More technology - enough yet?...

Oh dear Lord. I cannot get away from 2 things - the weather in Ireland and technology on the Internet.

OK, lets do the weather first. It has been brilliant weather here in Dublin for the last few weeks - very little rain, average temperatures of around 15 degrees celcius and quite balmy frankly. Was in Prague last week for a day at a conference. Weather was great too... :-)...Sorry...couldn't help myself...

The conference was on the new buzzword for big ole Telco's - NGN (Next Generation Networks) and was hosted by Marcus Evans. It was one of the better conferences I've been to in ages. The interesting bit was that a colleague, Karim from AD Little consultancies in Austria, asked some of the Mobile Phone companies when they were going to make money from 'Content', and when they were going to abandon their 'walled gardens' which limits what users can do with their mobile phones. Telenor from Norway was the first one to bravely open their network to 3rd party developers and to open the garden gate so to speak. T-Mobile from Austria stated that they were opening the garden gates, but slowly.

And the reason for all of this you may ask? Well, we have been looking at all the content being developed aimed at community rating, social networks, WebTV and video content over the last few weeks. Well, this is the very stuff that is buckling the knees at the big Telcos. They have invested millions in developing their walled garden content, and the web has just passed them by...

So, now we have NGN. The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) developed a standard for NGN's (browse Wiki for some definitions and descriptions if you're interested), and part of it says that it should enable third party applications to work and integrate across it. So, now many conference organisors are arranging conferences on NGN, and everyone is trotting out theirs. NGN should enable all these applications that I am examining here to run smoothly and seamlessly across these new networks. The only issue is - they will not be making any money out of it.

This conference was about the underlying new wondrous technologies being invested to create NGN at the heart of all our favourite Telcos. It was not about figuring out how it will make them make money. The purpose is to reduce the cost of operating and managing the networks, so that we can continue to enjoy all these new wonders that the web is dishing up for us at better speeds and smoother than ever before, whilst the shareholders of these wondrous companies figure out how they can make money from it.....

Anyhow, I finally managed to get an invitation to the beta test of Joost! I have installed the beta on my laptop, but it is not working all that well in the sense that once I start it, I can't stop it, so I will have to install it on my desktop machine (a bit more horsepower...). However,the concept seems good, and quite frankly the quality is good enough for most. My bet? I think it will work. It will definitely gather a following and a chunk of market. It needs a good bit of bandwidth to work well though, at least 3Mbps. I have downloaded a video accelerator from DAP (Download Accelerator) which is supposed to speed up and improve the streaming of videos from YouTube. Must surely work for Joost video as well! I think.... Well, I will keep you up to date on my trials and travails with Joost.

Something I found that claims to be as good as Joost is Babelgum. Haven't figured it yet. The site does not appear to be that user friendly. It invites you to 'join' the beta, but it doesn't really want you to.....

The one program I am using regularly is Stumbler - I am enjoying 'stumbling' the web, because it means I have access to a whole community of people out there who are browsing the web and finding all these great little things for me to look at and report back to you about!

I go to the gym regularly, and whilst I am not quite one for star worship, t he one person I really admire for having achieved so much in his life is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And what I am enjoying is some funny videos of a VERY young Arnold on MetaCafe. Type in 'Arnold' and see what you get. Some really cute ones of him making his pectoral muscles jump, and an old interview of him in 1977 (yes, I know, 30 years ago)...

Anyhow, that is it for tonight!