Hybrid MOOCs

I wrote an earlier post contrasting the goals of the typical introductory statistics course with Sebastian Thrun's goals for the statistics MOOC he recently taught at Udacity.

The usual statistics course is required in many physical and social science majors and its goal is to teach students to evaluate statistical arguments and prepare them for advanced statistics courses if they pursue a research career.

Thrun's is a short, elective, general studies course and his goal is to inspire students. In describing his course, he wrote that statistics is "a highly intuitive field -- a field full of magic and surprises. I aspired to share these insights with everyone, and to have students experience them by working on interesting problems."

Much of the material in the traditional statistics course can be captured in short, interactive MOOC video lessons, but what of the motivation and enjoyment Thrun seeks to provide? Can we deliver that in a MOOC?

Hybrid MOOCs may do the trick.

Let me use a course I teach in a conventional classroom as an example. It is an introductory digital literacy course geared to the Internet era -- a general education class in which I present the skills and concepts one needs for success as a student and after graduation as a professional and a citizen.

I have developed modular course material that can be presented in person or shown as Udacity-like interactive videos.

But, that is only part of the class. Much of our classroom time is devoted to "discussion," in which I present and we discuss current developments. I prepare these discussions each week and no two are alike. Discussion topics might include difficulty they had with the previous week's assignment -- common misconceptions. I also include things that occurred to me to add to the previous week's presentation after the class was over or things that came up in one section, but not the other. (I teach two sections).

I also maintain a class blog on which I post current events that are relevant to our class, and we discuss them. For example, this week part of our discussion period was devoted to a post on Google's Kansas City fiber project. That post gives us plenty to talk about that is relevant to our class -- data transmission speeds and prices, the roles of public and private infrastructure, the digital divide and possible applications of very high speed connectivity.

Capturing and maintaining the portion of the class that I spend on prepared presentations for a MOOC would be expensive, but doable.

I've not tried it, but I would like to capture the ephemeral, discussion portion of the class as well. I would do that by having a weekly class meeting. It could be a face to face meeting in a room with students taking the course or it could be online, for example in a Google "on air" hangout. (Good coverage of a studio classroom would be expensive). Either way, the class session would be broadcast on the Net.

Those watching the broadcast in real time would be able to ask questions and make comments during the class. That might be done through chat with a screener or with some sort of voting-up scheme.

Regardless, the broadcast would be recorded for archival viewing by students who were not able to watch the live session. The chat stream, transcripts and other ancilary material would be available as well.

A hybrid class would be expensive to produce, but it could serve a mass audience. Is anyone doing this sort of thing? Do you think it would be effective?

#mooc #highered #edreform #pedagogy #bonkopen #educause

A scathing criticism of a Udacity course and a rebuttal

I just read a devastating review of Udacity's recently completed Introduction to Statistics MOOC on the Angrymath blog. It is a long, well reasoned post with many insightful comments -- well worth reading -- but the short version is the author's summary -- "the course is amazingly, shockingly awful."

The course instructor, Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun, answered with a post of his own in which he acknowledges the validity of some of the criticisms and promises that the course will be revised. However, he goes on to explain that to him statistics is "a highly intuitive field -- a field full of magic and surprises. I aspired to share these insights with everyone, and to have students experience them by working on interesting problems."

Reading the two posts, it is clear to me that they are talking about two different courses intended for different audiences with different goals.

The Angrymath blogger is a college lecturer who teaches what sounds like a standard introduction to applied statistics course. That is a traditional, well defined course that introduces probability, descriptive statistics and statistical inference for students in a range of fields -- business, pre-med, psychology, etc. It is a semester-long course and the textbooks follow similar outlines. It also establishes background for those who will do research and will go on to take more statistics courses (including math stat).

Thrun's is a shorter course in which he is trying to interest and surprise people, not to teach them how to read the statistical analysis in a psychology research paper or to design research studies. Thrun is teaching a short, elective liberal arts course while the Angyrmath blogger is teaching a required social science course.

Can we find ways to preserve the flexibility, enthusiasm and spontaneity that is found in an inspiring general studies course in canned MOOC?

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Subsequent to this post, Udacity announced that they would be substantially revising this statistics course -- adding four new units and improving 20 of the videos to clarify topics and provide more real world examples. There will also be a new assistant teacher.

Google and Kansas City push to narrow the digital divide

We have covered various aspects of Google's gigabit connectivity trial in Kansas City. Their plan is to install fiber first in areas of the city, "fiberhoods," with high demand for the service, as measured by the percent of households willing to pay a $10 pre-registration fee.

The deadline for pre-registration was midnight last night, but, as of last Friday, the map of fiberhoods that had met their goal reflected the digital, cultural, racial and income divide in Kansas City, Missouri.

Google and the City worked hard to bridge the divide. The threshold to qualify for fiber was higher in affluent areas than poor. For example, in the circled area on the map shown below, only 5% of the households had to register in order to qualify.

Furthermore, on August 31st, Google adjusted some of the thresholds to make it easier for poor neighborhoods to qualify.

During the last weekend of the six week registration drive, Google and the City worked overtime to close the gap. They held meeting, walked door to door, deployed an ice-cream truck refitted as mobile registration site, and more.

The map below shows that many fiberhoods east of the traditional Troost/Paseo Avenue division line met their thresholds during thd weekend push. (This map shows Kansas City Kansas as well as Missouri). Google reports that 63 fiberhoods qualified during the last week of the registration drive and that at least 180 out of 202 have qualified for service. They will announce the final tally on the registration drive and publish a fiberhood installation schedule next Thursday.

This is important for two reasons. Google will give free gigabit connectivity to all schools, hospitals, libraries and other public facilities in qualifying fiberhoods. That will mean more to a school in a poor neighborhood than an affluent neighborhood.

Furthermore, while Google will charge subscribers $70 per month for gigabit access, they offer free 5 mb/s DSL connectivity to those who wish to pay less. (Households that elect free connectivity must pay a $300 installation fee in 12 monthly $25 installments).

While 5 mb/s sounds slow compared to gigabit connectivity, the fastest DSL speed Verizon can offer me in my middle class Los Angeles neighborhood is 3 mb/s for $29.99 per month. At that rate, I could pay off a $300 installation fee in ten months.

(Verizon does not offer fiber service in my neighborhood, but, where they do, they charge $89.99 a month for 75 mb/s service).

I would expect less contention for backhaul with Google DSL than Verizon since they are provisioning for gigabit service. Five mb/s customers will not add much load.

Google's free DSL service will be more important to many households on the wrong side of the digital tracks than their gigabit service. It will provide very usable speed to newly connected households.

I have said a lot about Google's effort, but, as Timothy B. Lee points out, Kansas City is an active partner. To attract Google, Kansas City taxpayers offered power, office and equipment space and more.

This is a good example of blended public-private investment. It reminds me of Stockholm where the municipal government provided "middle mile" fiber then invited private companies to compete using that infrastructure.

Lee points out that some right-wing commentators have claimed the Kansas City project shows that industry (Google in this case) can build exellent infrastructure without government guidance or subsidy. That is clearly not the case in Kansas City. Hundreds of cities applied to participate in this pilot study, and I am sure they all offered various incentives to Google.

Google and Kansas City cannot bridge the cultural, income and digital divide by themselves, but they are making laudable effort and I applaud them.

Telegeography report: International Internet capacity grows to 77 Tbps

Telegeography has published new statistics on global Internet capacity and utilization for fans of the "big picture." (Click the chart to enlarge).

Total international capacity is up to 77 Tbps, a 40% increase over last year. Average international internet traffic grew 35% in 2012, down from 39% in 2011, and peak traffic grew 33%, compared to the 57% in 2011.

The growth rate is slowing due to caching in content delivery networks and increasing saturation of broadband markets in developed nations, but broadband adoption in developing nations, the spread of Internet video and increased mobile connectivity will fuel growth for many years to come.

You can drill down for details on individual cables on this interactive map.

we've come a long way since the first undersea cable in 1858.

Politicians using media, from Roosevelt's fireside chats to Obama's Ask me Anything

President Roosevelt used radio -- "fireside chats" -- to communicate with the American people. President Eisenhower was the first to campaign on television and Kennedy used it effectively. One can argue that President Obama is the first president to effectively use the Internet.

The most recent example of his use of the Internet was the live "ask me anything" (AMA) session he held at Reddit.com earlier this week. Reddit users typed questions for the president and he answered the ones that were voted up. The questions he took and his replies are shown below.

In our class, we talk about the implications of the Internet for individuals, organizations and society. Internet chat and AMA provides a new way for a candidate to campaign and for an official to interact with the public. In that sense it is reminiscent of President Roosevelt's fireside chats.

You can see the questions President Obama replied to along with his answers below. It is a mix of personal (he's a Bulls fan, eats with his family then goes back to work, and plays a game of basketball or golf every week) and political dialog. You also hear a conversational tone -- "Hey everybody -- this is barack" -- not the polished public speech voice.

Here is what he had to say:

"Hey everybody - this is barack. Just finished a great rally in Charlottesville, and am looking forward to your questions. At the top, I do want to say that our thoughts and prayers are with folks who are dealing with Hurricane Isaac in the Gulf, and to let them know that we are going to be coordinating with state and local officials to make sure that we give families everything they need to recover."

SharkGirl: We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?

Obama: Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody - from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although their will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle - and it will be reflected in the platform.

PartyInYourMouth: How are you going help small businesses in 2013 and 2014? and what if any bills are you going to impliment for small businesses, in 2013, and 2014?

Obama: We've really focused on this since I came into office - 18 tax cuts for small business, easier funding from the SBA. Going forward, I want to keep taxes low for the 98 percent of small businesses that have $250,000 or less in income, make it easier for small business to access financing, and expand their opportunities to export. And we will be implementing the Jobs Act bill that I signed that will make it easier for startups to access crowd-funding and reduce their tax burden at the start-up stage.

karlfranks: Who's your favourite Basketball player?

Obama: Jordan - I'm a Bulls guy.

Silent1mezzo: What's the recipe for the White House's beer?

Obama: It will be out soon! I can tell from first hand experience, it is tasty.

Suzmerk: What are you going to do to end the corrupting influence of money in politics during your second term?

Obama: Money has always been a factor in politics, but we are seeing something new in the no-holds barred flow of seven and eight figure checks, most undisclosed, into super-PACs; they fundamentally threaten to overwhelm the political process over the long run and drown out the voices of ordinary citizens. We need to start with passing the Disclose Act that is already written and been sponsored in Congress - to at least force disclosure of who is giving to who. We should also pass legislation prohibiting the bundling of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change.

Fifth Surprise: What was the most difficult decision that you had to make during this term?

Obama: The decision to surge our forces in afghanistan. Any time you send our brave men and women into battle, you know that not everyone will come home safely, and that necessarily weighs heavily on you. The decision did help us blunt the taliban's momentum, and is allowing us to transition to afghan lead - so we will have recovered that surge at the end of this month, and will end the war at the end of 2014. But knowing of the heroes that have fallen is something you never forget.

Daveforamerica: What is the first thing you'll do on November 7th, win or lose?

Obama: Win or lose, I'll be thanking everybody who is working so hard - especially all the volunteers in field offices all across the country, and the amazing young people in our campaign offices.

hmlee: I am recent law school graduate. Despite graduating from a top school, I find myself unemployed with a large student loan debt burden. While I'm sure my immediate prospects will improve in time, it's difficult to be optimistic about the future knowing that my ability to live a productive life -- to have a fulfilling career, to buy a house, to someday raise a family -- is hampered by my debt and the bleak economic outlook for young people. I know that I'm not alone in feeling this way. Many of us are demoralized. Your 2008 campaign was successful in large part due to the efforts of younger demographics. We worked for you, we campaigned for you, and we turned out in record numbers to vote for you. What can I say to encourage those in similar situations as I am to show up again in November? What hope can you offer us for your second term?

Obama: I understand how tough it is out there for recent grads. You're right - your long term prospects are great, but that doesn't help in the short term. Obviously some of the steps we have taken already help young people at the start of their careers. Because of the health care bill, you can stay on your parent's plan until you're twenty six. Because of our student loan bill, we are lowering the debt burdens that young people have to carry. But the key for your future, and all our futures, is an economy that is growing and creating solid middle class jobs - and that's why the choice in this election is so important. The other party has two ideas for growth - more taxs cuts for the wealthy (paid for by raising tax burdens on the middle class and gutting investments like education) and getting rid of regulations we've put in place to control the excesses on wall street and help consumers. These ideas have been tried, they didnt work, and will make the economy worse. I want to keep promoting advanced manufacturing that will bring jobs back to America, promote all-American energy sources (including wind and solar), keep investing in education and make college more affordable, rebuild our infrastructure, invest in science, and reduce our deficit in a balanced way with prudent spending cuts and higher taxes on folks making more than $250,000/year. I don't promise that this will solve all our immediate economic challenges, but my plans will lay the foundation for long term growth for your generation, and for generations to follow. So don't be discouraged - we didn't get into this fix overnight, and we won't get out overnight, but we are making progress and with your help will make more.

gobearss: How do you balance family life and hobbies with, well, being the POTUS?

Obama: It's hard - truthfully the main thing other than work is just making sure that I'm spending enough time with michelle and the girls. The big advantage I have is that I live above the store - so I have no commute! So we make sure that when I'm in DC I never miss dinner with them at 6:30 pm - even if I have to go back down to the Oval for work later in the evening. I do work out every morning as well, and try to get a basketball or golf game in on the weekends just to get out of the bubble. Speaking of balance, though, I need to get going so I'm back in DC in time for dinner. But I want to thank everybody at reddit for participating - this is an example of how technology and the internet can empower the sorts of conversations that strengthen our democracy over the long run. AND REMEMBER TO VOTE IN NOVEMBER - if you need to know how to register, go to Gottaregister.com. By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience - NOT BAD!

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You can see the transcript and thousands of comments on Reddit.

Ting is looking better -- will allow customers to bring Sprint phones

In a previous post, we described Ting.com, an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator), that resells access to the Sprint cellular network at dramatically reduced prices with no contract. My one complaint was that you could not bring your own phone to Ting. You had to buy a new phone from them, and they offered a limited selection.

Well, that restriction is starting to fade away. Ting announced that during the next quarter, they will begin allowing customers to use their own Sprint phones. That means the selection of new phones will increase dramatically and old Sprint phones will be welcome as well. They point out that, "at first", there will be restrictions -- the iPhone, BlackBerry push to talk and a small list of specific handsets won’t be included.

If you check Ting's prices, you will find significant savings over the major cellular companies. Now that you can bring your old Sprint phone or choose from a wide selection of new phones, Ting (and other MVNOs) seems like a terrific deal for those in areas with good Sprint coverage. The deal is even sweeter if you live in an area which is or will soon be covered by Sprint LTE.

I don’t know how Ting does it. Perhaps Sprint’s wholesale price is very low or perhaps Ting is less greedy and more efficient than the major carriers. Somehow, it offers a better retail deal than Sprint or any of the others. Maybe it is just that it charges more rationally than its competitors. Since 2009, U.S. data traffic has exceeded voice traffic and the gap is growing rapidly, but the cell phone companies still gain most of their revenue from voice.

The cellular and cable companies seem to have arrived at a "gentleman's agreement" to reduce what little is left of Internet service competition. The cellular companies are getting out of the land line business and the cable companies are getting out of the mobile business.

Will the MVNO's like Ting succeed in disrupting the mobile market?

Talking heads may or may not improve presentations, but they do add to conversations

MOOCs and other online classes give us an opportunity to learn what works in presentations. For example, I've proposed studies of the effect of playback speed or including a talking head in a presentation on comprehension, retention and engagement.

I'm not sure how these studies would turn out (though I have my suspicions), but I am sure that talking heads are important in coversation.

My certainty is based on a single anecdotal experience (of no scientific value). Some friends and I meet for a weekly podcast bull-session on technology (Yet another tech show). We do the podcast using a Google Hangout.

As you see here, video thumbnails of all the participants are shown under a larger head-shot of the person who is speaking. (Switching is automatic). But, check the thumbnails and you see that the second from the left is blank. That is because one of us had a slow Internet connection that night and could not stream video. We could hear what he said, but not see his face.

If you had asked me before we did that podcast whether not seeing him while he spoke would matter, I would have said "no" -- figuring that the audio conveyed all the information in a technical discussion.

If you ask me now, my answer is "yes, for sure." It had nothing to do with information or content. We understood what our invisible colleague was saying and he participated fully, but it felt weird.

Talking to disembodied people on the phone feels natural because there is no point of reference. But, in a mixed conversation, where you can see some, but not all of the participants, the difference is palpable. I don't know if it is because of subtle clues as to who gets the floor next, some primitive fear or something else, but it feels more natural to talk with someone you can see.

Two researchable questions: do talking heads and moving hands improve learning?

I would like to see studies testing the hypotheses that seeing a talking head or a hand writing on the screen improves student comprehension and retention.

I've developed a collection of modules for my digital literacy course. Each module contains an annotated PowerPoint presentation and other material. As I find time, I record videos of the PowerPoint presentations, using the annotation as a script.

To conserve bandwidth and storage space, I only use still images of the PowerPoint slides in my videos. There is no video of me speaking. I reasoned that my students knew what I looked like, and viewers who were not in my class could see what I looked like in a photo.

But, I notice that Google (left), Coursera (right) and others include video of the speaker's face during their presentations.

Is there evidence that talking heads improve comprehension and retention?

We see a similar contrast in the screencast videos produced by Udacity (left) and the Khan Academy (right}. Udacity videos are screencasts with superimposed video showing the teacher's hand and pen while drawing and writing on the screen (with noticeable parallax). Khan produces screencasts in which only a cursor is shown.

Does seeing the hand and pen improve comprehension and retention?

(If these research questions sound interesting, see a proposal for a related study of the effect on comprehension and retention of varying playback speed and bullet point images).

FCC approves Verizon + Comcast -- The gentleman's agreement between cable and wireless companies

Verizon Wireless on Thursday won unanimous Federal Communications Commission approval to move forward with its $3.9 billion purchase of 4G LTE spectrum from the country’s largest cable providers. The partnership also enables the cable companies to market Verizon services and in some cases sell their own services inside Verizon stores.

Here is how the industry sees the deal:

Dan Mead, president and chief executive of Verizon Wireless: “This purchase represents a milestone in the industry, and we appreciate the F.C.C.’s diligent work to review and approve the transaction.”

David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast: “a smart and efficient way for Comcast to deliver a broader array of wireless services, and is an efficient deployment of this spectrum.”

And here is the opinion of Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that promotes an open Internet:

“By allowing Verizon and the cable companies to sell each other’s services, the D.O.J. and the F.C.C. are acknowledging what has been clear for some time — that broadband competition policy in the United States has failed."

I have to agree with Gigi Sohn. The US congress tried to foster competition with the 1996 Telecommunication Act. The idea was that the incumbent telephone companies would allow competitors to use their facilities at wholesale rates to compete as retail level service providers. The telephone companies drug their feet and fought at the state and local level to keep that from happening, and they succeeded.

This is what William Kennard, who, as chairman of the F. C. C. from 1997-2001, was charged with implementing the Telecommunications Act, had to say near the end of his term:

“All too often companies work to change the regulations, instead of working to change the market.”

“[regulation is] too often used as a shield, to protect the status quo from new competition - often in the form of smaller, hungrier competitors -- and too infrequently as a sword -- to cut a pathway for new competitors to compete by creating new networks and services.”

“companies invest in lawyers, lobbyists and politicians, instead of plant, people and customer service.”

Some have argued that wireless connectivity would eventually bring competition to the Internet service industry, but it seems we have instead a gentleman's agreement in which the cable companies will provide land-line connectivity and the cell phone companies will provide wireless connectivity. Furthermore, sometimes they can sell each other's service.

My experience illustrates the gentleman's agreement. I was a Verizon DSL customer for years. I was about to leave them when I started seeing ads and billboards saying I would soon be able to get their fiber service, FIOS. After a couple years wait, they announced they would not be bringing FIOS to my neighborhood after all. Then they cut my DSL speed from 5 to 1.5 mbps! I switched to cable -- my one alternative.

My current slim hope for getting connectivity that close to what is available in Riga Latvia is Google's pilot in Kansas City.

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Update 10/5/2014

The FCC okayed Comcast's deal with Verizon, but maybe they are getting tougher now. They've put the Time Warner Cable merger on hold:

In a public letter to Comcast and Time Warner Cable executives, the FCC announced that it is hitting the pause button on its review of the proposed $45 billion merger. Citing inadequate responses by both cable companies to earlier FCC requests for additional information, the agency is stopping the clock on its 180 day review period until late October.

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Update 5/10/2015

The end game has been revealed -- Verizon will exit the wireline business within ten years:

A utility company familiar with Verizon's business plans says Verizon has told it the company plans to exit the fixed-line broadband business entirely within the next ten years. Stop The Cap directs our attention to a filing at the FCC made by Florida Power & Light, urging the FCC to reject Verizon's decision to offload its Florida, Texas and California DSL, FiOS and POTS customers to Frontier Communications.

I guess they are counting on 5G cellular, but I hope public WiFi hotspots give them some stiff competition.

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Update 11/8/2015

During a recent earnings call, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said that FiOS will be available to about 70% of their east coast, fixed-line customers once the company finishes the sale of their Texas, Florida and California fixed-line networks to Frontier Communications.

If they stick to their plan of leaving the wireline business, they will have 100% penetration the day before selling off the last customer.

While no further sales are imminent, Shammo stated that all options remain on the table. "As I have always said you never say never," Shammo noted. "We're always open to new options and we always keep our eyes open for that but at this point we're very committed to the wireline business."

Verizon is living up to the aforementioned gentleman's agreement with Comcast. In my personal case, that means Time Warner Cable will remain my only viable Internet service provider until Google or Elon Musk or someone else comes to my rescue.

Google patents the network OS

Google has been awarded US patent #8,239,662 for "a system for providing an operating system over a network to a local device."

The patent describes the system architecture and goes on to make 3 independent and 15 dependent claims for protection, but how unique are those claims? There have been several "thin client" products and Oracle marketed their Network Computer. Furthermore, is downloading a program that is an operating system conceptually different than downloading a program that is a Web browser or word processor -- where exactly do you draw the line between an operating system and an application program?

I spoke with intellectual property attorney Thomas Ewing of Avancept LLC about those 18 claims and he pointed out that "the number of claims a patent has is only very loosely correlated with its inventiveness." He added that while multiple claims are common in the US, they are less so in other nations and that to infringe upon a dependent claim, one must also infringe upon its corresponding independent claim.

He noted that the patent examiners initially questioned the novelty of several claims in Google's application and it took two rounds of rejection and appeal to finally get the patent, but characterized this as a "fairly typical back and forth with the patent office." He also noted that the patent examiner cited references to prior art in 1 issued patent and 6 published applications (listed below).

Ewing said that to infringe a claim literally, someone would have to do everything listed in the claim. I would think that engineers working on a competing product could find work-arounds that would differentiate their work from Google's. “There is a possibility for arguing infringement under what’s known as ‘the doctrine of equivalents,’” he said, adding that such arguments are often difficult to win.

Ewing also mentioned that it is unusual for someone as senior as David C. Drummond, Google's Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer to sign the power of attorney for a patent application. He acknowledged that that may be standard procedure at Google, but, if is not, it may give us an indication of their commitment to the Chromebook.

With their Motorola acquisition, the Chromebook, Google TV, Nexus tablet and the quickly withdrawn Nexus Q, it looks like Google will end up a hardware manufacturer, heeding Alan Kay's advice that "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." They may also have noticed Apple's profit margins.

If you would like to really geek out on this patent, you can see all of the accompanying documentation by requesting information on patent number 8,239,662 at the Patent Office portal. I did so, and was impressed (and depressed) by the effort needed to secure the patent -- there are records of 46 transactions, 69 documents on file, 63 adjustments (some minor) made during the application process and contact information for 82 attorneys and agents (though only two attorneys actually filed the documents in the case).

Whether it is eventually upheld or not, this patent gives Google and its lawyers a weapon to use in the sad court fights that are so characteristic of today's computing scene.


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Prior art referenced by the patent examiner:

Patent:

• 7,343,560 - Method and system for generating dynamic images - owned by Novell

Applications:

• 20030126242 - Network boot system and method using remotely-stored, client-specific boot images created from shared, base snapshot image - owned by Compaq/HP
• 20040153694 - Reliability of diskless network-bootable computers using non-volatile memory cache - owned by Microsoft
• 20050091349 - Automatically configuring a computer - owned by SAP
• 20060010314 - Methods and systems for running multiple operating systems in a single mobile device - owned by Intellectual Ventures
• 20060047946 - Distributed operating system management - owned by MaxSP Corp.
• 20090083404 - Software Deployment In Large-Scale Networked Systems - owned by Microsoft

A gold medal for the BBC's Internet coverage of the Olympics

BBC's Olympic Internet coverage was better than NBC's. In this post I'll tell you why I say that and also take a look at BBC's terrific Sports blog.

I watched both the BBC and NBC Olympic coverage on the Internet and the BBC did a better job than NBC. Four BBC pluses come to mind.

1. The BBC Web viewer was more interactive, less passive and TV-like, than NBC's and they are continuing to improve it. As you see here, the user could display and hide data on demand and jump to the start of a "chapter" corresponding to an event.

2. I watched the BBC stream via a VPN, which, as shown below, slowed my connection considerably.

In spite of the increased latency and decreased speed, the BBC's video experience was as watchable as the video when using YouTube's content delivery network in the US.

3. Many of the NBC events I watched were video feeds with no commentary and every event I watched on the BBC had commentary. That could have been random chance and I watched more NBC than BBC, but it was my experience. (Commentary is more important for some events than others and some people dislike it. Users should be able to toggle commentary and the ambient sound on and off).

4. The BBC was commercial free -- paid for by the British TV license fee.

The BBC also wins the gold medal for Olymic blogging. The developers of BBC sports have a blog with suprisingly informative posts, and around 20 of the recent posts pertain to the Olympics.

Here are snippets from a couple that caught my eye.

Phil Fearnley, General Manager, News and Knowlege at BBC Future Media outlined their goals for the Olympic coverage and placed it in historical context.

The goal was to deliver over 2,500 hours of live sport online via 24 high definition streams - to cover every sport, from every venue on every day – across four screens: PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV. There were not 24 events going at all times, but the screenshot below was taken at a moment when there were -- the user could choose among 24 video streams.

Finley saw this as the start of a new era, writing

Broadcast television’s first big moment was the coronation in 1953, which brought the nation together around the TV screen for the first time. Our aspiration is that 2012 will do for digital and connected televisions what the coronation did for TV.

Cait O'Riordan, Head of Product, BBC Sport presented some statistics and analysis of the site traffic.

Below, you see the number (millions) of people watching the six streams with highest peaks on the first of August. People could easily switch between streams, and chapter links on the time-line let them find specific events they were interested in.

This graph shows relative usage during the day for each of the four screen types between July 28 and Aug 9. It looks like people watched on their computers (at work?) during the day and took their tablets to bed during the evening.

Matthew Clark, the Senior Technical Architect for BBC Online's Olympic website and apps described the site architecture. Here is his architecture diagram -- frustratingly small and impossible to read, but it conveys complexity:

In the post, Clark states that "Over the coming months we'll be working on bringing many of these features to the rest of Sport, and perhaps other parts of BBC Online too."

Alex Perry, Project Manager for the Live Interactive Video Player, outlined its key capabilities, including:

• Easy switching between up to 24 live streams at any time
• The ability to pause and rewind live video or jump straight to key moments you may have missed by using chapter markers (eg the Men's 100m final)
• Alerts for the key events that have happened or are coming up so you don't miss the moments that matter to you
• Extra facts and info on the sports and competitors you are watching alongside the video

this gives you a taste of the blogs -- if you are a live-stream event coverage geek, be sure to check them out.

Why did BBC do better than NBC? Two things come to mind. BBC's non-commercial culture makes a difference -- the viewers are their customers while NBC's customers are their advertisers. There is another clue in two of the tags on the BBC blog posts open source and open standards. Those tags indicate that BBC "gets" the Internet, and maybe NBC doesn't.

Regardless, the BBC team gets the gold medal for streaming live events.

(I've written several other posts on NBC's coverage of the Olympics and the Tour de France. You can see links to my observations as well as predictions for future event coverage here).

Amazon's Glacier storage service will disrupt online backup

The bar chart below sums it up -- Amazon's Glacier is cheap -- 1¢ per gigabyte per month. (Follow the link for pricing detail).

Amazon has published a Glacier API, and, for now, you have to be a programmer to use it. But they have committed to releasing FTP access very soon, and it will not take long for developers to release backup programs and services with graphical user interfaces to Glacier.

The Olympic live stream -- observations, recommendations and predictions

I watched the Tour de France and the Olympic Games (from both NBC and BBC) online this year. I'm a sports fan, but I also spent a lot of time focusing on the Internet content and experience. You can see my detailed observations here.

For this, the short version, I will list a few observations and conclude with some predictions for the future of live-event coverage on the Internet. First the observations, in no particular order.

• There were examples of three sources of revenue for live streaming of events: the BBC's coverage of the Olympics (free with a license fee), NBC's coverage of the Tour de France (pay per view) and NBC's Olympic coverage (advertising). My favorite was pay-per-view, but there is a lot of room for improving NBC's advertising presentation and many people would rather pay by watching ads.
• The BBC's Internet coverage was better than NBC's. It was more interactive, had better video quality and commentary and no advertsing. BBC also has a terrific sports blog. They win the gold medal because the viewers are their customers while NBC's customers are their advertisers. BBC "gets" the Internet.
• NBC could learn something about Web design from BBC. The BBC Web site was more interactive, giving the user control, while NBC's more closely followed a passive television model. They also need to clean up glitches like broken links.
• NBC's Olympic coverage needed better direction -- adding expert commentary to all the streams, better timing of commercials and intelligent camera selection.
• Sadly, NBC deleted the archives of the Tour de France soon after end of the race. I believe they have an information stewardship obligation and should maintain the archives of important events for analysis by journalists, scholars, fans, remixers, etc. The cost of doing so would be low.
• NBC's Olympic archive is still online, but they have not said for how long. Since it contains ads, they may leave it up. The BBC archive will remain online until January.
• NBC allowed viewers to watch two streams at once (one in a larger window), but then they had to watch two streams of ads.
• The quality of NBC's Web stream was very poor at first, virtually unwatchable. The video quality using their phone and tablet apps was much better. The video quality of NBC's earlier streaming of the Tour de France was nearly as good as that on television.
• NBC's Web video quality seemed to improve during the Olympic games. I did a subjective evaluation on day nine and, while it was far from perfect, it was in the same ballpark as BBC's streaming coverage. (Note that I watched the BBC coverage using a proxy server, which limited my download speed to about 2.3 Mbps while I was getting around 15 Mbps when accessing NBC).
• NBC's video seemed to improve even further by the end of The Games. Looking at various performance tests during the games, I tentatively concluded that the bottleneck was in the network, although there are too many variables to be sure.
• NBC made changes to their user interface during the Olympics. They were acting a bit like an agile Internet start-up -- release early, revise often -- tweaking the network to improve performance and revising the user interface.
• The Olympic Organizing Committee did its best to control leaks of Olympic material. For example, WiFi hotspots were not allowed in the stands and they did their best to stop social media leaks.
• NBC did a much better job on the Tour de France than the Olympics, but it was an easier event to cover, they had experience covering it in past years and they did not have to deal with the presentation of ads.

Now for a few fearless predictions.

NBC paid the International Olympic Committee $4.38 billion for the media rights to 2014 - 2020 Summer and Winter Olympics. We will see major changes in the coverage and the industry by 2020.

There will two separate markets. The first will be for producing content -- video, commentary, interactive features, Web design, and so forth. NBC was the content producer in this case. The second market will be for efficient networking to distribute that content. During these Olympics YouTube (Google) provided the networking expertise.

Both the content producers and the networkers will have learned a lot from past experience and will do a much better job than they did this year. We have even seen improvement during these Olympics. This is just the start of the IP TV era -- it is like the crystal set era in the early days of radio.

Given the expected improvement, the majority of people will be watching live events and other video on the Internet by 2020 -- we will have cut the cord and be watching over the top.

While there will be both network and content industries, the content industries will not have a lock on production. As the comedian Louis C. K. showed us, the production company will be dropped in some cases. Louis C. K. decided that he could do a better job of producing his comedy DVDs than Sony, and the Internatinal Olympic Committee might decide that it can do a better job than NBC or another production company.

It will be interesting to see what Google does in this area. If their fiber pilot study in Kansas City looks promising and replicable, they may become a networking powerhouse. At the same time, they are developing content and learning by working with folks like NBC. They may end up being able to offer the whole package.

Of course, there is a disclaimer to these predictions -- never underestimate the power of well-funded, entrenched lobbyists and huge corporate legal staffs. On the other hand, it is hard to find good buggy whips these days.

The structure of Google's Internet search MOOC

Google has posted the content of their Internet search MOOC. It consists of six 50-minute classes, and I went through the first one, to see how Google is approaching MOOCs.

The class consisted of an introductory video followed by five lessons with activities for each lesson.

Four of the lessons were videos showing screenshots and screencasts with a talking head in a small window, as shown below. The fifth lesson was a professionally produced video on how search engines work.

Each activity started with a boxed text summary of the points made in the associated lesson, as shown here.

The summary was followed by three or four activities. There were three types of activity:

• Multiple choice/true false questions, followed by the answers
• An admonition to think about something or answer an open ended question before proceeding (for example "What is something you have wanted to find that color filtering might have helped you locate faster? Reflect on this before proceeding to the next lesson.")
• An open ended question, followed by the response of an "expert" to the same question

#mooc #digitalliteracy #edreform #highered #bonkopen #pedagogy #edtec

Students in MOOCs form groups to study and socialize

Students in online courses are forming groups, both online and in the real world, to study and socialize. They discuss the content of the courses and the MOOC process and its impact on higher education. The groups may remain active after the course ends.

Some examples I found in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education are:

• Using Meetup.com to form local face-to-face (FTF) groups
• Weekly Google Hangouts with the professor and interested students (John Boyer also uses weekly online office hours to supplement his massive on-campus class)
• FTF “office hours” in different cities
• Student organized groups on Google Plus
• CompScisters, a Facebook group to encourage women to take and complete MOOC’s in mathematics and science

What is a MOOC?

MOOCs (massive, open, online classes) are a hot topic -- they've generated a lot of experimentation, press, venture capital, etc. When my colleagues ask what it is all about, I point them to these quick resources:

1. Peter Norvig, The 100,000-student classroom. This is a six-minute TED talk describing the MOOC Norvig and a colleague taught at Stanford along with some of the principles that guided the course design.

2. A twenty minute audio interview of George Siemens, a professor at Athabasca University. Siemens was one of the first to teach a MOOC. (He may have coined the term). He describes his decentralized approach to MOOC design and, like Norvig, focuses on the need and opportunity for pedagogical research.

3. A twenty minute Ted Talk by Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller presents their MOOC techniques and highlights a few pedagoical research results.

4. Two blog posts that give a sense of the video production process at Udacity, a prominent, venture funded startup:

• Katy Reichelt, video editing manager at Udacity: Video editing and the learning process
• John Regehr, Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Utah describes the Udacity production process from the point of view of a teacher.

Disclaimer -- these are all presentations by enthusiasts. I've written several posts on MOOCs in the last year or so, and see a lot of potential, but there remain many unanswered questions.

Three revenue models for online coverage of live events

With the Olympics and Tour de France, we saw examples of three live streaming revenue models: license fee, advertising and pay per view. Here is a quick look at each.

BBC Olympics, license fee

The BBC streamed 2,500 hours of free, live coverage, but you had to have a British TV license. The TV licenses cost £145.50 per year for a color TV and £49.00 for a black and white TV. The fee allowed you to watch the video streams on any device and gave you permission to store, but not distribute, the content. If you came to the site from a non-British IP address, you were blocked, but that was easily circumvented using proxy servers. In the future, they may be more aggressive about discovering and blocking proxy servers.

Archived footage will be available until January.

NBC Olympics, advertising supported

To view their live coverage of the Olympics, NBC required you to have a cable TV account with an authorized provider and a subscription level with access to several NBC cable channels. (That restriction may have been imposed by NBC's owner, Comcast). On top of that, they showed a lot of ads.

Like the BBC, authorized users were free to view the live coverage on the Web or their tablets and phones. One could circumvent the account restrictions by using the user name and password of a friend with a qualifying account. Again, in the future they might be more aggressive in blockng that sort of access.

NBC's archives are on line at this time, but they have not announced their plans for future access. Since they run ads, they may leave them up indefinitely.

NBC Tour de France, pay per view

For the Tour de France, NBC charged a $29 fee, which, as with the other events, entitled the user to watch on the Web, a phone or tablet. There were no ads, but, unfortunately, access to the archive footage was dropped shortly after the end of the event.

My least favorite this year was the ad support model, which was done poorly. When navigating the Web site, it seemed that every new page view had a pre-roll commercial, and arbitrary commercial breaks in the middle of event coverage were irritating and distracting -- the screen would go black for a few seconds in the middle of an event, then they would run as many as six commercials before resuming the action. To add insult to injury, they boosted the audio volume during commercials.

I preferred pay per view, but many viewers would opt for ads, and there is a lot of room for improving the experience. For a start, NBC needs directors to watch the action and insert ads intelligently. Ad targeting -- showing individuals ads based on demographic, social networking and search signals or asking them for hints as to the kinds of ads they were interested in -- would also improve the experience. There could be hybrid models like allowing the user to choose between pay per view with no ads and paying a smaller fee and seeing just a few, well-placed ads.

State of the Internet - the Official Akamai Internet Traffic Report for Q1 of 2012

I am attracted to the big picture -- studies of the global diffusion of the Internet. For example, Telegeography tracks the spread of the physical infrastructure in the form of undersea cables and Akami tracks use and traffic in their quarterly reports on the State of the Internet.

Akami's report for the first quarter of 2012 is just out. It is a detailed report, but a couple of big picture items caught my attention.

Akami saw a 6.0% increase in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to their global content distribution network over the previous quarter, and the global average connection speed was 2.6 Mbps.

They also noted the continued growth of mobile data, which passed mobile voice during the fourth quarter of 2009.

Check the full report for a lot more of this sort of thing and to drill down into the details.

For old timers, let me throw in links to a couple of earlier papers on Internet diffusion by my colleagues and me:

An Internet Diffusion Framework, CACM
The State of the Internet: Growth and Gaps, ISOC 2000

A few Olympic Web design tips for NBC

I wrote an earlier post on the production and direction of NBC's Olympic coverage. That note focused primarily on the production of their video content, but we also noted a few Web site production problems like broken links, slow response time and screen blackouts during transitions to commercials.

Many of these glitches depended upon the network as well as the Web design, but they should be able to improve both of those based on their experience this year.

In addition to fixing those problems, they can take some interface ideas from the BBC's Olympic Web site, which was more interactive than theirs. NBC was more like television -- the viewer watched the video passively, and NBC producers popped up extra information like standings and scores on the screen when they decided to do so. (They also popped up commercials -- something the BBC or Tour de France producers did not have to deal with).

The BBC gave the user more control. If the user clicked on Extras after hovering over the bottom of the screen, they could display information about the athletes and the game. They could also control playback using a chapter-oriented time line.

In the example shown below, the video timeline is divided into "chapters." In this case, the chapters correspond to pre and post-game material and quarters or parts of quarters of the game action. The user is watching the second video chapter (yellow) and has displayed the game statistics of one player, Carmelo Anthony. The chapter-oriented timeline and Extra choices gave the BBC user more control than the NBC user had.

The folks on the NBC Olympic crew can also borrow from their Tour de France team. For example, I really liked the 15-second instant replay button on Tour videos. Again, this example shows a way to give control directly to users, who can replay as much or little as they wish.

The user interface shown above was BBC's default, but they offered two optional user interfaces. The accessible player had text-oriented controls that were designed for keyboard and screen reader access. They also had a pop-out player for people who wanted to keep the action streaming in a small window while the worked on something else.

This is not to beat up on the NBC Olympic team. The Tour de France team had a simpler event to cover -- a single race comprised of stages that all followed the same format. Furthermore, they had previous experience covering the Tour and neither they nor the BBC crew had to deal with commercials.

That being said, I am sure NBC will look back at what they and their competitors did this year, and improve their site design.

The Olympics -- NBC's production and direction

The Olympics were brought to us by two organizations -- YouTube and NBC. YouTube ran the network, and their task was to deliver smooth, high-resolution video streams. NBC handled content production and direction, using video feeds supplied by Olympic Broadcasting Services, OBS. Most of my posts to this point have focused on the former -- the network. How about direction and production?

While some of the content was good, there were significant gaps.

For example, a cycling road race is a difficult event to cover -- it is spread over a large area, the action is continuous and the cyclists break into groups. NBC streamed the video of this and many other events without commentary and with relatively few on-screen graphics. While that may be satisfactory for an event like volleyball or weight lifting, one tends to get lost in a cycling road race.

The camera might be focused on a single group of riders, but, who is in the group, are some of the race favorites or top sprinters in the group and where us the group relative to the rest of the field? Commentators and graphics like NBC used in their coverage of the Tour de France provide that context. (I spent less time watching the BBC's live coverage, but all the streams I saw had live commentators).

Extended tree-obstructed shots like the one shown below are evidence of loose direction. I do not know whether NBC had the ability to switch cameras or they only got one video feed from OBS, but someone should be watching and switch cameras when the view is obstructed or there is something else of more interest to show. Ideally, the person switching cameras would also be in communication with the commentators.

Cuts to commercials at arbitrary points in the action were also evidence of loose direction. Furthermore, seeing a commercial on a TV set is not the same as seeing it on a laptop screen. We subconsciously expect commercials on TV and the transitions are fast, but on the Web they are jarring. You think something is wrong at first when the screen goes black during the transition to a commercial.

NBC's Tour de France video was superior to that of their Olympic video, but that was to be expected. The Tour de France video feed was supplied by France television, working with Euro media France (EMF). France TV and EMF have years of experience, while Beijing was the first Olympics for OBS. They also had only one event to cover, so needed only one set of experts and commentators. Finally, since the coverage was pay-per-view, they did not have to deal with timing of and transition to commercials.

There were also production problems with respect to the Web site -- broken links like the one shown below, slow response, poor user interface design, screen blackouts during transitions to commercials and so forth. (The slow Web site response time is a shared problem between the Web site design team and the networking team from YouTube).

I don't mean to beat up on NBC -- covering 302 events in 32 sports is a huge task, and I am sure they learned a lot about how to produce live events during the Olympics. They even made some mid-stream adjustments like changing the user interface on the live stream menu and perhaps adding more commentators near the end of the games. I cannot be sure of the latter, but it seemed like after the first week or so I found fewer live events without commentary, and the commentators often had English accents.

As video coverage of live events moves online, the production experience NBC and OBS gained at the Olympics and the Tour de France, will serve them well.

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You will find a description of EMF's operation during the Tour de France here.

Dabbleboard, RIP -- the end of a cool service

Dabbleboard, a cool, shared-whiteboard, vector drawing service is shutting down.

I didn't use Dabbleboard for production work, but it was a terrific tool for teaching students the difference between vector and bit-mapped images and illustrating synchronous collaboration.

This illustrates one of the risks of cloud computing -- you are stuck if you depend upon a service that goes out of business, raises its prices, etc.

I wonder if the folks at Dabbleboard would consider open sourcing it?

Olympic archives remain online ... for now

Tiled UI with over 4,000 choices

The games are finished and NBC has an archive of over 4,000 videos on their Web site. (As with the live coverage, only NBC cable subscribers in the US can access it).

There are full events, event highlights, interviews, expert analysis, footage from earlier Olympics, medal ceremonies and more. You can filter the videos by these categories, sport, or top athlete and sort them by by date, popularity or recommendation.

But, what about that user interface? I would have called it a Metro-style user interface, but I guess Microsoft has dropped the name "Metro." Maybe a better name would be square icons user interface (SIUI)? Or tiled user interface (TUI)? Or cell-phone user interface (CPUI)? Or an iPhone user interface (iUI)? (Pronounce each acronym and see what you think).

Tiled UI with one choice

Seriously, whatever you call it, this sort of user interface might be more appropriate for a cell phone or tablet with a few installed apps than a library of over 4,000 videos. (On the other hand, it lends itself nicely to using oversize tiles for ads).

As I noted in a post the other day, NBC deleted their Tour de France archive. I asked their PR department what the plans were for the Olympic archive, but got no comment. Maybe they will leave this one up as ad bait.

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I want to add a note on the quality of the archival video streams. I expected that it would be better than the original broadcast stream because demand would be lower, YouTube would have had time to push content out to caches around the Internet and there would have been time for additional compression.

To test my theory, I watched the replay of the final basketball game between the US and Spain at 1080p resolution. The streaming was a bit jerky, but the game was watchable.

I could not subjectively say whether it was better or worse than the original live stream at that resolution, so I looked at the performance profile while streaming from the archive (below). As you see, it is considerably different than the live streaming profile.

Whether it is better or not, I am confident that YouTube and other major distribution networks will learn from this Olympic experience and improve performance.

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I also tried the BBC archive. The BBC provided up to 24 simultaneous live streams adding up to 2,500 hours of coverage during the Olympics. That material has all been archived, and it will remain online until January.

The BBC streams their video at a variable rate, starting slow and adding speed as buffering and bandwidth allowed. I watched the final basketball game between the USA and Spain. The motion was fairly smooth. There was some stuttering, but less than with NBC. However, the resolution was lower, not exceedinig 512 x 288. Bear in mind that I was watching via a proxy server. The average of three download speedtests was 2.34 Mb/s, about 20% of my local download speed.

At this speed, the following is representative of the best image quality I saw.

Like YouTube, I would expect the BBC network to improve as a result of this experience. I wish they would reconsider the decision to delete the archive in January.

NBC blows it -- deletes the Tour de France archive

All that is left at the Tour de France Web site.

During their coverage of the Tour de France, NBC created a terrific archive of 261 videos of interviews, highlights, full-stage replays, commentary, etc. on the Tour Web site.

I just went back to the site, and discovered that the archive is gone. That is a shame, because it would have been a valuable resource for historians, journalists, fans and remixiers.

What a waste. Doesn't NBC get the Internet? Haven't they noticed Amazon's success with low-selling, long tail books and other retail items?

They need to talk with Brewster Kahle, who founded the Internet Archive to build an Internet library to offer "permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format."

In endorsing the Internet Archive, Stewart Brand wrote that "civilization is developing severe amnesia" due to the rapid turnover of digitized information, that the archiving "norm is total loss."

NBC -- how many early TV video tapes and kinescope recordings have you lost? Don't keep repeat your past mistakes.

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Added notes: NBC's Olympic archive is still online, but they have not said how long it will remain there. The BBC Olympic archive (up to 24 live HD streams and 2,500 hours of coverage) will be available until January.

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I just learned that the January date was not decided by the BBC, but imposed in their contract with the International Olympic Committee (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olympics_reach_stream_stats.html?postId=113427062#comment_113427062).

I understand that one can argue that the IOC paid a lot of money and should have the right to maximize their profit on that investment, but I also feel that there is a class of event that should be kept available as part of our cultural and political history for which there is a stewardship responsibility. Do not know where to draw the line, but in this case, I would urge the IOC to plan on keeping the archive available to the public and adjusting the terms of their contract to take that into account.