Transpera

"Regularly" is a Funny Word...

August 18, 2009

Well, all righty then - my how time flies. It's been a year since I let folks know I'd be blogging here "regularly." I'm a hoot, that way. I apologize for the silence, and by way of apology I'd like to let everyone know what we've been so busy with over here at the T during my radio blackout.

In the past year, there's been a lot of changes in the mobile video landscape: the iPhone has dominated the news, the smartphone sales, and the minds of the digerati; Android has begun to be gain momentum; and the Palm Pre finally hit the streets. Transpera supplies videos to all of these handsets, of course, as well as the legions of other devices out there capable of displaying mobile video content. Transpera-powered videos are now behind the iPhone apps for TV.com, Showtime, the Today Show, MSNBC, and CBS Sports to name just a few, as well as powering video content for the mobile web sites of CBS News, The Weather Channel, Accuweather, Revision3, Break, and scores of others.

The one constant thread throughout all of these applications are our usage numbers: they continue to rise at an astonishing rate. If it isn't clear to anyone at this point: people are moving to their mobile devices for more than just text messaging and - heaven forbid - actual phone calls. Transpera is now trafficing more mobile video then anyone else, and the numbers continue to climb week after week.

In order to keep up with this rapid growth, we've invested in new infrastructure (both hardware and software) that can scale. Whole swaths of our software platform have been rearchitected over the last 10 months to support not only the increase in video distribution, but in our ability to dynamically place video ad campaigns into the video streams based on targeting data.

As much as people like to say that mobile is the new internet (including yours truly), that only holds for the growth model, adoption and market penetration rates. For the tech and usage models, its a new beast. Back in the 90's we used to refer to the 5 browser problem when we spoke about application support - in the mobile environment, it's the 65,000 browser problem. Each model cell phone has separate capabilities from its siblings, and even two identical handsets may behave differently depending on which carrier it resides. All of this must be taken into consideration as Transpera's platform determines which video to serve, which ad to place with it, and how best to serve it - all with the best possible user experience in mind.

Similarly, the usage model between the internet and the mobile internet is much different. Video consumption on the internet can assume that there is a roomy, 13" or higher screen and that the user is sitting comfortably ready to watch. Advertising can be displayed in banners or on the sides of the landing page as the video plays, and the user experience isn't fundamentally altered. On the handset, its a different story: 2" to 4" screens are the norm, the user is usually on the move, and the ad content has to be delivered in a way that is non-obtrusive to the users' experience, contextual to the video, and still message the users' in a way that conveys the advertisers' intent. Sure, we have banner advertising like many of the mobile players out there, but we also have pre-roll video ads (these ad units are stitched directly into the video itself), transperent banner overlays, and clickable pre-roll ads. All of these ad units are designed with the principles of non-obtrusive behavior with effective design in mind.

In the midst of all of this, there's the quality of the content itself - with high definition content coming online from our content providers, only the best will do. To that end, we've been ramping up our transcode technology. (Transcoding is the process of taking media from one format or standard and translating it to another format or standard. It's a lot of heavy math and consumes a lot of cycles on our server farms.) Late last year we came to the conclusion that our previous trancode technology wasn't fast enough to keep up and still maintain the quality, so we swapped that out as well. Traspera's new trancoders are fast enough to maintain our scalable growth well into the future, produce great 3G quality video that passes Apple's rigorous over-the-air standards, and creates WiFi-based video that makes your phone look like a little HDTV.

Finally, there's the access into our system from the outside - our publisher clients and our advertisers constantly want up-to-date information about their traffic counts, ad impressions, and other information that is the part of their personal dashboard. Transpera's new user console affords them the information they need when they want it - all in a self-service model.

So, I think that covers it - well, much of it anyway - as far as an excuse for not posting more frequently. At least that's what I tell myself to appease my guilt...

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CTIAway-we-go...

September 09, 2008

Welcome to Transpera’s new website…and, seeing as how you successfully navigated your way here, welcome to the CTO blog.

First I should let you know who I am, I suppose: My name is Rob DeMillo, I've been in tech for a very long time. (Does dismantling the tube - and that's vacuum tube, not cathode-ray tube - TV at age 8 count?) I began my professional carrier in the public sector doing work for JPL, NASA, Lincoln Laboratory and the F.A.A, wandered through the world of 3D computer graphics when it was still young, and ended up a serial entrepreneur. I was involved in numerous internet tech companies when the phrase “dot com” was still fresh and clever, and then moved into digital media and mobile when they were both…well, they are still both fresh and clever. Currently, I am the CTO and co-founder of Transpera, here in sunny California creating technology for delivering video and video advertising to mobile phones.

As the little blurb below says, I’ll be using this space to explain Transpera technology, comment on the larger mobile ecosystem, and generally rant about all things tech going forward. The great thing about the mobile space is that there is never a slow news week. In fact, we’re launching the new website in conjunction with one of the large wireless tradeshows in the world: CTIA 2008…well, ok, the second CTIA of 2008…yeah, there’s two of ‘em.

So, as myself and 40,000 of my closest friends head up to San Francisco (or, in my case, down the block) to converge on the Mascone center, keep your eye on this space for information about Transpera and our client partners, and news of the industry in general – from a technologist’s perspective, of course.

…and, if you happen to be at CTIA, look me up and let’s chat. My attention can be had for the cost of a beer.

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Welcome to our Blog. Rob DeMillo, CTO, shares his viewpoint.

August 13, 2008

Transperantly...This is where Rob rants about everything and anything related to mobile video.

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