IDC what he thought of the vanishing value per video stream debate. And here’s what he told me…