Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Video and the internet of things

    Video and the internet of things

    A few days ago we discussed how 4k video cameras are going to change the sports broadcasting industry.

    Yesterday executives from modular data center supplier VCE held a media lunch where they discussed some of their industrial applications. One of the areas they discussed was the monitoring of power stations with large resolution cameras.

    The 4k cameras are trained on machine rooms with software watching for irregular conditions such as excessive vibrations, leaks or smoke. Should something out of the ordinary be detected, warnings can be triggered and potentially affected equipment spun down.

    With the 4k resolution the cameras are able to watch large areas and like the sports coverage can zoom in for a detailed view of an affected area.

    The use of 4k video cameras shows how the internet of things won’t just be about the data gathered from smart devices but also matching the information coming from IoT equipment with that of other environmental factors.

    For companies like VCE these sort of applications are an opportunity as they need large amounts of data storage and processing power in local centres.

    In many respects these small scale data centers are a large scale example of the fog computing being touted by companies like Cisco where most of the operational tasks are carried out by local equipment with only reports and exceptions being transmitted to the cloud.

    This sort of application also shows the demands different industries are going to have for local data processing and storage with the VCE executives suggesting hospitals, mines and sports stadiums are also going to need these facilities.

    For VCE – a troubled joint venture between Cisco, storage company EMC and computer virtualisation firm VM Ware – these are the sort of clients they are hoping to find to keep their business running.

    Regardless of VCE’s prospects, the need for equipment to manage the data being collected by devices on the Internet of Things and 4k video is going to grow. That could give us one of the clues of where the jobs of the future are going to come from.

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  • What happens when others control your traffic?

    What happens when others control your traffic?

    Quartz magazine is held up as one of the most innovative news websites and one of the models for the future of online publishing however its president Jay Lauf suggested at the Digital Media Strategies conference in London yesterday that web users are increasingly shifting towards social sites to find their content.

    This isn’t new, most sites have been dependent upon referrals from the popular social media services and companies like Buzzfeed have built their entire strategies upon traffic from Facebook.

    Lauf suggests that sites like Quartz and Buzzfeed are increasingly losing control of their own audiences which raises risks for publishers and readers as they become dependent upon the social media gatekeepers.

    Quartz’s traffic from LinkedIn is a good example of how a gatekeeper can control traffic with referrals falling away as the social site pivots into a publishing platform of its own.

    It could turn out that control of traffic backfires however as people find those services deliver less value or relevant information.

    Ultimately it may be the gatekeepers who suffer from restricting traffic as readers decide they aren’t getting the news they want.

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  • Software eats the sports cameraman

    Software eats the sports cameraman

    Since the beginning of industry technology has changed occupations in unexpected ways the demise of the sports TV cameraman is a good modern example of a highly skilled, specialised trade that may soon be redundant.

    Years ago television studios largely replaced cameramen with remote controlled cameras but sports grounds needed skilled operators with excellent attention spans to video action at sports grounds.

    At a lunch today in Sydney Michael Tomkins, Chief Technology Office of Fox Sports Australia, explained how a combination of high definition cameras and advanced software is changing the way sports are broadcast and recorded.

    “Last year we put two 4k cameras in to cover the length of the ground,” Tomkins said. “Two 4k cameras can see the length of the whole ground so I get rid of four cameramen and replace them with one joystick bunny.”

    “He moves a box around the screen and those become a virtual camera. The resolution of a 4k camera is four times that of our HD broadcasts. It’s quite cost effective and I don’t have to roll a crew out.”

    A demonstration of how the technology works is in a YouTube clip of an Australian Rules football match from last year. While the ‘joystick bunny’ and the software is somewhat clumsy in the segment, the clip shows the power of the technology.

    With abolishing most of the camera, the opportunity to rationalise the production suite also becomes possible; at present most sports events have a producer instructing a group of assistants to cut between cameras, prepare replays and all the other effects expected by viewers. With a software based system most of that labor and its skills become redundant.

    Over time as higher resolution cameras become available this application is going to become common, in fact most junior and amateur sports will be able to afford static hi-res cameras for their ground that allows them to record their games.

    While the demise of the sports cameraman and producers is a shame in the same way loom weavers and hansom cab drivers disappeared, it is a reflection of  changing technologies creating then destroying occupations.

    TV camera image through wikipedia

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  • Managing the great transition

    Managing the great transition

    At present the global economy is beset with low expectations; trade is at its lowest point in 20 years, many of the worlds economies are teetering on the edge of depression and investment is barely keeping ahead of depreciation.

    The world is slowing and The Great Transition report by Colonial First State Global Asset Management looks at the reasons and some of the effects of this change.

    Senior economic and market research analyst James White suggests in the report that the current state of affairs is a permanent shift as global productivity rises due to Chinese production and the widespread digitisation of most industries.

    Compounding the problem in White’s view is the traditional measures of economic growth understates the size of the service economy as between ten and twenty percent of transactions go through the ‘black economy’ in most countries.

    In looking at their own field, the Colonial First State researchers suggest that investment strategies are going to change as ‘capital light’ industries begin to dominate advanced economies.

    While White and his co-author Stephen Halmarick are optimistic about what the changes mean and suggest a focus on people and attracting global capital as the key to competing during the Great Transition, the challenge is on policy makers to increase human capital in their economies.

    The question though is what can individual countries do to be competitive in this context? While nations like Switzerland and Singapore can quickly develop pro-investment policies, it’s harder for larger and more diverse societies.

    Perhaps the services driven economic model is really only one for high wealth, small nations with well trained and skilled workforces? If that’s the case, then the Great Transition might be a tough time for many of the world’s developed economies.

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  • Data driven lending

    Data driven lending

    Banking has always been a data driven business, understanding borrowers and the risks they present is one of the essential skills in making money from lending.

    The new wave of payment startups present a new way for lenders to analyse risks; with real time data aggregated across businesses and regions, lenders can quickly decide wether a borrower is likely to able to pay the money back with the conditions asked for.

    Payments company Square in its latest pivot has partnered with Victory Park Capital and claims to have extended more than $100 million in capital to more than 20,000 merchants writes the New York Times.

    Like other payment companies that have entered this market, Square uses their own deep understanding of their customers’ incomes to be able to make a data based decision on the creditworthiness of applicants.

    Square also offers ancillary data-driven products created for small businesses. The new instant deposit product, which is still in testing and will be fully available in the spring, will give businesses faster access to money they put into a debit account. And the company’s new charge-back protection service will cover some disputes between consumers and merchants.

    Those products also rely on data that Square has collected. They will be available only to small businesses that have a solid financial track record, based on a history of accepting payments with Square.

    Square is by no means the first business to do this, last year we wrote of PayPal’s move into small business lending and Point of Sale hardware manufacturer Verifone retreated from the market two years ago calling it ‘fundamentally unprofitable.’

    The competition in the space and the fact assessing financial risks isn’t exactly a core competence of Silicon Valley start ups indicate Square’s and other companies may find small business lending a tough business as well.

    Despite that, small business lending is a field that is overdue for disruption. With companies like Apple, Google and Amazon all offering payment services, the logical expansion is into evaluating risk and profit.

    It may not be Square, Verifone or PayPal who ultimately redefines the sector, but it will be one of today’s tech businesses that does.

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