“The solution is so obvious for this problem. We should all be working together.”

Q: Do you think BitTorrent has been unfairly singled out by Comcast because the open-source protocol has been used to distribute pirated content?
Walker: Yes I do. But singling out BitTorrent or any other type of traffic is just plain wrong. For one, it’s wrong because of the contractual relationship Comcast has or had–they keep changing the rules as we speak on their Web site–with their subscribers. It did not distinguish between any different forms of content. So in other words, the end users didn’t think there was going to be any issue with consuming this category of content.

It seems really strange that they would go after BitTorrent traffic if they were already working with you guys. What did you say to him when the news broke that they were throttling your traffic. Did you tell him to call off the dogs?
Walker: Well, this is the funny thing about a company that is as large as Comcast. On the one hand, Tony and his team can be working with us in the background long before this story broke to figure out the kinds of things we can be doing together.

So by 2010, half the population will get half the speed that Japan gets today. BitTorrent’s technology can’t help get Comcast to 100 Mbps symmetrical speeds like Japan this year or next year, but it can help make the network more efficient tomorrow.

The situation has ignited a firestorm of protest from broadband subscribers and Net neutrality supporters who say that Comcast has no right to monkey with network traffic. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating the situation and has held public hearings to determine what level of network management is adequate. The agency is still considering whether to take action against Comcast.

Really?
Walker: Yes, the plot thickens.

What is the real problem?
Walker: The real issue is that video is growing so rapidly. The stats are just absolutely overwhelming. In December, 3.2 billion YouTube videos were shipped in America. In December, 330 million MySpace videos were shipped. And in December alone, 141 million people in the United States downloaded video.

Time Warner has talked about metering traffic usage to manage its network. What do you think about that?
Walker: Metering is interesting. It gets back to the shareholder versus what services the public deserves. For example, if you meter my mom and how much she uses the Internet, her bill will go from $60 a month to $1, because she doesn’t use much. But if you meter me and charge me for how much I use, then my bill will go from $60 a month to $200. That works fine if we are both charged based on usage. But what Time Warner is talking about doing is everyone still pays the basic rate, but whoever uses more is charged more. So that serves the business interests. And it doesn’t do much for the consumer.

BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker

But do you think that laws or regulation are necessary to protect Network neutrality?
Walker: I think we have to be very careful. We don’t want to interfere with the natural rules of business. Competition has served us well for a very long time. I am just suggesting there is not enough of it to drive us towards the standards that we should expect in the United States. The broadband market is a duopoly right now. I think these things have to be looked at very carefully. And I think that’s the purpose of the FCC to look at what can be done. However, I do believe in the concept of Network neutrality.

The two companies have been at opposite ends of a raging debate over how network operators should manage their networks. Last year, Comcast admitted that it had been “throttling” or slowing down Internet traffic using a peer-to-peer protocol originally created by BitTorrent’s founder Bram Cohen. The cable operator argued it had targeted the protocol because the peer-to-peer traffic was overwhelming its network resources.

Should the FCC take action against Comcast?
Walker: I think we haven’t learned enough yet as part of the hearing process. I think what I would like to believe is that as a result of listening to public opinion that Comcast will take action on its own. I think there should be less lawyering, quite frankly. They are caught under a spotlight right now. I would hope that Comcast puts its hand-up and says, “You’re right we need to get to world class standards and here is how we are going to do it.”

How could BitTorrent be helping them?
Walker: Let me create some context for you. Comcast announced recently that it could get to a speed of about 50 megabits per second transfer rate symmetrical by 2010. Japan is already twice that speed. And by the way, they could get there to half the people in the U.S.

You mentioned earlier that you understand Comcast’s need to manage its network, but should it be able to do whatever it takes to do that?
Walker: I think the answer is, “No.” They should not have the right to do whatever they want. I think anybody who manages a business or a highway needs to find a way to make it work the best way they can. But you can’t do that without rules. What has happened today when you listen to the FCC hearings is that basically Comcast’s position has been: “We are the parent you are the children. And we’ll tell you when we need to manage the network. And we won’t tell you exactly what that means. Leave it up to us. And go on about your business.”

And on the other hand, other parts of Comcast are throttling back BitTorrent traffic at the same time. Someone catches them doing that. And so all of a sudden the public opinion is completely on the side of BitTorrent and Comcast is cast in the spotlight, and they have to defend their actions. The funny thing is we could be helping them find the solution.

AT&T has talked about policing the Internet to stop the distribution of pirated content. Should the network operators become traffic cops?
Walker: No, that is not the job of network operators at all. Can you imagine the kinds of security issues that come with policing the network? I mean to what level do you police? That becomes the big question. Once you start to open the envelope and take a look at content people are moving back and forth, I think you have violated all kinds of personal trusts and that is completely unacceptable.

“The protocol that they (Comcast) cite as their issue is actually the technology that can help fix their problem.”

(Credit:
BitTorrent)

But the truth is that Time Warner wouldn’t have to do this if they worked with P2P companies like BitTorrent to make their networks more efficient. The solution is so obvious for this problem. We should all be working together.

But BitTorrent is often used to distribute pirated content . Isn’t that part of the reason why it’s being targeted?
Walker: There is pirated BitTorrent content on the Internet. In fact, there is a lot of pirated content that uses the BitTorrent protocol. But there are hundreds of companies out there that are using peer-to-peer, and BitTorrent in particular, to distribute perfectly legal copyright protected content, including our store.

Another issue is that BitTorrent files could be very small or they could be very large. By casting a net over all things BiTorrent, you’re actually impacting the users of small files who are causing no network degradation whatsoever as well as the ones using large files. So how do you distinguish between the two?

I look at that and say, if there is technology that is available today that can help make your network more efficient. Why wouldn’t you be reaching out?

Also businesses like ours which invest hundreds of millions of dollars developing new value sets did not know that there was going to be any kind of an issue with our technology or service running on Comcast’s network. So from that perspective managing traffic without letting people know is the wrong thing to do.

If Comcast and other operators, like Time Warner and AT&T, had just recognized the oh-so-obvious signs of what has been happening with Internet video, the proliferation of consumer devices, and the growth of high-definition content, they would have kept up with the rest of the world in terms of their networks. But instead they have done the right thing in terms of serving their shareholders, but the wrong thing in serving the American public.

Video to the PC and video to the TV is expected to grow by a factor of 10 over the next three to four years. The real issue here is that consumers want rich media over the Internet. BitTorrent just happens to be the most efficient and effective way to do that. And so they are using the protocol to get that video downloaded in an inexpensive way.

What level of network management is acceptable
Walker: I don’t know the answer to that question. I think that becomes the debate once Comcast discloses what it’s really doing. I would say that what needs to happen is there needs to be a place where Comcast’s business model and the responsibility to shareholders actually matches up to what the American people need to be productive.

What has happened since the whole traffic throttling stuff was revealed? Was the CTO completely embarrassed?
Walker: Tony is actually a really great guy, who is very knowledgeable in this space. He understands the issues completely. And he is working under the weight of a very large corporation. We are continuing to have a dialogue. I am hopeful that we are going to be able to work together in the future as this whole thing works itself out and takes its natural course. If there is anyway we can help Comcast make its network more efficient, we’d like to be a part of that solution.

CNET News.com sat down with the BitTorrent CEO, Doug Walker, who replaced Cohen as chief executive last year. Walker acknowledged the challenges facing Comcast and other service providers as they try to keep up with network demand. But he said Comcast should be looking to partner with BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer content distributors instead of trying to slow down their traffic.

So what should be done? Comcast is saying that its network is being choked by all this peer-to-peer traffic.
Walker: First, our perspective is that neither BitTorrent nor any other kind of traffic should be singled out. And secondly, we could actually help Comcast solve this problem. We recognize that they need to manage their network. But the protocol that they cite as their issue is actually the technology that can help fix their problem. And we have reached out to them. Actually, Tony Werner, who is the CTO of Comcast, is an adviser to BitTorrent. And very few people know that.

That is completely unacceptable. Of course, they have to manage their network. But what’s unacceptable is they don’t tell people what they are doing or how they are doing it. And they single out protocols like BitTorrent as a way to make that happen.

q&a BitTorrent’s CEO wants to make peace with cable operator Comcast.

How so?
Walker: Just look at the numbers. Comcast is planning $7 billion worth of stock buy-backs by 2009. It’s giving 25-cent dividends, and it grew 24 percent. These guys are protecting a very good traditional business model. But the problem is that everyone in the U.S. is going to pay for it. Because on the one hand we say we want Google and YouTube. We want MySpace and all of these Internet enabled businesses. But then we say, “Sorry we aren’t going to let you operate on a network that makes any sense as compared to the rest of the world.”

To get more power from the same footprint, GE is looking at a variety of technologies, said Renou, who oversees development at four GE wind research centers around the world.

One of GE’s research teams is developing software for modeling how to best place turbines in a wind farm while another is working on the electronic controls to get wind power fed into the grid most effectively.

“I see a lot more technology going into each of the components, especially the blades,” he said. “The blades will look more funky and twisted to get better performance.”

General Electric’s wind energy division is trying to find a “Goldilocks” turbine design, one that’s not too big and not too small.

But perhaps just as significant, having a range of materials and technologies to work with gives GE more flexibility in how to assemble a turbine. Supply chain disruptions have contributed to product shortages and project delays.

A 2 megawatt or 3 megawatt wind turbine is still large. The tower on a 2.5 megawatt machine can stand nearly 330 feet high.

A fan blade for a GE aircraft engine made of carbon under development at GE's Niskayuna, N.Y., lab. GE is translating work done on materials for engines to turbine blades.

So instead of making bigger and bigger machines, manufacturers are trying to squeeze more energy from conventionally sized wind turbines.

Although it’s four times more expensive than fiberglass, carbon also gives blades more flexibility, allowing them to operate at higher wind speeds.

GE is also working on electronics controls to optimize performance and sound level of entire wind farms, Renou said.

One area that GE’s wind labs is not pursuing aggressively is energy storage. A handful of companies and utilities are looking at truck-sized batteries or underground compressed-air storage to incorporate renewable energy more reliably.

Limits in transmission line capacity are a barrier to both wind and solar energy. Wind farms and solar plants are typically best placed in remote areas, far from the areas on the coast where demand for electricity is highest.

By adding more carbon composite to turbine blades, GE can add 16 feet to their length, which translates into a significant boost of energy.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET News)

Update at 3:22 p.m. PT: Text of first caption corrected.

Like other wind manufacturers, GE is benefiting from booming demand for wind turbines in Europe and in the U.S., even with the possibility of a renewable-energy tax credit lapsing later this year.

But Renou said that storage attached to wind turbines is not likely to happen in the next two years. Instead, beefed-up transmission lines, along with smarter power-grid management, could push wind to make up 10 percent of power generation, up from less than 1 percent now.

But making 5 megawatt or 6 megawatt turbines, as some off-shore turbine makers are doing, also means more raw materials, notably steel, which drives up the cost. The logistics of delivering and assembling these massive components can add to costs as well.

Overall, Renou said that wind technology is developing quickly and is getting more competitive on a price-per-watt basis with natural gas generators, which themselves are going up in price.

“The grid is a fantastic source of energy storage. Wind variability can be handled by the grid and grid management,” he said. “It’s more about policy and grid development.”

That will be done by using alternative materials, better electronics, and shaping turbine blades to better capture the wind, said Stephane Renou, who manages research and development for General Electric’s wind technology platform.

“We’re working on supply-chain flexibility by providing different technology options,” Renou said. “It’s all about having options at this point. We will structure things to have all the raw materials at the right costs.”

A 2.5 megawatt turbine–a size GE intends to stick with.

(Credit:
GE)

Still, the rapid expansion is being throttled by high prices of steel and other commodities, making wind power more expensive.

(Arrington, by the way, set the tone for the environment by telling me, bluntly: “Demo needs to die.”)

I suppose even if Demo had only announced its fall dates at the end of the 2007 show, Calacanis’ point could be valid if Shipley et al had tried to move their event in front of the expected date of the 2008 TechCrunch confab.

Not to take Shipley’s side in this, but I sort of agree with her about one thing, and that is, in the end, the losers here are the entrepreneurs who are going to get wedged in between a news-hungry press trying to cover both shows and the VCs who want to be able to see what’s hot.

Demo Executive Producer Chris Shipley “may be crying that we are taking her dates, but that is false,” Blodget quotes Calacanis as saying. “Demo moved up their dates this year by three weeks to come after TechCrunch40. They (were) on 9/24 last year and we were the week before them. Demo decided to move their conference up to try and unseat us.”

But if Shipley is telling the truth–and I have no reason to doubt her, especially given the calendar page I cite above–I think Calacanis may have his facts a bit twisted. After all, he doesn’t offer any evidence that Demo tried to ace it out on dates other than the fact that DemoFall 08 is a couple of weeks earlier than was DemoFall 07.

“If she wants to do the right thing, she should resign from IDG/Demo after this year and join the TechCrunch50 event,” Calacanis told Blodget. “We would love to have her on our team–that’s a serious offer. She should be working with Mike and I and help us bring TechCrunch50 to Europe, India and Asia.”

TechCrunch50 co-organizer Jason Calacanis says the conflict over the dates of his event and DemoFall’s are the fault of the Demo organizers.

But as Calacanis surely knows, conferences move their dates around all the time. Witness the Game Developers Conference, which in 2007 was the week before South by Southwest. In 2008, it was a month before, and in 2008 it will be two weeks after, if my math is right. The reality is: event scheduling, which is often done years ahead of time, is tricky, and it’s somewhat rare for a conference to always be on the exact same dates.

Of course, Calacanis ended his bullet-pointed “interview” with what he termed a genuine offer of a job for Shipley.

I’ve been trying to find proof of this announcement, and have so far been coming up short. But I do see proof, from a very old calendar page on Demo’s site that listed the dates of Demo’s main 2008 winter event all the way back when they were still planning their 2006 events.

Now, I’m not involved in the date scheduling of either conference, but in a telephone interview Wednesday, Shipley told me that Demo schedules the dates of its events three years ahead of time and that the date of DemoFall 08 was publicly announced at the end of the 2007 fall event.

I’m reading Henry Blodget’s story on Jason Calacanis’ rant about how the Demo conference organizers are to blame for the scheduling conflict that pits TechCrunch 50 against DemoFall. And I have to say, I’m a little dubious of Calacanis’ statements.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET News.com)

Want proof of that? Well, TechCrunch 40 was a week later on the calendar last year than it is this year.

My guess is that Shipley is going to hold on to her current job. But I remain open to surprise.

Another Calacanis statement to Blodget makes me wonder, as well. He said, “The marketplace is going to decide which conference model is better: pay for play or merit based with a $50,000 grand prize.”

Well, let’s assume for a moment that both events sell out, or at least get more or less the same attendance as they did a year ago. If that happens, how is a winner determined?

The job of the algorithm is to best match Web pages with people’s search terms. One tweak the company tried last week was increasing the “diversity” of search results so the listed Web pages would cover a broader scope in an attempt to compensate for the ambiguities of search terms, he said.

And while some might see the industry of search engine optimization (SEO), which strives to get Web sites higher placement on search sites, as gaming the system, Manber said that at least a basic amount would make his life easier.

“I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right keywords onto their pages,” he said.

He also said Google doesn’t adjust search results by hand.

“If we find, for a particular query, that result No. 4 should be result No. 1, we do not have the capability to manually change it,” he said. “We have to find what weakness in the algorithm caused that result and find a general solution to that, evaluate whether a general solution really works and if it’s better, and then launch a general solution.”

For those interested in the subject, I also recommend the New York Times interview with Manber from last year and another from Eric Enge at SEO firm Stone Temple Consulting. (I can’t help but note that the latter piece shows up higher in Google search results.)

The company reported net income of $542 million for the quarter, compared with $142 million for the same period a year ago. Excluding $401 million related to the initial public offering of Alibaba.com, the business-to-business division of Alibaba, net income slid $1 million.

However, excluding that and other factors, the company reported earnings per share of 11 cents, 2 cents above what analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expected on average.

Excluding commissions paid to advertising partners, Yahoo’s revenue was $1.53 billion, up 14 percent from $1.18 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Analysts had expected $1.32 billion.

(Credit:
Yahoo)

Chief Executive Jerry Yang expressed optimism. “Yahoo is beginning to realize the benefits of the very substantial and deliberate long-term investments we’ve made to capitalize on the opportunities ahead in display and to recapture momentum in search,” he said in a statement. “We believe we can significantly accelerate our revenue growth, return to our historically high margins, and double our operating cash flow by 2010. This quarter’s solid performance underscores the fact that we are executing on that plan.”

For the second quarter, Yahoo said it expects revenue to range between $1.73 billion and $1.93 billion. Excluding commissions, which at the company are historically at a rate of about 26 percent, revenue would be between $1.28 billion and $1.43 billion.

Yahoo’s future is highly uncertain. In February, shortly after Yahoo announced 1,000 layoffs, Microsoft launched an attempt to acquire Yahoo. This month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer issued a hostile takeover threat, but Yahoo said Microsoft isn’t valuing Yahoo “fully.”

Since then, the pressure has only increased. Ballmer’s deadline is Saturday. Various strategic possibilities have surfaced, ranging from Yahoo using Google’s search-ad results or acquiring Time Warner’s AOL and buying back its stock with funds from a Time Warner investment. And Microsoft apparently is considering bolstering its bid with funding from News Corp. and an acquisition of its MySpace site.

Further pressure comes from Google, the competitive threat that’s catalyzing all these machinations. Google reported a strong quarter last week even as growth slows in the U.S. for people clicking on search advertising.

Strong results could help coax Microsoft to offer a higher bid, an outcome many analysts see as the most likely outcome for Yahoo. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney has a Yahoo stock price target of $34 “based on our belief that Microsoft remains committed to its unsolicited $31 bid offer and is capable of and willing to increase that bid in order to conclude this deal.”

The switch-off of analog TV broadcast signals this February may cause even those who make the switch to lose some channels.

(Credit:
CNET)

The statement comes three weeks after Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, a Democrat, warned that the next presidential administration may inherit a “communications crisis.”

McDowell urged broadcasters, the party he identified as having the most to lose in the transition, to step up their informational campaigns and to tailor the information to local markets in the months leading up to the transition. As an example, he said that technical differences between local markets may require campaigns that urge consumers to also purchase a new antenna to get their DTV converter boxes to work.

To parse McDowell’s statement, he’s probably referring to the fact that, even if consumers buy a converter box and hook it up to their current antenna, they may not receive as many channels as they did before the transition. Digital TV signals use a completely different transmission method from analog, and in many cases we’ve heard reported, people often can’t get the same number of digital channels as analog ones.

As reported in Broadcasting & Cable, FCC chairman Kevin Martin told Congress last month that, after the switch, approximately 15 percent of digital TV stations will not reach as many viewers as their analog signals did. Many viewers during the test of the DTV switchover in Wilmington, N.C., lost access to NBC, for example. Martin said the FCC’s “highest priority” is to address the loss of coverage after the switch, and that FCC engineers are working now to identify the problem areas. How much can be done at this late stage is an open question, however.

What’s your experience? Have you or someone you know made the switch from analog to digital broadcast TV? If so, did you stop receiving certain channels, or even received more? Let us know in comments.

Finally, visual search that isn't dumb.

I have puzzled over several tools that try to put a visual interface on Web search. Most are either too clever, too slow, or both. But a new experiment, ManagedQ, shows us that it’s not the concept that’s been at fault, it’s the execution. This one actually makes sense.

ManagedQ displays Web search results in visual snapshots. The images are bigger and more readable than the thumbnails you get on a search engine like Exalead, and arrayed in front of you so you can process them all at once, unlike Redzee (see: Redzee is fancier, less useful than text). But what’s really useful is that you can select common keywords from your search results and visually find the sites that do and don’t relate.

Hovering over common search terms makes the visual display more helpful.

On the ManagedQ search results there’s a left-hand bar with words that relate to your search. Hovering over any one of them will grey out the results that don’t have the word; selecting a word will rerun the search with the new filter. The words are categorized by people, place, and thing, and while the categorizing algorithm is far from perfect (I’m a person, thank you, not a thing), the concept is useful.

Ask.com does a better job of offering options to narrow or expand a search, but I still like being able to visually see which search results the new terms apply to.

ManagedQ is not, technically, a search engine. It’s what founder David Stat calls a “search application,” since it repurposes another engine’s results (in this case, Google, at least for now). So as a business, it’s not a complete story. But it is an interesting new way to look at search.

CBS has begun testing high-definition streaming video.

Buried in the lab’s section of the network’s Web site is a gallery of short HD clips from shows such as Jericho, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Dexter.

TechCrunch was first to report the story and said the clips are available in H.264 format at 480p, with 720 p and 1080p coming later.

CBS has been overshadowed on the Internet in recent months by Hulu, the video portal operated by NBC Universal and News Corp. Hulu launched earlier this month and has attracted a score of content from other networks, studios, and sports leagues. Hulu has also begun testing high-definition streaming.

It’s still not up to 1.0, but Google on Wednesday announced completion of version 0.8 of OpenSocial, a standard for building social applications on the Web.

One notable difference with OpenSocial 0.8 is the addition of the RESTful API. This addition lets a wider variety of software beside just Web-based widgets running in JavaScript interact with the servers running social applications. For example, it would permit a program running on Windows or on a mobile phone, but not in a Web browser, tap into a social application.

OpenSocial began at Google, but the company won allies for it. Web heavyweights including MySpace.com and Yahoo joined Google to manage the technology through the OpenSocial Foundation. OpenSocial is one theme getting heavy emphasis at the first Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday and Thursday.

The technology consists of a number of standardized Web programming interfaces called APIs; with OpenSocial, a developer can more easily write a single application that runs on several different Web sites.

Programmers are working on building OpenSocial 0.8 support into Apache Shindig, an open-source project that can endow servers with OpenSocial support, Dan Peterson, a Google product manager, said in a blog posting. “Expect to see containers supporting it in the coming weeks and months,” he said.

Other changes beside the RESTful API are documented in the OpenSocial 0.8 release notes.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

SAN DIEGO–These days, I hear about new photo sharing sites just about every day.

That’s especially true when you go to a conference like DemoFall or its winter version, Demo, where over the years, I’ve seen more photo sharing sites than I could ever care to count.

At the same time, the stock photography business has been turned on its ear by the emergence of Web 2.0 and phenomenons like crowdsourcing.

On Monday here, a startup called Photrade took the stage to show off their new service, which combines both photo sharing and stock photography in a bid to give people a way to earn some money with the digital cameras that are ubiquitous these days.

In effect, the service is about connecting photographers, publishers and advertisers in a single marketplace, Photrade CEO Andew Paradise told me in an interview recently, that lets the photographers get paid when publishers use their pictures.

The idea for the site, Paradise explained, is that there are more and more talented photographers taking pictures and posting them online. The days in which only traditional professional photographers can take the kinds of pictures advertisers would want are over, in other words.

But until now, Photrade argues, talented amateurs haven’t had a way to get paid for their work. And at the same time, it has been difficult for photographers to maintain control over the pictures when they’re posted online.

So Photrade aims to solve those problems.

On the one hand, Photrade helps protect photographers by embedding custom watermarks in users’ pictures with a system that also allows for updating and changing the watermarks any time they want.

In addition, the system allows photographers to track usage of their photos, so that they can determine who is using them. And, if they decide they’re not happy with someone specific using a photo, they can block access to that picture. But if that happens, the user gets a note allowing them to ask the photographer for permission. This, of course, is a path to asking for payment for use of the picture.

And in a further bid to protect photographers’ intellectual property, Photrade uses tools to make it difficult to steal photos without permission.

The financial aspect of Photrade is an embedded advertising system in which advertisers can link to contextually relevant photos. And in that case, a small text ad is embedded in the frame of the photo in a place that viewers can easily see but which doesn’t interfere directly with the photo itself.

Photrade gives photographers a way to share their pictures and make some money from ad revenue in the process.

(Credit:
Photrade)

This, of course, is the revenue model. And while most photographers will never earn a penny with their work, those whose work attracts attention and advertisers could make out well on this service.

In that regard, Photrade is much like other stock photography sites, except that anyone can add any photos they want to the site, and the revenue comes from advertising, not just from publishers using their pictures.