Ustream Delivers Out-of-This-World Footage of Cosmic Drive-By

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When a comet the size of a small mountain whizzed past Mars a few weeks ago — coming within 87,000 miles of the Red Planet — a fleet of scientific observatories, including NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, were there to record the action. And thanks to NASA’s Ustream channel, thousands of people around the world were able to observe the historic event. (Read more in “Comet takes near-miss route to Mars,” USA Today)

Speaking to USA Today, planetary scientist Roger Yelle of the University of Arizona called the happening “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” For Mars and the comet to be “coming right next to each other … right after this very sophisticated spacecraft [MAVEN] gets there — it just boggles the mind,” he added.

Comet Siding Spring, named after the Australian observatory where it was discovered in 2013, came from the Oort cloud, one of the coldest, most remote regions of the solar system. While most comets in the Oort cloud tend to stay put, this one appears to have been bumped by a passing star and sent on a trajectory towards the sun.

The “cosmic drive-by” occurred on Sunday, October 19, while most Americans were preoccupied with football. “If your team loses, forget about it and just go to the Ustream,” Padma Yanamandra-Fisher of the Space Science Institute advised at a NASA briefing before the event. “This is a lot more exciting.”

Read the USA Today article, “Comet takes near-miss route to Mars” or download the DemandGen Report On-Demand Webinar to learn how your business can be successful with live video streaming.

How to Amp Up Holiday Sales with LiveAd

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If you’re in the retail business, better start eating your Wheaties, because the holiday sales season is in full swing. And if you find it a challenge to get your marketing message heard during the rest of the year, standing out amidst the eardrum-busting pandemonium of the holiday season can seem like an impossible feat.

Hey, we get it. That’s why we created LiveAd, a game-changing online advertising solution for brands looking to amp up their video marketing strategy.

Video is one of the hottest trends in online marketing, and LiveAd lets you take it one step further by harnessing the excitement of live streaming and targeting the exact audience you want to reach. Since we launched the service just over a year ago, hundreds of Ustream clients have discovered just how powerful this combination can be — clients like HBO.

True-ly Impressive Impact

When HBO released Season 5 of its True Blood series on DVD, it promoted the launch through a “Live From the Set” streaming video event featuring stars of the show answering fan questions. Thanks to LiveAd, HBO was able to create an interactive ad that allowed a targeted audience to not only watch the stream, but also join chats on Facebook and Twitter — and, most importantly, click through to Amazon to place their orders immediately.

How effective was it? The event drew over 135,000 viewers who watched an average of 14 minutes … and it racked up more than 60,000 clickthroughs.

So if your holiday advertising strategy could use a little fresh blood (pardon the pun), think about adding a live video element to pump up your engagement … and your ROI.

To learn more, visit our LiveAd page or check out the DemandGen Report On-Demand Webinar.

 

The Concert For Valor: Saluting America’s Veterans

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This Veterans Day, Ustream will provide live streaming services for The Concert For Valor – a free concert to honor our veterans. The Concert For Valor is a first-of-its-kind event designed to bring artists, celebrities and millions of Americans together to honor the courage and sacrifice of veterans, active duty service members and their families. This event will provide a national stage for ensuring that veterans and their families know that their fellow Americans’ gratitude is genuine. Millions of people, including veterans, active duty service members, their families and Americans from all walks of live are expected to watch the free concert.

Performing artists include Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood, Dave Grohl, Eminem, Justin Timberlake, Metallica, Zack Brown Band, and Rihanna.

Watch the show live on TheConcertForValor.com this Veterans Day, Tuesday November 11, 2014 as we broadcast our gratitude to America’s soldiers live from the National Mall in Washington, D.C..

The SMBs Heard ‘Round the World

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Not so long ago, your typical small business was a neighborhood mom-and-pop shop that served a small, local clientele.

Fast forward to 2014, and small businesses are just as likely as IBM to have a truly global presence, with team members and customers located around the world.

With a worldwide footprint comes the need to communicate with audiences thousands of miles away, which can be a challenge for lean-and-mean companies. That’s where Ustream comes in.

Ustream enables thousands of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to realize the benefits of live streaming video. Our clients include some of the most innovative, dynamic SMBs around — businesses like Foster City, California–based Zuora.

Founded in 2007 by three guys in a tiny office, Zuora enables businesses to launch and monetize subscription products and services through its subscription management software. Today the company employs more than 400 professionals at its headquarters in California and at satellite offices throughout North America, Europe, and China.

As you can imagine, managing a team whose locations span nine time zones can be quite a challenge, especially for a small business. How do you keep all your employees engaged and aligned with your mission while still keeping a small-company feel?

Zuora’s leadership found their solution in live streaming video, provided by Ustream. The company began broadcasting its weekly meetings, enabling employees around the world to offer input and ask questions in real time.

But that was just the beginning: Now the company uses Ustream live video to evangelize their brand message. Last year the broadcast of their Subscribed conference in San Francisco attracted more than 20,000 viewers. “That blew away our expectations,” says CMO Brian Bell. “We never expected to get that many watching it live and engaging in the conversation. In fact, it was so successful that when we did the event again in London, we also chose Ustream.”

Read more about Zuora and check out their Ustream channel.

Ustream, the only video platform in IBM’s Bluemix Platform

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Great news! Ustream is currently the first and only video platform that is available within Bluemix, IBM’s cloud platform for developers. Developers leveraging the Bluemix platform can easily integrate video into their applications, or simply use it for communicating the benefits of their business. Thanks to the depth of Ustream’s APIs, the Ustream platform can be directly controlled from Bluemix with little hassle.

Bluemix is an implementation of IBM’s Open Cloud Architecture, leveraging Cloud Foundry to enable cloud application developers to rapidly build, deploy, and manage their applications. IBM has partnered with some of the leading SaaS applications to make this possible.

Cloud applications built on Bluemix will

  1. Reduce time for application/infrastructure provisioning
  2. Allow for flexible capacity
  3. Help to address any lack of internal tech resources
  4. Reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
  5. Accelerate exploration of new workloads – social, mobile, big data

To learn more about Ustream’s offering in Bluemix, check out our entry in IBM’s Bluemix blog.

Forging New Paths at the Pioneers Festival

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On October 29–30, more than 2,000 individuals representing technology, science and entrepreneurship will gather in Vienna, Austria for the Fourth Annual Pioneers Festival.

Thanks to Ustream, thousands more around the world will be able to experience the event live as it happens through the Pioneers Festival channel.

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Established in 2011, the Festival’s mission is to gather the smartest minds in technology and science entrepreneurship “to showcase, impact and shape our tomorrow.” The 2014 slate of speakers includes Fred Destin of Accel Partners, Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, Neil Patel of Kissmetrics and Justin Kan of Twitch/Y Combinator.

And if that’s not enough, how about a flying car?

At Pioneers Festival 2014, Slovakian company AeroMobil will unveil the Flying Roadster, the prototype of “the world’s most advanced flying car.” The company has been working on developing a flying automobile for two decades, and on October 29, the world will get its first live look — in person in Vienna and around the globe via Ustream

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Over the last four years, attendance at the Pioneers Festival has grown from just over 1,600 to 2,500 – and Pioneers Festival 2013 attracted more than 55,000 unique visitors worldwide.

It all kicks off Wednesday, October 29 at 10 am CET; to follow all the action, tune in to the Pioneers Festival channel on Ustream.

Case Study: TWiT.tv

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From its humble beginnings with a single podcast, TWiT.tv is now poised to become “the CNBC of tech” — powered by its partnership with Ustream.

Since 2005, the shows of TWiT.tv have provided news, commentary, help, how-to and perspective on the latest trends in digital tech from seasoned experts and journalists. Beginning with a single podcast called This Week in Tech (the source of the acronym TWiT), the online broadcaster now offers more than 20 other top-ranked shows, including This Week In Google, Tech News Today, Green Tech Today, Macbreak Weekly, Windows Weekly, The Daily Giz Wiz and many more.

“Soon after we started the podcast, I could see that video was getting the lion’s share of attention,” recalls Leo Laporte, founder, owner and president of the Internet television channel. “We set up a webcam and started streaming video of me recording the podcast.” But even in 2005, Laporte foresaw a grander future for streaming video.

“I envisioned a time when IPTV [Internet Protocol television] would take off, when people wouldn’t care where they got their TV from traditional networks or Internet broadcasters,” he remarks.

Today, TWiT.tv produces 30 shows and owns a 3,000-square-foot studio in Petaluma, California. Viewers can enjoy the content live as it is broadcast or via download; however, Laporte notes that the live broadcasts are the secret behind TWiT’s special brand of success.

“I came from live TV and radio,” Laporte explains, “so I know firsthand that there’s an immediacy, an urgency, an energy around live broadcasts. Because we’re live, our shows are better — they feel live, even if you’re watching a download.”

Ustream has been a partner of TWiT.tv since its earliest broadcasts. “Ustream is our oldest partner, and it’s the default selection on our live stream home page,” says Laporte. “Our audience is very tech savvy, and they come with the expectation that our broadcast will be flawless. It’s so important that the distinction between Internet broadcasters and ‘real’ broadcasters disappears — we ARE real broadcasters — and Ustream enables us to deliver a real broadcast experience.”

In addition to uncompromising quality, Ustream has also delivered on customer service. “We were very specific about what we wanted,” Laporte notes, “and Ustream has been great about helping us do livestreaming our way. For example, we didn’t want preroll ads — our advertising is a part of the show — and they’ve worked with us every step of the way.”

As livestreaming becomes more popular and accessible to more content creators, Laporte sees his vision for IPTV closer than ever to becoming reality. “Newer televisions are capable of showing IPTV,” he explains. “One day soon, picking up the remote will be the same process for watching network TV as for accessing an Internet show. Then IPTV will be a reality … and TWiT.tv will be right there.”

To learn more, check out the TWiT.tv case study video or download our white paper to learn how you can integrate video into your communication strategy.

Live Video Bigger and Hotter Than Ever, Ustream CEO Tells International Business Times

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Following Amazon’s acquisition of video platform Twitch for $970 million, many in the business media are taking a rejuvenated interest in streaming video and the companies driving its popularity.

One of those journalists is Jeff Stone of the International Business Times, who recently spoke with Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable. (Read the full article here)

Hunstable emphasized that the success of Ustream is no mystery, that it can be attributed to smart business maneuvering and a commitment to openness, both online and in the real world.

He also asserted that “live streaming is bigger and hotter than ever,” citing as evidence Sony’s recent live-video launch of the Playstation 4, which attracted 4.8 million viewers with an average viewing time of 45 minutes. “That starts to look like a primetime TV audience,” Hunstable noted.

On the issue of copyrights and illegal streaming, Hunstable affirmed that Ustream is committed to protecting the assets of its customers with “actual human monitoring, real-time fingerprinting and also with systems and algorithms,” an effort that began with our Viacom and UFC partnerships.

With all its success over the last seven years, Ustream is remaining true to its roots. Hunstable founded the company in 2007 with the goal of helping troops overseas connect with their families, a cause that is still close to his heart. The company is one of the main champions behind the Oscar Mike Foundation, which assists veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and is exploring further opportunities for acting as “a force for good.”

Hunstable notes that he has become inspired “to get involved and have a role socially. We donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to citizen journalists on the ground in Ukraine. […] The Internet is a tool for new emerging democracies and societies, [and] it’s important to leverage our technology as a force for good.”

Read the full article here or download our Wainhouse Research white paper to learn how enterprises leverage live video for business communications.

Streaming Media Hearts Ustream!

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Wow, color us overwhelmed — not one, but two recognitions for Ustream in the last couple of weeks from Streaming Media.

Every year since 2011, the editors of Streaming Media have assigned themselves an unenviable task: Review more than 250 companies to create their list of The One Hundred Companies that Matter Most in Online Video.

This year, that list includes Ustream.

Over the years, the growing popularity of online video has forced the editors to narrow their scope, deciding in 2013 to “focus exclusively on the technology companies that enable content creators and publishers to innovate and build their audiences.”

With the field of candidates decided upon, Streaming Media asks its editorial and publishing staff to rank each one on a scale of 1 (doesn’t belong on the list at all) to 5 (absolutely must be on the list if the list is to have any credibility). After the votes are counted and averaged to yield a score for each candidate, those with the 100 highest scores make the list. This year, that includes us!

And it’s not just the Streaming Media staff that sings the praises of Ustream. The magazine’s readers like us plenty, too, nominating Ustream in five categories for the 2014 Streaming Media Readers Choice Awards. This is the highest honor in online video technology and products, as it’s the only awards program in which winners are decided by end users — that’s you!

To cast your vote, visit the 2014 Streaming Media Readers Choice Awards page between now and October 24. Ustream is up for awards in the categories of:

  • Education Video Platform
  • Enterprise Video Platform
  • Live Video Platform
  • Cloud Encoding/Transcoding
  • Video Advertising Solution

Streaming Media will announce the finalists — the top three vote-getters in each category — on October 31 and present the awards at Streaming Media West on November 19.

Tour de Force: Ustream Brings Dreamforce 2014 to 10M Worldwide

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This week, up to 130,000 people will gather in downtown San Francisco for the world’s largest software conference, salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2014.

And thanks to Dreamforce’s partnership with Ustream LiveAd, up to 10 million more around the globe will be able to experience the event as it happens.

Dreamforce will broadcast the four-day event over its three Ustream channels, bringing live presentations from speakers such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, Al Gore and Arianna Huffington to a worldwide audience. The 2013 broadcast drew between 5 and 7 million viewers, and the 2014 numbers are projected to be even larger.

Since July 2014, Dreamforce has used live streaming video to generate buzz for the event via its weekly “Road to Dreamforce” broadcast, featuring conversations with salesforce.com executives, partners and MVPs. Viewers had exclusive access to breaking news on this year’s event, plus the chance to ask questions and get answers in real time using the hashtag #RoadToDF14.

Dreamforce 2014 continues through Thursday, October 16; to view the live broadcasts, check out Dreamforce Channel 1, Channel 2 and Channel 3.

To learn more about Ustream, watch this overview video or download our Wainhouse Research white paper that shows how video is becoming the main way enterprise’s communicate.