How To Stream Video From Amazon S3

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a great service for anyone doing business on the web that needs a lot of storage or bandwidth.

The problem with most web hosts is that they charge you every month for the maximum bandwidth you might need, whether you actually do need it or not.

Amazon S3, however, only charges you for what you use. That makes it ideal for streaming video (it’s not actually streaming, it’s progressive download, but we won’t get into that here).

You link to the video html page, the video itself from within a web page on your site, or link to it from within your web site video player. The actual video streams from Amazon S3 through your web site, but it doesn’t add to your web host bandwidth usage.

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Science Fiction Becomes Reality

I came across Wolfram Alpha from a rumor that Microsoft’s search engine Bing would present some of the content that Wolfram Alpha generates. Then, Time magazine had Wolfram Alpha as one of its top 50 websites.

So what, exactly, is Wolfram Alpha? It’s not a search engine per se. It doesn’t provide links to answers. It GIVES you the answer that it calculates or finds in its database.

According to Wolfram Alpha

Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

From simple things like converting measurements to plotting out mathematical equations to the weather any place on any given day to geographic data on major cities to the fish production of France. Or even a comparison of the fish production of France to that of Poland.

It’s definitely worth watching the video on the site.

What else? A quick look at companies by their stock symbol, or comparisons of companies. Calculate mortgages. Find nutritional data of foods or add them up for a meal. Everything from mortality data to quantum physics.

I did find an article that says it falls short on baseball statistics, but this tool almost makes me giddy with delight!

Let me explain. The Internet has three basic uses – email, information and shopping – in that order. The information aspect has grown exponentially but finding that information can be a chore.

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Recession Creates Uptick In New Businesses

A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation shows an uptick in business startups in 2008. It’s what the New York Times calls ‘accidental’ or ‘unintentional’ businesses.

Many unemployed people are turning to small business startups as an alternative to a corporate job, a job they got laid off from and are having little luck finding a new one.

The NYTimes article goes on about startup costs…

…the costs of owning a business add up quickly. There are state and local taxes and fees, insurance, salaries and contract pay, overhead, inventory and the like. And these days, lenders are none too generous when it comes to forking over money to new businesses.

For an online business that’s just nonsense. All that can come later. To start an online business all you need is a bank account and an Internet connection.

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Don’t Offer Too Many Choices

In both Internet marketing and offline marketing, it’s best to limit the number of choices offered at the same time. This applies to both products and services.

In a recent article called Focus Your Marketing Plan the author was helping an entrepreneur who had been in business for 15 years.

…he showed me the company brochure, which listed ten different, unrelated services that his company provided.

He just thought the more services he offered his clients, the more business he would generate. Unfortunately, he just neglected to consider how trying to do too many things for too many different types of clients would dilute his efforts.

I remember an old story about Soviet Russian visitors coming to America and, when going to a grocery store, being flabbergasted at the number of choices offered. They were used to standing in line for one item, like shoes or beets. These people would spend hours shopping because they couldn’t make a decision.

It’s true. Go grocery shopping and you have lo-cal, lo-fat, sugar-free, low sodium, gluten free, fortified, all natural, organic, Fair Trade Certified, and that’s before you get to specific brands. Hell, look at the choices for chewing gum in the checkout lane.

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Where Do Moms Go For Advice Online?

The answer: Other moms online

A post by Stephanie Azzarone at mediapost.com’s Engage: Moms had some interesting statistics:

• 35 million of the 40 million women in the U.S. with children 18 or under are online
• Over 16.5 million of those moms are blog readers or publishers

• 67% of moms online look for help making a purchasing decision

• 78% of moms who blog review products

And moms looking for advice online usually go to other moms…

Studies show that moms are increasingly losing trust in established “experts” — institutions and the like — while trusting more in what other moms have to say. That trust extends beyond members of their family or immediate community to other moms — strangers — they meet online.

In other words, she says “Bloggers can promote products or services more credibly than companies can on their own.”

So, if you are a Mom you can start a home business as a blogger giving advice and selling products to other moms. Many do product reviews as a lead-in to affiliate sales.

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Government vs. Small Business

I try to give solid advice to budding entrepreneurs looking to start an online business. But every so often I am going to drag out the soap box, stand on it and shout, like a bearded radical inciting the citizens in the town square.

First of all, the U.S. Government, especially now, is NOT a friend of small business. It is turning into the most anti-capitalist, anti-profit, anti-business government I’ve ever seen.

I’m not even going to how we got into the current economic crises, but the links below will give you an idea…

2000 – The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities

The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation’s banks.

2004 – Ex-SEC Official Blames Agency for Blow-Up

[An SEC] rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch.

The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets and remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults.

2008 – Barney’s Rubble

Mr. [Congressman Barney] Frank was publicly arguing for an increase in the size of their [Fannie Mae & Freddy Mac's] combined $1.4 trillion portfolios right up to the day they were bailed out. Even now, after he’s been proven wrong about a taxpayer guarantee, he opposes Treasury’s planned reduction in the size of the portfolios starting in 2010…

The resulting economic crises has put the government in control of investment banks, insurance companies, auto companies and over half of the home mortgages in America.

The government strong-armed Bank of America into paying 18 billion dollars too much for Merrill Lynch, told major banks they WOULD participate in TARP whether they wanted to or not, and short-changed Chrysler bondholders in favor of the UAW, then complained the bondholders were being greedy.

Next step – health care. A lot has happened since I wrote about the health care plan last month. An estimated 1.5 trillion dollars over 10 years, perhaps now whittled down to only a trillion, to “fix” something that over 70% of Americans are satisfied with.

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How To Transfer Large Files

The video below shows how to use your web host to transfer large files without using email attachments.

It’s a simple matter of creating a ZIP file, FTP it up to your web server and adding a link to it in your email to whoever needs to download it…

Transferring files larger than 10 MB or so can be a pain. Most email inboxes are limited to 10 MB and your email will either be rejected or fill up their inbox so their other emails are blocked – not good in either case.

Well, if you have your own web site you can use your web server to transfer large files. You zip it up using something like 7-Zip (free), FTP it up to your web server using a program like Filezilla (free) and create a link to that file that you send to the email recipient. They download the file, extract it and Voila!.
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Exposing Intellectual Property Myths

A Small-Business Guide to Intellectual Property is a recent article in the New York Times Small Business section that reviews some of the myths surrounding patents and trademarks, saying that it’s not just for large businesses.

I remembered it after reading about Microsoft’s injunction on selling it’s Word software due to patent infringement.

Some of the common fallacies that are explored are:

1. For small-business owners, it’s not worth the time or effort to secure intellectual property rights.

2. Once I get a trademark, my brand is safe.

3. Having a patent gives me the right to produce something.

4. If I have a patent or trademark in the United States, I don’t need to worry about the rest of the world.

5. People who collect patents but don’t actually make anything are “patent trolls,” parasites who can make money only by filing lawsuits against real businesses.

One of the subjects addressed was the fact the intellectual property doesn’t just mean patents (which can be expensive to file) but also trademarks, trade dress (a products look and feel) and Internet domain names.

In one example, a lady trademarked a term and someone monitoring the PTO web site bought the domain name of the trademarked term. Now, I don’t know if that’s legal but it’s going to be a legal hassle to get that domain name.

A word to the wise… purchase the domain names of any terms or phrases before you apply for the trademark.

The purpose of patents and trademarks is the protection of your intellectual property.  You then have the right to use it, license it or even give it away.

Now, don’t get me started on today’s ability to patent microbes or genes, but take a look at the article, do a cost benefit analysis for your business and take rational steps to research the matter. Don’t just assume that patents and trademarks are too expensive for small businesses..
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