Digital Trends
When online video operator Joost first appeared on the Internet landscape back in 2007, it was a force to be reckoned with: founded by the same folks who gave birth to Skype, Joost promised high-definition real-time streaming of real-time television programming over connections of even modest bandwidth: slap that together with a bunch of what we’d call social networking features today, and you might just have had a killer application for Internet video.
Back in April, Redmond software giant Microsoft announced it would be taking on Adobe’s market-dominated Flash technology with Silverlight, a new interactive platform for delivering "rich media experiences" across browsers and platforms. Today, Microsoft released version 1.0 of its Silverlight browser plug-in , and has announced it will be working with Novell to offer support for Linux.
"Our expectations for compelling, immersive experiences on the Web are increasing daily," said Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie, in a statement. "With today’s release of Silverlight 1.0, we’re making it possible for developers and designers to deliver to individuals the kind of high-def experiences they crave by integrating data and services in rich and unique ways."
Using an MRI scan, doctors can tell what a healthy brain looks like and what a dysfunctional one looks like – then use the differences to assess the problem. A company out of Massachusetts has developed technology that basically amounts to an MRI scan for the entire Internet. Akamai’s real-time visualization of web traffic allows users to get an overview of networks across the world, and use it to pick out anything from the most connected city to the most likely country of origin for network attacks.
A new market research report from Ireland’s Research and Markets finds that Microsoft’s Window Media remains the dominant format for streaming video on the Internet, based on distribution volume and contracts. The report, “CDN Growth and Market Share Shifts: 2002&mndash;2006” finds that Windows Media accounted for 50.8 percent of video streams served during 2006, with Flash coming in at 21.9 percent. AOL Media Player cornered 11 percent of the market, Real got 9.3 percent, and Apple barely got on the radar with roughly 2 percent of video streams using its QuickTime format.
A new study commissioned by content-acceleration provider Akamai Technology and conducted by JupiterResearch claims that the average online shopper will wait as along as four seconds for a page to load before potentially abandoning an online retailer. And, besides prices, what was the most-cited factor contributing to poor online shopping experiences? Long load times.
“The critical takeaway from this research is that online shoppers not only demand quality site performance, they expect it,” said Brad Rinklin, Akamai’s VP of marketing, in a release. “Four seconds is the new benchmark by which a retail site will be judged, which leaves little room for error for retailers to maintain a loyal online customer base. Site performance becomes even more critical as retailers add more dynamic content and applications to their site.”
Akamai Technologies has unveiled its Akamai Net Usage Index, a near real-time Web activity report which tracks the total visitors per minute to more than 100 new portal sites around the world. The resulting map shows geographical and time-based trends on where specific news stories are being "consumed."
The problem began about 8:45 a.m. EDT and lasted about two hours, said Jeff Young, a spokesman for Akamai Technologies Inc., whose network of servers mirror some of the Web’s top destinations to improve their performance.
Young called it a “large scale, international attack on Internet infrastructure.” However, there was no evidence that non-Akamai infrastructure was affected.
Amit Yoran, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division, declined to comment on the alleged attack and its scope, deferring questions to Akamai. The government-funded CERT network emergency response team said it was too early to determine what happened.
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