I’ve been lucky enough to meet with a swath of companies this year, almost all of which excite me on various levels. One of the more interesting infrastructure conversations I’ve had is with a company called Bandwidth.com, who this year in Austin launched a new service over at Phonebooth.com. The service, like much in the telephony business, isn’t immediately exciting (due mostly to the utilitarian nature of telecom), but is really quite interesting at first brush, and looks to have the signs of a service offering with staying power once you delve beneath the service. Bandwidth is a company that’s been around for ten years, involved (unsurprisingly) in the bandwidth business. Starting out as a reseller, they’ve long since transi

Cyber-anthropology. What? That was just about my reaction as well.  I met Diana Martin in the SxSWi Bloggers Lounge early Saturday morning, who is a UX (user-experience) specialist at The Planet (a large web host local to Dallas).  As we at that particular table were sipping our wake-up juice and making our introductions and card exchanges, she initially introduced herself not as a Planet employee, even though it was pretty clear from the large block lettering on her t-shirt that she was, but as a cyber-anthropologist. Naturally, that’s a pretty decent cue that you’re about to hear a pretty interesting introduction. Obviously, the etymology of the word indicates that the use of the study of anthropology is somehow involve

Lunch with the greatest podcaster of our generation? Why not. He tweeted. “Lunch at Ironworks.” Leo Laporte and his entourage and some fans are in Austin for SXSW.  It’s Leo’s first.  He’s already boggled at the myriad of events and choices.  What party to go to?  What panel? Leo will be tricasting his “This Week in Google” (TWIG) and “This Week in Tech” (TWIT) from TexasCoworking at 200 E Sixth Street in Austin, TX on Saturday, March 13, 2010 and Sunday, March 14, both at 5 pm CST.  Texas Coworking provided the equipment and space and both SiliconAngle (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins and Michael Sean Wright) and NewTek Tricaster provided expertise, production and equipment for this event and their

John McCrea and Chris Messina are joined by special guests — Don Thibeau of the OpenID Foundation and Drummond Reed of the Information Card Foundation — to discuss the launch of the Open Identity Exchange, the result of a year-long collaboration between the two foundations. Watch HiRes. Links related to this episode PC World's coverage of the announcement: Open Identity Exchange backs U.S. gov't privacy guidelines From the Financial Times blog: One step closer to a single sign-on for the web The official press release from the Open Identity Exchange: Open Identity Exchange Launches at RSA

With the recent battle between Cablevision and Disney over Retransmission Consent in New York regarding WABC-TV carriage on Cablevisions 3.1 million subscribers, and thereby producing a coalition of Cable Providers to petition the FCC to intervene in negotiations, is akin to the saying: (be careful what you ask for). It seems to me, this is a business market negotiation best handled through competitive market forces rather than asking the FCC to get involved in a dispute between two companies. The (ax can cut both ways) when it comes to oversight of the pipeline distribution and broadcasting industries. Yes, consumers are caught in the middle, wanting pertinent and relevant programming for a reasonable price, while public negotiations and

When asked the biggest challenges in online video advertising this year, top executives at media agencies like Starcom and MediaVest say they're most eager to target audiences better and to access more sophisticated data around viewership. At last week's 4A's conference in San Francisco that drew top brass at ad agencies and brands, Daisy Whitney caught up with MediaVest's President Donna Speciale, Starcom USA CEO Lisa Donohue and 4A's Managing Director Harold Geller. Here's what they had to say about hurdles in Web video in 2010 in this week's New Media Minute.

Media agencies and brands are hungry for data - they want better data that they can use to target their potential customers. That's why I took a detailed look in this week's New Media Minute at a data-driven deal and a new research tool and explains why they matter in the online video business. They include the Quantcast-MTV pair-up and Visible Measures' introduction of its new Trends tool. Check out this week's episode for the scoop.

The recent announcement between Terremark and Engine Yard got me to thinking this past week, just what this means for enterprises. Terremark has been quite aggressive in providing its Enterprise Cloud to the market. With VMware’s vCloud, they are delivering private cloud services to their enterprise customers. With roughly 50% of enterprises considering a move to a cloud computing model, the market opportunity abounds and competition will heat up. Terremark and VMware are both well known vendors who understand the needs of enterprises, and will leverage this to make its way into the private cloud market, as Terremark will not only provide the platform with VMware’s vCloud, but will also provide the necessary services needed to deliver

Remember when I talked about international opportunities in TV earlier this year in the New Media Minute? Now we're seeing even more evidence of that trend because the popular Web series "Break a Leg" just sold the licensing rights to its show to Fox Italy, marking a big step for Web producers looking to graduate to the TV set. Another possible route to the TV may come through smart partnerships like the one inked between Fox TV studios digital shop Fox 15 Gigs and the Web destination MyDamnChannel – two of the hottest digital players around. For more on why this deal matters, watch this week's episode of the New Media Minute.

The comic business is estimated to be a $1 billion business annually but it's one of the few media forms that hasn't yet fully transitioned to the digital world. That may change with the coming influx of Apple iPads and sexy new eReaders, as I report in this week's New Media Minute. The business of digital comics is also one TV networks are already starting to leverage, including Starz, which created a motion comic for its popular new original TV series Spartacus. For more details, check out this week's New Media Minute below.