2011: The Year I Plunged Into Streaming

2011 was the year  I finally experienced the Internet as a head-on replacement for traditional broadcasting. Not just for words (the net already replaced print media in my life) but for music and “tv” broadcasts. My personal access to bandwidth had reached the tipping point where it had finally become possible to use the net as the full fledged replacement for radio and television.

This might be genuinely frightening for a few people out there in the business of broadcasting: in TV and radio. It might even be a concern for the advertising industry and the advertisers who rely on the medium to deliver the eyeballs to experience their message.

It will probably take quite a few more years in the Philippines, but the path is clear that given enough bandwidth, the Internet can fill in our addiction to audio and video content. And we may not even miss traditional TV –  but we may end up wondering how did we do without the Internet to deliver content.

The tipping point in my case was bandwidth. My TV was already the “third screen” for internet consumption, after computers, and mobile devices (phones and tablets) after I had plugged it into a couple of set top boxes – a Boxee Box, and a Logitech Revue (running the Google TV platform). But the best these devices could do was act as media streamers for downloaded video files, streaming was not ideal given my sluggish bandwidth.

As for “radio“, podcasts, downloaded music, and playlists on iTunes had long replaced radio programming. But new apps like Stitcher and Tune In (available for both iOS and Android) now allow you to stream podcasts and overseas radio stations – eliminating the need to download audio files.

But back to the tipping point: This year my home DSL connection moved up from a miserly 1.8 Mbps to a fairly respectable 3 Mbps. And improvements in mobile broadband networks now meant my mobile devices could reliably expect at least a 1 Mbps signal (on a very good day and location the mobile bandwidth available even exceeds my home DSL speeds, hitting 4 Mbps and better).

An increase to 3 Mbps meant I could now watch YouTube clips without buffering regularly at 480p resolution (roughly DVD quality) – and since I could access YouTube on my TV, I now had access to the biggest repository of video content on the planet. On good days I could watch 720p (near high-def) videos with some buffering. (It turns out that PLDT caches accesses to YouTube – I verified this through the Mac app Little Snitch – so YouTube videos run smoothly on their network.)

As for mobile, improvements in 3G networks (particularly the rollout of HSPA+) meant getting reliably getting from 1-2 Mbps in Makati. At this point it allowed me to stop feeding my iPod with songs from iTunes and stream audio content directly from the cloud instead.

Here were the apps that got me hooked on streaming in 2011:

For video: The inescapable YouTube remained my go-to channel for video of all types, from viral memes to professionally produced content – and even full length features. Only now, YouTube was omnipresent – from my Mac laptop, iPad, iPod, Galaxy Tab, phones (Android and iOS), right up to my TV.

There was also Flixster and iMDB on the web and on apps for my movie trailer feed, and Boxee apps for the New York Times video feeds and Leo Laporte’s TWIT podcast network. For streaming US TV content via a Slingbox connection, I have Slingplayer on the iPad and on the web. Through the magic of proxies, I also access Hulu and Amazon Instant Video (movies and TV specials) on my laptop. I’m considering adding Netflix for 2012.

With all this going on, who has time for local cable?

For audio, I rely on two free go-to internet radio apps on my mobile devices – Sticher and Tune-In (available for both iOS and Android). These allow me to stream hundreds of podcasts and foreign radio stations. NPR also has a number of apps that provide access to the programs for free.

For music, there is Spotify, a commercial service that alows you to create playlists out of a selection of thousands of tracks already in the cloud. Spotify’s music service is so comprehensive, I have given up on stuffing my iPod with new content. Also through the magic of proxies, I have taken to using Pandora, another cloud-based music service with pre-defined playlists of different music genres. I sometimes use Google Music for accessing my own music collection through the cloud.

These are all early days. For 2012 I hope to see my home bandwidth options increase and prices kept reasonable – I’m looking at hitting 10-12 Mbps this year. At some point I might also just chuck away my internet tv set top boxes and plug in a real computer to the TV – maybe a Mac mini via an HDMI cable. And increasingly the concept of TV itself is becoming decentralized since you can use a laptop or tablet to view the same content anywhere at home.

I also see streaming replacing my car entertainment, through content streamed into my smartphone and hooked into the car stereo system via bluetooth. The Philippines never got satellite radio stations like XM, but that point might now be irrelevant when digital audio content already comes to you via mobile internet.

I don’t see any of these technologies become mainstream soon. For the forseeable future these will be the playground of crazed early adopters like myself and some like-minded geeks who might find each other on some Facebook group. This is all still too complicated for the masses. But you never know when the next tipping point will arrive to make this all explode into the mainstream. I give it three years.

Skycable has already seen the signs through its Iwanttv.com.ph site that allows you to view video content on demand on your laptop or tablet. In a few more years I see Skycable becoming less like Comcast and more like Netflix. This is the inevitable future.

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Here’s a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that backs me up here: Cutting the Cord on Cable

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Google TV’s CES 2012 presentation gives us a glimpse of what’s possible now on Internet TV:

Did Asia Crash Twitter last New Year’s Eve? Apparently So

Time was when New Year’s Eve would creep up and your phone would start beeping frantically as all the text messages would come in. The mobile operators’ SMS network tubes would clog up and it would be impossible to get an SMS in, edgewise – until an hour past midnight.

Well that was then (maybe just about 3 or 4 years ago), this is now – and the reality of the now is that HNY greets are coming in through web and mobile messaging – BBMs, iMessages, Facebook status updates, and increasingly, #Twitter.

For several hours leading up to New Year’s Eve in our time zone (GMT +8), Twitter started to burp and grunt and finally ground to a halt, displaying the infamous Fail Whale and the “Twitter is Over Capacity” error message.

Since ramping up their infrastructure and now claiming to have 100 million users, the Fail Whale has been appearing with much less frequency. But on New Year’s Eve, the volume of greetings was just too much and overwhelmed the Twitterverse’s servers.

I put two and two together and deduced that this was a SouthEast Asian thing. After all,  Twitter is especially strong in Social Media happy strongholds like Indonesia and Philippines. And Japan has traditionally been a Twitter mad nation, being the first country outside of the US to have a Twitter office).

The Economic Times in London put it all in perspective by posting that Twitter clocked in a staggering 16,197 Tweets per second around midnight Japan time, which was a transaction rate that was enough to bring down the servers.

LONDON: Social networking site Twitter was out of action for over an hour in Britain after it was overloaded with New Year messages.

The site crashed around 3 p.m. Saturday. It coincided with midnight celebrations in Japan when revellers were sending a record 16,197 tweets per second, the Daily Mail reported Sunday.

The overload meant no one could post new messages or read existing ones. Instead, frustrated users were greeted with the error message: “Twitter is over capacity.”

The site returned to working order but then stopped on several other occasions, prompting speculation that it was being hit by the arrival of New Year in different parts of the world.

The meltdown happened as the world welcomed in 2012, a year of historic importance for Britain, with the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee set to be defining moments.

Up to 250,000 people poured into Central London, some in Trafalgar Square and others watching the pyrotechnics centred on the London Eye, the Mail said.

In Tokyo, people released helium balloons in front of the Tokyo Tower at midnight with notes attached listing their hopes for 2012. Many wished for a better year, following the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, the newspaper added.

The site eventually went back up, and as the celebrations creeped through the date lines towards the West, the servers held fast.

Which all indicate that Asians really take New Year much more seriously than the west, and that Twitter is becoming a preferred communications channel for ringing in the new year. #hny2012

Photo credit: New Year celebration photo – shot in Eastwood, Quezon City by Santi Magno. 

Buying The George Estregan Groove Explosion Online

There aren’t many music sites where you can find an album with the NSFW title “Tangina Mo, Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo, Fashionista Ka Pa Rin” – which was the actual title of the last Radioactive Sago Project album. Not on Amazon, not on Spotify. But it turns up as one of the items for sale on Terno Recordings’ new online store, being prepped up as a Chrome (read: HTML5) app, available on the Chrome Web Store.

Users of the Google Chrome browser in the Philippines who visit the Chrome Web Store site (the store detects the user’s location via an IP check) are now shown a localized menu screen that displays PH-developed Chrome apps (essentially HTML5 sites optimized for Chrome) that stand out among the plethora of titles in the store.

The Terno Recordings app is apparently still a work in progress, but we understand it will soon enable online purchasing through means apart from credit cards, such as mobile payment platforms. This is significant considering credit card penetration in the Philippines is still quite low – with only 3% penetration according to some estimates.

“Tangina Mo, Andaming Nagugutom Sa Mundo, Fashionista Ka Pa Rin” - which incidentally could be used as a slogan by #OccupyWallStreet protesters – was notable for such stellar hits such as “Wasak na Wasak”, “The George Estregan Groove Explosion”, “Superhatdog”, and “Mambo Rat” and its tasteful cover graphics depicting a giant human brain being dissected. The album was the spoken word-meets-punk/funk/jazz group’s second album with the indie label Terno Recordings.

Kudos to app developer Codeflux and Terno Recordings for attempting to break new ground. No doubt George Estregan himself would be proud.

Spotify is Teeming with OPM! But are artists getting compensated?

As I recently wrote here, I signed up for Spotify, the cloud-based streaming music service with a bazillion of music tracks in its servers. While still not available to users in the Philippines, I was able to sign up using a US-based IP address. While there is a free service available for users in countries where Spotify is officially supported (like its country of origin Sweden, the UK, and the US), the paid version allows you to use the service wherever you travel – meaning countries outside the officially supported territories. So I signed up for the paid version.

I justified the expense by thinking, with all that music available, I may never buy a CD again. And I was right, the selection is staggering, a music junkie’s dream come true.

Evidently a lot of my local social networking friends in the PH are on Spotify too, so it looks like there is already quite a community of Spotify users in this neck of the woods.

Now here’s the ironic kicker. Though still unavailable to Philippine users, it turns out that Spotify has a massive collection of OPM in its servers. I would even venture to state that this is probably the biggest collection of Philippine music assembled online.

On Spotify, you can search for a track by Track name, Artist, or Album title. These fields are all cross references so if you you search for a track and a song comes up, you can list all the songs in the album where that track appeared – or list all the albums of that artist.

My search for OPM started with an innocent search query for “Himig Natin” – the seminal pinoy rock anthem by Juan de la Cruz. Lo and behold, a long list of performances appeared, both by the original artists, and cover versions. I even uncovered a jazz instrumental arrangement by saxophonist Tots Tolentino.

Curiousity piqued, I searched for the usual suspects, typing in names like “Gary Valenciano” and “Sharon Cuneta”. Spotify quickly returned detailed listings of apparently ever album they ever recorded, or guested in. A search query for “Eraserheads” turned up the complete Eheads catalog from Sony Music’s vaults. Well complete except for the final studio album “Carbon Stereoxide”. But the studio albums, live albums, and anthologies were all represented.

And so it went, testing Spotify’s search engine, I began to uncover even the most obscure Philippine artists.

Because Rogue Demanded it: My List of the Top 25 Greatest OPM Songs of All Time

My former officemate Miguel Mari (ah, long story), who is currently one of the honchos at Rogue Magazine, recently conducted a Facebook survey among people who were/are in one way connected with the local music scene about their list of Top 25 All-time OPM songs of all time. Or as Kanye would have said, “OF ALL TIME!”

Now this is the type of topic that can lead to riots if brought up in the context of a drunken bar brawl because this is always highly subjective. What may be gold to you may be pure garbage to my ears. Tastes differ. Furthermore, there are gems in a specific genre (like pinoy hardcore punk) which won’t make the cut in a listing of songs that stretch cross all genres.

But let the chips fall where they may. Here are mine. I tried to be fair and made a selection that crossed over genres (whereas the typical pinoy rock diehard would focus only on Pinoy Rock). Some are quiet lullabies, some are arena anthems. I also tried to list them down as fast as possible. Most of them are from the 20th century, which is when I did most of my critical listening. And as this is my taste, I’m sure you have you have your own, so let’s agree to disagree.

The drum roll please…

Digital Downloads are so 2010, Cloud-Based music streaming is the way to go

Record companies (and music artists) still mourning the death of physical media (Compact Discs and DVDs – which are fast going the way of the 45RPM vinyl single, the cassette tape, and the old 8-track tape format) are being hit with another whammy when along comes a new form of digital distribution in the form of audio streaming straight from the cloud. Who needs to download an mp3 when you can listen to music on the fly streamed directly from music servers in that big internet cloud in the sky?

In a one-two punch the past couple of weeks, both Apple and Google have opened up their own cloud music services. Apple has iTunes Match, a $24.99/year service, and Google has Google Music, a music store and free cloud storage solution (you can store up to 20,000 songs for free, but you must upload them to your account yourself) for your music files.

SMART Evolution LTE open for beta testing: Fastest 4G network in the Philippines goes online

This is hot off the digital presses – in fact it’s so hot you’ll need flame resistant gloves to handle.

We just got the word that SMART’s LTE network – SMART Evolution – is now open for beta testing by a select group of power users who will be willing to try out the setup and give the operator their impressions.

Potential speed demon guinea pigs can check out the best test sign up form here: http://www1.smart.com.ph/bro/lte/sign-up

How fast is this baby? Judging from the initial roll out in Boracay held Holy Week 2011, expect speeds of up to 42 Mbps in areas covered by the LTE rollout.

Lucky beta testers will be given an LTE modem (which plugs into a USB port) to try out the network on bandwidth intensive applications such as High Def video streaming and downloads. It’s a taste of the ultra-fast bandwidth found in other countries – and this is now in the PH.

Actual details for the beta test are yet to be revealed. But if I were you, I’d sign up for the program first and ask questions later.

Welcome Home To “The World’s Worst Airport”

It never gets old. After a long tiring trip back to the Philippines, the traveller arriving at NAIA Terminal 1 is confronted with the inevitable chaos: a mass of people at Immigration (queues, what queues?) and even more chaos at the baggage claim.

Some website that rates airports on their suitability for sleeping in terminals rated this “The World’s Worst Airport”. I haven’t tried to sleep here yet but just from the arrival experience alone, NAIA 1 easily romps off with the “World’s Worst” tag many times over.

While Asian neighbors have catapulted their airports well into the 21st Century (often leaving American airports choking on their dust), Manila remains mired as a Third World Airport stuck in the early 80s – which is probably the last time this terminal saw any improvement.

Coming from a business trip, I snapped a few scenes of the chaos that greets the arriving traveller. One day things will get better. Yes, when hell gets some air-conditioning maybe.

Ramona Bautista takes her Sister Act to Twitter

Murder suspect on the lam Ramona Bautista (aka Ramona Revilla, Mara Bautista-Revilla, etc) briefly hit worldwide trending status on Twitter last night when Filipino Twitter users took to their computers or phones to suggest alternate movie titles for the hashtag #replacemovietitleswithRamona.

While the hashtag went viral quite fast, I’m afraid the submissions were less than inspired. As some one pointed out, you could just replace an entire movie title with the word “Ramona” and stop the meme in its tracks.

One wonders if Bautista/Revilla – rumored to have escaped to Istanbul, Turkey – got wind of this, and if the showbiz genes in her bloodstream got a bit of a tickle. Well probably not.

The Story of Angry Birds: Straight from Rovio’s Mouth

This is a video I shot sometime May 2010 while attending a BizTech Mobile talk in San Francisco. It’s a video of the Angry Birds story, as told in a talk by the Rovio guys themselves. I only got around to editing the video and uploading the video now – but well, better late than never. 

Biztech Mobile is a periodically scheduled talk where mobile entrepreneurs get together and listen to other entrepreneurs talk about their experiences in the industry. It’s pretty inspiring, especially for startups who learn about what the successful companies went through in their early days.

This must have been quite an action packed session in retrospect because the founders of Foodspotting were present to talk about their app, as well as people from Rovio, who came to talk about their most popular product – Angry Birds of course,

These were still relatively early days for the game. At this time Angry Birds was just 18 months old and was already a rip-roaring success. The Rovio guys (mostly ex-Nokia hands) had flown into the Bay Area from Finland to attend the Google I/O conference at the Moscone Center in San Framcisco. They had just  announced the HTML5 version of the game which was made available on the first edition of the  Chrome Web Store, which had just made its debut back then.

The Angry Birds Story is always an interesting case study of a mobile game that rose from humble beginnings to become the most popular mobile game in the world and more – to one of the world’s leading consumer brands, beloved by audiences, retailers, and pirates alike.

The latest stat being bandied around is that Angry Birds had made it to 500 Million downloads in two years. More on this from GigaOM.

Some additional stats about Angry Birds mentioned in the GigaOM post:

It’s been #1 in 79 countries
Players have already gone through 266 billion levels
Players have flung 400 billion birds
Players have collected 44 billion stars
Players have played collectively 200,000 years in total
Players were collectively playing 300 million minutes daily

Given all these achievements, I consider myself lucky to capture this video from Angry Birds’ relatively early days, while Rovio was still basking in the early taste of success.