Hybrid Web/CD:
Smart Content on the Desktop

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Roadmap

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This paper presents the distribution speedbumps and potholes facing today's multimedia content publishers. In particular, this paper discusses the realities of content publishing over rapidly evolving technical mediums and a widening gap between content supply and demand. A brief roadmap of the paper's contents follows.

Content Explosion	Identifies the growth of available content from essentially a supply-side perspective. Technology advances and the reduced time between content creation and content publication has fueled phenomenal growth in available content, across all mediums.
Bandwidth Demand and Supply	Presents the high-level problems and bottlenecks of Internet access. A short presentation of the near-horizon technologies and bandwidth offerings is paired with a discussion of the coupling between backbone and tail feed throughput that must be considered when planning network-based content delivery.
Electronic Distribution Bottleneck	Defines the gap between content supply and content demand as a distribution problem.
Exploiting Desktop Resources	Begins the process of identifying a means for bridging the gap between content supply and demand.
Hybrid Web/CD Publishing	Introduces a new technology application as a tangible near-term solution to the electronic distribution bottleneck. This discussion identifies the features and benefits that should both facilitate content production and content consumption without significant technical hurdles to deployment or end-user acceptance.
Technology Applications	Introduces a few application areas for Hybrid Web/CD technology that extends beyond "classic publishing" and demonstrates the versatility of this technology.

Content Explosion

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Regardless of media or information domain, content publishing is a growth industry. TV and radio news programs have spawned from de facto news hours into evening, midday and weekend prime-time spots. Print media has seen a similar growth in topic breadth. The Internet, and more specifically the Web dimension of the Internet, is probably the best example of a medium that has fostered an explosion of content offerings. While the depth of emerging published information content may be questionable (regardless of media), the breadth is a tangible element of nearly all aspects of daily life.

Part of this content growth can be attributed to the evolution of publication technologies, i.e., a supply-side factor. Typesetting systems have kept pace with the overall computer industry evolution and, to a large degree, simply integrate with computing technology as another form of output device. Publication technology advances have significantly:

1 reduced the overall cost of publishing,
2 reduced the time between content creation and content publication, and
3 increased the variety of organizations and individuals with the ability to publish.

Supply-side content growth has been stimulated by a corresponding growth in demand for more information. The duration of this period of content growth is nearing two decades and such growth is unsustainable without demand-side support. A relatively recent, interesting causal relationship is the demand for financial information as a function of the growth of participation in and success of the U.S. securities markets.

Bandwidth Demand and Supply

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New-user Internet access has grown at a phenomenal rate over the past three years, yet Internet backbone speeds and Internet Service Provider access offerings have been unable to adequately address the bandwidth demands of the growing Internet user community. Network tail feeds are already saturated and this congestion has become a source of contention between Internet Service Providers and their subscribers. While new network technologies are under development and to some degree in deployment, the overall fabric of our global digital connectivity lags behind the increasing demand for access.

A recent study by Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com/press/pressrel/980901.htm) estimates that by 2002, 16 million U.S. households will have a broadband connection to the Net. This represents a quarter of U.S. homes with an Internet connection. Cable companies will provide over 80 percent of broadband connections with local telephone companies providing the remaining 20 percent.

In the near future, set-top cable boxes may deliver a combination of television programming and digital network access, viewable from living room televisions. However, as deployment of this technology nears, the realities of shared neighborhood cable network nodes and backbone limitations still present a problem for realizable end-user network throughput. Asymmetric service offerings and a potential codependence upon your neighbors' Internet consumption rates may work to dampen the optimism for cable network technologies. Of course, if cable networks are able to increase tail feed bandwidth, the Internet backbone speeds may still be the ultimate chokepoint.

The road ahead for the U.S. telecommunications industry is clouded by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, a global series of mergers and acquisitions and a dizzying array of current and emerging network technologies competing for adoption and deployment. Digital technologies have nearly usurped analog communications in the cellular world and the near horizon holds the promise of global satellite networks with a multitude of potential service offerings. In aggregate, all of these technologies and potentialities represent the evolution of our ability to communicate, but no single technology seems to represent a clear path to the future for content publishing.

Electronic Distribution Bottleneck

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Existing and emerging hypermedia Web content, fueled by boundless creative talent and a near-rabid information appetite by consumers, continues to outpace affordable, available bandwidth. The Web represents a less expensive, more efficient and more interactive medium for content delivery than is available from television, radio, print or even email.

Simply put, content publishers have a reservoir of content supply that is met with an equal (or greater) demand for such content and an exciting, extensible medium (the Web) with which to present their content. Yet, however shiny and bright the information content bullet train might be, the tracks ahead are brittle and missing in places such that a steam locomotive could provide a similar rate of delivery.

The production of high-quality hypermedia Web content is a supply-side response to the increasing demand for rich, comprehensive content. The information value of rich Web content is diluted by the inconsistent Internet access methods available to content consumers. There is a supply-side problem -- an electronic distribution bottleneck -- with a solution requiring a modification to the content manufacturing and delivery process.

Exploiting Desktop Resources

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As network and Web technologies have advanced, local storage device capacities have increased at a rate that far outstrips affordable, available Internet access, at ever-decreasing costs. CD-ROM technology, in particular, offers significant, inexpensive local information access that is very nearly ubiquitous on the desktop. Most desktop computer units purchased today include a CD-ROM drive. So much software actually ships on CD media today that a desktop unit without a CD-ROM drive is typically hamstrung during most software installations.

CD-ROM drives have seemingly existed for a long time, but modems and network adaptors have existed even longer. With the numbers of network-connected workstations increasing, the high-speed modem (28.8K baud or higher) or network adaptor (e.g., 10Mbit Ethernet) has also become a near fixture on most desktops.

Some of the new "network computers" (e.g., Apple iMac, various Compaq models) ship with CD-ROM drives and network adaptors and/or modems as standard equipment.

To remove the electronic distribution bottleneck, content providers need to exploit the available desktop resources. Content consumers may already possess the necessary technology to enjoy rich, detailed hypermedia content at consumption rates and qualities that complement the information content.

Hybrid Web/CD Publishing

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A Hybrid Web/CD solution to the Web content delivery problem exploits the strengths of both local storage and Internet access. Hybrid Web/CD solutions provide a cost-effective means for content publishers to easily maintain multiple media formats (print, Web, CD) without extra training or staffing resources.

Hybrid Web/CD solutions allow for rich content delivery of relatively static or reference material at the consumer's desktop (via CD-ROM), while maintaining embedded links to volatile or more recent information at a lower network bandwidth requirement (via the Web/Internet). Hybrid Web/CD approaches offer content providers the ability to explore sophisticated hypermedia representations that can be seamlessly integrated with a remote Internet or Web site for value-added or incremental content enhancements. Hybrid Web/CD offerings represent an alternate, parallel delivery mechanism for rich Web content -- not a replacement for Web sites or Web-derived technology.

The evolution of the Web, itself, represents an attractive content publishing arena, with Web-related technologies evolving to facilitate better information organization and presentation. Today's new content production is likely to include the Web as a distribution mechanism. A Hybrid Web/CD approach leverages planned Web distribution investments and allows the content publisher to reach a larger audience, more effectively. Even disconnected content consumers can benefit from Hybrid Web/CD approaches with core content local and the potential to cache content updates during intermittent network connection periods; e.g., portable computers that might be only temporarily connected to networks could cache the hyperlinked content to augment the core content on the CD.

At present, the selection of content representation technologies (animated images, streaming audio/video, "push" technologies) is moderated by the realities of bandwidth limitations -- as well as the complexities of browser plug-ins and desktop platform heterogeneity. Hybrid Web/CD delivery offers content authors optimal/effective representations that best convey information, rather than selecting representations that accommodate delivery technologies that may or may not be appropriate for the content; i.e., build and deliver content in its most effective form, rather than contort the content to accommodate distribution bottlenecks.

The goal of a Hybrid Web/CD distribution would be to provide a seamless, invisible integration of disparate delivery technologies such that the content consumer is unaware and unconcerned about the processing or network demands of the delivery mechanism. Furthermore, the consumer should be presented with content in the manner that is most effective without the content producer having to anticipate delivery options or limitations; i.e., network connectivity, access or bandwidth should not affect information delivery. In short, give the content consumer what they want, when they want it and in the manner in which they expect it.

Content production, deployment and maintenance considerations weigh heavily when considering a Hybrid Web/CD approach. The financial feasibility of Hybrid Web/CD offerings will hinge on decreasing production/delivery costs with increasing distribution. Furthermore, Hybrid Web/CD approaches increase the autonomy of content developers; i.e., as the core content on distributed CDs becomes stale, the content developer/publisher/distributor can assess the trade-offs with respect to creating a new content master versus maintaining remote links to incremental content changes.

The economics of product delivery are fast becoming an important factor in determining the selection of technologies to support content product development. Hybrid Web/CD approaches represent the first genre of such technologies and require a new view of publishing technology that is as much driven by management considerations as it is by technology advances.

Technology Applications

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Classic Publishing

Organizations with thousands of content pages are clearly the primary benefactor of Hybrid Web/CD technology. The cost to create, maintain, review, print and ship multi-volume sets of printed manuals is exorbitant. Shipping a Hybrid Web/CD with the requisite core content and links to evolving/updated information represents an evolution of content delivery that is effective and efficient. Content consumers that require hardcopies have the option of printing the content locally and using whatever means required to bind and deliver the hardcopies internally.

Distance Learning

A different application of Hybrid Web/CD technology is the realm of distance learning. Higher education organizations have long struggled with an effective means of providing professional development and advanced formal training and education to remote or simply off-campus locations. The demand for evening and distance learning courses is at a current peak within the U.S. while, simultaneously, U.S. enrollments in formal on-campus education programs has declined significantly. The enrollment decline and evening/distance course demand increase is directly related to the near full employment levels that the U.S. is experiencing. During periods of full employment, working professionals cannot afford the opportunity cost of on-campus, full-time educational programs, but often feel they cannot afford not to continue with their education. "Education is a lifelong process" is an oft-repeated phrase, particularly in the high technology employment sectors. Hence the need for evening and distance learning courses

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Distance learning provides remote students with access to scarce resources -- talented knowledgeable instructors, acclaimed educational programs or diverse course offerings. To date, however, technology has not facilitated distance learning with useful mediums for content delivery. Often, special video networks are established such that a course's lecture is broadcast to specific, remote locations and the instructor and course reception area is governed by the reach of these special networks. While video compression and delivery technology has seen impressive advancements (JPEG, M-JPEG, MPEG, HH-320, ISDN, ATM, M-BONE, etc.) the fiscal realities of broadcast video inhibits widespread installation and thereby limits availability to potential content consumers.

The Internet has also served as an experimental ground for distance learning, but video over the Internet to most sites suffers from the same bandwidth bottlenecks mentioned previously in this paper, and the video quality and audio synchronization is extremely poor -- so much so that it interferes with effective content delivery.

Hybrid Web/CD solutions seem to provide a solution to distance learning problems. With a Hybrid Web/CD approach, course content providers could develop core content that is distributed via CD prior to the start of a semester. Embedded links on the CD could include reference sites, late-breaking course information (e.g., updated course notes) or even timed examinations. Course lecture could exploit existing telephone conferencing technologies with the visual stimulus supplanted by remote control of the Hybrid Web/CD content view; i.e., an instructor could centrally control the view of course lecture materials for all Hybrid Web/CD systems that have connected to the central site. Audio interaction is, of course, bidirectional over the telephone conference and could easily be moderated via a prompt/response protocol so that multiple speakers don't create a cacophony.

Consumer Catalogs

The home shopping industry has experienced a revitalization through the advent of television shopping channels and seems poised for further expansion through shop-at-home Internet solutions. As previously mentioned, set-top boxes may bring the Internet to more living rooms than current network access technologies. The combination of television displays and network access provides a new means for Hybrid Web/CD applications to reach content consumers -- home shopping via Hybrid Web/CD catalogs. With an "active catalog" on a local CD a home shopper can quickly move among related sets of products (e.g., canoes, life jackets, paddles, camping gear, etc.) as the content has been organized. Vendors can specifically target sales promotions to Hybrid Web/CD consumers based on the kinds of products that are being accessed or browsing patterns, both on the local CD and through Web links.

Maintenance References

Organizations with large amounts of maintenance and repair references face similar but slightly different problems from the "Classic Publishing" issues described previously. While costs and distribution considerations are the same, usage of this content by maintenance and repair personnel creates a new problem.

Maintenance or repair operations often require the technician to physically interact with a system or component, i.e., a technician's hands are often busy. If you consider extremely large maintenance or repair operations -- aircraft, submarines, ships, manufacturing equipment -- a technician could actually be physically inside a component under inspection or repair. The physical displacement or activities of maintenance and repair inhibit the ability to access and review the large body of extensive technical information that may be available or crucial to the operation itself.

If the technical reference content was available via a Hybrid Web/CD system on a belt- or shoulder-mounted viewing system with a low-bandwidth RF connection to a network node, the technician could bring the content to the problem. In the future, voice-activation systems would make a content browsing interface even easier to use through simple commands for searching and display.

Legalese

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