The result? All that streaming eats up huge swathes of bandwidth, and your network could slow to a crawl. IT or Finance need to warn users about company policy on watching videos at work and monitor usage a bit more closely.

This also goes for your mobile users, who could rack up hefty data charges on their company-issued devices or even their BYOD gadgets.

Employees who travel abroad could run into even more trouble. An IDG report cites a worker who racked up more than $30,000 in charges thanks to a Final Four app that continuously updated scores. Another cost a company $175,000 in roaming charges on an air card after downloading the entire first season of the TV show Seinfeld in a country that lacked English language TV.

Yeah, the price tag for streaming data can be huge.

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The videos in question — one of a FedEx delivery guy tossing a video monitor box over a the wall of an upscale home, the other of a UPS delivery man making an obscene gesture at a home security camera — are drawing thousands of viewers.

Both show delivery personnel callously tossing items at the homes of seemingly well-to-do customers who don’t appear to be home to accept delivery of their items. (Although in the case of the video monitor, the recipient insists he was home and would have responded to knock or bell if the delivery guy had bothered to attempt contact.)

While much of this holiday season’s shopping was done online and required delivery by one of the services that ships merchandise around the world, it’s certain that most shoppers didn’t get the callous treatment of their items that these YouTube stars dished out to their customers.

But this isn’t the first time package — or baggage — handlers have been captured on video while behaving badly. And it’s safe to say that this time of year means high pressure and lots of long hours for the folks in the shipping and handling business.

Does your firm depend on them for moving items to customers or clients? How much more do you depend on these services now that technology has made ordering online a bigger part of your business?

The transition from a bricks-and-mortar style business to an online one has plenty of pitfalls.

If shipping and delivery services are now a big part of your business, it’s important to realize that the folks doing the actual delivery are something of an extension of your brand. Knowing how they behave when they present your goods to a customer will reflect on you, to some extent.

What can you do to control this part of your business so that it doesn’t impact your bottom line?

The post Delivery men gone wild: Who’s to blame? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

No, it’s not a soccer game or the Super Bowl, it’s bigger than both of them. It’s the wedding of Prince William of the United Kingdom and his commoner fiancee, Catherine Middleton.

While sporting events and big time rock concerts all draw hoards of fans to streaming video, there’s little that surpasses a royal wedding for viewership. The nuptials of William’s dad and mother (Prince Charles and Diana Spencer) drew about a billion TV viewers back in 1980.

That was before the Internet took off. Now, experts are estimating that two billion people around the globe will be watching when William and Kate say ‘I will’ in Westminster Abbey at 11 a.m. London time on that fateful Friday.

Most Americans will either be at work or on their way to their day job when that happens.

Watching from one’s cubicle isn’t as comfy and entertaining as staying at home to watch the pomp and ceremony on one’s personal telly, but it’s a sure bet that many British royalty watchers (believe us, they are many and committed) will try to catch the action on their work computer.

How? The wedding procession will be streamed live on the Royal Channel on YouTube.

And if you thought the World Cup or the World Series ate up lots of bandwidth, wait ’til you have to contend with the number of folks salivating over the costumes, uniforms, horses, carriages, tiaras and fancy hats British royals trot out for these kinds of events.

The You Tube site’s got a count down clock, a guest book to be signed and a way to donate to charity in lieu of a gift for the royal couple (their request.) It’s also got a map of the procession for those not familiar with London’s rabbit warren of streets.

Why do people want to watch? This is the sort of event that doesn’t happen every year or, for that matter, even every decade. It’s rare, it’s splendid to look at and nobody loses a bet or bleeds. It’s pure entertainment and fantasy — no downside (unless you consider the marriages themselves, which often end in the trash heap.)

There’s also gobs of money to be made from the global obsession with these antiquated celebrities. Photos of them sell for millions of dollars each year. Magazine with them on the cover sell out. Souvenirs of their exploits rake in millions. TV coverage of them garners huge ratings.

And the principles themselves get paid a pittance. Most of their money is inherited, save the small amount the government gives them annually to make hundreds of public appearances.

It’s a PR professionals dream. They’re the original reality stars and the public never seems to get enough of them.

Watch on.

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Feeling put out by the overwhelming bother of actually navigating from home to the movie theater to see a new flick? Relax, a new on-demand service for those who want their new movies now and without the hassle of leaving home to get them is at hand.

Reported to be called  “Home Premiere,” the service will arrive first on DirecTV.  After that, the other cable TV providers, including Comcast, are expected to pick it up for their subscribers.

The deal: For $30, viewers get access to each title for two or three days.

Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox appear to be on board, much to the chagrin of theater owners, who are already struggling to get folks away from their TV sets, computers, tablets and even smartphones for movie viewing.

According to Variety, among the first films to be made available will be the latest Liam Neeson flick, Unknown, and the Adam Sandler/Jen Aniston vehicle, Just Go With It. Both films hit theaters in February.

“These plans fundamentally alter the economic relationship between exhibitors, filmmakers and producers, and the studios taking part in this misguided venture,” reads a statement released by the National Assn. of Theater Owners.

Word is that the studios won’t release a film to this new version of On Demand viewing until it’s proven to be something of a dud in theaters. In other words, its appearance on the new service will be something of a warning: Watch this if you’ve got nothing better to do and are really too lazy, unkempt or just plain unable to get to a theater to see something that’s halfway decent.

Do the theater owners really have much to fear? If you consider that they’re really making their money off $10 buckets of greasy popcorn and giant boxes of Raisinets, they may take a big hit to the bottom line.

Anything that keeps folks out of the theater also keeps them from queuing up for overpriced snacks as well. And while the flicks that are moving to TV likely wouldn’t attract all that many viewers, if you add up the typical movie-outing expenditure, struggling theaters are likely to lose even more revenue.

Not a happy prospect.

Some experts are predicting that VOD (video on demand) will not only kill movie viewing in theaters, it will also wipe out DVD sales and streaming video revenue as well.

The post Will new ‘on-demand’ movies kill theater biz? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Extra games and wider access to coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball championship (A.K.A., March Madness) on smart phones and tablets could increase workplace distractions that threaten to sap employee productivity during the annual three-week long tournament, say the workplace experts at the global outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

Challenger estimates that total online viewership during work hours is likely to reach at least 8.4 million hours during this year’s tournament, which began with special qualifying games on Tuesday, March 15.

Multiply that figure by the average hourly earnings of $22.87 among private-sector workers and the financial impact exceeds $192 million.

The Challenger estimate is based on 2010 March Madness on Demand traffic statistics from CBSSports.com, the site’s primary sponsor. Last year, the online streaming service attracted 8.3 million unique visitors, who enjoyed a total of 11.7 million hours of online video and audio (an average of about 1.4 hours per visitor). That was up 36 % from the previous year.

According to CBSSports.com, 8.7 million hours, or nearly 75% of the total, was consumed in the first four days of the Tournament.

About 80% of the four-day total was achieved in the first two days, based on the fact that 3.4 million hours of March Madness on Demand was streamed on the first day of the tournament alone.

With CBS Sports expanding its reach this year by providing free mobile apps, Challenger conservatively estimates that streaming will increase at least 20% in 2011 to about 14 million total hours.

Assuming similar viewership trends will occur this year, roughly 10.5 million hours of streaming video and audio will be consumed in the first four days of the tournament, with about 80 percent of that (8.4 million hours) occurring on Thursday and Friday.

The post March madness cost: nearly $200 million appeared first on Finance Tech News.

It used to be that Prime subscribers got free two-day shipping on orders from the online retailer for an annual membership price of $79. In a bold and interesting move, the company will now add the free, unlimited streaming service on top of the shipping benefits.

Will Amazon be able to scuttle Netflix with this recent move? Nobody seems to think so — yet. Netflix still has the edge with its huge number of devices that can be used to stream content.

But as many in the tech industry have been predicting, video is a dominant force in the online world these days. The company that corners this market will have a major leg up in race to the top of the tech field.

The post Latest round in streaming contest goes to … appeared first on Finance Tech News.

For now, Netflix seems to have the upper hand in the streaming wars.

Its subscription service gives customers mailed DVDs and a library of content that can be streamed over a broad range of devices.

An early entrant into the game, Netflix struck good (at least for Netflix) deals with studios for access to content. They transitioned their huge subscriber base to streaming by using a wide variety of devices to download the streaming content.

But most of all, Netflix was early to the game and laid claim to the high ground.

Apple also became a dominant player in the space with their Apple store, popular devices and integrated technologies.

The new players? Redbox, a company that’s used convenient red machines to replace outmoded video stores, recently announced it would go toe-to-toe with Netflix. Amazon’s also trying to insert itself in the lucrative game.

Tech industry analysts seem to be betting on Netflix to emerge victorious, but the contest will likely come down to who can make the best deal with the content providers.

While the battle to become the streaming king will likely rage for months to come, it’s really content that’s king when it comes to consumers. The provider who can supply the most in-demand shows will be the winner — bet on it.

The post Battle to be Stream King heats up appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Getting folks to watch your YouTube video has become an all-consuming passion for online marketers. But how do you work a clip of an old movie featuring new technology into your sales strategy?

An obscure Irish film director’s found a great shtick for promoting his work and film festival with a clip from a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film.

In the footage of “The Circus,” an old woman appears to be walking down a street holding something to her ear. She also appears to be talking. No wires, no antennae. It’s the familiar movement and behavior of the classic walker/talker we see on modern streets everyday.

Of course, there were no mobile phones in 1928. There were no cell phone towers or satellites to transmits signals. Yes, there were telephones, but most of them were mounted on the wall and operated by standing near them and shouting into a speaker.

But in this Chaplin clip, it really does appear that an extra — “a big Butch lady,” as the uploader describes her –  in a deleted scene is hurrying down a sidewalk with a mobile phone pressed to her ear and is chatting away. She walks past a Zebra outfitted with a saddle (worth seeing, by the way).

The director, George Clarke, found the scene on the second disk of the DVD he purchased, in the “Extras” feature. He ponders whether or not the woman is a time traveler and has screened the clip for audiences of movie buffs trying to get an explanation for the woman’s behavior.

Then, he posted it on YouTube and got 4.6 million views.

And of course, at the end of his little lecture on the scene and multiple views of it in close-up and slow motion, Clarke exhorts us all to watch and his own films and attend his festival.

Our take? People cup their hands around their ears for a variety of reasons. Because the Chaplin film is silent, we have no idea what kind of noise there was during filming — perhaps this woman is merely shielding her ear and muttering what a bunch of idiots the crew seems to be.

Two things you should know before jumping on the cell phone from the past bandwagon: Clarke specializes, it seems, in zombie/martial arts films that depend heavily on the gullibility and fantasy-prone habits of teenage boys and middle aged adults who live in their parents’ basements.

And number two: If a time traveler actually did visit Earth … oh, forget it.

Now, when’s that film festival again?

The post Click thru magic: Cell phone in a Chaplin flick appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Talk about your military-style surges. Just a few short years ago, Blockbuster was the power to be reckoned with in the business of providing in-home movie viewing to consumers. Then little red envelopes started flooding the mail and now Blockbuster’s dead.

The once-ubiquitous chain of video rental stores was knocked out by the upstart Netflix, a company that made its fortune not just by renting DVDs through the mail for folks too inert to haul themselves to the local strip mall to rent a movie.

Netflix’s secret to success? Its leaders were able to read the technology tea leaves and figure out which way the winds of content delivery were blowing and position itself in that direction.

By also providing movies via streaming directly to literally dozens of game systems and via the Internet, Netflix buried Blockbuster, a company tethered to store rentals and one that also appeared to lack the agility to shift with the changes in high tech.

Hollywood — always sensitive to the smell of a winner — initially scorned Netflix, but started taking it seriously soon enough. The powerful studios, facing many of the challenges of the music industry, negotiated some wide ranging and lucrative (for filmmakers) deals to give the new distribution channel a serious amount of content to offer customers.

The result? Consumers get more choices, studios get a big market for their products and companies that don’t catch the current wave get buried.

Next big battle: a fight among the online services, where Netflix will have to face already established players such as Apple, Hulu, Amazon and Google — all of which have proven to be as good at predicting technology shifts as Netflix.

The winner will likely be the company that reads the consumer best and satisfies the most important demands first.

By the way, who’s on first?

The post War for movie customers heats up appeared first on Finance Tech News.

They’ve hired venerable rapper Snoop Dogg to be the face of a new contest that asks people to upload two-minute videos of themselves rapping about cybercrime to its new “hackiswack” website.

Yes, that’s right. A whole two minutes of rap about cybercrime.

The site claims the winner will be judged on “originality, creativity and message.” Prize? The winner gets two tickets to a Snoop concert, a Toshiba laptop, and, get this, “the chance to meet Snoop’s “mgmt/agent.” Guess that means face time with the rapmeister’s handlers or entourage.

No mention of any one on one with Snoop himself.

The site also encourages contestants to “have fun fo’ shizzle.”

True dat.

The post Selling cybersecurity, one rap at a time appeared first on Finance Tech News.