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Apple Documentaries for the ‘Fanboy’ in All of Us

on February 12, 2009

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Apple (s aapl) has been a “recent” devotion for me. Within the last six years have I come to appreciate the quality and design that goes into the products I use daily. So why not better understand the culture and devotion behind the company? If you love your Apple product enough to sit through a documentary or two, here are a few to get you started.

MacHeads

MacHeads is a deep dive into the culture and aura surrounding Apple. Meet dedicated people, probably not too far from ourselves, as they reveal their inner devotion to everything Apple. You’ll meet some interesting, and possibly random people through this journey, but it will give you a better understanding of why so many love their Apple products. Enjoy interviews from Guy Kawasaki, and other Apple cultists. Currently the video is available for sale or rental through iTunes and Amazon.
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Ev Williams: Twitter Not Limiting Followers

Om Malik on August 11, 2008

Updated with comments from Twitter: Dave Winer points to a series of discussions and blog posts about Twitter allegedly limiting people to 2,000 followers. In his opinion, it is a good idea, because “the expensive thing in Twitter is distributing status messages to large numbers of queues.” Actually, Twitter isn’t doing anything formal. Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, left a comment in response to an earlier version of a post that explains it all.

I’m afraid this has gotten confused. There is no limit to the number of followers you can have. There is a limit to the number of people you can *follow*. This is mostly to reduce spam and depends on a number of factors. More details here: (link)

In other words, there are no such limits. Earlier reports were based There is no official word from Twitter, and all on a couple of blog posts and status messages, where people reported that they were running into the 2,000 follower problem. Read More about Ev Williams: Twitter Not Limiting Followers

Level 3 Adds IBM’s CDN Patents to Its Portfolio

Guest Column on March 19, 2008

Written by Dan Rayburn, EVP for StreamingMedia.com, who also has his own blog at BusinessOfVideo.com.

Over the past few weeks, an ongoing patent dispute has meant most of the focus in the content delivery market has been on Akamai and Limelight. In the meantime, however, Level 3 has been quietly expanding its CDN services, adding capacity to its network and signing up one large customer after another. In fact, when it comes to CDN patents, Level 3 is the one to watch. In addition to the 50 patents pertaining to content delivery it has pending, Level 3 owns over 80 patents pertaining to content delivery and streaming media technology — including 20 it recently bought from IBM.

Level 3 and IBM last month said they’d signed a long-term patent cross-licensing deal whereby Level 3 gets licenses to 42,000 pending and issued patents from IBM and IBM gets licenses for more than 850 pending and issues patents from Level 3. What was not disclosed was that Level 3 also purchased 20 patents pertaining specifically to content delivery and streaming technology.

I’m about to put the finishing touches on a story detailing why Level 3 is not affected by Akamai’s 703 patent, so I’ve been doing a lot of research on CDN patents lately. Sifting through prior court rulings and patent filings, I noticed that the USPTO web site lists IBM as the owner of 20 patents pertaining to CDN and streaming. It also claims they’re in the process of being transferred over to Level 3. I contacted Level 3 and they confirmed this was indeed true.