Do-It-Yourself Russian Video on the Internet

[Benjamin Sher]

Dear Colleagues:

This letter is addressed to Slavic departments, Centers for Russian
and  East European Studies, in fact, to any academic institutions
and/or  individual professors in charge of video production at their
respective  universities or institutes: I have just read an article on
ZDNET's site about Broadcast.com and its  CEO Mr. Mark Cuban. It
appears that Mr. Cuban and Broadcast.com are  introducing a new
technology called Multicasting that will make it possible  for any
individual or, in our case, academic department to create their own
video broadcasts on the Net at minimal cost and then have
Broadcast.com  actually broadcast them on their servers using
multicasting, which makes it  possible to broadcast the program
from one server to an unlimited number  of users. In fact, according
to Jesse Berst, the Editor of ZDNET, the future of  Web broadcasting
depends on this new technology of multicasting. No  doubt other
companies will offer similar services. But right now, according  to
the article below, it appears that Mr. Cuban and Broadcast.com are
the  pioneers. Those of you who are interested in creating Russian
video on  your own and then broadcasting it on the Web through
companies such as  Broadcast.com might be interested in reading
about this new technology.  Here is an excerpt from the article:
"Broadcast.com clearly intends to create a turnkey service that even
 technophobes with tiny potential audiences could use, Hall said. A
budding  programmer might send a tape to Broadcast.com for
processing, and  participating Internet providers presumably will
provide the hosting." You may find the entire article at ZDNet at:
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2208705,00.html

"Broadcast.com Plans Do-It-Yourself Webcasts"

>>From InteractiveWeek Online (onZDNet's site)


I am not in any way personally or professionally associated with
Broadcast.com or ZDNet.

Thank you.

Benjamin

Benjamin Sher
Sher's Russian Web and Index
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/