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Posts Tagged ‘after-the-event’

By now you’ve probably seen the videos on Apple’s site showing the iPad. But those aren’t always indicative of the way it actually works in real life. Luckily, Apple had plenty of iPads in a demo pit area after the event today and we captured some footage of a few applications actually being used.

In the video below see Apple’s new Keynote app (built specifically for the iPad), as well as the new iBooks app, in action. As you can see, the device is very fast. Also note the Apple employee talking about using the iPad to make calls.

Netflix has just reported its Q4 2009 results, and has performed pretty well as expected, although revenue was slightly below most forecasts.

What caught our eye is just how many Netflix customers are now streaming movies and TV shows online. The percentage of subscribers who watched instantly more than 15 minutes of a TV episode or movie in Q4 2009 was 48 percent, compared to 28 percent for the same period of 2008.

As for the numbers (PDF):

Netflix ended the fourth quarter with approximately 12,268,000 total subscribers, a 10 percent jump compared to end of the third quarter of 2009. Net subscriber change in the quarter was an increase of 510,000 for the third quarter of 2009.

The company earned $30.9 million, or 56 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2009. That compared to $22.7 million, 38 cents per share, in the same period of 2008.

Netflix’ Q4 2009 revenue rose 24% to $444.5 million, a 5 percent sequential increase from $423.1 million for the third quarter of 2009. The DVD-rental company was estimated to report revenues of up to $446 million.

Netflix expects revenue to climb to $490 million to $496 million this quarter.

Full earnings can be consulted in the press release.

The Crunchies award gala, tomorrow night in San Francisco, is sold out. But there are a limited number of slots still available for the after party, held at City Hall’s Grand Rotunda immediately after the event (approximately 9 pm) until midnight. All attendees of the main event get into the after-party.

If you can’t attend the event in person, please join us for the live stream, hosted by Ustream and filmed by Future-Works. Plymedia will provide live captioning of the ceremony.

The simple fact is that the party holds about 100 more people than the Herbst Theater, where the main event is actually held. And since a lot of people would rather go to the party than not attend the event at all, we’re putting those 100 tickets on sale. You can get them here while they last.

There’s lots of good stuff to enjoy at the after-party, co-hosted with Microsoft BizSpark and award benefactor Founders Fund. DJ Inertia (aka Ryan Jeffs) is flying in to spin music for us. Ryan is one of us, a tech engineer by trade. He leads a double life as an electronic music DJ with a new startup label Republik Records. He’s been featured in the playlists of artists like Paul Van Dyk, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong and countless others.

Grey Goose Vodka has designed some custom celebratory cocktails for us to enjoy. Cannonball is hosting wine, and LewisPR is providing embargo-free beer. The North Light Court of City Hall will have casino games: thanks to Armor Games, Betfair, Kosmix, Outcast Communications, SecondMarket, SGN and Zong. Stop by the DailyBooth photowall. We’ll also have start-up demos for you to enjoy from SGN, Tap11 and select fbFund companies. Big thank you to Solana and the talented team at DesignAboutTown for making us look great.

See everyone tomorrow!

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Technology conferences are supposed to have Internet. Most don’t. In fact, audiences are trained to be grateful for even a trickle of bandwidth. Maybe enough to get off a Tweet or two. But uploading photos and videos is something that you do later, after the event is over. Because it can take days.

It’s been a real problem for us over the years. We’ve thrown money at the problem. We’ve tried new vendors and technologies. We’ve prayed. And cursed. I’ve offered vendors a big wet kiss of a post on TechCrunch if they could get it right. They never have.

Last year we had a full day Internet outage at TechCrunch50, and it wasn’t better on day 2. The only good thing about an Internet outage is that most attendees can’t blog or tweet about it, since they can’t get on the Internet.

Giving 2,000 hard core Internet users simultaneous access from a single location is very, very hard. I’ve seen grown men cry when they tried and failed.

This year, though, WOW. There was more Internet at TechCrunch50 than you could shake a stick at. And for that, Mariette Systems gets that big wet kiss I promised.

The team: Ernie Mariette, Cliff Skolnick and Tim Pozer. They came in, brought bandwidth (100 Mbps line-of-site microwave link from WiLine and 30 Mbps from Telekenex), hooked it into a BSD router and distributed it throughout the building via more than 100 Cisco switches and 28 wifi access points. There were hundreds of ethernet connections (and power strips) at attendee tables. Plus dedicated bandwith to Ustream, the DemoPit area and the main stage. And, overall, lots of very happy attendees.

There were more than 1,200 simultaneous connections at peak points, and bursts of up to 88 Mbps inbound bandwidth usage. But no one was ever cut back. And I noticed multiple people in the audience watching the live Ustream feed on their laptops. Others were watching the US Open livestream. In other words, the audience was totally wasting bandwidth. And it was wonderful.

In fact, I was a little disappointed that the audience failed to make our Internet fail. They tried their best, and were found wanting.

Thanks very much, Mariette Systems. We owe you. And we love you. Keep doing Apple’s WWDC and other huge events, but keep your calendar clear for our conferences, too. I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else.

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