Live TV on the iPhone – Some new developments

While poking around the app store yesterday, I came across a few new applications that have tremendous promise.

France 24 in the news section offer live streaming of the France 24 (think CNN of France). The buffering is pretty quick and the quality is not bad. France24 is a different take on some of the news out of Europe and this lets you watch them on your iPhone via wifi pretty easily. Free app and worth a download.

France24 is only on limited cable systems in the US, with service in Washington and New York that I know of. They had some great coverage of some stories like the Bettancourt rescue in Columbia and they also have some good culture shows from Europe that are worth watching.

TVU is p2p video streaming company that allows you to watch tons of content from around the world, some of which is probably not authorized by the copyright holder. The app is in beta and released, but will likely have a few new developments that will make it much more useful (such as widescreen, which I haven’t figure out how to use just yet. Lots of Chinese channels (as I’ve said before, the Chinese are light years ahead of the US on IPTV — light years). Amazing what developments can be done when DRM is not the first consideration.

We’re still waiting for livestation.com to come out with their app (in development) and I guess we are still waiting for the Slingbox app, promised for months and months (but no where in sight just yet).

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Estonian network engineers rush to Georgia to help fight Russian cyberwar attacks

Computer engineers from another former Soviet republic are rushing to the aid of Georgia, armed not with weapons but with computers. Russia and Georgia are engaged in a ‘cyberwar’ of sorts attacking each others networks and websites, and now some computer networking engineers from Estonia are rushing to aid their Georgian colleagues who are dealing with hacking, Denial of Service attacks and other networking issues.

Two of the four experts that staff Estonia’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) were waiting Tuesday morning in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, seeking permission to drive into Georgia, said Katrin Pärgmäe, communication manager for the Estonian Informatics Center. The two officials are also bringing humanitarian aid, she said.

Estonia is also now hosting Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site, which has been under sustained attack over the last few days.

Russia was accused of hacking Estonian computer systems in response to that country removing statues of former Soviet leaders.

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