Vincent Nguyen and I have been talking about starting a watch/horology site, a passion he and I shared; we dragged Chris Davies and recruited Radhika Seth from Yanko Design to launch Watch.am – I aimed for a simple minimalistic design on Watch.am. We will be updating the blog daily, so enjoy!
We launched SlashGear iPhone app last month and will be launching our iPad app in a week or so. The iPad App would be so much different than the iPhone counterpart. Here are some screenshots.
It has been interesting and educational two months; I had the chance to use several major CDN services on SlashGear. Choosing the right CDN is a matter of pricing/budget, delivery technology or features and POP availability. The CDN vendors I had the opportunity to try are MaxCDN, InterNAP, Highwinds, Akamai, and EdgeCast.
MaxCDN has the best implementation of web based management console. I really enjoy using them and still do use them on R3 Media sites (SlashPhone and AndroidCommunity). The cache-hit number is pretty impressive at 96.62%. Unfortunately MaxCDN does not have presence in Asia where 12% of our traffic came from (95% for SlashGear Japan). Last I heard, they are planning POPs in Asia.
I don’t have many complainw on InterNAP, however they are not the fastest of bunch, but not the slowest either -routing sometimes does not provide the best route.. Pricing is pretty competitive.
HighWinds is a very affordable CDN vendor, unfortunately it rewrites files URL rather than sticking with predefined CNAME you have setup for the account. Great reporting tools (entirely made of Flash) and control panel.
Akamai is the big dog in CDN business; I was very excited when giving it a try. It has robust control panel, fast aggregation of content when setting up origin pull, and it has many POP around the world. Speed is impressive, however I was disappointed to find out it was not the fastest out of the bunch and pricing is amazingly high unless you commit to a high bandwidth bucket. If you don’t need much bandwidth you can try VPS.NET, they are Akamai reseller with reasonable price.
EdgeCast was one of the CDN I didn’t plan to include in my search for CDN vendor, but I’m glad I did. Sales were very accommodating and responsive. Setup was quick and simple, however I wish their management control panel would provide origin pull progress and detail reporting. They performed the best during my usage (Pulling data from Dallas, LA and Nagoya), almost 28 percent faster compared to InterNAP and 14 percent faster compared to Akamai. I was very surprised by the delivery speed on small object (has not tested video delivery yet – large file object). Pricing is very competitive and they will work it out depending on your situation and usage.
So by the end of the day, I picked EdgeCast CDN to power SlashGear.com, and SlashGear.jp due to its performance and pricing. However video files are still being serve-using HighWinds as part of UK2Group sponsorship.
Disclosure : MaxCDN sponsored SlashPhone & AndroidCommunity CDN bandwidth. UK2Group sponsored SlashGear TV videos bandwidth using HighWinds CDN.
It is a privilege to have Ben Bajarin from Creative Strategies on SlashGear. Looking forward to read his thoughts on the tech industry with his column at SlashGear Ben also blog about technology on his tech blog here.
About Ben Bajarin
Since joining Creative Strategies in 2000 Ben has researched the global transition from analog to digital in consumer technologies and entertainment media. He has focused on projects and developed strategies in the markets of the digital home ecosystem, mobile computing, digital lifestyle and interactive entertainment, trying to understand how and why consumers will use new digital technologies in their everyday lives. His expertise is in understanding the Gen X and Millenial consumers and their present and future demands for technology.
His research and strategic work spans digital entertainment and media, brand marketing and awareness, social media and consumer products and services. Ben manages Creative Strategies behavioural analysis and digital home research center where the impacts of many consumer behaviours, digital home / family and digital lifestyle technologies are studied.
His current and past clients have included Sony, HP, Dell, Toshiba, Philips, Palm, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD and Microsoft to name a few. He speaks regularly at industry events and trade shows, appears frequently on technology radio shows, is quoted frequently by the press and has regular television appearances commenting on the latest technology news.
Read on why I switched to Google’s Nexus One. Not saying I would not use the iPhone x.x version in the future, but for now, Nexus One fits me like a glove.
For the past 6 months I’ve been working on a new project outside R3 Media LLC with my business partner Vincent Nguyen and a great developer Daniel Lim. The project is called eGether; a multi-dimensional social portal for consumers, reporters, analysts and PR practitioners. Curious? Then head over to eGether now!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Come together with eGether a collaborative multi-dimensional service combining the best functionality from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn.
Scottsdale, AZ, and Dallas, TX — December 8, 2009 — Addressing consumer demand to have one site that links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn, eGether is launching today in public beta (http://egether.com/). A collaborative multi-dimensional social portal for consumers, reporters, analysts and PR practitioners, eGether is centered around an Activity Pitching Engine (APE) that combines 255 character status updates and 999 character pitches, using familiar @ status messaging for inter-user communication. Status updates can include one image, while pitches can include image and video content (including embedded YouTube), documents such as DOC, PDF and ZIP, and hyperlinks.
eGether was founded by Vincent Nguyen and Ewdison Then after they had grown frustrated using a combination of existing networking tools to collaborate. They developed eGether to bring the best of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn functionality and features into one easy-to-manage social networking service structured around Activities and Connections. Activities originate from user status updates and pitches, combined with user-defined contact information, online galleries that can be tagged with people and products. Connections include private and public circles — groups of other eGether users with whom they collaborate, or topics about which they are interested.
eGether also allows consumers to obtain product and service information direct from the source, rather than second-hand. Consumers can use global search for the latest company news and reviews, and PR firms can freely pitch their clients’ products and services, rather than sending out individual alerts.
eGether offers a single information point with a custom URL for users that can be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. Visitors can then engage in discussions with everyone from consumers, to people in the media, to analysts, or even engineers involved in the company. eGether also empowers users to connect and share what’s on their mind, or even just to share their thoughts on the shiny new gadget they received over the holidays.
To start taking advantage of eGether’s powerful social networking tools, sign up at http://egether.com/signup.
eGether is supported by an advisory board including Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, Inc. (www.creativestrategies.com); Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, LLC (www.gartenblog.net); Seth Combs, interactive brand strategist(www.sethcombs.com); and Judie Lipsett, tech blogger and founder of GearDiary (www.geardiary.com).
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For more information, contactVincent Nguyen
vincent [at] r3media.com
+1 (917) 477-7911http://eGether.com/Vincent
Ewdison Then
ethen [at] r3media.com
+1 (917) 720-8281http://eGether.com/Ewdi
All marks are the property of their respective owners.
I know I’m a little late on this, but late announcement is better than no announcement at all; SlashGear has added its editorial agenda with columns written by industry experts. While our focus is still up to date tech and gadget news, we wanted to diversify our content with opinions and analysis on digital lifestyle. I would like to welcome Michael Gartenberg, Avi Greengart, and Joanna Stern to SlashGear family.
An analyst working with Credit Suisse is claiming that YouTube is costing itself nearly $500 million a year. YouTube, which is owned by Google, only places banner advertisements on approximately 3% of the pages that make up the website. If they were to increase the number of pages that include web advertisements, they just might see their online advertising revenues increase dramatically.
The analyst, Spencer Wang, suggested that YouTube needs to create a standard web advertisement for their site. Once they can accommodate the additional advertisements, it will be important for YouTube to convince marketers that their site has the capability to boost sales for the products that they advertise.
Not too long ago the forecasted revenues for Google were dropped a bit and YouTube is supposedly to blame. Analysts suggest that the video website is a real weakness for Google. Wang noted that “Despite the growth of YouTube’s user base, there is little evidence to suggest Google has been able to materially monetize this usage. In light of the current ad recession, experimental budgets are being trimmed.”
Google stock has already taken a hit over the last several months. The economy is declining and revenue generated by online advertisements simply is not growing as fast as it used to. Even though the forecast for YouTube was less than optimistic, the value of Google stock grew slightly. At the moment, Google also seems to be generating a great deal of gossip over whether reports of a Twitter takeover are true or not.