At breakfast the other day a friend brought up the topic of the impending TV Upfront and the industry's bullish expectations. He asked my opinion. I queried as to whether he was familiar with the Native American Indian's tale of the approaching winter. He wasn't. I proceeded to spin the yarn:

No discussion of DVRs would be complete without a mention of its Trick Play capability. Just like a video recorder of old, DVRs enable the viewer to choose the time to view regardless of the television schedule. The difference now is in the storage capability and in the ease of use of the DVR. Here are a few terms and definitions regarding Trick Play and its capabilities:

Steve McGowan, SVP Research at Discovery, returned to the network after a seven-year stint at Nielsen. Steve has a unique perspective on the evolution of Discovery from small start-up to large conglomerate. In an in-depth video interview, Steve talks about a range of subjects including the use of set-top-box data, the evolution of DVRs, and some predictions for the next five years.

Six weeks ago, we talked about the resurgence of research in the MediaTech space, about the need to rethink what and how we measure in a world where everything is media. And the key to this new activity, of course, was how we bring it all together with standards and currency and actionability.

As Thomas Friedman says, the world really is flat., That's what I kept telling myself as my son and I road-tripped from college campus to campus last week visiting computer science departments throughout the Northeast. The ingenuity coming out of these schools, it seemed to me, was a reflection and a direct result of the multinational, multi-ethnic, utterly heterogeneous populations of students and faculty inhabiting these departments.