13 Jun 2001 (updated 15 Jun 2001 at 02:46 UTC)
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Server Move
Chris and I spend most of our monday evening moving our co-lo server between two facilities of Allegiance Telecom. We finally got our server upgraded and moved to the new facilities, a task that was upon us for more then a month.
We still got some bugz to work out, but I am pretty happy with the result so far. You can notice, however, that we are now served by a corporation where the best communication channel is the one through the customer. Too bad we lost our
200+ day uptime. Oh well, we seemed to be better homed though. ;-)
Work
Well, I spend a day and a half in San Francisco last week to
get an idea of how much has changed since the last time I was up at HQ. It was an engineering get together to cover a lot of the re-organization that was done to make things more
"efficient".
The coolest thing is that I am finally back on a project, so I will have to drop most of the Audio/Video and XML work for working on more immediate requirements. So, far so good, since it could have been a lot worse.
I also got a word from a few folks stating that this silly
internal engineering politics, that has been bogging me down and frustrating me to a point I have not interest in doing anything anymore, will be held under close watch and ultimately killed. I have been trying to not respond to anything that looked remotely like a political pitfall, so
hopefully we can all work as a team in the near future. The
future is starting to look more brighter by the day! Now only if the market could also take a turn for the better.
IP versus SDKs
MP3.com has furthered their interest in MS WMA Technologies for use in their PLuS service. Again this is how Microsoft is winning has people develop stuff for their Windows platforms. This is because of the wealth of APIs (good and bad) that are available where instead of writing their own they take the APIs/SDKs and use those because it is an easy way to get a product out that does what is required short term. Now I have had similar discussions with people from the office and find it interesting that now that we are in DOT COM land we do not want to re-invent the wheel, but at the same time we do not even consider rewriting the wheel when you have no control over the existance and stability of the wheel in further revisions of the product.
Update: I just noticed that the Yahoo! Player requires MSIE and WMP, so most likely makes use of the API/SDKs as well. It seems like the major client side players are Microsoft, Real and Apple. Yahoo! still has some of the pie with their server side technology when they acquired Broadcast.com.
Start Ups
Big corporations are definately using the startups in every way you look at it. The pressure created by buzzwords such as "Time to Market" and "High Margins" (which contradict btw) are what can bring great ideas to the ground. Doing a large amount of research and development over a year or so to create valuable IP is in these start ups unthinkable.
There are a few exceptions such as Packet Video and Transmeta, but the hype is very high and the recent economic slump isn't not helping. It is killing "experimental business plans" but also lots of necessary research and IP development for start ups to compete with the big boys. Regardless of serious stock drops, it is the big corporations that are winning.
Music Industry
Looks like Subscription services are still a go. Press Play (formerly Duet) now has a site and a new CEO. My mod_icecast idea, executed by Brian Aker, seems to be taking off. The biggest thing that still needs to be implemented is HTTP Range header support in HTTP MP3 Players. This might force the issue a little and will have more people looking at RTSP/RTP in the long run.
Real Networks, Inc. is keeping their options open and seem to be considering joining the Press Play team as well to provide them with RTSP/RTP which makes total sense from a business stand point. Why should they care who has the better solution as long as it is based on Real IP. Hopefully
they didn't sign an exclusive when they joined MusicNet.
Also seems as if MusicBank has fallen of the face of the net, who knows why but I am sure some of the big five or the economy had something to do with it.