DECEMBER 2006 • Vo1. 1 • No.7
B r o a d b a n d P r o p e r t i e S
M
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Em e r g i n g A p p l i c a t i o n s F o r A C o n n e c t e d W o r l d
The Internet
Arrives in the Living Room
What’s the best way to put broadband content on the television screen?
And who’s the audience for Internet on the TV?
Killer App looks at some of the solutions vendors are proposing
: T e l e m e d i c i n e
Magazine
Emerging Applications For A Connected World
DECEMBER 2006 • Vo1 1 • No. 7
EDITOR
Masha Zager
[email protected]
Telemedicine Brings
Mammography
to the Rez
By Nicole Fawcett, University of Michigan
DESIGN DIRECTOR
N
Irving Grunbaum
Assistant Editor
Geoff Daily
Contributing Editor
Michael Render
Contributing WriterS
Kassandra Kania
Robert E. Calem
Webmaster, KillerApp.Com
Doug Thompson
Killer App Ventures
Steven S. Ross, Senior Advisor
ative American women livleadership network that promotes
ing in North Dakota and
cancer control research among NaSouth Dakota are comtive Americans. “But what happens
ing to the University of Michigan
when a woman needs to be called
Comprehensive Cancer Center for
back for more images?”
breast cancer screenings without
ever leaving the reservation.
Images Beamed
Cross Country
In traditional mobile mammography, a large truck equipped with
The radiologists found that by usmammography machines travels to
ing digital mammography instead
rural sites, and the mammograms
of films and adding satellite capaare printed and read days later
bility, they were able to beam the
when the truck returns to a hospidigital mammograms back to Ann
tal or imaging center. Radiologists
Arbor, Michigan, to be read.
at the University of Michigan deIn the pilot program whose recided to improve on this method.
sults Roubidoux presented at the
“ M o b i l e
annual meeting
mammography is
of the Radiologia critical way for
cal Society of
A satellite link allows
Native American
North America,
women to get a
a mobile mamNative American
m a m m o g r a m ,”
mography unit
women to get
explains
Dr.
owned by the
Marilyn RoubiIndian
Health
real-time readings of
doux, professor
Service visited
mammograms taken
of radiology at
seven American
the University of
Indian reservaby a mobile unit.
Michigan Meditions in North
cal School and a
member of ‘the
Spirit
of
Eagles,’ a
Himi Kittner
President, Killer App Ventures
Broadband Properties LLC
Scott DeGarmo, CEO, BBP LLC
KILLER APP MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2006
The Indian Health Service mammography van
: E c o n o m i c
Dakota and South Dakota and
performed 515 digital mammograms between March and July of
this year. The digital images were
transmitted via satellite to radiologists in the Breast Imaging Division of the University of Michigan
Radiology Department. The average time between sending the films
and obtaining a report for these
women was 50 minutes. In ideal
technological and weather conditions, it was as fast as 30 minutes.
Of the 58 women who needed
additional images, 72 percent were
able to get those tests done immediately, or returned within three
days for more imaging.
Radiologists found the mammogram images transmitted via satellite were of excellent quality, on a
par with the digital mammograms
they read daily in the clinic.
Making Health Care
Accessible
Only about 10 percent of Native
American women over age 40 get
a yearly mammogram. In many
cases, women live on rural reservations where they must drive as
far as 100 miles to have a mammogram. After the test, it can take up
to a week before a woman receives
the results. If additional tests are
needed, it is often difficult to arrange for that followup.
“What I used to have to do is
drive about 90 to 100 miles to get a
mammogram done,” said one Native
American woman who participated
in the mobile mammography. “It
was real convenient to have that unit
come directly to our home town.
There are a lot of women in our town
who need to have the mammograms
done that usually don’t come.”
The Indian Health Service plans
to implement this service again
in 2007, with collaboration from
the University of Michigan.
Nicole Fawcett is a media coordinator for
the University of Michigan Comprehensive
Cancer Center.
D e v e l o p m e n t
Fiber-Wired City
Attracts Managed
Services Businesses
By Geoff Daily
T
he Internet is often described as the 21st-century equivalent of the
19th-century railroad network: locations without access to it are
left off the economic map, while locations with the best access are
poised for growth. That’s why cities and towns have been trying to spur
economic growth by building their own broadband access networks.
But does municipal broadband really make a difference to local business? And do higher network speeds have proportionally higher impacts?
The evidence is still anecdotal, but it’s mounting. This is one of those
anecdotes.
Fiber-to-the-Premises in Jackson
The Jackson Energy Authority, a publicly owned utility, recently built a
fiber-to-the-premises system in its home town of Jackson, Tennessee and
surrounding areas, and opened the system to service providers who sell
telephone, Internet access and cable television to local residents and businesses. Cinergy Commmunication and Aeneas Internet and Telephone
both offer high-speed Internet access over the fiber network, at speeds
that range up to 10 Mbps.
At least three companies in
Jackson are taking advantage of
this state-of-the-art network to
deliver technology-based services
and applications to the businesses of Jackson and beyond: Trinity
Solutions, Xpert Systems Integration (www.xsysi.com), and Interworks (www.interworks.us). All
of these companies actually locate servers in Jackson Energy’s
operations center.
These three companies have
positioned themselves as providers of IT support services for
small businesses. “We’re an IT department for a company that’s too small
for an IT department,” says Paul Brian, president of Interworks.
“Whether it’s an attorney, a doctor’s office, or real estate, why not let
companies keep doing what they’re doing and we’ll do the IT work for
them?” asks Ted Beck, president of Xpert Systems Integration. “We do
the infrastructure all the way up to the end-user experience.”
And Michael Laffoon, CEO of Trinity Solutions says, “We provide any
type of computer solution for the west Tennessee area – we’ve written
software applications, we’ve done networks with firewalls, and all the way
down to troubleshooting why your printer isn’t working.”
For a small city,
Jackson, TN, boasts a
high concentration of firms
that provide off-site
computing resources
for other businesses.
The reason: its state-ofthe-art fiber network.
KILLER APP MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2006 3
: E c o n o m i c
From Daily Backups to
Hosted Services
Interworks’ primary application is
offsite backup, which ensures the
security and safety of business-critical information. A software client
installed on the customer’s server
automatically backs up any changed
files on a daily basis to the cluster of
servers that Interworks maintains in
Jackson Energy’s operations center.
“The nice thing about it is that since
it’s done over the Internet, it doesn’t
matter where the client is,” says Brian. “I’ve got one client backing up
data that’s a freight liner dealership
based in British Columbia.”
For customers who don’t want to
manage their servers locally, Trinity Solutions maintains servers for
them in Jackson Energy’s operations
center. The customers’ applications
run on these remote servers, which
they can access over the network
with a PC or a terminal (essentially
a keyboard, mouse and monitor).
“We’ve had great success with the
customers … not having a server
in each office, but having a central
server through which everyone can
access their applications,” says Laffoon. Like Interworks, Trinity also
provides offsite backup services.
Xpert Systems Integration has
taken this model a step further.
Customers can not only access their own applications
on the servers XSI maintains in Jackson Energy’s
operations center; they
can also purchase software as a service from
XSI. For a monthly peruser fee, customers have
remote access to the Microsoft Office suite from
any PC or terminal. This
arrangement means they
don’t have to worry about
buying software upgrades or
about upgrading their servers
to accommodate newer software
versions. “The service flattens out
our customers’ expenditures,” says
Beck. As soon as we certify Of
KILLER APP MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2006
D e v e l o p m e n t
fice 2007, they’ll get it without any
change in price.”
Network-based office applications are increasingly becoming
available from large companies, including Microsoft and Google. But
Beck still sees a bright future for
smaller companies like his, which
can offer the personal touch: “We
won’t compete with those guys,
but we may resell their stuff… The
most important relationship is with
the customer, and that’s what we’ve
been building.”
Why Fiber is Important
Jackson’s fiber network had, and
still has, a profound effect on the
way these three companies do business. XSI’s hosted Microsoft Office service was directly inspired by
Jackson Energy’s deployment of fiber to the premises. “When we saw
the network getting built, we started
thinking it would be a good entry
point to provide services to people
in our area that benefit from this
high speed and reliable backbone,”
says Beck. “We saw an opportunity
to realize and take advantage of
this network by becoming an applications service provider.”
For Trinity Solutions, the deployment of fiber optics meant not having to deal with so many complaints
about Internet outages. “The JEA
fiber network is strong. It’s secure.
It’s not always going up and down,”
says Laffoon. “We don’t get a lot
of calls from our customers saying,
‘Hey, I can’t get on the Internet today.’ When we do get those calls,
they’re usually not on the JEA fiber
network.”
And the dynamic bandwidth allocation on the fiber network gives
these companies the tools they
need to support continued growth.
“Whether we need more bandwidth
in our office or in the operations
center for our backup business, it’s
just a matter of making a phone
call to turn up the bandwidth,” says
Brian. Before the fiber network was
available, Interworks could only get
additional bandwidth by ordering
more T1 lines and waiting for them
to be physically put in the ground.
With the capacious bandwidth of
fiber, companies like Xpert Systems
Integration are free to dream up
new ways to build their businesses. Beck says he’s considering several possible new
services: “We’re looking
at … moving further into
the Microsoft direction with applications
like Exchange 2007, as
well as exploring some
VOIP add-ons. We’re
also considering offering document management services where
companies can save images to the network from
copy machines. And we’re
investigating things like video for surveillance.”
Geoff Daily is the assistant editor of Killer
App Magazine. He can be reached at
[email protected].
: B ROAD B AND
V i d e o
Broadband Content: Coming to
a Living Room Near You
By Masha Zager
I
n the late 1990s, when we began hearing about Internettelevision convergence, the
idea seemed comical. Even on postage-stamp-sized players, Internet
video consisted of short segments
with jumpy motion and out-of-sync
sound. Who would want to watch
that on television?
With better software and faster
connectivity, the Internet today
can bring us full-screen, high-definition, long-form videos. But now
that Internet video looks more like
television, people are starting to
wonder why they aren’t watching
it on television. Viewers settling in
to watch a movie or TV
show usually want to sit
comfortably (and socially) in the living room,
watch the big screen and
listen to high-quality
sound coming from their
television speakers.
Delivering broadband
content to the television
screen is not a technical problem
– there’s no shortage of products
and services that accomplish this
task. Nor is there any lack of content. Film, television and music
companies are all rushing to put
their content libraries online, either publishing them directly to
their Web sites or syndicating them
to other site owners, or both. Many
entertainment companies are developing video content specifically
for the Web. And, of course, video
isn’t the only Internet service that
plays well on TV – you can also
read your e-mail or do your banking on the television screen.
Why, then, are viewers still
watching video clips on their lap-
tops, propping their feet on the
desk to catch a missed episode of
“Lost” or downloading movies
to a DVD and carrying the DVD
into the living room? Though some
brave souls have ventured into
home networking, they’re decidedly in the minority. For the rest of
us, the Internet delivers content to
the PC, and that’s where it stays.
One reason Internet-TV convergence hasn’t yet become standard is
that no standard for it exists. Every
company in the market seems to advocate a different technology and a
different business model. At least
for the present, there seem to be
over the Internet rather than over
its own access network.
NeuLion works with several
“channel partners” that aggregate
content for niche audiences – either immigrant groups like Chinese or Africans, or special-interest groups like hockey fans or
church members. For example, the
Chinese-language KyLinTV service offers 26 streaming television
channels from Taiwan, China and
Hong Kong, as well as video on
demand. These channels provide a
full range of programming in Mandarin and Cantonese, including
news, drama, movies, music shows
and sports.
While the channel
partners create and market their channel lineups,
NeuLion provides the
infrastructure and does
all the behind-the-scenes
work. It gives its channel
partners the proprietary
IPTV software and hardware platform they need to deliver
programming. When a customer
signs up for KyLinTV, he actually
speaks to the NeuLion sales center, which takes the order and provisions the service. The customer
then receives a NeuLion set-top
box with KyLin’s brand on it. Since
the set-top box connects the customer’s television directly to the
broadband modem, the customer
doesn’t have to have a PC, only a
broadband connection of 700 Kbps
or more. Then NeuLion bills the
customer each month.
What will it take to bring
Internet video to the television screen?
several plausible models for bringing broadband video to the television screen. Following are profiles
of two companies that have taken
very different approaches to this
challenge, as well as a sampling of
the strategies that other companies
are adopting.
NeuLion’s Walled Garden
Founded by a group of former
Computer Associates executives,
and financed by the founders of
Computer Associates and Cablevision, NeuLion (www.neulion.com)
began offering services in 2005. It
operates somewhat like a traditional cable-television provider – except that it delivers programming
Like a Cable Service…
but Portable
From the customer’s point of view,
DECEMBER 2006 KILLER APP MAGAZINE : H o m e
according to NeuLion EVP Chris
Wagner, the service looks a lot like
cable or satellite television. There
are monthly or annual fees for basic service and premium service,
plus additional usage fees for video on demand. The customer gets
cable-quality pictures on the television screen and uses a cable-type
remote control to channel-surf,
record, replay shows that were
broadcast earlier, or access video
on demand.
One difference from cable and
satellite is that the box is portable.
A customer can bring the set-top
box along on a business trip or
a vacation and hook it up to any
broadband connection, anywhere
in the world. However, even though
the content is delivered over the
Internet, the customer has no access through the set-top box to any
other Internet video – even free
content – but only to the service he
subscribed to.
This model has been a success, according to Alan Zhang,
KyLinTV’s director of operations.
In its first year, KyLin attracted
10,000 customers from all over the
United States and Canada and was
able to expand its programming
from 19 to 26 channels and build a
video library of 20,000 hours. It is
even starting to work with producers here and in China to originate
its own programming.
KyLin has worked hard to market its service, placing ads in Chinese-language newspapers, on Web
sites like Sina.com and even on
Chinese broadcast TV stations, as
well as using Google Ads. It has developed reseller agreements with
stores, business associations and
individuals in Chinese neighborhoods; Wagner says that some
resellers create buzz about
the service by holding parties at their homes where
they show movies on KyLin
stations.
6
KILLER APP MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2006
N e t w o r k i n g
Finding Niche Audiences
High-quality content and diligent
marketing aren’t the only reason
for KyLin’s success. The strategy
works because it matches programming with specialized but geographically dispersed audiences.
KyLin’s customers – and those of
NeuLion’s other channel partners
– aren’t trying to watch broadband
video on television; they are just
trying to watch television. The content, and not the technology, is the
driver for them. They subscribe to
broadband TV because it has the
content they want.
Of course, Chinese-speaking
Americans do have other options:
Satellite television offers a variety
of Chinese-language channels, as
do some cable systems; Chinese
programming is also available
on DVD. But none of these have
KyLinTV’s range and diversity.
For example, cable television in
New York City’s Chinatown offers
three Chinese channels, compared
to KyLin’s 26.
NeuLion’s model is a good illustration of the “long tail” phenomenon made popular by author Chris
Anderson in his recent best-selling
book of the same name. Because
Internet-based services can supply a large geographical area, they
make it economical to sell a huge
variety of niche content that appeals to narrow audiences. Just as
Amazon.com can stock a far larger
selection of books than your local
bookstore can, and just as Netflix
can offer more movies than your
local video store, so NeuLion can
potentially support many more
television channels than a locallybased cable television company.
With services such as NeuLion’s,
every type of content can now find
its audience, and every audience
can find its content.
MediaREADY’s
Wide-Open Landscape
In contrast to NeuLion, which creates a cable TV–like experience on
the Internet, MediaREADY (www.
mediareadyinc.com) wants to create a convergent service that combines the best of both Internet and
television worlds. MediaREADY
users gain the Internet’s advantages – the freedom to explore and the
ability to multitask – while benefiting from the comfort and ease of
use that television offers.
MediREADY grew out of a
company called Video Without
Boundaries that designed products
for the corporate environment. In
2002, it began focusing on consumer electronics that allowed people
to manage digital media in the
home – first photos and music, and
later video.
The company’s newest product, the MediaREADY MC, is a
broadband-enabled set-top box
with bells and whistles galore.
Like the NeuLion set-top box, the
MediaREADY MC connects to a
broadband modem or home network, streams broadband video to
the television screen and performs
DVR functions like recording,
searching and playing back television programs. But that’s where the
similarity ends.
The Media Jukebox
The MC is a “media jukebox,”
streaming content to the television
from almost anywhere – from the
computer’s hard drive, from USBconnected memory devices, MP3 players
or
cameras,
from CDs
: H o m e
or DVDs. It also manages media
libraries. It has Bluetooth support
for headsets, gaming consoles,
remote controls and keyboards.
Higher-end versions of the device
include high-definition tuning and
software tools for custom installers
to use in setting up elaborate home
theaters.
And that’s not all. The
MediaREADY MC offers unlimited access to the Internet through
the Firefox browser. The Web interface defaults to a portal that
guides users to services that tend
to work well on a television screen,
such as video, music and banking.
But users are free to visit any Web
site they want to. “We handhold the
average person and guide them to
places where they’ll be happy with
the experience, while giving them
the flexibility to go elsewhere,” explains MediaREADY EVP David
Novak.
The portal also directs users to
communications services like email, instant messaging and VoIP.
“Basically, it does anything that
becomes interesting in the living
room,” Novak says.
N e t w o r k i n g
But that’s still not all. Unlike
earlier
generations
of
MediaREADY devices, the MC
can multitask. A user can watch a
DVD and conduct a VoIP phone
call at the same time, while reading a broadband news ticker at the
bottom of the screen – all without
impacting quality.
What the MediaREADY
Doesn’t Do – and Why
There are applications that the
MediaREADY MC isn’t optimized
for – notably office applications
and gaming – and those omissions
are deliberate. People like to work
on office applications in their home
offices and to play games in the den
or bedroom.
Novak believes that Media Center PCs (computers designed to operate Windows XP Media Center)
suffer from trying to be both PC
and media center. It’s not just that
consumers use the Media Center
PC in the office instead of the living room, he says; they also complain about contention between
office applications and media applications.
Similarly,
because
Microsoft’s Xbox is targeted at gamers, who are often exiled from
the living room by non-gaming
family members, its general-purpose capabilities may go unused.
MediaREADY, on the other hand,
is optimized for media applications
that tend to be used in a single location, the living room.
While NeuLion has a “narrowcast” strategy, MediaREADY
casts as wide a net as possible. Its
market may be limited by disposable income (the base model of
the MC, with a suggested retail
price of about $800, is about four
times the price of the NeuLion
set-top box.), but it is not limited
by interest in specific content. In
spite of the enormous number of
functions the MC performs, the
company has worked at making
the device easy to set up. It also
tries to make it easy for users to
access as many different services
as possible.
In contrast to NeuLion’s relationships with content providers
and aggregators, MediaREADY
avoids exclusive relationships.
It acts as a Web affiliate, guiding users from its portal to content providers it thinks are appropriate and taking a share of
ad revenues. “As we get bigger
and have more eyeballs, we can
change that model and start offering premium content,” Novak
says. “We can bring that up in
the interface and showcase it for
a larger percentage or a flat fee
from the provider. But I don’t
want to stop you from going to
other services.”
The ability to stream pictures
from broadband to TV has been
available for several years. The
reason it’s starting to take off
today, Novak says, is content:
“YouTube and Myspace – content
that’s wildly different from what
the Internet has seen before.
Those kinds of services, as well
as VoIP and videoconferencing, will really drive
television as an access
point. Devices like ours
will become more relevant
to the consumer’s life….
It’s the content and services that will make it into
a mainstream product.”
DECEMBER 2006 KILLER APP MAGAZINE : B ROAD B AND
It’s safe to say that Internet
video will show up soon in
many American living rooms.
How, and when, is an open
question. Users with highend PCs can take the do-ityourself approach of cabling
the PC’s video and sound
systems to the television set.
Here are some of the other
solutions on the market:
Advanced Technetix
www.advancedtechnetix.com
Product: Access Key
Marketed to: Network providers and
end users
Access Key set-top boxes
connect the television with
the PC. Users can play
Internet video (including high-definition video),
play online games, listen to music, make VoIP
calls, videoconference, run computing
applications, store data and more.
Akimbo
www.akimbo.com
Product: RCA Akimbo Player
Marketed to: End users
The Akimbo Player is a set-top box connecting
a broadband modem or home network to the
television. It gives users access to the Akimbo
Service, a selection of video programs and new
and old movies from Movielink. The Akimbo
Service can also be accessed through Media
Center PCs.
Alcatel-Lucent
www.alcatel-lucent.com
Product: My Own TV
Marketed to: Telecom operators
V i d e o
can use it either for branded, walled garden
and aggregated content portals, or for
free-to-view niche and minority content.
MediaREADY
www.mediareadyinc.com
Product: MediaREADY MC
Marketed to: End users
Apple Computer
www.apple.com
Product: iTV
Marketed to: End users
MediaREADY’s set-top box includes DVR
functions, plays CDs and DVDs, and streams PC
and Internet content to the television screen.
(See article for details.)
As of press time, the details of Apple’s iTV
player (and even its final name) have not been
revealed. Apple has said it plans to sell a set-top
box that will connect the PC and TV, allowing
customers to watch content on television that
they have downloaded to the PC from iTunes
online store.
Microsoft
www.microsoft.com
Product: Windows XP Media Center
Marketed to: End users
Digeo
www.digeo.com
Product: Moxi Media Center for Cable
Marketed to: Cable providers
Digeo’s set-top box
connects the television,
cable service and home
network. In addition to
playing cable television channels and
performing DVR functions, it can play photos
and music from networked PCs on the television.
ICTV
www.ictv.com
Product: Active Video Distribution Network
Marketed to: Network providers and
content owners
Intel
www.intel.com
Product: Viiv technology
Marketed to: PC manufacturers/end users
Siemens’ set-top boxes connect the television to
both the video service and the broadband
modem. In addition to playing television
channels and performing DVR functions, they
provide the user with access to Internet content.
Amino
www.amino.com
Product: AmiNET125i
Marketed to: Network providers
ITVN
www.itvn.com
Product: ITVN service
Marketed to: End users
Amino’s set-top box connects the television to
both the video service and the wireless home
network. In addition to playing television
channels, it provides the user with access to
Internet content. Amino says network providers
ITVN markets subscriptions to a variety of
broadband television channels and provides
subscribers with a free set-top box that connects
the television to the broadband modem or
wireless home network.
DECEMBER 2006
Neulion supplies IPTV
hardware/software
platform to content
aggregators and set-top
boxes to their subscribers.
Set-top boxes connect broadband modem with
television. Subscribers have access only to the
Internet content they have subscribed to.
(See article for details.)
Siemens
gigaset.siemens.com
Product: Gigaset HD series
Marketed to: Telecom operators
Viiv-enabled PCs are multimedia PCs optimized
for entertainment and designed to be connected to the television.
KILLER APP MAGAZINE
NeuLion
www.neulion.com
Product: NeuLion IPTV Platform
Marketed to: Content aggregators
AVDN software delivers broadband video to
cable, IPTV and mobile viewers with any type of
set-top box or handset.
My Own TV software lets users upload
movies and photos from the PC to the operator’s
network and share them with selected viewers,
who access the content
on a dedicated television
channel.
Windows XP Media Center runs on Media
Center PCs made by several vendors. Media
Center PCs have set-top box functionality in
addition to PC functionality. Several interfaces
connect to the television so that any Internet
content can be viewed on the television.
TiVo
www.tivo.com
Product: TiVoCast
Marketed to: End users
TiVo supplies a line of
digital video recorders
that can be connected via
broadband. Subscribers
with these broadband-connected DVRs have
free access to the TiVoCast service, which makes
selected Internet video content available on the
television screen.