I'm moderating another StreamingMedia.com webinar today at 2pm on the topic of "Solving Today's Top Hurdles in Online Video". Limelight Networks will be showing content owners and publishers how they can:

• streamline your video workflow from the ingest process to library management and channel creation
• simplify content syndication and distribution to PCs, tablets, and smartphones
• integrate your video with other IT functions including content management systems, ad serving networks, and content delivery network services
• improve analytics data for continually optimized video performance

We'll also be having a Q&A session answering your practical questions on ways to improve your online processes and technologies for video management and distribution, so sign up here for the webinar and bring your questions.

StreamingMedia.com's sister site, OnlineVideo.net, has just launched The Ultimate HTML5 Video Guide, a thorough resource for those struggling to learn about the new world of HTML5 video. The guide contains features, how-tos, FAQs, and videos by the OnlineVideo.net team of experts. The guide can be found at www.onlinevideo.net/html5

HTML5 video is a new online standard, and because it’s new there’s a lot of confusion about what it means and why it’s important. The OnlineVideo.net experts have seen a huge demand from readers for information on both the basics and details of HTML5 video. Anyone who wants to serve video that will play on the iPad or iPhone, and be viewable on a wide range of browsers and devices, needs to know what HTML5 video is and how to create it.

With that in mind, the OnlineVideo.net team has created an essential resource for anyone struggling to get up to speed on HTML5 video. The guide starts off with FAQs and basic articles to help people learn the essentials of HTML5 video.

Besides articles, the guide contains how-to and comparison videos created by video industry expert Jan Ozer. The videos walk video creators through the steps of encoding video for playback on iPads and iPhones, and also show how H.264 and WebM encoding programs compare. The Ultimate HTML5 Video Guide also includes timely HTML5 video news, so that readers can learn which companies are offering HTML5 video solutions.

If you have any questions about the HTML5 video guide or want to contribute to it, please contact Eric, the editor of the website at erics@streamingmedia.com

At 2pm ET today I'll be moderating another StreamingMedia.com webinar with RealNetworks about their enterprise streaming solution, the Helix Media Delivery Platform. During this webinar, Real will cover today's hottest topics, including:

• Streaming multi-format video to mobile phones, including Apple iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Nokia
• Webcasting whose quality rivals digital television with IP TV for the Enterprise
• Launching your company's own internal "YouTube" with Helix Media Library

We'll be saving a lot of time for Q&A with Real's presenters so sign up here for the webinar and bring your questions.

While many industry conferences do a good job of bringing people together, one of the best ways for vendors to collect industry data and learn what products and services customers need is via small, focused networking events. With that goal in mind I am please to announce that StreamingMedia.com is starting a new series of events called "Dinner With Dan".

The events, which I will organize and moderate, brings together end-user customers for a dinner and discussion around a particular topic. These dinners are a great way for vendors to get one-on-one face time with a small group of customers and utilizing my rolodex, make new introductions to companies they may not normally be able to easily get in front of.

I have done a few of these private dinners already and they have been very successful at bringing together about a dozen customers to have a fun and rewarding conversation about their business challenges and the products and services they are looking for in the market. The sponsoring vendor, only one per dinner, gets to ask questions, collect feedback and get in-person introductions directly with decision makers.

I'm excited to start offering this as a service to companies as I get a lot of requests from vendors for customer introductions and these dinners are a great way of pulling together a small group of executives for a very rewarding discussion. If you are interested in more details on these events, please email or call Joel Unickow at StreamingMedia.com (250-716-8815) who can give you all the details.

I’m pleased to announced that we have just launched the new website for the 2011 Content Delivery Summit, taking place May 9th, at the Hilton hotel in NYC. Now in its third year, the Content Delivery Summit is a one-day conference designed to bring together telecom carriers, service providers, content owners, and industry vendors for a detailed look at CDN platforms and the delivery of video and rich-media content.

The summit will include case studies on real-world deployments, demos of new technology platforms and discussions on business model considerations for over-the-top video delivery. The program agenda and speakers are still being developed but topics and technologies that will be covered at the Content Delivery Summit will include:

• Learn how telcos, carriers and operators are deploying service provider platforms
• Hear how cable operators are managing and monetizing OTT video
• See demos of transparent caching and app acceleration solutions
• Discuss deployment architecture, build vs. buy strategies and the video ecosystem
• Hear about future trending costs and its impact on the market

Now that the site is live, I have started planning the agenda and will be placing speakers and presenters over the next four weeks. If you’re interested in being involved, please reach out to me quickly. I am actively looking for ideas and feedback on what topics we should cover and am looking to involve as many carriers, telcos, ISPs and content owners as possible. I am also looking for a second keynote speaker from the telco or carrier community.

To give you an incentive to open up your rolodex and help me find good speakers, I’m offering a $100 Amazon gift card per speaker you introduce me to that gets placed as a speaker. You can make an introduction for me via email, on Twitter or simply send me the person’s contact details.

Please note: The referral fee will not be paid to vendors who are placing their own customers.

On Thursday, Limelight Networks announced that it was looking to raise approximately $71M in a public offering of 10M shares of its common stock, priced at $7.10 per share. In their filing, the company says they plan to use the money to, "fund capital expenditures for network and other equipment, as well as for working capital and other general corporate purposes." They also mention they may use a portion of the money to acquire "complementary businesses".

The offering is expected to close around the first week of March and it will be interesting to see if Limelight uses any of this money to do acquisitions of a similar size like they have done for Delve Networks and EyeWonder. I do think they will do one or two small deals. There are a lot of troubled assets in the market right now and quite a few companies who can't raise another round of funding who are looking for an exit strategy. The real question is whether or not any of these companies have technologies or a platforms worth acquiring that really fits into the CDN ecosystem.

To date, we have not seen many acquisitions by CDNs and the only ones I remember over the past 18 months have been; Delve Networks and EyeWonder by Limelight, Bandcon by Highwinds and Velocitude by Akamai. It looks as if the CDNs don't see a lot of potential synergies with their business and other vendors in the market right now.

Today at 2pm ET I will be moderating another StreamingMedia.com webinar where Microsoft will detail how you can transition from the legacy Windows Media Encoder to Microsoft's new video production tool, Expression Encoder. They will discuss how to effectively use your Windows Media Encoder knowledge with Expression Encoder, how to migrate your Windows Media content to Silverlight, and how to take advantage of new capabilities in Expression Encoder.

Microsoft will also detail tips and tricks to maximize your encoder settings and we'll be taking a lot of your questions during the live Q&A portion of the event. So sign up here, bring your questions and get ready to learn how you can improve your encoding workflow.