Email was amazingly fast when it was new. Instant messaging was even faster. Instant became more powerful with Twitter — you can send messages to an unlimited number of people at once, and those people can receive your messages a variety of ways. A rotating quote on the Twitter.com home page describes Twitter as "the telegraph system of Web 2.0."

What is Twitter?

Twitter is described at the Twitter site as a microblog. It's that and a blog on steroids at the same time. Instead of writing a blog post (or in addition to writing one), you type and send a short message of up to 140 characters via the Twitter site, your mobile phone, an instant messaging program, or a third party application. The message goes out to cyberspace instantly and to people who are subscribed to your feed. Or in Twitter language, your followers (people who receive your Twitter updates) can read your tweets as soon as you send them — via mobile phone, IM, RSS feeds, and the Twitter website.

Unlike blog posts, you can specify who receives your twitters, and you can send private messages to individuals in your network. You can also track specified words and be updated via mobile phone or IM whenever a word you're tracking is used. (Web updates are reportedly coming soon.)

Who twitters?

People who want to tell their followers that they just had lunch or are on their way somewhere twitter. Friends and family members twitter to stay in touch. Some people use Twitter to share something interesting that they came across or to give their opinions about recent events. Adults twitter. Kids twitter. Unfortunately, spammers also twitter (but if you don't follow them, their spam won't reach you).

Twitter isn't only for casual conversation and tidbits. Barack Obama uses Twitter to announce events he's attending and updates to his website. CNN uses Twitter to announce breaking news. A conference organizer posts deadlines and updates via Twitter and used Twitter to announce that three followers would be randomly chosen to win conference passes.

The growth of Twitter

Twitter has been experiencing growing pains. Recently the Reply feature had to be turned off temporarily in an attempt to keep Twitter working during high load times. While this article was being researched, a "Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again" message appeared several times at the Twitter site. But those who thought that Twitter wouldn't last appear to be wrong. As with blogs, Twitter has continued to grow in popularity and usage. According to a May 2008 report, nearly 1.2 million people per month had signed up with Twitter in the past three months. Twenty-four percent of users are classified as heavy users, and traffic is much higher on weekdays than on weekends.

Twitter as a networking tool

Twitter allows users to follow other people for short periods of time or indefinitely. It can help users build relationships and develop new ones. You can learn more about people in your network by following them via Twitter, and you'll have more to talk about with them. When you're looking for someone for a particular task or job, you'll be better able to decide whether you want to work with them.

Some ways to network with Twitter:

Publish tips and interesting bits of information related to your area of expertise. You'll develop more followers and build a reputation as an authority in your niche.

At events, update followers with schedule changes, your whereabouts, brief reviews, and tips on what to avoid and what not to miss. Give out your Twitter username to people you meet at events, and if you follow each other, you'll have added to your network.

When you have a good number of followers, ask questions via Twitter about how to solve a specific problem or to find out who has information about a topic. Chances are that someone will know the answer, and the interaction will help build relationships.

Search Twitter conversations via Summize.com for topics that interest you, and start following people whose tweets are about your interests. Add a lot at first and then reduce the list to those whose tweets are most worth following to you. Some of them may start following you as well.

Twitter as a marketing tool

Twitter can be useful as a marketing tool to be used with other marketing methods. Because people have to choose to follow you and can stop following you at any time, it's a form of permission-based marketing.

Examples of uses for Twitter as a marketing tool:

* To summarize and link to new blog entries, newsletter issues, and other updates to your website
* To announce sales and other time-limited offers
* To introduce new products or services
* To publish news about your area of focus, especially breaking news
* To share bits of knowledge that are useful to your followers and that help establish you as an authority in your field
* To initiate conversations with your followers

Publish your Twitter username at your website and on your business cards, and keep your tweets with your Twitter business account professional.

Related blog articles

* How to Become a Known Niche Authority
* Newsletter or Blog? Have Both!
* How to Market Your Brand via Social Media Websites

Webinars: “Thank You For Attending”

Webinars, Webcasts Explained by Web Hosting Provider

Webinars have grown increasingly popular in the era of Web 2.0 - web hosting provider explains. They’re interactive, easy to set up and deliver a lot of advantages to the webinar host. And a lot of revenue if you’re good at it.

Webinars versus Webcasts

Webcasts are one-way communication. You, the site owner, post a digital video (DV) on your web site or upload it to YouTube and other social sites. You talk. The viewer listens. And unless you have a compelling way about you, watching a webcast is like watching grass grow.

Today, people don’t want online passivity. They don’t want to sit there. They want to interact. Interact with each other via facebook.com, myspace.com and other sites that rely on the user-generated content of those laying claim to a few pixels, and interact with experts who actually have something worthwhile to say.

Webinars are totally interactive and your web hosting provider can explain how to set them up. They’re scheduled to start at a specific time, they’re hosted by an expert and “attendees” from around the world interact with the webinar host and with each other.

Webinars are interesting because of this interactivity. As a participant, you’re free to ask the expert questions, ask for clarifications or expansion on a specific topic. You can learn a lot from these on-line classes.

Selling CEUs

They’re called continuing education units or CEUs, and lots of professions require their members to obtain a certain number of CEUs each year – every profession from private investigators in Texas to hearing aid dispensers in Maine. Hundreds of thousands of pros need CEUs. They can get them by attending classes at the local community college or professional association, by writing papers and they can earn CEUs by attending online webinars.

Starting to see the potential here? If you’re an expert in a field that requires members to continue their educations, you have a captive audience. And attending an online seminar is a lot easier than attending classes every Monday night for 16 weeks.

Certain standards have to be met to qualify for CEU recognition. The teacher has to be a professional, the course subject has to be (in some way) relevant to the professionals’ work and the seminars must actually teach, i.e. have an established syllabus or course of study. The standards are high, as they should be, so to qualify for a CEU accredited webinar, you better know what you’re talking about or zippo CEU-seekers are going to sign up.

How To Stage a Webinar Technically - Web Hosting Provider Explains

There are two ways to do this thing.

First, if you’re planning on doing a webinar a week and adding to the list of classes and topics available, you’re best off buying webinar software. Here’s a link to some Q & A on what to look for in this system-based software.

However, before you fly off to the Software Shack to pick up a webinar program, try one of the hundreds of online services that specialize in the staging of webinars. These companies provide the software and some hand holding. They aren’t too pricey, either, given the competitive nature of the market. Heck, even Big Blue (IBM) offers on-line conferencing services and that’s all a webinar is – an online conference with nice pictures.

Marketing Your Webinars - Let Your Web Hosting Provider Help

If you’re CEU accredited, use Google AdWords to promote your upcoming event. Allow a six-week time window from the date you start promotion until the actual date of the webinar itself. Then, do a little viral marketing.

Respond to blog posts relevant to your upcoming event and mention date, time, URL and cost, if any. Let’s talk about that for a minute.

When you first start staging webinars, no one knows you from Adam. You’re an unknown quantity, yet to prove you’re worth $29.95 to sign up to hear your words of wisdom. So, to start building an audience and establishing credentials as a quality educational or instructional site, offer your first few webinars free. Hey, you can become a star pretty quick if you aren’t a cold fish. And people will pay for righteous information presented in a professional manner.

The exception, here, is CEU-accredited webinars. These demand a certain production standard, knowledge standard and broadcast standard. These webinars may require a cash outlay to the conferencing company, a graphic designer and techie if you think a USB port is where U.S Boats dock. So, you can charge by the CEU. Some webinars are worth 1 CEU. Another can be worth 3 CEUs depending on the credibility of the webinar producer, length and scope of the content.

If the budget can stand it, pay for links from related sites. If there’s an industry association, send its PR department a press release announcing time and place for the webinar, and be sure to include your professional biography and credentials for hosting this gab fest.

Also, if you’re doing webinars regularly, get listed in webinar directories (Google it. There are lots of them.) If you know your stuff and you’re not a stiff – you can have fun interacting with others – then you’ll quickly see the popularity of and attendance at your webinars increase. As attendance increases, your web hosting provider can offer needed bandwidth to accommodate the visitors.

Putting Together a Webinar

The software comes from the conference provider. On screen, you’ll have the webinar administrator’s console showing activity of participants, handling emails from participants and tracking levels of participation.

Now, the easiest way to put together one of these online lessons is to buy a decent web cam, write out your key points and interact with participants via the email option. Or, to make connections even easier and quicker, provide a telephone contact that attendees can use to ask questions, make a point or contest a point.

As the webinar administrator, you move things along. Whatever you do, don’t write a paper and read it for an hour. I’m bored just typing about it. You need some sizzle, some visuals, some eye candy to create a professional and engaging webinar.

The easiest tool to develop webinar visuals is Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have it on your system, you can download it from the Microsoft site. This is a totally screen-driven program that’s almost idiot-proof. (Prove me wrong, kids. Prove me wrong.) You type text where prompted to do so.

Add a dash of color or a photograph to give a boring bullet list a little pizzazz. Especially if we’re going to be parked on it for a while. Or, instead, reveal text in the bullet list on cue simply by going to the next Power Point slide in the deck. Without too much of a learning curve, you can put together a Power Point presentation.

Using your webinar administrator’s console, you can cut back and forth between the graphics in your Power Point deck and your talking head via a hi-res webcam. By switching between the two you accomplish a couple of important tasks: (1) you put a face to the voice and the knowledge and the humor and professionalism (at least wear a nice sweater); and (2) it maintains visual interest. An hour-long Power Point presentation is almost as bad as an hour-long talking head. Switch to create interest, especially when answering questions from the crowd.

During the Webinar

You should have a list of talking points and sub-points, not a speech. You should have an agenda. “Today I’m going to talk to you about liability insurance and the private investigator. Let’s begin with blah, blah, blah…”

Encourage discussion and stop often to ask for questions. In some cases, it may take a few minutes for a question to reach the moderator’s console if the email is routed via Zambia so go with the flow. “Oops, okay, we have an email from a dental associate in California regarding that last point.” Stay flexible and nimble. As the moderator you’ll be juggling a lot of balls.

You’ll be teaching, reading emailed questions, moderating group discussions, tracking viewer activities and trying to work in a little humor all at the same time.

You should know, throughout the webinar, where you are on your agenda list and expand or contract your discussion as necessary.

Encourage debate by posing provocative questions. Part of the appeal of these events is the ability to interact with one’s peers so provide that opportunity. Then, sit back and moderate, keeping the discourse on topic.

Testing

CEU webinars require that attendees take and pass a test so if your’s is a CEU-accredited webinar, you need to develop an online post-test administered after the webinar. To earn the CEU credits, each attendee must achieve a certain grade. Hey, for all you know they were watching TV as you were explaining the latest in forensic science so those meeting professional requirements should be tested, and they should pass.

If your webinar isn’t CEU-based, testing is up to you. Frankly, the people who have signed up already know their stuff so testing seems a bit inappropriate. However, to maintain interest, ask the “Question of the Second” or “Insurance Trivia” throughout the lesson. Using Power Point makes creating “test pages” easy and the conferencing software captures attendees scores and even delivers them individually to avoid embarrassment.

Amortize Production Costs

It could cost a few bucks to put together a professional webinar that has high production values, accurate, current information and a dash of entertainment value on the web (sorely missing, btw). And if you only host the webinar once (a spot webinar), those costs are all associated with the one-shot spot. Instead, schedule webinars daily or weekly. Each time you’re able to conduct a revenue-producing webinar, the initial production costs are further amortized. So, that one time production expense pays for itself over and over.

It’s not hard to do, and if you don’t have the time, talent or inclination there are plenty of freelancers who do this stuff every day so outsource all the heavy lifting and save yourself for Saturday mornings when you become the congenial host of “Process Server Weekly, the ONLY weekly webinar for professional process servers.”

Ahh, show biz.

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The 10 Best Uses of Web Technology: So Far

Web Hosting Blogger Offers Best Uses of Web Technology

Paul S. Lalley

Of course everybody is going to have a different opinion on what constitutes “good” use of the web. “Good” is such a subjective word. So to clarify: by good I mean useful, important and even earth shaking. (Man, that gives me a lot of range.) So, in descending order from least to most important uses of web technology, your web hosting provider offers the following:

10. Take an ear test.

How likely are you to visit an audiologist this year for a hearing screen? Like zero? But the fact is, with the use of iPods, MP3 players and ear buds, we’re losing our hearing sooner. Hearing professionals see kids in their 20s coming in to be fitted for a hearing aid.

But what if you didn’t have to make an appointment? What if you have your hearing screened as you web surfed? Important note coming up: Sure, you can get a free hearing screen on line but don’t bet your future hearing on it. Consider it a tool that indicates just how quickly you need to see a hearing specialist.

Want a free hearing test? Here you go: Better  Hearing, (written test) Telecare Health and Freehearingtest.com.

9. Check that vision while you’re at it.

Same deal, here. These online tests are NOT a substitute for a trip to the eye doc, but they may indicate the need to make an appointment so use them as a tool and a means of gathering information. The Eye Digest, and for the kids preventBlindness.org.

8. Find your runaway puppy.

It’s a helpless feeling when your favorite family member, the family dog, goes missing. In the past, you could knock on doors, post flyers, put an ad in the classifieds and check in with community animal control. Those were pretty much your options but why not use the power of the web to get the word out. Use the web to tell the world your dog is missing; post pictures and identify a radius in which you think your beloved pet has roamed.

If you’re missing your Shi-Tzu, visit FindFido.com and get the whole world looking. Also, a great idea for a web site. This is the kind of horizon thinking that makes money on the web.

7. Wikipedia.

In theory, this is such a great idea and a noble experiment worthy of more than a passing reference.

Wikipedia was (is?) the opportunity to gather heaps of human knowledge, across disciplines, across borders and covering any topic under the sun. Wiki offers this potential.

Unfortunately, this great idea has been somewhat usurped by spammers, taggers, bigots, whack-jobs and web users with an axe to grind. There have also been reported cases of Wikipedia sabotage in which competitors go in, change data and make the original author’s thesis a pile of rubbish. What a surprise. People acting like idiots.

The potential is still there. These user-edited entries do have value and any Wikipedia contributor has to sign in, please. Of course, Dr. I. P. Daily can also do some editing, too.

The point? Wikipedia is one of those really great ideas and still could be. However, until the reliability of the information can be certified and the human lunacy stops, the uses of Wikipedia as a serious accumulation of world knowledge is suspect. Wikipedia.org.

6. The Open Directory Project

is open source information edited by volunteers. Companies, individuals, associations, game designers – anything with a pulse on the web wants a listing on the ODP. However, because the induction process is run by volunteers, and there’s a waiting line around the block, it might take a while to actually see you site listed.

Like Wikipedia, the quality of many of the listings within the ODP are suspect but that’s for the viewer to decide. You’ll find everything you want to know about toothaches to free shoot-‘em-up sites to pass the time waiting for the phone to ring.

Another reason to push your ODP submission along is that Google uses this as its default directory, unlike Yahoo that maintains its own, profitable directory. So, if your site is interesting enough, if it provides good quality, accurate information and it’s easy to navigate, your site just might make the cut and appear in the Open Directory Project, a tacit seal of approval. The Open Directory Project.

5. You Tube.

Yeah, first it was an idiot riding on the roof of a car or blowing smoke out of his ears, but today it’s become a major force in politics, news reportage, trends and turning ordinary people into worldwide superstars over night.

And this is just the beginning, folks. You Tube will expand its influence. No, Big Brother isn’t watching bit a lot of little brothers are. Assume you’re always being filmed. Comforting, ain’t it? You Tube.

4. Social Sites.

Another major change in the way the web is used. Everybody is a star. Everybody has a place in the world on the web – a place that represents them and everything about them.

You’ve got everybody from a gum-snapping teen-aged girl espousing the benefits of organic shampoos to business moguls speaking to company stockholders.

The two big social sites in the States are MySpace and FaceBook. If you’re looking for a European viewership, checkout bebo.com. FaceBook, MySpace and bebo.

3. Web MD.

With the cost of health care, it’s nice to log on, click through a bunch of symptoms and discover that you don’ have the Hanta Virus. This site has worked hard to maintain its integrity, though it does generate a bunch of ad revenues like you wouldn’t believe.

Even so, the advice is from professionals, not hacks cranking out words by the pound. It’s worth another mention, according to our legal department, that Web MD or any website is not a substitute for real-world medical treatment so go to a doctor if Web MD suggests you might be coming down with a bout of beriberi. It’s just one more (very good tool) in the dissemination of medical advice. WebMD.

2. Match making sites.

Okay, so I’m a romantic. It’s difficult to meet people in a world that moves at the speed of sound. In fact, much of our lives are spent in the matrix we call the web. Only occasionally do we venture into the real world of bills, kids and a case of beriberi you just can’t get rid of.

Yes, there’s a lot of cheese behind these mushy, kissy-kissy sites, but I don’t care. This is my list and I think finding ways to meet people and be happy counts for a lot. I think it’s called quality of life. So, I don’t know, maybe those happy couples you see on the TV are paid actors. With these sites the dream is always alive. eHarmony, Match, Chemistry.

1. Google.

There can be only one and it’s Google by a mile. Now, this search engine was the first. Yahoo introduced the first primitive search engine in 1994. It wasn’t much more than a list of categories with numbers in parenthesis to indicate that there were 64 links in the automotive folder. True, for you who don’t remember this first search engine.

But Google changed everything – the way sites are rated, ranked, banned, indexed – this search engine provided us with a road map and address book to equip us to find whatever we want in 1.5 seconds.

And this elephantine index is now, not only delivering the addresses of content, it’s become a content provider with the acquisition of You Tube and more content providers joining the Google team. The company knows that to survive, it has to provide content. Without, it will ultimately fragment and collapse. You just don’t use the yellow pages the way you used to. Same with Google. But worry not. This is one paradigm shift that’s here to stay. Google.

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Web 5.0: What Will the Web Look Like In 10 Years?

Web Hosting Blogger Offers Predictions of the Future of the Web

Predictions are easy. Especially when they’re 10 years out and no one remembers you stuck your neck out back in 2008.

When I was kid, I was told that in the future, I’d have my own hovercraft. Traffic jams a thing of the past. They also told us that nuclear power generation would enable us to disconnect our electric meters, power would be so cheap. Boy, did those prognosticators get it wrong as I open my $300 monthly oil bill.

Even though tellers of future events are wrong most of the time, even Nostradamus gets it wrong, the Website Source readers of tea leaves make their utterly fearless predictions for what the web of our grandkids will look like.

Just look at that changes that have occurred in the 15 years since you became web smart.

Web 5.0 - What do you think the future holds for the web - this web hosting blogger offers predictions. Please leave your opinions below. We’d love to hear from you.

1. In less than 10 years out, your TV and computer will blend seamlessly into one device. Watch TV on your computer. Click a link on the TV screen to get a sample of new Fab laundry detergent.

Further, we’ll see shows develop around viewer interactivity. No more reaching for the phone to try to get in your American Idol vote. Just click your fave and your done.

2. Miniaturization of computers will continue, especially as voice activation and recognition becomes more sophisticated. 10 years from now, you will use a device no bigger than the frame of a pair of eye glasses. Through voice commands (keyboards are sooo 2011) you’ll have complete access to your personal data and a web that’s in its fifth incarnation.

3. We’ll all be stars. Anybody with something to say will become a star when blogs, TV and solid information collide. You’ll be able to call up any number of thousands of video blogs on your TV set to learn everything from fly fishing to how to remove your own pancreas!

4. You’ll interact more with the TV and computer. See something you like, click your TV mouse and learn more from your drop-down, glasses sized computer – immediately. Consider how the transmission of information quickly will affect everything from your food choices to who you vote for.

Right now, TV and computers are taking baby steps toward integrating content from a variety of sources. Google, search engine par excellence, is now also a content provider with its acquisition of You Tube. And Microsoft is chasing Yahoo, threatening a hostile takeover. The reason?

Because these companies see the future and it doesn’t really involve them to the degree they’d prefer. Want to send an email to a friend? No need to log on. Grab the TV keyboard and send it via digital to your friend who will be able to access the text on his TV, eye-glass computer, ear PDA or text via cell phone.

Integration of technologies is a certainty for the future because there’s money to be made. Lots and lots of it and every content producer (TV, movies, newspapers, blogs, any form of content) will be under siege to produce more, better, faster.

5. Accessibility will increase. We’ve mentioned voice commands, but eyeball scanning will also be in place. Just look at the link for 2 seconds and you’re there. Think it. You’re there. This technology is already available in our sophisticated war machinery. It’s only a matter of time before it trickles down to the consumer level – like Velcro did.

6. Functionality skyrockets. We’re toddlers trying to synch up different platforms, languages, protocols and other digital details. But these are stumbling blocks, not brick walls.

We’ve seen huge growth in digital functionality in the past few years. Order your pizza on line, using your cell. And, if your cell is equipped with GPS, it’ll tell you how to get to the pizza place.

Utility and functionality will make us more productive. Also more reliant on digital communications.

7. In a digital world, an electromagnetic pulse knocks out the web. The web is a grid, and like dominoes, and EMP, properly placed could throw us all off line for months. Hey, welcome to the ‘70s – again.

So we can expect to see the web a more secure bastion – a necessary means of commerce. Just think about it – how would your business and your life be if the web disappeared?

More secure walls and rebounders are being developed (we ain’t there yet, folks) to offset the effects of a terrorist EMP.

And lets’ not forget hackers who will have many more access points to a site and to your information. These black hats aren’t going to mosey out of town. In fact, hacker tactics grow more sophisticated (read lethal) everyday. So, in 10 years, we’ll be padlocked with iron clad protection updated 10K a second.

Wanna bet?

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Open Standards In Trouble:

Will the W3C Maintain Its Relevance?

There are dozens of browsers, thousands and thousands of apps for online use in both the design and administration of a web site, more and more features are appearing on even the simplest sites and, what once looked like an orderly flow of open standards has turned ugly with the filing of Opera’s anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft.

The World Wide Web Consortium - Web Hosting Provider Explains

It’s a loose affiliation of software developers, SEOs and other tech-types that has set out on a noble mission – to unify the web with open design, construction and administration standards that will apply to ALL web sites.

The benefits to all of us using the same coding conventions and software are enormous. Sites work in all browsers. (Right now they don’t.) My site can talk to your site seamlessly because both were constructed to do so using open standards that, at least in theory, unify the mishmash being employed by different site designers. And with new technologies evolving like protozoa in the Web 2.0 era, the W3C has been working late into the night to keep up with this expanding plethora of new tech, new software, more stable browsers and higher expectations on the part of web users - web hosting provider explains.

Ogg Vorbis Audio and Ogg Theora Video

We’ve arrived at HTML 5.0 for those who didn’t notice. Hyper-text mark-up language (HTML) has evolved. HTML is the digital language of the web, the basis for web site construction and interaction between sites and users. There are variations on the HTML theme, i.e. XML (extensible mark-up language) XHTML (extensible hyper-text mark-up language) and several other varieties, but all worked with the basic HTML protocols so all sites were in sync.

To learn more about the working draft of HTML 5.0, you don’t have to look far. This link will take you to discussion group threads where designers are lining up to state their preferences for open standards moving forward.

The HTML5 Working Group, however, has become engaged in a debate over which codecs browsers should be supported. Both Apple and Nokia – big players in the open standards debate – succeeded in removing Ogg Vorbis and Theora from the current standards draft being prepared by the W3C. The reasons these companies cited were patent and copyright uncertainties. However, the W3C has focused primarily on PC programming and browsers, and the lack of support offered by Nokia and Apple of these W3C open standards for audio and video presentations created an obvious rift – one that the high-powered Apple and Nokia have eliminated.

The Response from the Xiph Foundation

The Xiph Foundation is responsible for the Ogg series of audio and video tools required in this new age of web design. Xiph put out a position paper that made clear that this was a chicken-egg question.

From the Xiph Foundation position paper on the use of Ogg audio and video as W3C open standards:

“So, how do you make Theora and Vorbis popular? Why, by the very same process that made MP3 so ubiquitous: by using it and by sharing it. Only by advocating the formats will you see interest from the corporations. There is no other way around it. Let me write that one more time: there is no other way around it. Backup your films in Theora. Backup your music in Vorbis. Share podcasts and video casts in these formats. And do not wait for tomorrow; do it now. And by now, I mean yesterday.

There’s a lot of companies out there who do not wish to see Theora and Vorbis succeed, and they don’t even have to make much of an effort to affect them. The masses out there with their expensive iPod toys don’t care about Vorbis or Theora. Most of them don’t even know what they are.”

The Big Players Have Big Clout

Microsoft, the biggest player in content management and delivery software, has never been a strong supporter of the W3C’s effort to standardize web protocols. Bill Gates and company don’t want an outside group telling them what should be standard and what shouldn’t. As the 800-pound gorilla, they, of course, want to set the standards.

Ogg authority, Manual Amador, posted a blog with regard to the removal of Ogg Vorbis and Theora from the working paper being compiled on OS. In it, he points out the advantages of Ogg A/V programming to designers and to manufacturers.

In part, Mr. Amador’s post reads:

“- The Xiph developers were extremely zealous and almost fiduciarily [sic] diligent in researching all possible patent threats to Vorbis technology, and for more than a year they found none — they even did the research “before” beginning to code, explicitly to avoid submarine patents. I know, because I was subscribed to their mailing list and read status updates of this research, practically at the start of the project.

I also know that big-name software houses and media players manufacture products with Vorbis technology, and none of them have been sued. It’s been what, seven years now?

- The Theora codec has had its patents practically relinquished by On3 with a perpetual, royalty-free license.

- Ogg and its audio/video codec technologies are the ONLY free software media technologies with implementations widely available on all consumer computing platforms — from WM codecs to Linux DLLs, passing through the entire range of hardware (floating-point and fixed-point)and OSs.

- Without guaranteed Ogg support (whose integration in user agents I think I already established to be sort of a weekend-level junior programmer project at NO COST, due to the ready availability of the technology in all platforms), authors will be forced to use patent-encumbered technology.

Remember MP3? Well, with HTML5 it’s 1997 all over again.”

The battle between manufacturers to set technology standards has never been clearer than the undermining of the inclusion of Ogg Vorbis and Theora in the W3C’s revised standards. It’s beta versus VHS all over again, and companies like Microsoft, which threw a monkey wrench into the whole Ogg debate, are determined to politicize and monetize the World Wide Web Consortium’s standardization efforts.

And because the W3 is an independent group that can only make suggestions, companies like Microsoft, Apple, Nokia and other tech giants have highly-paid lawyers who are scouring patents as you read this looking for an infringement on the part of Ogg. According to Manual Amador’s blog post, this work has already been done by legal at Ogg.

The Bottom Line

It really comes down to this: the big companies in web design, construction and administration want a say in the open standards established by the W3C. However, the W3C should be impervious to corporate pressures and threatened lawsuits and keep its focus on what is going to produce the most effective and efficient web experience for the user.

Once again, the user is the last one considered in these corporate dust-ups. And you can’t help but wonder if the big techs recognize the value of unified standards to the long-term growth of the web.

It seems that the corporate realm is concerned only with short-term returns and additional costs to adapt existing services and software. It’s time the CEOs and other management big wigs at these corporations (yes, that’s you Mr. Gates) recognize the need for web uniformity and standardization. It’s in the company’s best interests and, most certainly, in the end users’ best interests.

Finally, with the W3C now the target of legal pressure, the organization has become politicized and its once noble mission to bring cohesiveness to the web seems very much in doubt.

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