Making the World Economic Forum Transparent: Speedera and AlwaysOn to Video Blog Sessions

Making the World Economic Forum Transparent: Speedera and AlwaysOn to Video Blog Sessions

Internet Viewers Passionate About Global Issues Can View Sessions in Real Time and Interact by Providing Reviews and Posting Comments

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Speedera Networks, a leading global provider of on-demand distributed application hosting and content delivery services, and super-weblog site AlwaysOn, founded by Tony Perkins, today announced that the two organizations will be enabling Internet viewers around the world to view live video streams of the World Economic Forum (WEF) sessions held January 26-30 in Davos, Switzerland. Through the use of "video Web logs," viewers will additionally be able to interact by rating content of the sessions, posting reviews, and expressing their opinions.

"For those people passionate about the global issues being debated in Davos, this video blogging service is an enormous leap forward in communications," said Ajit Gupta, president and CEO of Speedera Networks, which is hosting and delivering the WEF content for AlwaysOn. "This new, real time communication model of video blogging is a major change from the traditional, passive, one-way experience of the Web in that users can now view live streams and also comment on them for public view in real time. With live video blogging, the Internet is democratizing Davos, which until now has been largely a closed-door series of meetings for the world's power elite."

"This joint project between AlwaysOn and Speedera will make the WEF more transparent than it has ever been before," said Tony Perkins, founder of AlwaysOn, which has a user base of more than 165,000 bloggers. "From Bono to Bill Gates, the world's political, business and cultural leaders will be available live on the Web for visitors to not only see, but for them to blog interactively and provide creative thinking about the events unfolding at Davos. To make that happen, we needed a robust, globally distributed network like Speedera so that anyone in the world with access to the Web can join the video blog without fail, regardless of traffic volumes or user location."

The video will be streamed through Microsoft Windows Media and combined with interactivity through text Web logging (or "blogging"). This means users not only can view the sessions in real time, they can also comment in real- time as they watch. They can provide "instant reviews" of the caliber of the Webcast content, whether live or on-demand, using a 1-to-5 point rating scale. They additionally can provide commentary by expressing their opinions of what they are seeing.

Any visitor to the http://www.alwayson-network.com/ site can view the sessions. To join the blog and post comments, visitors must register, which is free of charge.

In addition to video blogging the event live, Speedera and AlwaysOn are making the content available as archived files for six months following the event.

A lot of major news will be made on the world stage this year as the WEF tackles the subject "Take Responsibility for Tough Choices." Discussions will cover many topics, such as the upcoming elections in Iraq, the recent Asia tsunami tragedy and subsequent relief efforts, and hope for a new beginning in discussions between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

Over the course of this year's five-day event -- expected to draw more than 2,500 participants from 96 countries -- key political figures will be in attendance such as Victor Yushchenko, the new leader of the Ukraine, U.S. Senator John McCain, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. Also on hand will be global business leaders such as Bill Gates, Michael Dell, George Soros, Carly Fiorina, John Chambers, and Infosys Technologies Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor, N. R. Narayana Murthy, as well notable personalities from the cultural world including musicians/activists Bono and Peter Gabriel, and actors Angelina Jolie and Richard Gere.

About AlwaysOn

AlwaysOn's goal is to keep its global members in front of the most powerful players in technology, media and entertainment in an innovative blogging and social networking environment at http://www.alwayson-network.com/. AlwaysOn also produces "The Innovation Summit @ Stanford," an annual live and web-cast thought leadership event - http://www.alwayson-network.com/events - and a quarterly print "blogozine." AlwaysOn sponsors include IBM, Accenture, Sun Microsystems, PalmSource, Audi USA, Think Equity, Quova and KPMG.

AlwaysOn, LLC, is a privately held and virtually headquartered company born out of the heart of Silicon Valley.

About Speedera Networks

Speedera Networks, Inc. is a leading global provider of distributed application hosting and content delivery services. The company's SpeedSuite family of services provides on-demand services that cost-effectively solve the performance, scalability, availability and security problems of hosting distributed applications and Web sites. Speedera's edge delivery network is deployed in the Americas, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, controlled by a patented global traffic management system. Customers include leading organizations such as American Eagle Outfitters, DoubleClick, Fox Broadcasting, Macromedia, McAfee, NASA, Sony Music and Univision. The company's channel partners include Softbank Broadmedia/Club iT, BT, VSNL, Hewlett-Packard, AboveNet, and Inflow. For more information about Speedera, please call +1 408-970-1528, visit http://www.speedera.com/ or email info@speedera.com. To request a white paper, please click on http://www.speedera.com/reqtechpaper.htm. To request a demo, please click on http://www.speedera.com/reqdemo.htm.

For additional information contact:
Jay Mejia
Speedera Networks
408-970-1583
jmejia@speedera.com


Source: Speedera Networks

CONTACT: Jay Mejia of Speedera Networks, +1-408-970-1583,
jmejia@speedera.com

Web site: http://www.speedera.com/
http://www.speedera.com/reqtechpaper.htm
http://www.speedera.com/reqdemo.htm
http://www.alwayson-network.com/


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