Mobiles for Army

SOLDIERS THAT are scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan with the First U.S. Army Brigade are to get smartphones to improve front-line communications. The phones will be tethered to a digital radio to mark the locations of roadside bombs, share intelligence, and send text messages, Military.com reports. The system gives soldiers patrolling on foot or riding in vehicles a similar level of connectivity as their counterparts back at headquarters.

Col. Mark Elliott, who oversees development of the Army's tactical network, said: “This is just in time for a retrograde mission,” he said, referring to the process of removing military equipment from an operating area. “We're pulling cables out of buildings because we're trying to turn the lights out.”

The equipment includes smartphones such as the Motorola Atrix running Google Inc.'s Android software; handheld AN/PRC-154 Rifleman Radios; portable AN/PRC-117G Falcon III radios and satellite dishes.

Maps Engine Lite - But no KML - But My Maps is always there

Google Launches Maps Engine Lite, Makes It Easy To Create Advanced Custom Maps

from TechCrunch by Frederic Lardinois

For years now, Google has offered its Google Maps Engine to enterprises that want to visualize their custom geospacial data. Starting today, anybody will be able to use a subset of this functionality, thanks to the launch of Google Maps Engine Lite (beta). This new tool, Google says, will allow any mapping enthusiast to “create and share robust custom maps using this powerful, easy-to-use tool.”

Maps Engine Lite allows users to upload small spreadsheets with locations and visualize them on a map. They can also compare up to three different data sets for, the company stresses, non-businesses purposes.

These custom maps can have multiple layers, and users who don’t have spreadsheets to upload can also manually draw lines, mark specific areas and set place markers. Google offers a total of nine base maps, including its usual satellite and terrain maps, as well as styles that emphasize city boundaries, political boundaries and highways. Maps Engine Lite also offers about 150 different icons that can be used to mark specific places.

To help new users get started, Google also published a tutorial that offers a few sample data sets and a step-by-step guide to publishing a custom map.


Google says it will still offer My Maps, its earlier custom mapping tool, for the time being and My Maps users can import their maps into the new Maps Engine Lite. Over time, however, Google product manager Beth Liebert writes in today’s announcement, My Maps will be “incorporated into Google Maps Engine Lite.”

For now, Google is officially labeling Maps Engine Lite as a beta, and it’ll only be available in English for the time being.

VP8 Granted Freedom to CODEC

Google And MPEG LA Sign Licensing Agreement Covering Google’s VP8 Video Codec, Clearing The Way For Wider Adoption

from TechCrunch by Frederic Lardinois

Google’s VP8 video compression format, which the company acquired from On2 Technologies, is an open standard and covered by a free patent license. That, however, didn’t stop MPEG LA, the guardians of the H.264 patent and license, from looking into creating a patent pool in 2011 and potentially suing Google for patent infringement upon its competing codec. Today, however,MPEG LA and Google announced that they have come to an agreement. MPEG LA will grant Google a license “to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders.”

The agreement allows Google to sub-license the techniques covered by the agreement to any VP8 user and also covers the next generation of the VPx codec. As part of this deal, MPEG LA is discontinuing its efforts to form a VP8 patent pool. Chances are Google had to pay for this license, but the financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Perhaps the real focus of Google’s VP8-related efforts, going back to the original On2 acquisition, relate to WebRTC, which is an HTML5-compatible, open framework enabling real time communications in the browser. Essentially, WebRTC is Skype without the app, enabling web-based communications between all supporting browsers. As always, Google’s profit motive for WebRTC is opaque. The best contender for an actual motive was proposed by Tsahi Levent-Levi in the VisionMobile blog, who opined, “The real value for Google lies in allowing them to serve more ads and mine more insights out of people’s browser behavior – these are things that Google treasures.'

"Whatever the motive, WebM certainly has a greater chance of succeeding in a nascent market like WebRTC than in existing markets that have already embraced other technologies." A lot more detail from Streaming Media to be found here...

“We are pleased for the opportunity to facilitate agreements with Google to make VP8 widely available to users.” MPEG LA President and CEO Larry Horn.

The relative uncertainty around VP8 definitely hindered its adoption outside of Google. Microsoft, for example, decided to keep the Google-backed WebM media file format that was built around VP8 out of its browser because of this uncertainty. The WebRTC standard, however, which most browser vendors have now adopted, is built around the VP8 codec.

“This is a significant milestone in Google’s efforts to establish VP8 as a widely deployed web video format,” said Allen Lo, Google’s deputy general counsel for patents, in a statement today.

Despite Google’s efforts, H.264 remains the de facto standard for video codecs. The fact that it is build into WebRTC (and that the standard doesn’t allow for alternative codecs) is a boon for proponents of open standards. Now that the uncertainty around VP8 is out of the way, Microsoft may even decide to adopt WebRTC for Internet Explorer instead of its own version of the standard.

For the time being, however, this virtually no support for hardware-based VP8 encoders and decoders, while virtually every video-enabled device can handle H.264 without taxing the CPU.

With both the next-gen H.265 standards and Google’s VP9 codecs already in the works, today’s agreement could mean we’ll see more competition in the video codec space in the coming months. Mostly, though, this agreement takes away the uncertainty around VP8 and will surely lead to its wider adoption.

Citzen Sensor.. helping youself?

Apple Maps Keeps Trying...

Apple improves Maps, critics slam it anyway

By Jonny Evans

March 13, 2013 12:22 PM EDT

63 

Comments

 

Apple [AAPL] last night fielded a range of improvements in its Maps application, including the addition of Flyover support for 16 new cities, but if the company hoped this would help people see its commitment to improving the service, it thought wrong: ever eager for a "bad Apple" headline, media critics focused on negative comments appended to the original report

Apple quietly updates Maps in Japan

A behind-the-scenes change to Apple's mapping service fixes a handful of issues for users in Japan.

by Josh Lowensohn

 March 12, 2013 10:10 AM PDT

Apple this week quietly made behind-the-scenes changes to its mapping service in Japan, fixing a handful of shortcomings.

Chief among them are changes to pronunciation during turn-by-turn navigation, a key feature introduced in Apple's own mapping service in iOS 6. The app now also alerts drivers to toll roads, and has better point-of-interest labels for things like subways, freeways, and hospitals.

Other tweaks include 3D buildings for some Japanese landmarks like Tokyo Station and Tokyo Tower, as well as changing the freeway color to green.

The changes rolled out without an additional software update from Apple. That's because they were tucked into an earlier build of the iOS, which was released to users in early February.

Apple has stayed relatively quiet on improvements to Maps since launching it as part of iOS 6 in September. When asked about progress on the software during an earnings call with Wall Street analysts in January, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the company had already made "a number of improvements" including improved satellite and flyover imagery as well as local information for businesses.

Apple frenemy Google released its own, standalone maps app for iOS in December. That software was updated for the first time last week with a quick search tool and integration with Google's contacts service.

The changes to Apple's maps in Japan were noted yesterday by 9to5Mac.

Google Feels Competition in Maps?? Reorganizes in Response?

http://corporate.yp.com/

Blind Study Finds YP Local Results Beat Google, Bing, Yahoo

Mar 7, 2013 at 11:19am ET by Greg Sterling

Crowdflower reported that in November 2012, YP search results “were found more relevant compared to Bing local, Google Maps, and Yahoo! Local. Users were satisfied with YP.com search results 86% of the time, compared with 83% for Google Maps, 82% for Yahoo! Local, and 74% for Bing local.”

The Wallstreet Journal reports significant shake-ups at Google

In reshaping his leadership circle this week, Google Inc. GOOG -0.88% Chief Executive Larry Page is weeding out perceived inefficiencies and a lack of cohesion among some of the Internet company's core product groups.

Mr. Page on Wednesday combined the team running Google's Chrome Web browser and computer-operating software with that of the Android mobile-operating software, as Android chief Andy Rubin moves to a new unspecified role at the company. Sundar Pichai, who ran the Chrome group, will take over the combined unit.

At the same time, Mr. Page is separating the company's mapping-and-commerce unit. Google executive Jeff Huber, who led that group, will join Google X, which currently is overseen by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and works on projects such as self-driving car technology and the Google Glass wearable computing device.

On the same day that Google CEO Larry Page was announcing a major change involving the company’s Android and Chrome business units, he also moved forward more quietly on another reorganization involving Google’s mapping and commerce operations. The moves, said people familiar with the Mountain View, Calif., company, are part of Mr. Page's stated goal to improve the pace of "execution" at the Internet behemoth and to create "one consistent, beautiful and simple Google experience" that unites all of its services for the benefit of people who use them.

Mr. Rubin's departure from Android comes as he and other Google executives are worried about the growing might of Samsung, which has grabbed an increasing share of the market for Android-powered devices, said people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Rubin and others at Google have expressed concerned that if Samsung's share continues to grow, it could extract monetary or other concessions from Google or create its own "forked" version of Android to power devices that wouldn't come with all of Google's apps preinstalled, these people said.

Manufacturers shipped 497 million Android-powered smartphones last year, or 70% of the global smartphone market, up from 246 million in 2011, or 49% of the market, according to IDC. Apple shipped 136 million iPhones last year, or 19% of the market, up from 93 million in 2011, which also accounted for 19% of the market.

Android's rise has also meant Google's revenue-generating Web-search engine, YouTube video service and other apps are preinstalled on 750 million devices made by 60 manufacturers world-wide. Google said last year it was on pace to make $8 billion annually from mobile revenue.

Mr. Rubin tried to run the Android unit like a startup, keeping it somewhat independent from the rest of Google and purposely keeping its headcount low, said people familiar with the matter. That sometimes led to conflicts with other Google units that tried to get their products to be preinstalled on Android devices or be more tightly integrated with the software, these people said.

With the separation of Google's mapping and commerce unit, mapping products, which many Web users access via the Google search engine, will become part of the company's search team, also known as "knowledge." Alan Eustace, a L-Team member is to lead the newly amalgamated search and mapping team.

A version of this article appeared March 15, 2013, on page B4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Page Shakes Up Google Leadership Team Further.

Always knowing where your are... in deepest darkest?

Cambridge Consultants develops indoor tech to pick up where GPS drops off

from Engadget by Nicole Lee

Indoor navigation isn't a new concept, but it often requires wireless signals or custom infrastructure, neither of which are entirely reliable. Cambridge Consultants has come up with an as-yet-unnamed technology that purports to solve the issue by utilizing low-power sensors along with a custom formula that don't require an existing framework. According to the Cambridge, UK-based company, all you need are its special Bayesian algorithm and run-of-the-mill smartphone components like accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to do the job. It has already built a concept chipset (seen above) that could be embedded in existing devices -- you can either map your location directly on it or send that info off to a remote system. The firm says the technology will be useful for firefighters and hospital workers, though we wouldn't complain if it's implemented in trade shows either. For more information on the tech, check the press release after the break.

What your get is not what your may want to see?

This is a good read...

How Google And Bing Maps Control What You Can See

Behind the scenes of the most powerful maps in the history of the Earth. And how Google, Microsoft, DigitalGlobe, and the world's governments decide what does — and doesn't — belong on its surface.

In early February, Wired published a satellite photo of a desert structure in southern Saudi Arabia. The image, screencapped from Bing Maps, corresponded with a report that the CIA had built secret drone bases in the region. The site was available on any computer with a web browser, but appeared to be legit — Bing Maps, which is owned by Microsoft, had effectively outed a closely guarded intelligence secret.

If you went to the same location in Google Maps, however, you'd find nothing but desert.
.....

What's most remarkable about these mapping services is the lack of transparency in how they work, who regulates them, and how the maps are built. Every major mapping service draws from many sources for its imagery and metadata, but their processes for combining the information are proprietary and guarded — the public gets statements along the lines of the one provided by Google, whose spokeperson told BuzzFeed: "We strive to publish the most useful imagery possible, and take into account many factors when determining which imagery is optimal, such as its date, resolution and clarity. If the updates we receive from data providers improve the overall imagery of an area, we may elect to publish the imagery even if the provider has blurred certain portions."

This makes straight omission — the purest form of censorship — very hard to identify. And even if it is identified, its causes are even harder to suss out.

"The data set that Google owns became some kind of de facto gold standard," says Geens. It is, to an extent never seen in human history, the map of record — not just of relative locations on the Earth's surface, but of geopolitical reality. To casual users, these maps give an impression of completeness and infallibly — they appear on your screen with an instantaneousness and ease that belies their complexity, and conceals a long and complex information supply chain.

The reality of digital mapping is less comforting: the tools that provide us with unprecedented transparency are controlled in deeply opaque ways.

ESRI Closes the Door Again...

Use Esri GIS and Your Data Becomes Inextricably Intertwined

from James Fee GIS Blog

We talk about open data quite a bit but clearly if you use the Esri platform, it has huge hidden costs to get that data out.

The Supreme Court of Ohio today denied a writ of mandamus sought by Portsmouth real estate appraiser Robert Gambill to compel the production of certain public records by Scioto County Engineer Craig Opperman.

So the courts usually don’t help liberate data we’ve paid for, not really big news here. But what caught me eye was the cost Gambill has to pay because Scioto County made a horrible business decision to lock their data up in Esri’s silo.

In a 6-1 per curiam opinion, the court held that Opperman met the requirements of the Ohio Public Records Act by offering to provide Gambill with a copy of the county’s electronic database containing deed information and aerial photos of all property in the county if Gambill paid the estimated $2,000 cost of separating that data from proprietary mapmaking software protected by U.S. patent laws that is “inextricably intertwined” with the data on the engineer’s computer.

$2,000? Wow, why would it cost that much to deliver the data?

But the engineer’s office cannot separate the requested raw data from the exempt Esri software files.

Oh snap, the engineer’s office has paid probably millions of dollars on a proprietary GIS system and it locks the data up in “Esri software files”. Not only do taxpayers foot the cost to create such a crazy GIS system, but then they double pay when they want the data back out. The court says:

Gambill may obtain paper copies of maps and aerial photographs of properties in Scioto County by inputting search terms into the computer at the engineer’s office and paying the cost for each document printed.

Clearly Scioto County is locked into the 1970’s with this Esri GIS system. I can only assume you input the data into a Prime Computer terminal and get a dot matrix print copy out the back. Ah but big GIS consulting company with huge overhead to the rescue!

“Notwithstanding the inability of the engineer’s office to separate its requested electronic database from the exempt Esri software, it received an estimate from Woolpert—the company that the engineer’s office had hired to make its information system compatible with that of the auditor’s office after the auditor’s office updated its system in 2007—to extract the underlying electronic data from the intertwined exempt software. Woolpert estimated that it would cost $2,000, plus the cost of a hard drive. The engineer’s office then passed along this quote to Gambill. … Opperman acted reasonably in asking Woolpert to provide an estimate to extract the requested electronic data from the exempt Esri software files

Oh my Woolpert! Way to sock it to the taxpayer. At least one judge sees through this nuttiness. Emphasis mine…

Justice Paul E. Pfeifer dissented, stating that in his view “The county engineer in this case has intertwined public records with proprietary software and expects citizens seeking public records to pay an exorbitant price to untie the knot. A person seeking public records should expect to pay the price for copying the records, but not the price for a public entity’s mistake in purchasing inefficient software. … The holding in this case encourages public entities desiring secrecy to hide public records within a software lockbox and require individual citizens to provide the golden key to unlock it.”

Seriously, now many times are we going to go down this path with these silos?
Huge hat tip to Brian Timoney!

UAVs in US Airspace Claim Jobs Targeted Jobs Explosion... 70,000+ Jobs?

Unmanned Aircraft Industry to Create 70,000 New US Jobs in 3 Years Following Integration into National Air Space

Posted on March 13, 2013 by The Editor

AUVSI unveiled a new study, which finds that the unmanned aircraft industry is poised to create more than 70,000 new American jobs in the first three years following the integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into U.S. national airspace system (NAS). Integration is scheduled to take place in 2015. Beyond the first three years, the study projects that more than 100,000 new jobs will be created by 2025.

“This is an incredibly exciting time for an industry developing technology that will benefit society, as well as the economy,” said Michael Toscano, President & CEO of AUVSI. “In recent years, unmanned aircraft technology has grown remarkably and is already proving useful in a range of domestic applications. Integrating UAS into the national airspace will lead to new and expanded uses, which means the creation of quality, high-paying American jobs.”

Specifically, the study finds:

In the first three years following integration into the NAS, more than 70,000 new jobs will be created.
In the first three years following integration, the total economic impact stemming from the integration is projected to surpass $13.6 billion and will grow sustain-ably for the foreseeable future, cumulating in more than $82.1 billion in impact between 2015 and 2025. Economic impact includes the monies that flow to manufacturers and suppliers from the sale of new products as well as the taxes and monies that flow into communities and support the local businesses.

The study projects integration will lead to 103,776 new jobs nationally by 2025. Many of these jobs are portable and will gravitate toward states with favorable regulatory structures and infrastructure. Future events – such as the establishment of FAA Test Sites – will ultimately determine where many of these new jobs will flow.
Additional economic benefit will be seen through tax revenue to the states, which will total more than $482 million in the first decade following the integration.
Every year that integration is delayed, the United States loses more than $10 billion in potential economic impact. This translates to a loss of $27.6 million per day that UAS are not integrated into the NAS.

The complete study, including state-by-state breakdowns of economic impact projections, is available here.

“While we project more than 100,000 new jobs by 2025, states that create favorable regulatory and business environments for the industry and the technology will likely siphon jobs away from states that do not,” wrote the report’s author, Darryl Jenkins, a past professor at George Washington University and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.

Nationally, the precision agriculture industry is expected to be the largest market for UAS technology, the AUVSI study finds. UAS will help farmers monitor crops and distribute pesticides, which could not only help improve efficiency, but also reduce the total amount of pesticides sprayed, saving money and reducing environmental impact. The public safety sector is another area that will benefit from the tremendous potential for UAS technology. UAS have the capability to help police and firefighters— who put themselves into harm’s way every day to protect the communities they serve — do their job safely and efficiently.

The report was commissioned by AUVSI and developed by Jenkins, an aviation industry economist with more than 30 years of experience. Mr. Jenkins is the author of the Handbook of Airline Economics and previously served as the director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Source: AUVSI

Googlola to present Intel Smartphone?

Intel releases Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 dev code, adds dual-boot option for Windows 8

from Engadget by Mat Smith

Intel's in the tricky position of playing Android iteration catch-up -- but it's getting better at it. Releases are now appearing every six months, with the latest release of Android (4.2.2) now Intel-optimized -- at least at a pre-alpha stage. The company's Open Source Technology Center devs have been working on the Android Open-Source Project to ensure it works well on Intel-powered devices, whether that's PCs for debugging and testing or those still-rare Intel smartphones. Now powered by the Linux 3.8 kernel, there's a new interactive installer, plus the new ability to dual-boot on a Windows 8 system. So it's all good news for developers, but it should drip down to more immediate updates on the likes of Motorola's RAZR i and any future Android hardware Intel's planning to power.

Google gets a VP8 and WebM Pass...?

Google and MPEG LA Announce Agreement Covering VP8 Video Format

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Google Inc. and MPEG LA, LLC announced today that they have entered into agreements granting Google a license to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders. The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity. It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one next-generation VPx video codec. As a result of the agreements, MPEG LA will discontinue its effort to form a VP8 patent pool.

"This is a significant milestone in Google's efforts to establish VP8 as a widely-deployed web video format," said Allen Lo, Google's deputy general counsel for patents. "We appreciate MPEG LA's cooperation in making this happen."

"We are pleased for the opportunity to facilitate agreements with Google to make VP8 widely available to users," said MPEG LA President and CEO Larry Horn.

MPEG LA and Google Settle: What Does it Mean?

Google's licensing agreement with MPEG LA, and while the impact on streaming is likely to be small, the implications may be significant for other technologies like WebRTC

By Jan Ozer
Posted on March 11, 2013 Streaming Media

Last week, MPEG LA and Google announced that they entered into agreements granting Google a license to technologies that “may” be essential to VP8, the video codec fueling WebM. While this agreement may have little impact in the traditional streaming market, it could be very significant in other markets, particularly WebRTC. No financial terms of the agreement were announced, and MPEG LA declined to answer our questions.

History

You know the players and the history, but let’s quickly recount. Google bought On2 in 2010 for $124 million, acquiring the VP8 codec that was the successor to On2’s wildly popular but never financially successful VP6 codec. Google later released VP8 as the video component of the open source format, WebM. WebM was quickly implemented by Firefox, Opera and within Google’s own Chrome browser, but Apple and Microsoft declined to add the technology to their HTML5-compatible browsers, citing potential patent-infringement concerns.

Google later announced that it would remove H.264 playback from Chrome, a promise they have neither kept nor retracted. In the meantime, Mozilla, which never licensed H.264, saw its market share dropping while it waited for Google to follow through. Recently, Mozilla changed their long-standing policy of not supporting patent-encumbered technologies, and decided to support H.264 playback via the HTML5 tag when H.264 playback is present in the system, which includes most mobile devices, and Windows versions starting with Windows 7 (but not XP).

WebM never gained significant traction in the marketplace, with the most recent MeFeedia blog post, HTML5 Based Video Availability, from December 2011, reporting less than 2% share. An April 2012 report from Sorenson Media showed WebM’s market adoption at 5%. Neither source identified how many of these streams originated from Google subsidiary YouTube.

According to tests published in Streaming Media, WebM’s market share wasn’t slowed by quality concerns, as the difference between WebM and H.264 were very minor. Rather, WebM seemed a solution without a problem, as H.264 usage, and web video in general, certainly hasn’t been hindered by the fact that H.264 is a patent-encumbered technology.

In February 2011, MPEG LA announced a call for patents essential to the VP8 video codec and twelve parties stepped forward, but no patent pool was ever formed and MPEG LA never identified the patent holders. Although WebM was largely seen as dead in the water, as interest in the H.265/HEVC codec started to grow, the same patent-related concerns started to plague VP9, the next gen codec designed to compete against H.265/HEVC.

The Fine Print

Which brings us to the agreement. Let’s study the multiple relevant bits in the press release in turn.
“Granting Google a license to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders.”

There certainly is no public admission that VP8 technology infringed on any technology. For an amusing counter view, see Apple Insider’s “Google admits its VP8/WebM codec infringes MPEG H.264 patents.” While this is probably meaningless, it’s interesting that the though 12 parties stepped forward in MPEG-LA’s call for patents, only 11 patent holders were party to the agreement.
"The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity."

This makes it clear that all licenses of VP8/WebM are also clear from any claim of patent infringement from the MPEG-LA H.264 patent group. Since this was a major reason why Microsoft and Apple refused to license WebM, they’ll now either license the technology or find another major reason not to.
"It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one next-generation VPx video codec."

This makes it clear that VP9 is also covered in the agreement, but not VP10 or any successor.
"As a result of the agreements, MPEG LA will discontinue its effort to form a VP8 patent pool."

MPEG LA’s quid pro quo; disbanding the VP8 patent pool.

Again, MPEG LA refused to answer any questions, so this is all that we--or presumably any other journalists--actually know. The rest we can only surmise.

Impact on Existing Streaming Markets

At this point, it’s hard to see that the agreement will have any short-term impact on the streaming media marketplace. Whether Apple or Microsoft will integrate WebM into their browsers is anyone’s guess, but even if they do, there’s little incentive for most producers of free internet video to adapt WebM, since there is no H.264 royalty on free internet video, and H.264 plays everywhere, from the lowest power mobile device to all OTT Platforms.

If WebM browser-support becomes ubiquitous, or if Adobe adds WebM “in an upcoming release” of Flash player, those selling subscription-based or pay-per-view content might want to encode desktop-bound streams in WebM, though mobile support, particularly iOS support, could take longer, and conceivably may never happen.

Looking forward, this announcement does clear the air for VP9’s charge against H.265/HEVC, but Google faces an uphill battle against a standards-based codec whose ultimate success will depend largely upon hardware support for encode and decode. According to a Google presentation made at the Internet Engineering Task Force meeting in Atlanta in November, 2012, VP9 is still about 7% behind H.265 in quality so there are other hurdles to VP9’s success.

It’s WebRTC, Stupid

Perhaps the real focus of Google’s VP8-related efforts, going back to the original On2 acquisition, relate to WebRTC, which is an HTML5-compatible, open framework enabling real time communications in the browser. Essentially, WebRTC is Skype without the app, enabling web-based communications between all supporting browsers, and was a component of the technologies discussed by Google’s Matt Frost in his keynote speech at Streaming Media East in 2012. In February, 2013, Google and Mozilla demonstrated WebRTC interoperability between Firefox and Chrome, a significant milestone in WebRTC’s success.

Interestingly, Google acquired the WebRTC infrastructure when they bought Global IP Solutions Holding in May 2011, for $68.2 million, around the same time that the On2 acquisition closed. Several codecs,including H.264, have been proposed as the Mandatory to Implement (MTI) codec for WebRTC, but the potential for patent infringement claims have hindered VP8’s adoption. Beyond the MPEG LA agreement, Google “submitted VP8 as a candidate for standardization in ISO/IEC JTC1 SC29 WG11 (better known as MPEG)” and is now aggressively pushing VP8 as the “most suitable code for MTI.”

As always, Google’s profit motive for WebRTC is opaque. The best contender for an actual motive was proposed by Tsahi Levent-Levi in the VisionMobile blog, who opined, “The real value for Google lies in allowing them to serve more ads and mine more insights out of people’s browser behavior – these are things that Google treasures”.”

Whatever the motive, WebM certainly has a greater chance of succeeding in a nascent market like WebRTC than in existing markets that have already embraced other technologies.

Never to be... MGPEG DASH?

MPEG-DASH: Struggling for Adoption?

MPEG-DASH, and particularly the DASH264 spec, will help standardize and unify online video delivery, but the move to embrace has been slower going than the hype might suggest

By Adrian Pennington
Posted on March 12, 2013

Slides provided from ChristianTimmerer

It may be early days for MPEG-DASH, the format intended to unify the various adaptive bit-rate (ABR) specifications, but there are already concerns of slower than expected take-up.


“There are several trials and lots of noise about MPEG-DASH, but we’ve yet to see concrete demand that point to DASH being the great unifier,” warns Bruce Devlin, CTO of AmberFin. “In fact, unless there is some operational agreement on how to use the standard between different platform operators, then it might become yet another format to support.”

MPEG-DASH was ratified as an international standard in November 2011 and published as by ISO a year ago. If 2012 was a proving-in year for the technology, with a number of proof-of-concept trials, the coming year may prove critical for widespread adoption.

“DASH has taken quite a while to gather a following among consumer electronics and software technology vendors, delaying its adoption,” argues RGB Networks' senior director of product marketing Nabil Kanaan.

“The various profiles defined by DASH have aded too much flexibility in the ecosystem, at the cost of quick standardisation. We still believe it’s a viable industry initiative and are supporting it from a network standpoint and working with ecosystem partners to make it a deployable technology.”

Elemental Technologies' vice president of marketing Keith Wymbs says, “To date the impact of MPEG-DASH has been to spur the discussion about the proliferation of streaming technologies.”

Digital Rapids marketing director Mike Nann says, “MPEG-DASH isn’t in a position where people are thinking that it will be the only spec they’ll need to support in the near to mid-term, but most believe that it will reduce the number of adaptive streaming specifications that they’ll need to prepare their content for.”

Jamie Sherry, senior product manager at Wowza Media Systems, also thinks DASH has had very little impact to date other than to re-emphasise that for high-quality online video to really become profitable and widespread, “issues like streaming media format fragmentation must be addressed.”

“If the ideals of MPEG-DASH become a reality and traction occurs in terms of deployments—perhaps with the help of the proposed DASH264 deployment guidelines—the impact to the market will be positive as operators and content publishers in general will have a real opportunity to grow their audiences while keeping costs in line,” he says.

Nann also looks to the recommended interoperability and deployment configurations of DASH264 to give renewed impetus.

“As an analogy, look back at the evolution of MPEG-2 and transport streams,” he says. “If every cable operator, encoder, middleware vendor, and set top box vendor supported a different subset of parameters, profiles, levels, and features, they might all be within the MPEG-2 and TS specs, but we probably wouldn't have the widespread interoperability (and thus adoption) we have today. DASH264 is a means of doing the same for MPEG-DASH, providing a constrained set of requirements for supporting DASH across the devices that support it, and giving vendors interoperability targets.”

Digital Rapids expects to see increased adoption in 2013 with “considerably more pilot projects as well as commercial deployments”, with growing device support particularly consumer viewing devices.

“The client device support is going to be one of the biggest factors in how quickly MPEG-DASH rolls out,” says Nann.

Telestream product marketing director John Pallett concurs: “The primary driver for adoption will be the player technology to support it. The companies that develop players are generally working to support MPEG-DASH alongside their legacy formats. Most of the major player companies want to migrate to DASH, but real adoption will come when a major consumer product supports DASH natively. This has not yet happened, but we anticipate that it will change over the next year.”

Elemental Technologies' Wymbs believes the discussion will evolve in the next twelve months “to one centering on the use of MPEG-DASH as a primary distribution format from centralized locations to the edge of the network where it will then be repackaged to the destination format as required.”

OneSystem and Rifleman Need to be Aware?

ViaSat snags Guinness World Record for highest-capacity satellite

from Engadget by Nicole Lee

After earning top marks from the FCC for its broadband performance, ViaSat has added yet another feather to its cap in the form of a Guinness World Record. According to the august organization, the ViaSat-1 satellite, which powers the 12 Mbps Exede Internet service, is the highest-capacity communications satellite in the world. The reason for the accolade? The orbiting spacecraft apparently provides around 100 times the throughput capacity of a Ku-bandsatellite and ten times that of a Ka-band, which adds up to more capacity than all North American communication satellites combined at the time of its 2011 launch. While its broadband service still has latency issues, the folks over at ViaSat must feel pretty confident of its recent accomplishments; the company is currently looking beyond its rural customer base and venturing forth into other enterprises, such as in-flight WiFi. Better watch your back, Gogo.

Watersheds Google Style

February 25, 2013

Watching Our Watersheds in Google Earth

Ever since Google Earth was released, it's been an excellent tool for planning and development. We saw environmental groups using it more than seven years ago, companies using it to plan new roads and much more.

Today we're going to show you an impressive new tool that was put together by Fugro Consultants with help from the San Francisco Estuary Institute, the Oakland Museum of California, CLEAN South Bay, and many other collaborators.

They have developed interactive creek and watershed maps as KMZ files for the Watching Our Watersheds (WOW) project. These represent creeks, urban drainage network, watersheds, baylands, and points of interest in Santa Clara Valley, California and are available to the general public.

The data has been assembled from various sources and has been migrated and updated into GIS and, even more recently, into KML format, for the area of Santa Clara Valley, thanks to funding by the Water District and others.

The downloadable KMZ files (ranging in size from 3 to 10 MB) are divided into Present and Past and into three areas (Western, Central, and Southern) to keep the file size and the performance in GE more manageable. If you've ever loaded a huge KMZ file into Google Earth and watched it slow to a crawl, you'll appreciate the fact that they split the files up so nicely.

For the most part, the data are in vector format but there are also some image overlays, which may take a few seconds to display when first loaded in GE.

You can learn more and download the KMZ files on the Watching Our Watersheds website, or watch the video below for a bit more info.

Google CFO: None of Motorola’s Upcoming Products are “Wow” by Google Standards

from Droid Life: A Droid Community Blog by Kellex

Back in January, Google CFO Patrick Pichette mentioned that Motorola had inherited 18 months of product pipelinethat they would need to drain through before the company could focus on creating something completely new. We assumed at the time that he was referring to that period coming to an end with the RAZR HD and RAZR M, and that Moto would be working towards releasing their first set of products under new management some time by mid-2013. In what can only be considered sad news to Motorola fans, his remarks at today’s Morgan Stanley Technology Conference paint somewhat of a different picture.

Pichette mentioned once again that Motorola’s new CEO Dennis Woodside and crew had 18 months of product pipeline to go through, however, this time he used the word “upcoming” in the same sentence. That can only mean that the next phone(s) or tablet we see from Motorola will still be leftovers from previous management that the new Motorola will need to release.

To make matters even more depressing, he called them “not really like wow by Google standards.” Yes, he apparently held nothing back.


“The case with Motorola is that we’ve inherited a pipeline,” Pichette said, “Motorola has a great set of products, but they’re not really like “wow” by Google standards. Dennis Woodside and his team have inherited 18 months of pipeline that we have to drain right now.”

So what does that mean for the X Phone? Well, the X Phone could still be very real. At the same time, the reality of the situation suggests that if we do see this mysterious new “game changing” device from Motorola, it may not be until the end of 2013 or whenever this 18 month period is over with. For the foreseeable future, we could see another couple of leftovers from the Sanjay Jha era.

Point-and-shoot are Shot...

Smartphones and the Collapse of the Point-and-Shoot Camera

from All Things Digital by Tekin Tatar

Image copyright Beth Van TreesMore pictures are being taken and shared online right now than at any other point in history, which is directly related to the fact that more people than ever have access to high-quality digital cameras in their smartphones. Today there are billions of photos stored online, and this number is growing rapidly. This trend lays the groundwork for substantial growth related to the photography industry, and there are currently major shifts and transformations taking place within the space. One of the most notable trends is that consumers are putting an old, familiar friend — the point-and-shoot camera — down to rest and starting to pay attention to a relatively new breed of camera: The compact digital SLR.

Current Trends in the Market

As smartphone cameras have matured rapidly in quality, they have quickly started replacing other cameras altogether.According to an article in TechRadar, compact camera sales fell by 30 percent in 2011, and it has been predicted that global compact camera sales will fall at least another four percent this year to 115.2 million units by market researcher HIS. On the flip side, the sales of digital SLR cameras saw growth of nearly 30 percent in 2011, according to research by GfK. But this is another trend that we can expect to quickly shift because as the quality of digital cameras has improved rapidly, consumers themselves are still discovering what qualities are truly important to them.
Consumer Behavior

Having high-quality cameras built into most phones means that photography has suddenly become more accessible to everyone, which can account for people’s newfound love for photography and the uptick in sales of high-end cameras. Technology has also made it possible for people to take beautiful images using these expensive cameras without ever learning any of the technical knowledge behind what they’re doing. A recent survey by Sony found that two out of three people with a digital SLR rarely or have never taken their camera out of auto mode. The same survey also found that some people think of these digital SLR cameras as a status symbol, though many now consider the camera to be bulky and complicated after purchasing it. So while the SLR camera market has been enjoying a surge in sales recently, we can expect that many of the people who bought these cameras may not again.
Advancements in Technology

Overall we can expect consumers to become less and less interested in features that not long ago mattered tremendously — like megapixels — because technology in this area is starting to plateau. This means that selling points that the camera industry has relied on to impress consumers are starting to become irrelevant. Full-frame sensors are quickly becoming the standard, so it’s predicted that we will soon consider aspect ratios a confusing thing of the past. The amount of megapixels offered in a cameras today exceeds the realistic needs of consumers. Most digital SLRs are currently featuring around 20 megapixels, so a rise in this number isn’t going to be much of a selling point, especially considering you can make an 11 inch by 14 inch print from a picture taken with an iPhone4. All this means that the features that were once hot selling points for these cameras manufacturers have hit their ceiling.

Camera parts are not only becoming higher quality, they are also becoming smaller. This is why high-quality cameras in phones are becoming the industry standard. In addition to having great cameras on their smartphones, the photography apps available today make it easier than ever for consumers to create beautiful, professional-looking photos, which is the root of the major changes in the camera marketplace.

We can thank these recent developments in technology for helping a new breed of camera emerge: The compact digital SLR. Companies have been focusing intently on creating these high-quality cameras that give people the ability to take great photos in an easy-to-use format. These cameras give people the best of both worlds because they have the ease of use and portability of a point-and-shoot camera, with much of the quality of their more expensive relatives. That this segment of the market is gaining traction among consumers is good news for camera companies, and could just be what keeps them profitable.
The Death of the Point-and-Shoot Camera

We can expect this extreme shifting in the camera market to settle in the coming years. Regardless of whether the general population loses interest in high-end SLRs, these cameras will continue to be made for professionals, hobbyists and people who want this particular status symbol. So while it will not disappear completely, the current sales trend will reverse and this segment of the market will slow down substantially as consumers begin to notice compact digital SLR cameras. Meanwhile, camera technology will continue to improve, which will benefit this emerging market and the effort to give everyone with a phone a great camera.

Whether or not smartphone cameras and other cameras on the market can live in harmony will depend on consumers. If people feel that their camera phone gives them everything they need, they are unlikely to purchase another device. We can expect cameras in smartphones to continue to improve, and these advancements will cause the death of the point-and-shoot camera. The reality is that it’s imperative for camera manufacturers to find a true game-changer in the market that will capture the attention of the masses. While the compact digital SLR signals that the camera industry is listening to what consumers desire, a development that is more exciting is what it really needs to energize its consumer base. This could come in the form of teaming up directly with the smartphone industry, or something truly exciting that is impossible to predict.

Tekin Tatar is the CEO and co-founder of BeFunky. Prior to starting BeFunky in 2007, Tekin wore many hats as the Business Development Manager of McCann Relationship Marketing Turkey, a leading multinational company focusing on digital brand management. He has an MBA from Sabanci University.