In the April/May issue of Streaming Media magazine, we’ll be announcing the first annual Streaming Media All-Stars—the 25 people who’ve done the most to advance, evangelize, and expand online video and audio—and we want you to help us pick the team. StreamingMedia.com’s Editor Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen is leading the awards program and needs your help.

We’re looking for both familiar faces and unsung heroes. We’re looking for visionaries and tough-minded realists, for industry veterans and recent disruptors. However you describe them, they’re the people who’ve made this industry what it is, whether their contribution has come in the way of new technology, innovative delivery, or a whole new way of looking at online video and audio.

Because this is the inaugural Streaming Media All-Star team, we’ll be honoring 25 people who’ve had the most impact on streaming media over the last 10 years. We know there are more than 25 individuals, so in the future, we’ll focus primarily on current movers and shakers, but now is the time to acknowledge the people who are of true historic importance. While I am not leading the awards program, it is my hope that we will acknowledge those who don’t normally get a lot of credit or who’s credit usually goes to the CEO or executive in the company, even when it was the person in the trenches who really did the work. This is not about giving out an award to whomever has the best title or the most well known, but rather those who have made a real impact on the industry and have helped move our industry forward.

The Streaming Media editorial staff will put together the final All-Star team roster in time for NAB and Streaming Media East 2008. But we can’t do it alone, so we’re looking for nominations from you.

Just click here and enter the name of your All-Star nominee and a short description of why you think he or she deserves recognition.

The cutoff date for nominations will be February 11. No nominations will be accepted after 11:59 p.m., February 11, 2008. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email Eric at awards@streamingmedia.com

StreamingMedia.com is looking to hire someone who is interested in being the conference chair for the Streaming Media Europe show taking place October 15-17th in London. With all of the other shows I am working on in the U.S. and the growth of our business overall, I won’t be able to chair the European show this year.

We are looking for a part-time person who is willing to work with me on the program but will primarily take the lead in organizing the session topics, selecting speakers and being the conference chair on-site during the three days of the show. You must be located in or near the UK and must have experience in planning conferences and/or have a good working knowledge of the online video industry.

This is part-time work that can be done over many months and other than a few specific deadlines, is the kind of work someone who is organized could accomplish quickly. This is also a tremendous opportunity for the right person who wants to have a real impact on the European online video market and wants to use this event to help establish themselves as a thought leader in the industry. You get to decide how the industry is educated and brand yourself as someone who is tied directly into the space.

If you are interested, please contact me ASAP with your resume and an outline of your experience in the industry as it pertains to conference planning. We will be scheduling some in-person meetings next month in London to talk to those who may be interested. 

Back in September, I posted a list of CDN providers for video delivery and since that post, more providers continue to enter the market. Today, I am tracking over 30 providers for online video delivery (which can now easily be found at www.cdnlist.com) be it via streaming, progressive download, P2P or hybrid solutions.

The last time I made a list like this I got all sorts of angry comments
from many of the companies on the list about me unfairly comparing
their company to another company. No where in this post am I comparing
any company, product, revenue, size, geographic reach, formats
supported etc…. This is simply a list of the providers I am tracking
in the market who offer video delivery services.

Every provider has
different strengths and weakness all based on many different needs of a
specific customer. And before I get a million questions about why
Amazon is not on this list, Amazon’s S3 offering does not count as a CDN in my eyes. Also, this list is based on my interpretation of what a "CDN" is. Many people have different takes and opinions on what makes a CDN and these days, the term "CDN" is very broad.

Maybe you think differently than I do on what classifies a CDN and would have a different list than I do. But based on what I think a CDN for video is, in alphabetical order these are the delivery networks I track in the industry

• Advection.NET (stream, download)
• Akamai (stream, download)
• AT&T (stream, download)
• BitGravity (stream, download)
• BitTorrent (P2P)
• CacheFly (download)
• CacheLogic Changed name to Velocix (stream, download, P2P)
• ChinaCache (stream, download)
• CDNetworks (stream, download)
• Digital Fountain (stream – launching Q1 2008)
• EdgeCast (stream, download)
• Grid Networks (P2P)
• Highwinds (stream, download)
• Ignite Technologies (P2P, download)
• Internap (stream, download)
• Itiva (P2P)
• Level 3 (stream, download)
• Limelight Networks (stream, download)
• Mirror Image (stream, download)
• Move Networks (streaming via HTTP)
• NaviSite (stream, download)
• Octoshape (P2P)
• Pando Networks (P2P)
• Panther Express (download)
• PEER1 (download)
• Rawflow (P2P)
• Rinera (don’t know)
• Solid State Networks (P2P)
• Swarmcast (streaming via HTTP)
• VeriSign (stream, P2P)
• Voxel.net (stream, download)

A quick round-up of some of the latest hiring’s in the online video industry:

• DeWayne Nelon, former CEO at Ortiva Wireless is now the CEO at Avot Media.

• Paul Alfieri, formerly from Motorola is now the head of Worldwide Corporate Communications for Limelight Networks.

• Rick Holtman, formerly from the ROO Group, is now the VP of sales for NeuLion.

• G Gooder, formerly from The FeedRoom is now the Director of Business Development at Brightcove.

• Duane Sulo, formerly from Mirror Image is now the Director of East Coast sales for EdgeCast.

• Steve Chung, former VP of Business Development at CDNetworks, has now been promoted to the CSO and EVP of Global Markets.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will highlight it here on the blog – free of charge.

Thanks to the generous folks over at Microsoft, they have provided me with nine copies of Expression Studio that I can give away on the blog. The Expression Studio bundle includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Media and Expression Design and retails for $599. Expression Studio also includes a license for Expression Encoder and anyone can currently download a 180 day trail of the encoder here.

This drawing is now over. Dustin Reyes, Brett Stime and Jeff Parr won the drawing.

I will be giving these away in batches of three at a time and would like to give them away to those who will really use them as part of their daily job. To qualify to win a copy you must leave one comment in this post with a suggestion for Microsoft on how they can improve any aspect of Expression, Silverlight or Windows Media. Have you seen a feature you’d like included? Is there something missing that you think should be in the next version? Leave a comment with a working
e-mail address. I will pick three users a week from today using a random number picker website and
ship them out to the winners at no cost.

If any company is interested in getting exposure for their video
related product on my blog and is willing to give away the product, contact me.
I will post pictures of the product, link to the company website and potentially write a product review or link to other reviews on the web. It’s
great exposure on a blog that does over 300,000 page views a month.

Considering I am in the online video industry, some may say I am crazy for not wanting to follow the bandwagon that wants to shout from the top of their lungs that TV is all but dead. Yes, I get the impact online video is having on traditional broadcasters on many fronts, but when folks like the NY Times publish articles proclaiming that "TV is becoming obsolete", then the industry is setting everyone’s expectations incorrectly. TV is anything but obsolete.

Online video is having a huge impact on the way content is created, marketed and consumed, but distributing video online is not replacing traditional broadcast programming. I know some are under the impression that one day your computer will become your TV, but that’s not going to happen and we all know the Internet can’t even support those kind of numbers when it comes to viewers all watching a show at the same time. For all the talk of the writers strike and some of the data that has been put out saying that more people have gone online for videos, that does not change the fact that most of the content on TV is not available on the Internet.

I have over 60 season passes in TiVo. Going through all of them yesterday, more than 90% of the shows I watch are not available online anywhere. And the ones that are, like content from CBS and NBC, do not show up right after they are broadcast and typically take days if not longer to appear on the web. And in the case of something like 60 Minutes, one story alone is chopped up into 10 different video segments on their website and encoded at a pretty low bitrate. And sports, well forget that. No NFL games are available on-demand the next day online and while the MLB games are, it requires a subscription.

The demise of the TV is overrated and many in the industry keep saying the same thing as if they have to say it just to be cool. I keep hearing people in our space says things like "I don’t even need a TV anymore, I’ll just watch all my video online". Or, "there was nothing on TV last night so I went online to watch video". Nothing on TV? I don’t know about you but I have hundreds of channels and can always find something to watch. I don’t have hundreds of channels on the web of professionally produced content. It reminds me of the time when people in the industry had to use the word "convergence" or "broadband" in every single sentence they used as they were convinced that others would think that since they used those words they must "get it".

No one is throwing out their TV. And those who don’t watch TV, probably never really did to begin with, as opposed to people who want to use them as an example and say that online video is the reason. The TV is not going anywhere and way too often in our society people want to talk about one thing replacing another, instead of being a compliment to it. The TV did not replace the radio. Internet video is not going to replace the TV. P2P delivery is not going to replace all CDN delivery. These things are all complements to one another. We should see the TV for what it is, just another way to get different kinds of content for various viewing experiences.

As expected, CacheLogic has officially closed a fourth round of funding totaling $25 million and has now raised just over $50 million to date. The company will be making some announcements shortly about some new large customer wins and will be focusing on a new marketing effort designed to showcase their P2P offering in a new light. They have also recently won a contract to work with the BBC to help with the expected traffic surge when the BBC’s iPlayer comes out of beta.

It looks like P2P technology still has the most traction outside of the U.S. for now.