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Mirror Image Internet Combines Key Video Streaming and Edge Computing Capabilities for Targeting and Authorizing Live …

TEWKSBURY, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Mirror Image® Internet, a leading provider of edge computing, streaming and content delivery solutions powered by a patented global network, today announced a new service that combines streaming and edge computing capabilities to dynamically create and stream highly-targeted content and playlists, and enforce custom rules-based policy for live and on-demand video.

The Targeting and Authorization Suite for Live and On-Demand Video is the industry’s only solution that can stream live and on-demand video to any device, including laptops, desktops, mobile phones, tablets, game consoles and set-top boxes via any protocol including: RTSP, RTMP, RTP/UDP, Apple HLS, IIS Smooth Streaming and Adobe HS.

Streaming Features:

Multi-protocol support Adaptive bit rate support Live and on-demand video Supports streaming to desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, BlackBerry, IPTV set-top boxes, and game consoles including Wii and PlayStation 3

Targeting Features:

Targeting based on cookie values, geo-location, language, referrer headers and more Ideal for creating dynamic playlists, pre-roll and post-roll advertising Built-in device detection for thousands of mobile devices

Security Features:

Prevent URL hijacking via referrer domain verification Enforce time-limited access via time-sensitive URLs Ideal for assets with licensing restrictions Enforce licensing restrictions via geography-based blocking and authorization

“Video advertisers, news media, sports media, mobile solutions providers, and others, can now deliver their videos, advertisements or live events and set permissions as to who, when and where they can be viewed,” said James G. Hart, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Mirror Image Internet. “Mirror Image is the only vendor that can deliver live and on-demand video to any screen and combine it with a targeting and authorization service.”

About Mirror Image Internet

Mirror Image® Internet, Inc. is the leading provider of Real-Time Solutions-as-a-Service capabilities for online companies worldwide. Mirror Image combines a real-time, patented globally distributed Edge Computing network with a high performance content delivery platform to provide highly scalable online services with low latency and worldwide coverage. Mirror Image Internet’s real-time service offerings include Edge Computing capabilities, a complete Online Video Platform, streaming solutions for delivering live video and video on-demand, content delivery capabilities for content caching and file downloads, and optimized delivery to an extensive range of desktops, mobile devices, IPTV set-top boxes and other devices.

Mirror Image has been recognized by Internet Retailer magazine as the 2010 Vendor Leader in the Content Delivery Network Category for the fourth consecutive year. The company was also named a 2008 finalist in the Streaming Media magazine Readers' Choice Awards in the Global Content Network Delivery category. Mirror Image is a U.S.-based company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Tewksbury, Mass. Mirror Image was founded in 1997. For additional information, please visit http://www.mirror-image.com or call +1 866 374 4113. Follow Mirror Image on Twitter @MirrorImage_CDN.

Mirror Image is a registered trademark of Mirror Image Internet.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Mirror Image Internet Combines Key Video Streaming and Edge Computing Capabilities for Targeting and Authorizing Live ...

Internet addiction could be dubbed official affliction in DSM-V

Forcing your friends to watch 10 hours of "S%$t chimney sweeps say" videos on YouTube could be a sign you need help.

(Credit: Elizabeth Armstrong Moore/CNET)

The so-called "bible" of the mental health profession is getting an update, and version 5.0 of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) could add "Internet addiction" to its lengthy list of disorders.

The different iterations of the DSM have for decades been the go-to reference many psychiatrists use to diagnose patients. The manual has been no stranger to controversy over the years, including recent charges by some that it seems written to serve the interests of drug companies as much as those of patients.

But now the APA working group in charge of revising the DSM section on substance-related disorders has proposed adding a new non-substance based affliction--"Internet addiction."

In other words, Internet addiction could soon be classified along other listed DSM disorders like "cocaine dependence" or "Opioid abuse."

As someone who is certainly un-diagnosed, but surely shows several symptoms of a potential Internet addiction problem--as I'm guessing many of you also do--I'm suddenly offended that the only way I could learn about this development was on the Internet. I can't imagine many people who suffer from alcoholism are forced to seek information on their affliction from their bartender.

Every now and then, you might come across a reference to something called "Internet Addiction Disorder," but such a disorder is not officially recognized by any major mental health organization in the U.S. However, Chinese research published last year looked at Chinese students who used a computer around 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and found that such heavy use actually did have a measurable impact on the brain. The researchers concluded that:

...long-term Internet addiction would result in brain structural alterations, which probably contributed to chronic dysfunction in subjects...

So are you and I Internet addicts? Well, it's not yet included in the DSM, so there's no "official" way to identify the symptoms and make such a diagnosis, but Dr. Jerald L. Block recently provided a few red flags in an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry:

1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation, and fatigue

Yikes, as if that weren't broad enough to make any of us worry about our mental health, Dr. Block also includes gaming and texting under the umbrella of things that could be considered Internet addiction.

To its credit, the APA acknowledges that such diagnoses are problematic and will be considered "as research data accumulate."

The move to consider non-substance-abuse-based addiction disorders has also sparked a bit of a mental health smackdown between the psychiatry and psychology camps. David Elkins, president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology--a division of the American Psychological Association--has launched a petition with numerous criticisms of the proposed DSM changes. Elkins' open letter to the DSM V group includes this passage:

The Conditions Proposed by Outside Sources[13] that are under consideration for DSM-5 contain several unsubstantiated and questionable disorder categories. For example, "Apathy Syndrome," "Internet Addiction Disorder," and "Parental Alienation Syndrome" have virtually no basis in the empirical literature.

Clearly, even though the discussion has been opened on the notion of Internet addiction as a real form of mental illness, it seems the jury is still out. But if either the APA or Mr. Elkins need help in their search for data--or the lack thereof--I'm more than happy to help and dedicate endless hours combing through myriad online research journals, social networks, and other resources...it's all I'm doing these days, anyway.

(Via NY Daily News)

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Internet addiction could be dubbed official affliction in DSM-V

Google: Cookieless Domain Have No Direct SEO Effect

A Google Webmaster Help thread asks if there is an SEO benefit to going the cookieless domain route.

The simple answer is that no, there is no direct SEO impact on going with the cookieless domain. But it can impact site speed, which is now a direct SEO factor, although it likely won't have a serious impact if any on your rankings if you do use cookies, since most of the web pages on the internet that you visit and rank high in Google do have cookies.

Google's John Mueller explains why people use cookieless domain:

The idea behind a cookieless domain is that it can speed up transferring static files by the browser not having to send cookies with every request. This is something that can help to reduce the time needed to render a page, if you have static, shared content.

But does it impact rankings? John said no:

A cookieless domain does not have any direct SEO effect. However, as mentioned there are situations where we may choose to use site speed as a ranking factor, so if you have a site with extremely slow-loading pages, it may make sense to review this as well as the other page-speed recommendations to help speed things up.

For more on cookieless domains, see this page.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

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Google: Cookieless Domain Have No Direct SEO Effect

LM defendant to see final hearings this week

The final hearings into the lese majeste charges against Prachatai webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiyaporn, who was arrested in March 2009, should be held this week.

"For three years I have had to live my life being accused of committing a crime under Section 14 and 15 of the Computer Crime Act (CCA) … without knowing when it will end," said Ms Chiranuch, in her opening statement before her trial resumed on Tuesday.

Lese majeste defendant and Prachatai webmaster Chiranuch Premchaiyaporn (Photo by Thiti Wannamontha)

Ms Chiranuch was arrested on March 6, 2009 and her trial began in the Criminal Court on March 31, 2010. At one point, she was detained in the court basement for four hours before a 300,000 baht bail guarantee was placed by her sister who was a nurse in a government hospital.

The hearings were initially scheduled for eight consecutive days in February last year but only lasted for four days with just five prosecution witnesses available. The other witnesses said they could not attend on the scheduled dates, resulting in the judges, prosecutors and the defence lawyers rescheduling a new hearing from September to October.

Because of the long time gap, the judges for the second session were changed under the annual routine shift of personnel in the bureaucratic system, she noted.

In September, the hearing of prosecution witnesses was completed and defense witnesses were then called. However, the massive flooding in Bangkok in October prevented the trial from continuing. Only San Francisco-based Danny O’Brien, a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, was heard.

This week the trial resumed with three more witnesses giving testimony to the Ratchada Court.

Dr Kitipumi Chutasmit, director of Phusing Hospital, told the Court he was one of a few dozen volunteer moderators that deleted or hid inappropriate content found on the Prachatai web board.

The volunteer network was a system Prachatai had developed by soliciting help from regular readers or users to oversee debate and comments posted on the website, Dr Kitipumi said. General readers could also inform the webmaster if they found undesirable content, the Si Sa Ket-based doctor said.

Sawatree Suksri, a Thammasat University law lecturer, told the court that internet freedom was a fundamental human right and a UN report released May last year stipulated that intermediaries should not be held liable for any offence committed by a third party except if they collaborated or knew about it.

Better protection for intermediaries could be seen in most European countries, the United States and some Asian nations. For example the laws give 10 to 14 days for intermediaries to delete illegal or inappropriate content after they have been told by the authorities, Ms Sawatree said.

Ms Sawatree, an expert on the criminal code and computer crime, also said the Computer Crime Act's article 15 did not specify a similar clause (for intermediaries to clearly implement the law).

The authorities, since the CCA's inception, have yet to issue certain guidelines or regulations for parties concerned to understand and expedite the law, she told the court.

Jittat Fakcharoenphol, Kasetsart Unviersity's assistant professor on computer engineering, told the court that he was approached to be a director and treasurer of Prachatai in 2008 since the webmaster was increasingly concerned that the volunteer administrators who helped look for dubious and inappropriate content might not be adequate.

"I was about to develop a machine-learning natural language processor which is a computer program that  will highlight and/or spot the type of content that we set in the system as problematic so that the webmaster will be able to delete it in time," Mr Jittat said.
Prachatai was also considering hiring more staff for 24-hour monitoring of contents and subsequent debates, however financial problems had prevented them from doing so, the academic said.

The program-assisted censorship and manning ideas eventually were not put in place since the webmaster had decided to close down the web board as they faced more problems, Mr Jittat said.

He told the court that with between 300 and 400 issues - and up to 30 debates on each - it was impossible for the webmaster to handle surveillance. Even with more staff, human error was also a factor, he said.

During cross-examination, the prosecutor asked if it was the duty of the webmaster to take full responsibility for supervising the webboard administration. Mr Jittat said that was the case in principle.

The prosecutor asked if the problematic content printed as evidence shown to the court was all from Prachatai. Mr Jittat said the print-outs looked similar to the Prachatai webboard, but he could not guarantee or confirm if the alleged contents really appeared. As a general reader, he had not seen the content before.

"Technically, it cannot also be proved 100 per cent that what you see in front of the computer screen is content from the URL shown in the print-outs. Additions or deletions in the content page could take place before it is printed," he said.

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LM defendant to see final hearings this week

Google Webmaster Outreach 2011

Kaspar Szymanski, a Googler responsible for webmaster outreach and a downright awesome guy, posted on Google+ some of the highlights for his team in 2011. He wrote he wanted to share his personal thoughts on the top outreach accomplishments for Google in 2011.

Let me sum them up for you:

Authorship markup option is one of his favorites. Surprisingly he mentions Panda, but he does so for good reason, explaining "I've seen a number of threads from webmasters who claimed their legit, content rich sites have been slammed by Panda. Now, I only have a limited insight into our forums escalations, as I don’t speak all the languages we support but from what I've seen the vast majority of sites that have been escalated has not been affected by this algorithmic update. Some were experiencing technical issues, others' performance in #Google #Search was just not living up to the webmasters expectation. Now, I'm not saying our algorithms are always perfect right from the beginning and surely some fine-tuning had to be done but the bottom line is that users seemed to love post-Panda results and that's what counts for me." A new design for site links Multilingual content markup Spam in Google including phishing, malware, paid PageRank passing links with ways to report it. Transparency and two way communication via Webmaster Tools, forums, Google Hangouts, and more.

What do you think?

Forum discussion on Google+.

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Google Webmaster Outreach 2011