Friday, October 5, 2007

Some Late Night Thoughts

So here I am sitting in my girlfriend's apartment at 2:30 in the morning trying to figure out how to write something coherent at this time of night when a few things occur to me. One, I should probably be sleeping right now instead of doing homework. Two, not all fast food is created equal (this might explain why I'm doing one instead of sleeping). Three, we have entered what VeriSign would call the "Any Era." I actually want to take this opportunity to mention what VeriSign is doing in terms of streaming content.

About a year and a half ago VeriSign began the "Three-Screens Initiative." In a nutshell, the Three-Screens initiative is the ability to stream live content from the Internet to your computer, phone or mobile device. But that definition really doesn't do the technology justice and since I work in a completely different department then our content distribution teams I really can't adequately explain how exciting this stuff really is. Imagine being able to watch a show like American Idol on your TV, computer or cell phone and then during a commercial break receive discounted tickets to concerts with similar genres. Or imagine that you can instant stream movies from the Internet to your TV, computer or phone. VeriSign actually owns most of the infrastructure that regulates the flow of traffic on the Internet.

Also, VeriSign owns the registries for all the .com and .net domains so basically whenever you are going between websites (like google.com and cnn.com) you are being "transported" via VeriSign's servers.

VeriSign's website link is here but since VeriSign primarily deals with B2B transactions the corporate page is not that interesting to non-users.

The link to the three-screens campaign is here. I recommend that you at least watch the introduction because it's a advertising campaign (IMO).

And of course, if you would like to know more about VeriSign's most profitable business (and the technology that I know most about) then click here to learn more about SSL. But, I have to warn you, this stuff can VERY VERY VERY boring and is only exciting if you pay for Extended Validation... oh god I should probably be sleeping right now. :)

2 comments:

Mike said...

Haha. Welcome to college...i have yet to sleep...then again, I'm not complaining about 2AM Chinese food...

As far as the main point of your blog entry goes, you are right, the streaming ability is pretty cool. When you look at a company like Verizon with their television access (though a looped program), etc. it is neat how you can jump around like that. I still do not know how I feel about watching TV on a cell phone though. Unless it is the iPhone or the other phones like it, I have no desire to do such.

An interesting company is Knotice (pronounced like "notice"). They have come up with software that allows for Personal Relevance Marketing (PRM). Basically, using PRM a company can take the mobile idea to the next level and send advertisements to different people's cell phones that are based on their shopping habits/patterns (PRM Informational Demo).

EmperorChow (Peter Chow) said...

Streaming capabilities are great. I've had positive experience with it.

For example, while watching Heroes on tv, I sometimes have my laptop with me to check out the interactive contents they stream through the web during the show. That not only enhances my experience with the show, but it also gave me something to do during the commercials.

However, companies need to realize that streaming contents should only be used as support. If streaming content is detracting from the main object, at the end you're just gonna be left with a lot of A.D.D. and confused customers.