Although Swarmcast has been around for eight years, our chat with Chapweske worked out more like a talk with a newer, nimbler competitor to the world of content delivery. That’s probably due to the relative recency of its core patent award, and the on-the-fly technology promise of adaptive bit rate streaming.

Baseball fans already know Swarmcast’s work, if they are consumers of MLB.com’s online game-video streams. Swarmcast combines and blends streams from multiple content delivery networks to present them to a single viewer, and can do so regardless of the underlying presentation platform, be it Flash or Silverlight.

The faster the connection, the better the video performance. Chapweske said this goes all the way up to high-definition. If the speed goes down for whatever reason, Swarmcast adjusts to maintain the high quality of the video being presented.

Their network acceleration technology helps with this, providing a higher bit rate. Coupled with the new adaptive streaming, Chapweske thinks Swarmcast can be the next TV infrastructure, delivered over broadband.

“Broadband is going to be the dominant way to view video,” he said.

Efficiency of delivery will be a difference maker. Major cable ISPs want to meter bandwidth, which could be a pricey prospect for online video consumers. Who want to blow a whole month’s bandwidth cap watching a movie or two from Netflix on the computer?

Swarmcast’s model calls for it to partner with content providers, its main customers. We see room for them in deals with the major ISPs, who in turn could broker Swarmcast to media partners, saving their bandwidth and enhancing the user experience in the process.

Whether the savings in bandwidth consumption saves the public from the return of the metered Internet remains to be seen. That won’t happen if Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T continue to view heavy bandwidth users as pirates and thieves.

A little bandwidth savings could add up to a big future for Swarmcast’s network plans. We have to wonder if there will be external interest in the company, should its main product continue to deliver on its promise.

We’re thinking about this as we consider the next big consumer platform, the mobile phone. Clarity of content coupled with something like Apple’s latest iPhone may spur video over broadband, and with it the monetization opportunities, to the mobile world.

 I’m calling this “open infrastructure.” It’s totally shocking to me that Google and Microsoft are just letting Amazon take developers over this way.

I would NEVER have predicted that a “retailer’s” infrastructure would be used by so many startups. Totally amazing. This is going to develop as one of the biggest disruptions of our time.

Where is Ray Ozzie?

Oh, Steve Gillmor seems to know what Ray is up to but it’s amazing to me that Ray is letting Amazon take over the infrastructure platform world and all sorts of developers with it. Watch what happens next year as Amazon moves this infrastructure into enterprises. Of course I’m sure that all the Enterprise Irregulars will say I’m smoking something illegal, but let’s meet up again in a year and see what happened.

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Big predatory felines bring a new definition to having one’s head bitten off for failing to keep network resources available as needed.

However, people at IBM and Cisco were up to the task of donating equipment to upgrade the infrastructure at the Carnivore Preservation Trust. IBM dropped in a significant server and storage upgrade, while Cisco increased the local network’s speed and capabilities, including a VoIP system for better phone service.

Further enhancement of the technology will add video surveillance of the animals residing at CPT. The tech companies touted this as enabling better security, remote veterinary care, and live video streaming.

"With more Americans trying unsuccessfully to keep wild animals like tigers as pets, sanctuaries like CPT end up providing the proper care and shelter the animals need," said Pam Fulk, executive director, CPT.

"With the considerable donation of servers and networking by IBM and Cisco, CPT has experienced a 100 percent boost in productivity. Our staff and volunteers can now focus on caring for the carnivores, while also dramatically boosting educational programs to help these amazing animals out in captivity and in the wild."

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Fans of Agent Pendergast from the novel Relic and its sequels should remember him counseling the museum to not rely on its overly sophisticated security system during a major society event, taking place while a hypothalamus-eating serial killer was on the loose.

The security system turned out to have a single point of failure, with disastrous results. Rackspace suffered a similar indignity, one that could not be put aside like a well-worn paperback.

Sites like GigaOm and 37Signals, the latter a software-as-a-service company, both experienced downtime as a truck took out a transformer near Rackspace’s Dallas facility. Rackspace explained what happened in a statement on their site:

In the second incident at approximately 6:30 PM CST Monday, a vehicle struck and brought down the transformer feeding power to the DFW data center. It immediately disrupted power to the entire data center and our emergency generators kicked in and operated as intended.

When we transferred power to our secondary utility power system, the data center’s chilling units were cycled back up. At this time, however, the utility provider shut down power in order to allow emergency rescue teams safe access to the accident victim.

This repeated cycling of the chillers resulted in increasing temperatures within the data center. As a precautionary measure we decided to take some customers’ servers offline.

"Our Internet infrastructure despite all the talk is fragile as a fine porcelain cup on the roof of a car zipping across a pot-holed goat track," Om Malik said of the outage.

Jesse Robbins at O’Reilly Radar looked at the incident from the SLA perspective, giving credit to Rackspace for having a clear agreement with its customers. That SLA promises a 5 percent credit per 30 minutes of downtime, which should salve the disruption for the affected customers.

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MSN announced they are upgrading relevancy and coverage. The increased coverage likely means that more inbound link sources are getting indexed. From looking at rankings of a few of my sites it looks like:

• anchor text got A LOT more weighting
• many lower authority links that were not passing weight (due to not being in their index) are passing weight. For some competitive core industry related phrases (not SEO, another industry) I see a site that went from #150 to top 5 based on the anchor text of lots of low authority links.
• fresh links are still heavily trusted, but sites with older links but few fresh links now rank a bit better than they used to in the older MSN, likely due to the more comprehensive index coverage. for as much as Google has beat down some directory links, MSN just gave them a lot of love.
• MSN is still screwing up some navigational queries. For example, my homepage does not rank for seobook. Though I have already seen them fix some of these issues.
• Internal anchor text still counts, but it might seem slightly demoted, as a side effect of more competing pages and more links getting indexed.
• MSN mentioned that they were also looking to get more into universal search.

Yahoo! Search Update

Yahoo! recently updated their infrastructure, then rolled out universal search and are getting more aggressive with search suggestions. You can see they are serious about universal search because they are not only promoting their internal content, but they are also promoting YouTube videos. I believe this also indicates that YouTube will remain the #1 video destination in years to come.

Rand also noticed that Yahoo! is using their homepage to drive search queries for recent news. As Yahoo integrates their own content in their SERPs even more aggressively look for them to get more aggressive on this front to help further their search brand.

Google Tests

You can read about the Google test on WMW, which is seen on some Google IP addresses, but has yet to spread to Google.com.

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The weather report regarding Google’s latest quarterly infrastructure update for many sites likely read this way: mostly clear and warm, with some patchy clouds. A handful of sites briefly had a much grimmer forecast: nuclear detonation with thermal pulse, neutrons, x- and gamma-rays, radiation, electromagnetic pulse, and ionization of the upper atmosphere.

To put it more briefly, that disaster can be summed up as PageRank 0 in Google’s index.

Vanishing from Google can virtually be equated with dropping off the Internet in general. Such is life when one search engine dominates the environment and the habits of millions of Web surfers around the world.

‘The Fear’ doesn’t even begin to describe watching one’s site get unranked for reasons unknown. Fortunately Google has a couple of great people who communicate this kind of information. Adam Lasnik is one, and may be seen on Google’s webmaster help group.

The other is Matt Cutts, and he recently updated his infrastructure status post to clear up the dread PR 0 some sites observed:

In general, Cutts commented that this latest update should not cause any “major infrastructure-related upheavals to our rankings.” He also discussed supplemental results in some depth in his blog post.

“There were some situations where site: would show supplemental results ahead of regular results,” he wrote. “I believe we’ve changed that so that regular results will usually show ahead of supplemental results for site: queries.”

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Do not think the rankings and traffic will change dramatically as the PageRank values have already been integrated in the Google scoring. PageRank in the toolbar is updated by quarterly data push and it also updates data of the concerned info and links. At times supplemental results in a site are shown before regular results for which Matt Cutts says ” I believe we’ve changed that so that regular results will usually show ahead of supplemental results for site: queries.

You’ll continue to see the supplemental results get even fresher, and website owners may see more traffic from their supplemental results pages. To check out the current freshness of the supplemental results, I grabbed 20 supplemental pages from my site and checked out their crawl date using the “cache:” command and looking in the cached page header. The oldest supplemental results page that I saw was from September 7th, 2006 (and I only saw 2-3 pages from September; most were from December or November). The most recent of the 20 pages was from January 7, 2007, which shows that supplemental results can be quite fresh at this point.”

Google is planning to change filetype operator which means it will not need another query word. You can use filetype:doc or filetype:pdf. It is expected to be live very soon. Earlier data pushes were done every 3-4 weeks but now it is done every 1-2 days which leads to changes in the ranks.

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The latest design, which potentially looks like this, is scheduled for hopeful deployment by the end of this year or early next. China, Brazil, Thailand, and Egypt (among others) have all signed on to purchase the computers for school distribution, replacing costly textbooks and other educational wares.

The major selling points of the computers include a rugged, rubber-bound exterior to keep out moisture and dust, operating on human generated power, and piggyback wireless connectivity.

The first snag in the plan came when the original power concept of a hand crank turned out too tiring for the cranker and too wearing on the machine itself. The team seems to have abandoned the hand crank and is working on an external mechanism.

The hardware may not be the biggest obstacle though–one apparent jury rig master has created one for just $75. Most that criticize the project praise it first and then dismantle the logistics of distribution and practical applications.

The most notable objector has been Bill Gates, who recommended switching to a cellular phone model. Some have dismissed Gates’ proposal as misdirection-a backhanded smack at the Linux operated machines as well as a promotion for Windows CE mobile operating system.

Issue: Black (Gray) Market

The gray market is a term used to describe things legally obtained and then sold illegally. Critics believe that the computers would be given to families and then sold for money elsewhere.

The M.I.T team has addressed this from early on, aiming to give them a distinctive look, childish even, so that it would be apparent if the computer was stolen or sold to those that shouldn’t have them. The buzz phrase for the developers has been “people rarely steal a school bus.” Still, some argue the theory only works if there’s enough stigma or scruples to care about shame, unattractiveness or childishness of design.

Issue: Lack of Infrastructure

The biggest point of contention is that developing nations lack the infrastructure to support a wireless network and reduce the potentially enormous cost of distribution. Many of these countries lack sufficient wireless connection capabilities as well as the teams of technicians required to maintain them.

Project planners feel they have already sidestepped the financial aspects of Internet connection by installing a mesh network that allows one computer to connect to another that is connected to an Internet connection.

In addition to the logistical problem of ensuring so many computers are turned on simultaneously and the actual power that can be generated by hand, doubters feel that solid infrastructures need to be in place before any such program can be implemented.

Also of concern are the so-called “hidden costs” of distribution and who pays for them. Plus, if all fails, the project will have been an enormous waste of money that will have difficulty getting funding once infrastructure is in place in the future.

Optimism Still Survives

M.I.T., sponsors, and supporters are still ascribing to the old “where there’s a will, there’s a way” philosophy.

One rather eloquent Java developer, Jason D. Marshall, believes it has farther reaching benefits than just providing education and technology:

“You can give a man food, water, vaccines. You can keep his children from dying slow, horrible deaths. You can do all of this without giving a man any dignity, or any power over his own destiny. It is my belief that this observation is behind much of what Negroponte and his friends are trying to do.”

Others like the idea of giving the project more power through private sales in developing nations. Parents, who would like to buy their young children a durable, inexpensive computer may be willing to pay $200 or $300 for on of these $100 laptops.

Incentive to do so could be added by knowing that by purchasing one, buyers can send at least one to the children that need a computer, while helping to pay for distribution and development. One commenter at Engadget called the idea a “buy one, give one” concept.

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Included are new infrastructure solutions incorporating Oracle Database 10g with Sun StorEdge 3310 arrays and Sun Fire x64 servers (x86, 64-bit) powered by the AMD Opteron processor and running either the Solaris 10 Operating System or standard Linux distribution operating systems.

“Sun and Oracle have seen increasing demand for our respective Sun Fire x64 servers and database products and while the industry has traditionally thought of our longstanding relationship as only the marriage of big iron with leading database technology, the reality is we’re continuing to increase our joint presence in the growing x64 server market,” said Sun Microsystems vice president, Partner Marketing, Stephen Borcich.

“With this integrated solution, Sun and Oracle are enabling our joint reseller partners to share in that opportunity,” added Borcich.

These solutions are meant to bring high performance and enterprise-level reliability at a cost that small and medium-sized businesses can afford.

According to a press release, the database packs include:

– the low-cost, entry-level Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition One for small businesses

-Sun StorEdge 3310 arrays for customers requiring enterprise-class storage flexibility and reliability in a workgroup-size package and price.

Additionally, the solution includes the Sun N1 Service Provisioning System (N1 SPS) model for Oracle Database and Oracle Application Server. With the N1 SPS model and Database Packs, customers of all sizes can dramatically reduce the time and effort to deploy low-cost, scalable grids.

“Proven, low-cost solutions for small and medium businesses that are easy to implement, and provide reliability and scalability are what the market is looking for,” said Oracle Vice President of Worldwide Alliances and Channels Doug Kennedy.

“Oracle and Sun are delivering validated solutions that bring the economic benefits inherent in grid computing to the small and medium business segment with these database packs,” added Kennedy. “Not only are Oracle and Sun providing these joint solutions, but we’re investing in our resellers through training and support to successfully sell into this growing market.”

The two companies have worked together for over 20 years. The database packs are available immediately from joint Sun/Oracle resellers.

Chris is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.

On August 9th, Mr. Mueller emphasized the importance of letting law enforcement know when a business has been affected by an electronic attack. “(O)nly 20 percent of companies that experienced computer intrusions in 2004 reported those incidents to law enforcement. Respondents said they did not alert authorities because they feared negative publicity and loss of competitive advantage.”

That situation needs to change, Mr. Mueller said in his talk. He cited the now-notorious CardSystems breach that exposed 40 million credit cards to theft: “When the company discovered the breach earlier this year, representatives quickly contacted the FBI to initiate an investigation, based on the recommendation of an employee who is an InfraGard member. Because of CardSystem’s quick response, we were able to start the investigation immediately, before the trail went cold.”

Electronic threats can take many forms, and Mr. Mueller said that only with the cooperation of people like the 11,000 already in the InfraGard program can they hope to thwart future attacks. He praised members like those who helped agents in Phoenix on a “highly sensitive counterterrorism case” last year.

But the Agency can only battle threats it knows exists. “Maintaining a code of silence will not benefit you or your company in the long run,” he said to attendees.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.