DaviD Zweifler

DaviD ZweiflerP U B L I C R E L AT I O N S C L I P B O O K

CommuniCations Case stuDy

Euclid discovEriEs

FEAtuRED hERE ARE thREE PitchEs FoR onE cliEnt, EucliD DiscovERiEs

(EucliDDiscovERiEs.com), A comPAny thAt wAs DEvEloPing A nEw viDEo

comPREssion tEchnology. thEsE PitchEs wERE succEssFul bEcAusE thEy

hElPED thE FiRm ovERcomE thREE mAjoR chAllEngEs thAt thREAtEnED

to DAmPEn All cliEnt Publicity PRioR to A lAunch oR sAlE.

Euclid discovEriEs

THE cHAllENGEs

1. THE compANy HAd No producT.

Euclid Discoveries was a research company that

was focused on developing breakthrough video

compression technology that could be applied across

multiple channels. the business model was to create

an enabling technology that represented a 1000%

improvement over the state of the art for video

compression. this enabling technology would then

be sold outright to the highest bidder, and the

company would cease to exist.

2. THE compANy HAd No crEdibiliTy.

the technology itself was sound, but it was difficult

to demonstrate outside of the lab. the technology

represented such a significant improvement over the

existing compression standard that reporters did not

believe management's claims. combined with the

fact that there were no heavyweight technology

partners involved in the project, it was nearly

impossible to get a hearing about the technology.

3. THE compANy HAd NoTHiNG To rEporT.

there was very little news to report on the company

between the start of the engagement and the release

of the different phases of the technology.

THE soluTioN

because i could not show a product, and the technology

was difficult to understand and believe, i had to create

a way to position management as thought leaders

without relying on their technology. i also had to find

a way to drive the technology’s relevance to a

mainstream audience, even though it would be difficult

to demonstrate it outside of a test setting.

ulTimATEly, i focusEd oN THrEE ArEAs:

ApproAcH 1: the innovative way that

the company raised capital and managed

their business

ApproAcH 2: the social and business

implications of a world with high definition,

wireless video conferencing

ApproAcH 3: the business impact of

hollywood facing a file-swapping epidemic

similar to napster

rEsulTs – mEdiA

• Profile in the boston globe.

• Featured prominently in Associated Press with

pickup in dozens of top-tier news and business

publications around the country, the Deal,

businessweek online, numerous online publications

and hundreds of video compression and technology

blogs and news sites.

rEsulTs – busiNEss

currENT $100 millioN vAluATioN wiTH

No oTHEr mArkETiNG EfforT oN THE

pArT of mANAGEmENT.

cAsE stuDy | EucliD DiscovERiEs DAviD ZwEiFlER

DAviD ZwEiFlER

piTcH ApproAcH 1 of 3

subjEcT:

Tech Startup Focuses On Flyover States, Avoids VCs

Dear «salutation» «last_name»,

one technology company raised money from angel investors based in the southern u.s. as its primary means of

building startup capital. Rather than going the traditional route of raising money from vcs on the coasts, Euclid

Discoveries sought investments from wealthy individuals in states typically overlooked by tech startups, like

Kentucky.

because the company focused on angel investors in these "flyover states," Euclid Discoveries was able to tap into a

lower cost of capital, working with individuals hungry for new investments. this strategy helped management retain

control of the company and prevent vc partners from rushing a product to market - the demise of many technology

firms in the post- dot-com bust.

j. robert “bob” werner (a native of Kentucky) is a serial tech entrepreneur who is now President of Euclid Discoveries,

which is preparing to launch video processing technology that achieves compression ratios of 1000-to-1 for mPEg-4

compatible video.

bob is available to discuss the tactics of managing a large angel investor base, and fundraising strategies for early-

stage technology companies that will help ensure launch survival. he can also share several interesting anecdotes of

how he “sold” the company to a group of high net worth angels who are savvy businesspeople, but have very little

technology expertise.

i know that his perspective as an entrepreneur and a president would be of value to your readers. Please call me or

reply and i will be happy to arrange a conversation.

best regards,

cAsE stuDy | EucliD DiscovERiEs

Euclid discovEriEs

Euclid discovEriEs

cAsE stuDy | EucliD DiscovERiEs DAviD ZwEiFlER


subjEcT:

You Ate Breakfast At The Office Of The Future


People think of “the office of the future” as a specific place, but it is probably going to be at your kitchen

table, poolside or wherever you feel like working that day. the current obstacle to working at full strength

remotely is the loss of face-to-face contact, which hampers productivity and creates a sense of worker

isolation. however, this can be overcome with high definition, wireless video conferencing.

to date, high definition video conferencing has not been possible because of bandwidth constraints. my

client, the massachusetts-based Euclid Discoveries (www.eucliddiscoveries.com) is tackling this problem with

video processing technology that achieves compression ratios of 1000-to-1 for mPEg-4 compatible video,

with no drop off in visual quality (no typo.) in other words, it allows for true high-definition video conferencing

on wireless computers, mobile phones and PDAs.

i would like to offer you an interview with richard wingard, president and founder of Euclid discoveries.

he can tell you how this technology will make the bandwidth issue moot, and deliver on the promise of

mobile technologies that we have been hearing about since the late 90's.

best regards,

DAviD ZwEiFlERcAsE stuDy | EucliD DiscovERiEs

Euclid discovEriEs


subjEcT:

Compression Breakthroughs May Napsterize Hollywood


big-budget blockbusters King Kong and chronicles of narnia helped make this new year’s weekend a marginal

improvement from a year before in terms of box-office receipts. still, the improvement was not enough to reverse a

$400 million slide in ticket sales year-over-year.

technology breakthroughs could make things even worse for the entertainment industry in 2006. Advances in

compression technology are set to "napsterize" hollywood, making it easy to swap full-length movies online.

Euclid Discoveries has developed video compression technology that could allow users to swap full-length, high-quality

DvDs like they were mP3s. this is not a peer-to-peer network like bit torrent. this is technology that makes movies

really, really small without hurting visual quality.

this compression breakthrough could be as disruptive to hollywood as mP3s were to the record business – it is something

you need to incorporate into any forward-looking story on the subject.

i will be happy to set up an interview with Richard wingard, cEo of Euclid Discoveries (www.eucliddiscoveries.com).

Richard also sits on the mPEg standards committee, so he has a good understanding of how his technology can affect

the Entertainment industry. Richard can outline opportunities and threats from both a business and technology

perspective; i know his views will be interesting and informative for your readers.

Drop me a line and i will be happy to arrange a conversation with Richard.

best regards,

ClipsE u c l i D D i s c o v E R i E s

DAviD ZwEiFlERAssociAtED PREss | 06.15.2006

With more and more video surging across the Internet not just to comput-ers but also televisions and handheld

devices, something that could relieve the congestion or improve the quality would be a huge breakthrough.

That is inspiring multiple efforts to chase a long-sought -- and often unachieved -- goal of better compression, the trick of shrinking a movie, song, picture or other large file so that it can be whisked over the Internet without anyone notic-ing a difference.

Some compression companies are making some eyebrow-raising promises, such as the ability to squeeze a video file tight enough to facilitate high-definition television over the Internet. Oth-ers say their compression schemes will enhance existing video applications such as medical im-aging.

“We stand a tremendous chance of becoming a de facto standard,’’ boasts Daniel Kilbank, who founded Bethesda, Md.-based compres-sion-technology vendor Qbit with former Apple Computer Chief Executive John Sculley in 2003.

Qbit’s compression system is considered “lossless,’’ meaning it can shrink a file without losing a detail from the original file. It uses pattern-recognition algorithms to spot recur-ring aspects of a scene rather than sending them multiple times.

In contrast, today’s top method of video com-pression, MPEG-4, is considered “lossy’’ because some quality is sacrificed in shrinking the file. If you see fuzzy or pixelated images online, the faults could lie in the compression.

Consequently, even if Qbit merely matches MPEG-4’s ability to shrink files but can do so losslessly, Kilbank argues that his technology

“really creates a business argument’’ for new kinds of portable devices and Internet services with high-definition content.

Qbit figures to find its best success in “professional imaging fields’’ that generate huge files, such as medicine, defense, movie produc-tion and oil exploration, In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold believes. Eventually, however, Qbit ex-pects to be able to shrink files that already have been compressed with MPEG — potentially a boon to cable, satellite and phone-companies pumping out video content.

A different compression approach is in the works at Euclid Discoveries, based in this proudly historic Revolutionary War town.

Euclid recently announced that it can dra-matically improve on MPEG-4’s ability to render faces, while also shrinking files up to 10 times more efficiently. By focusing on faces first, Euclid hopes to spur “talking head’’ services, such as news broadcasts or videoconferences, on portable devices.

The compression is not lossless, but Euclid founder Richard Wingard argues that math-ematical tricks will make the loss essentially unnoticeable.

For now, it appears Euclid still has far to go. In an April demonstration for the Associat-ed Press, the system presented clearer facial images than files compressed with MPEG-4. But the edges weren’t smoothly integrated into the picture, as if the face had been glued on the background for a collage.

Wingard said those problems will soon be fixed. And he said rendering faces is one of the hardest aspects of image manipulation, so having already solved that puts Euclid close to essentially removing bandwidth constraints for high-quality video. Euclid pledges to eventually get a two-hour movie down to 50 megabytes -- small enough to fit 20 on a portable USB drive, for example.

Indeed, In-Stat’s Kaufhold believes that Euclid has “something valuable at its core’’ that might

lead to delivering HDTV over the Internet.

But other observers are far more skeptical. For one thing, innumerable compression claims have been made over the years only to fizzle.

And while there have been notable compression advancements over the years from such players as Divx and On2 Technologies, those technolo-gies power niche applications.

One reason is that existing, lossy compression — such as the MPEG-2 format that encodes DVDs —- is usually good enough for entertain-ment purposes, said Predrag Filipovic, an analyst with The Diffusion Group.

He also notes that a start-up compression scheme always faces an uphill fight. It must at-tract the interest of equipment makers who are reluctant to stray from industry standards, and it has to overcome rival offerings from full-ser-vice providers such as Microsoft.

“Is there a need for yet-better compression? Yes, you can argue that there is,’’ Filipovic said.

“The question is how much better somebody has to be in order to justify the huge cost of marketing this thing and the huge cost to the provider. Those equations usually do not end up in a revolution.’’

Video’s holy grail: perfect compression Shrinking files would relieve net congestion

By Brian Bergstein The Associated Press May 15th, 2006

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Firm squeezes films into a downloadNews could be bane or boom for movies

A Concord company called Euclid Discoveries says it has invented a video-compression technology

that could spawn a lucrative new market for Hollywood or a major new crisis.

The firm says its EuclidVision system can compress digital images to make them much smaller than today's most common compression technologies, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, which were created by the Mo-tion Picture Experts Group. MPEG-2 is the compression system used on today's DVD movie disks. MPEG-4 is a next-gen-eration system that can reduce the size of a movie even further.

But EuclidVision promises to squeeze video files more than ever before. Euclid Discov-eries chief executive Richard Wingard said EuclidVision will let movie compa-nies shrink a video so small that it becomes easy to distribute films over the Internet. He said that his company has filed 15 US patents on its compression system and is in discussions with a num-ber of companies to bring it to market.

That could be good news for Hollywood, which launched new services last week to sell downloadable copies of recent films. Re-ducing the size of these downloads could boost Internet movie sales. But it could also popularize Internet movie piracy, just as MP3 music compression caused a global boom in illiicit music downloads.

EuclidVision uses ''object-based compres-sion," which identifies individual objects shown in a video, then calculates the opti-mum level of compression for each of them. The current generation of EuclidVision is designed for videoconferencing over tele-phone lines with limited bandwidth. Euclid Discoveries says its scientists com-pressed a 25-megabyte conference video to just over 8,000 bytes using MPEG-4, but EuclidVision did four times better, shrinking the file to about 1,800 bytes.

Wingard thinks his system will work even better with full-length movies. ''We believe that because it's object based, the longer the video . . . the better we'll do," he said. That's because the compres-sion system can remember objects that appear frequently in the video, such as an actor's face, and can store such images in memory after reading them from the disk just once. Thus, many objects need to be re-

corded just once in the digital file, instead of every time they appear in the film.

As a result, Euclid Discoveries says a full-length movie that requires 700 megabytes of storage when compressed using MPEG-4 would use just 50 mega-bytes when compressed with EuclidVision. At that size, 14 movies could fit on a standard CD-ROM disk. As for video downloading, it would take an hour for someone with a 1.5 megabit-per-second broadband connection to download a 700-megabyte file. But 50 megabytes would take less than five minutes.

''It would solve a big bottleneck," said Chris-topher Chute, senior research analyst at IDC Corp. in Framingham. ''One of the rea-sons video has always been cumbersome . . . is it requires so much storage space."

Patti Reali, research director in the commu-nications group at Gartner Inc. in Philadelphia, said that EuclidVision could also have major effects on the television in-dustry. ''It would change dynamics in the satellite industry," she said. ''It would change what would happen in cable."

For example, cable providers are struggling with limited capacity, which prevents them

from carrying all their programs in a high-definition format. Better compression could solve that problem, helping cable compete against satellite television.

Smaller movie files could be a boon to major Hollywood studios, which have begun to em-brace Internet movie downloads. Last week, two online companies, MovieLink and Cin-emaNow, began selling downloadable copies of popular films. Downloads can take as long as two hours. EuclidVision could make the process far faster.

''I think we look at this as opportunities to deliver content," said Kori Bernards, spokes-woman for the Motion Picture Association of America.

But making movies easier to download could inspire piracy. Asked if Hollywood was wor-ried, Bernards was noncommittal.

''We have no reason currently to believe that Euclid seeks to facilitate copyright theft," she said. ''We continue to look at Internet piracy and figure out how to fight it at all levels."

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at [email protected].

By Hiawatha Bray The Boston Globe April 10, 2006

thE boston globE | 04.10.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Need cash and maybe some hands-on management help? If your startup has the potential for rich returns, you just

might snag an angel.

I started my business earlier this year with loans and money from friends and family. We are doing well and would like to expand, but we need additional funding. We’re not large enough to at-tract venture capital, and I don’t want to increase my bank debt. What are “angel” investors, and how can we interest them in our company?

– A.R., Boston

Contrary to the sound of it, “angel” investors do not earn their wings by dropping money from the sky. They are wealthy current or former busi-ness owners motivated not by philanthropy but by the desire to achieve extraordinary return on their investments in entrepreneurial companies. Most institutional investors and venture capital-ists put their money into expanding businesses that are already proven winners. Angels, on the other hand, are more willing to invest in start-ups they deem good prospects -- but that may not have already achieved profitability.

WHERE THE ANGELS ARE. Because such companies generally make for highly risky in-vestments, angels expect to become personally

involved in helping the company succeed, and they expect to reap rich rewards for their time and money. (The term “angels” in this context originally was used to describe financial backers of Broadway plays early in the 20th century. Back in the 1980s, it also began to apply to wealthy individuals who support entrepreneur-ial ventures.)

Most angels operate independently, but they do come in groups as well. You can find a listing of these approximately 225 groups, organized by region, at the Angel Capital Assn. Web site. Be-cause these hands-on groups typically like to promote the vitality of their local business com-munities, most angels invest in their own geographic areas, says John May, a longtime an-gel investor and co-founder of the Dinner Club, a group of 60 angels who collectively invest in early-stage ventures in the Washington, D.C., area.

EXTREME PRESSURE. Before you go looking, you need to make sure you and your business are ready to take on an outside partner.

“You have to be ready to partner with a funding source who will primarily be interested in a re-turn on investment. It’s a big step away from friends-and-family money,” he notes. The pres-sure for the company to perform up to expectations can be intense. “Our goal is to get three to five times the money we’ve invested

within three to five years,” May says, adding that his group typically looks to invest $500,000 in companies valued at as little as $1 million. Talk to your attorney and accountant about the im-plications of bringing angel investment on board, then ask them to make introductions for you, or find someone who can. Individual angels are usually well-connected in regional business cir-cles, and have a network of professionals looking out for deals for them, so if your company is a good prospect for an angel investor, it shouldn’t be difficult to meet up with one.

FEW SUCCEED. Angel groups usually put spe-cific criteria on their Web sites to explain what they’re looking for in terms of potential invest-ments, including company size, stage, region, and sometimes market, says Bill Payne, invest-ment chair for the Vegas Valley Angels. “The process of submitting your company will be de-fined on the Web site, including the length of your application, what information to include on it, where you send it, and how quickly you will hear back,” Payne says.

His group is looking for companies with the po-tential to grow to $25 million to $50 million in annual revenue within five to seven years of their investment. “It’s difficult to imagine the level of risk of these investments. Almost all of our ROI comes from one or two out of every 10 invest-ments. That’s why we need companies that can really scale up,” he says.

Richard Wingard, co-founder and CEO of Euclid Discoveries, a video-process-ing and compression-technology R&D company in Concord, Mass., has raised $13 million over the past six years from more than 80 individual investors.

BONDING WITH INVESTORS. “The main thing they are looking at is an exit strategy for the investment. They don’t always understand the technology, but they can tell if you know what you’re doing, if you have the right team on board, and if you have a compelling value set,” Wingard says. The early money is the most difficult to get, and communication is key. Wingard’s part-ner does investor relations full-time, he says, and he devotes about 20% of his time to the same endeavor.

“I have a great investor who owns a milk-delivery business in Georgia, “ Wingard says. “I regularly fly to Atlanta, rent a car, drive three hours through the dusty backroads of southeastern Geor-gia, go around to the back of his house, and sit there on the porch with him, yucking it up. It takes that kind of per-sonal time and commitment to get these people to take the leap of faith that’s needed.”

By Karen E. Klein Businessweek Online December 19th, 2005

Send Me an Angel InvestorSmart Answers

businEsswEEK onlinE | 12.19.2005

DAviD ZwEiFlER

CORANTE

Richard Wingard has figured out a way to fund cutting-edge technol-ogy with angel investors, and hold

them in their investments for nearly 7 years.

Wingard runs Euclid Discoveries, which is working on an object-based video compression technology he says will de-liver 10 times the performance of MPEG-4, enough to “turn your iPod into a DVD player.”

And he’s done it all with angel investors, who are best-known for backing only early-stage customers. Wingard has rejected the entreaties of venture capital firms, saying their time frames for pay-outs are too short. Yet he has succeeded in getting angels who will wait as much as 7 years for a private auction of his technology, and a distribution.

Want to know how he did it?

1. Communication -- Both Wingard and his partner spend an incredible amount of time communicatiing with, and preparing communication for, the investors.

2. Validation -- Wingard hired Charles River Associates (now known as CRA International) to validate his claims, and value his claims, before asking for new investments and higher valuations.

3. Patents -- Wingard aggressively sought patents for his technology and now claims valid patents on video compression tech-niques he’s using dated as early as 2004.

4. Exit Strategy -- Wingard has been clear with his investors from the beginning on exactly how and when they will get their money out, through a private auction of the technology, when it is ready for com-mercial deployment.

“There are more angels out there than in the past 5 years,” he concludes. “We’ve now got a very good model, about getting investors, about maintaining them through the long haul of R&D.”

This may be how U.S. R&D gets done} in the future, so give Richard Wingard a hand

Angel (Investors) in America

By Dana Blankenhorn September 9th, 2005

coRAntE | 09.09.2005

DAviD ZwEiFlERstARtuPnAtion.com | 08.04.2006

Controlling Your Startup Business “Burn Rate”

Cash isn’t like calories. Those, you want to burn up fast. But when it comes to the cash consumed by your startup busi-

ness, the slower your “burn rate,” the better.

Knowing the burn rate in your new business and managing it well will tell you – and indicate to your investors – when you’ll need more invest-ment or a loan, or when you will break even and begin to make a profit.

If you forget to check this compass within your new business, you could run out of cash before you reach those milestones – and find yourself burnt out of business.

Learn to calculate the burn rate for your start-up business

Simply put, your burn rate is how much capital you go through each month. When you start up, you begin with a specific amount of capital – let’s say $100,000 as an easy example. You decide that it takes $10,000 a month to operate your new business, with no revenues projected during the first year. That means your burn rate is $10,000 a month. In this example, you’d be in trouble if you don’t start making money by your 10th month in business.

As a rule, you need to review your burn rate ev-ery month, just as you do the components of the burn-rate equation: expenses and income.

“It’s no different for a company than it is for an individual: How much do I make a month, and how long is it until payday?” says David Bro-phy, a professor of venture capital at the University of Michigan. “It’s as old as dirt and as fundamental.”

Carefully monitor your burn rate

If your heart rate gets too high or low during a workout, you’d better figure out what’s going on. The key to understanding your company’s health is to monitor its burn rate.

“Devise a barometer,” Brophy advises. If you al-ready have revenue, this can boil down to keeping a fastidious eye on your order book and your cash-flow statement. “By watching them,” he says, “you’ve got your finger on the whole working-capital system of your company – and your burn rate.”

And it may pay to get even more sophisticated in monitoring your burn rate. Dwight Schultheis, for one, has developed a financial-projection model that he compares against the actual monthly performance of his New York-based company, Amenity LLC, which provides men’s personal-care products. Then he reports vari-ances to each of his managers and investors.

Keep your regular business expenses in check

Obviously, one of your burn rate’s two compo-nents is easier to control than the other. You can’t unilaterally produce revenues for your company, but you can single-handedly control

expenses. And you should be ruthless about it, particularly in the early going. Monitor expens-es every day.

Lea Ellermeier Nesbit tries to save money every time she turns around, to keep a safe burn rate for her startup, Lingualcare, until the Dallas-based company begins selling significant numbers of its innovative tongue-side orthodon-tic braces. Nesbit scouted out bargain-basement office space and then hit up the landlord for free use of cubicles, office furniture and phones. She outsources nearly every service, including ac-counting and marketing, to cut overhead. And, for now, Nesbit and her partner are taking com-pany stock instead of salaries.

Think twice – at least – before committing to big outlays

You should keep major outlays and significant new financial commitments to a minimum, es-pecially while you have to aggressively manage your burn rate. Once you decide to incur a big expense, take another day to think about it first.

At least make sure you’re placing the right bets. That may mean adding salespeople before a fi-nancial manager. Or buying a new shipment of inventory – you know customers will lap it up – before gorgeous new office furniture that makes you feel good. Spend your precious cash on what’s critical to producing revenue for your startup business.

Go back to the well for more capital

If you’re doing everything possible to contain expenses, but adequate revenue remains just over the horizon for now, you may simply have to add fuel to the fire – and get more capital for your startup business.

Even if you haven’t sold a dime’s worth of prod-ucts or services yet, you might be able to obtain that capital cheaper than when you started up.

“When the markets are good, there’s lots of mon-ey out there trying to find companies to put it into,” says Tony Grover, head of RPM Ventures, an entrepreneurial financier based in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Negotiate hard and get cheaper cash.”

And while raising money by parsing out equity is one thing, entrepreneurs warn against taking out more loans or adding other debt – avoid it like the plague. “We don’t accumulate debt,” says Richard Wingard, head of Euclid Discoveries, a Concord, Mass., startup business that is developing video-compression technol-ogy. “It’s like getting a credit card in the mail: it’s too easy. But don’t do it.”

Our Bottom Line

Controlling your burn rate can give you the con-fidence and resources to ramp up your startup business the way you want. Squeezing expenses in that new business is the best way to do it. If you don’t, you’ll learn just how unforgiving the marketplace can be.

By Jeff and Rich Sloan Head Coaches, StartupNation August 4, 2006

DAviD ZwEiFlER

With Verizon Communications Inc.'s VCast-equipped cell phones and video iPods topping holiday wish lists this year, attention is turning to powerful new technology that enables com-panies to better deliver video over the Internet.

This advance is being led not by any of the ma-jor software, Internet or entertainment industry giants that arguably could benefit most from widespread use of online video, but by two little-known startups — Euclid Discov-eries LLC and Qbit LLC — that claim to have re-engineered the process so it is faster and more effective than ever before.

The key is the ability to compress video enough to speed its passage over broadband networks. In essence, every video image is like a picture composed of thousands of bits of data. Without compression, it could take up to two hours to send a full-length movie over a broadband con-nection, and even then the quality of the picture would suffer. Compression technolo-gies effectively reduce the amount of information traveling over an Internet-Proto-col-based network by eliminating small variances in color or by trying to recognize sim-ilar shapes and reusing that data rather than sending multiple versions of it.

Compression is key in a variety of industries and applications. In video gaming, for instance, the bits and bytes that make up a picture must be processed by the chips in the computer or gaming console without slowing down the ac-tion, so compression is essential to keeping a game fast and the visuals realistic.

In set-top boxes, meanwhile, the data trans-ferred from a cable company over fiber lines must be compressed to make room for more channels and high-definition content. Better compression could enable broadcasters to beam high-def shows over conventional copper wire, which is cheaper than fiber.

There are two basic approaches to compressing video: shrink data into really small parcels so it can travel faster over limited bandwidth, thus sacrificing picture quality; or compress it less (or not at all in the case of medical scans) so picture quality is high but transmission slow.

Euclid's technology helps make video im-ages as much as 10 times smaller than what is possible under current compres-sion standards. Bethesda, Md.-based Qbit, founded in 2003 by CEO Daniel Kilbank and John Sculley, former CEO of Apple Computer Inc. and former president of PepsiCo Inc., al-lows for better picture quality and compression rates up to 50% smaller than usual. t

The ultimate goal is to create a better standard for compressing video. For now, large technol-ogy companies such as Apple and Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp. have their own compression technologies, as well as license the de facto industry standard, MPEG. Another company seeking to popularize its video com-pression software is Clifford Park, N.Y.-based On2 Technologies Inc., whose product powers Skype Technologies SA's new video calling ser-vice and Macromedia Inc.'s popular Flash application, which is used for Internet anima-tion.

MPEG, which is licensed by MPEG LA LLC, the administrator for the technology, has be-come ubiquitous by virtue of its more than 1,000 licensees. Larry Horn, vice president of licensing and business development at MPEG LA, estimates that the technology is used in 80% to 90% of video products on the market today.

But Keith Walker, director of IT analytics at Boston consulting firm CRA International Inc., said MPEG is inadequate to quickly download-ing a full movie or television show over limited bandwidth.

"The optimal technology solution doesn't appear to have been put into the market," said Walker, who is working with Euclid

to place a value on its intellectual property. "It's clear that the market is valuing the po-tential value and income for offering video downloads in the many billions over the next decade."

That's good news for Euclid and Qbit — if they can produce the compression rates they say they can. Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst with In-Stat, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based tech re-search firm, said Qbit, whose products are already commercially available, has succeeded with its so-called still-imaging compression. It also has eliminated data loss, which is crucial for transmitting film and medical images, among other functions, and for government purposes. Qbit has raised nearly $7 million in funding from angel investors, with a round of $5.5 million last year carrying a post-money valuation of $40 million. It now is seeking $2 million to $8 million to fund its sales efforts and further technology development.

Euclid, which since launching in 1999 has survived on a modest $10 million in funding raised from hundreds of indi-vidual investors, will launch its offering in January. The Concord, Mass.-based company could benefit from a partner — or an acquirer — to push its technology into the mainstream, Kaufhold said.

Compression made the video star

Stacey Higginbotham TheDeal.com December 2, 2005

thEDEAl.com | 12.02.2005

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Web Video Compression Could End Congestion

CONCORD, Mass. -- With more and more video surging across the Internet not just to computers but also televisions and handheld devices, some-thing that could relieve the congestion or improve the quality would be a huge breakthrough.

That is inspiring multiple efforts to chase a long-sought _ and often unachieved _ goal of better compression, the trick of shrinking a movie, song, picture or other large file so that it can be whisked over the Internet without anyone noticing a differ-ence.

Some compression companies are making some eyebrow-raising promises, such as the ability to squeeze a video file tight enough to facilitate high-definition television over the Internet. Others say their compression schemes will enhance existing video applications such as medical imaging.

"We stand a tremendous chance of becoming a de facto standard," boasts Daniel Kilbank, who founded Bethesda, Md.-based compression-tech-nology vendor Qbit LLC with former Apple Computer Inc. CEO John Sculley in 2003.

Qbit's compression system is considered "loss-less," meaning it can shrink a file without losing a detail from the original file. It uses pattern-rec-ognition algorithms to spot recurring aspects of a scene rather than sending them multiple times.

In contrast, today's top method of video compres-sion, MPEG-4, is considered "lossy" because some quality is sacrificed in shrinking the file. If you see fuzzy or pixelated images online, the faults could lie in the compression.

Consequently, even if Qbit merely matches MPEG-4's ability to shrink files but can do so losslessly, Kilbank argues that his technology

"really creates a business argument" for new kinds of portable devices and Internet services with high-definition content.

Qbit figures to find its best success in "profes-sional imaging fields" that generate huge files, such as medicine, defense, movie production and oil exploration, In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold believes. Eventually, however, Qbit expects to be able to shrink files that already have been com-pressed with MPEG _ potentially a boon to cable, satellite and phone-companies pumping out vid-eo content.

A different compression approach is in the works at Euclid Discoveries LLC,

based in this proudly historic Revolution-ary War town.

Euclid recently announced that it can dramatically improve on MPEG-4's ability to render faces, while also shrinking files up to 10 times more efficiently. By focus-ing on faces first, Euclid hopes to spur

"talking head" services, such as news broadcasts or videoconferences, on por-table devices.

The compression is not lossless, but Eu-clid founder Richard Wingard argues that mathematical tricks will make the loss essentially unnoticeable.

For now, it appears Euclid still has far to go. In an April demonstration for The As-sociated Press, the system presented clearer facial images than files com-pressed with MPEG-4. But the edges weren't smoothly integrated into the pic-ture, as if the face had been glued on the background for a collage.

Wingard said those problems will soon be fixed. And he said rendering faces is one of the hardest aspects of image manipu-lation, so having already solved that puts Euclid close to essentially removing band-width constraints for high-quality video. Euclid pledges to eventually get a two-hour movie down to 50 megabytes _ small enough to fit 20 on a portable USB drive, for example.

Indeed, In-Stat's Kaufhold believes that Euclid has "something valuable at its core" that might lead to delivering HDTV over the Internet.

But other observers are far more skeptical. For one thing, innumerable compression claims have been made over the years only to fizzle.

And while there have been notable compression advancements over the years from such players as Divx Inc. and On2 Technologies Inc., those technologies power niche applications.

One reason is that existing, lossy compression _ such as the MPEG-2 format that encodes DVDs

_ is usually good enough for entertainment pur-poses, said Predrag Filipovic, an analyst with The Diffusion Group.

He also notes that a startup compression scheme always faces an uphill fight. It must attract the interest of equipment makers who are reluctant to stray from industry standards, and it has to overcome rival offerings from full-service provid-ers such as Microsoft Corp.

"Is there a need for yet-better compression? Yes, you can argue that there is," Filipovic said. "The question is how much better somebody has to be in order to justify the huge cost of marketing this thing and the huge cost to the provider. Those equations usually do not end up in a revolution."

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN WashingtonPost.com May 14, 2006

Richard Wingard, Euclid Discoveries CEO, shows a test screen for digital video quality in his office in Concord, Mass. (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)

wAshingtonPost.com | 05.14.2006

.com

Clipst E l s E y A D v i s o R y g R o u P | A m E R i c A n m A n A g E m E n t A s s o c i At i o n | s E R E n i t i

DAviD ZwEiFlERthE nEw yoRK timEs | 10.06.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlERtimE mAgAZinE | FAll 2006

DAviD ZwEiFlERthE nEw yoRK Post | 09.04.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlERAssociAtED PREss | 06.15.2006

Technology lets people do more in less time, yet employers complain that their workers waste hours each

day surfing the Internet and writing e-mail — whether for work or play.

Concerned about the Web’s negative effect on productivity, 76 percent of firms now monitor employees’ In-ternet connections, according to a survey by the American Management Association. It polled 526 companies of varying sizes.

Some 65 percent of companies block cer-tain sites — a jump of 27 percentage points from 2001. Increasingly, companies are also using programs that track work-ers’ keystrokes and review their computer files and e-mail.

There’s got to be a better way.

The AP talked with AMA president Ed Reilly to find out why technology is hurting productivity at some firms and how employers and employees can work together to use the Internet better.

AP: What can managers do to help workers to use technology more efficiently?

Reilly:We need to give people skills to be able separate the ‘’important’’ from the

‘’urgent.’’ You can’t let other people — unless it’s your boss, of course — determine what is urgent to you.

I mean, we get this constant stream of e-mails all day long. Most conventional wisdom would tell people, (if) you want to be effective you have to devote time to answering your e-mails at a certain point in time so you can focus on that and not be: My Blackberry is going off right now.

... Even people who are bright-minded and doing the right thing, we’re still all learn-ing how to be more efficient at researching things on the Internet. ... You can end up with information overload. ... What is the nth value of looking at three more Web sites to get more information on a particu-lar product when you’re buying it after you’ve looked at six different Web sites?

... (Also, managers) can set rules as to what’s appropriate. Some companies allow very little or no personal use of their com-pany facilities. (But) I think the more general consensus is that you allow a mod-est amount of use of the company’s communication tools for personal use.

... You have to be very fair with your em-ployees and tell them what those expectations are. You don’t want to just quietly write down these things and start to enforce them and discipline people be-cause they didn’t follow a rule that you weren’t real clear in getting to them. So, there’s a lot of management responsibility on that.

AP: Technology is supposed to save time. How did things get to this point?

Reilly:I think one of the great myths of the e-world is this notion that people can multitask without any consequences.

... It’s very time-consuming, it tends to produce less good results when you’re switching gears as quickly as we are. It’s very fatiguing, interestingly enough.

AP: That’s interesting. How did this myth of multitasking arise?

Reilly:Probably we’ve all been doing this since the invention of the telephone. I think a certain amount of it, people can get away with. I think it’s just the varying degrees of interruptions that are available to us today have grown substantially, and maybe that is at the tipping point where people have too many opportunities -- and too many temptations -- to keep switching from one to another.

Is Internet at Work Good or Bad?Hard at work? Managers say technology can sometimes waste workers’ time

By Stephanie Hoo The Associated Press June 15th, 2006

(Photo: David Kohl, The Associated Press)

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Technology is having a double-edged impact in the workplace, says Ed Reilly, president and chief ex-

ecutive of the American Management Association. It improves productivity, he says, but it may also prevent high-quality thinking. Here are excerpts from a conver-sation:

Has technology improved overall produc-tivity in recent years?

There is no arguing that productivity has been improving at a historically unprece-dented rate, particularly in the past five years. Look at the things that are enabled by improved technology. In retailing, look at how Wal-Mart has combined informa-tion technology to set their supply chains against other people’s supply chains and to allow for outsourcing and offshoring that they’ve been able to do. The Internet has driven down pricing in lots and lots of industries. From a consumer point of view, eBay is the ultimate in pricing transpar-ency. If you want to sell a watch or an antique piece of jewelry, it used to be very

difficult. Now you can put it on eBay and 10 million people look at it.

If people have a sale on eBay and are using several e-mail platforms and their cellphones and their office lines, does that fracture attention span?

Absolutely. When people switch gears and move from one process to another, our brains require some amount of time to be-gin thinking about something else. Forget the amount of time you actually spend browsing on the Internet and reading things you don’t really need to read for your job. Just the fact that you’re switch-ing back and forth means you’re not organizing your time correctly.

Do all the distractions mean that people don’t have time to think deeply about what they’re doing?

There is certainly some indication that in middle to upper management, that can be a problem. If you don’t properly organize your thinking and your time, you can end up concentrating on the urgent rather than the important. You can get tied up being a traffic cop in terms of answering

e-mails, when in fact those things can be answered later.

What impact do the distractions have on working-level people?

There’s a curious anomaly. These tools pro-duce more productivity. But it doesn’t imply that everyone is working at maximal effec-tiveness. There’s a general consensus that managing the quality and quantity of work from knowledge workers has proven to be more difficult than managing the work-study processes that added so much productivity to the industrial age. For ex-ample, you can assign people to customer relations jobs. They will, if you make them, respond to, say, 120 inquiries a day. The real question is whether they take a few more minutes to think about what the cus-tomer really wants and try to be responsive.

What is being done to help employees use these tools?

I’ve heard people describe e-mail as the DNA of business communication because it never goes away. You want to be careful about what you say. Even for people like

Bill Gates, e-mails can come back to haunt them. You want to have appropriate poli-cies for e-mail, for instant messaging and for blogging, which is pretty quickly be-coming a big phenomenon in businesses. On top of that, you want to make sure that your employees have requisite skills in core time management. You want to make sure that people have the right kinds of communications skills, not only the ability to write a coherent sentence, but also to have a strategy of what they want to com-municate and who needs to know about it. Companies go to great lengths to set up lists of authorized approvals, meaning who can approve what size of purchase. But you will find that people who are not au-thorized to spend $100 on their own are authorized to send e-mails to people and waste hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of company time.

William J. Holstein is the editor in chief of the magazine Directorship.

Upsides and Downsides of a Many-Tasked World

By William J. Holstein of The New York Times The International Herald Tribune June 6, 2006

intERnAtionAl hERAlD tRibunE | 06.06.2006


Technology is having a double-edged im-pact in the workplace, says Ed Reilly, president and chief executive of the

American Management Association. It im-proves productivity, he says, but it may also be a distraction that prevents high-quality think-ing. Here are excerpts from a conversation:

Q. Is it clear that technology has improved overall productivity in recent years?

A. There is no arguing that productivity has been improving at a historically unprecedented rate, particularly in the past five years. Look at the things that are enabled by improved tech-nology. In retailing, look at how Wal-Mart has combined information technology to set their supply chains against other people’s supply chains and to allow for outsourcing and offshor-ing that they’ve been able to do. The Internet has driven down pricing in lots and lots of in-dustries. From a consumer point of view, eBay is the ultimate in pricing transparency. If you want to sell a watch or an antique piece of jew-elry, it used to be very difficult. Now you can put it on eBay and 10 million people look at it.

Q.If people have a sale happening on eBay, are using several e-mail platforms and their cell-phones and their office lines, does that fracture their attention span?

A. Absolutely. When people switch gears and move from one process to another, our brains

require some amount of time to begin thinking about something else. Forget the amount of time you actually spend browsing on the Inter-net and reading things you don’t really need to read for your job. Just the fact that you’re switching back and forth means you’re not or-ganizing your time correctly.

Q.. Do all the distractions mean that people don’t have time to think deeply about what they’re doing?

A. There is certainly some indication that in middle to upper management, that can be a problem. If you don’t properly organize your thinking and your time, you can end up concen-trating on the urgent rather than the important. You can get tied up being a traffic cop in terms of answering e-mails, when in fact those things can be answered later. Management, particu-larly the more senior management, needs time to think.

Q. What impact do the distractions have on working-level people?

A. There’s a curious anomaly. These tools pro-duce more productivity. But it doesn’t imply that everyone is working at maximal effective-ness. There’s a general consensus that managing the quality and quantity of work from knowledge workers has proven to be more difficult than managing the work-study pro-cesses that added so much productivity to the industrial age. For example, you can assign people to customer relations jobs. They will, if you make them, respond to, say, 120 inquiries a day. The real question is whether they take a

few more minutes to think about what the cus-tomer really wants and try to be responsive.

Q. What is being done to help employees use these tools while cutting down on the clutter?

A. I’ve heard people describe e-mail as the DNA of business communication because it never goes away. You want to be careful about what you say. Even for people like Bill Gates, e-mails can come back to haunt them. You want to have appropriate policies for e-mail, for in-stant messaging and for blogging, which is pretty quickly becoming a big phenomenon in businesses. On top of that, you want to make sure that your employees have requisite skills in core time management. You want to make sure that people have the right kinds of com-munications skills, not only the ability to write a coherent sentence, but also to have a strategy of what they want to communicate and who needs to know about it.

Companies go to great lengths to set up lists of authorized approvals, meaning who can ap-prove what size of purchase. But you will find that people who are not authorized to spend $100 on their own are authorized to send e-mails to people and waste hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of company time.

Q. Should top management say to employees, ‘’You can’t do anything personal on these com-puters while you’re at the office’’?

A. A lot of companies have limits. Companies that have general office workers may say, ‘’We don’t want you to spend more than 20 minutes

or half an hour on the computer on personal business, and we want you to do it at certain times. We’d like you to dedicate your lunch hour to it. We don’t want you to decide to do your Christmas shopping at 3 p.m. in the after-noon.’’

There is this lifestyle issue. We have 120 hours of waking time a week. These new technologies

-- the combination of BlackBerries, home com-puters and cellphones--expand the time that’s available for you to be working, if you choose. What’s curious, and perhaps even a little insidi-ous, is that the traditional boundary of work is being expanded to maybe not 24 hours a day, but maybe 17 hours.

Q. Couldn’t someone argue that because they are working evenings and weekends, they should be able to use the office computer how-ever they want?

A. That’s right. Companies recognize that you want to be careful about a policy that says, ‘’We 100 percent prohibit this.’’

Q. What do you read to stay informed?

A. I was better read before I got my BlackBerry. Now when I get on the train in the morning, I have messages from Asia and from Europe, from people who have been at work for six or seven hours. I don’t have time to read.

William J. Holstein is the editor in chief of Director-ship magazine.

Attention-Juggling In the High-Tech Office OFFICE SPACE: ARMCHAIR M.B.A.

By William J. HolsteinThe New York TimesJune 4, 2006

Orlando Sentinel Pick Up

06.15.06: Bradenton Herald (c. 41,296) Bradenton, Fl

06.15.06: Monterey County Herald

(c. 31,831) Monterey, CA

06.19.06: San Jose Mercury News

06.19.06: Daily Press

06.20.06: Belleville News-Democrat (IL),

06.17.06: Austin American-Statesman,

06.18.06: Times-Argus (Montpelier/Barre, VT)

06.19.06: Houston Chronicle

06.21.06: National Post

07.03.06: Akron Beacon Journal (OH)

07.03.06: The Lexington Herald Leader

Associated Press Pick Up

06.11.06: Virginian Pilot, VA

06.15.06: OCRegister, CA

06.12.06: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, IN

oRlAnDo sEntinEl | 06.05.2006 DAviD ZwEiFlER

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Work harder, play harder, and — with a boost from the latest technology -- squeeze 31 hours of activity into a

24-hour day.

A study done for a cable-TV network concluded that people can actually add about 50 percent more activity to a typical day of 16 waking hours. Spend a half-hour listening to podcasts while answering e-mail, and you’ve crammed 60 min-utes of work into 30.

Multitasking is nothing new -- but during the past decade, technology has helped speed its spread throughout our lives. The average yearly increase in U.S. workers’ productivity, for ex-ample, has doubled from 1.5 percent during the period 1987-1996 to 3 percent from 1997 to 2006, according to U.S. Labor Department figures.

“There’s been an enormous change in the American economy,’’ said Ed Reilly, chief ex-ecutive of the American Management Association, which helps everyone from indi-viduals to the nation’s biggest corporations improve their performance.

But even as technology is letting workers accom-plish more in less time, it is also exacting a price. People may be working and playing harder and getting more done each day, but they’re feeling overwhelmed by the multiplicity of their lives.

“There’s a sense of fatigue that comes from multitasking,” Reilly said. “You can force yourself to keep doing things, but you may not be as effective.”

People today describe turning on their electronic gadgets before the morning coffee is brewed and keeping them handy until tumbling into bed at night.

Jennifer Wakefield is both a spokeswoman for MetroPlan Orlando and a mass-communica-tions student at the University of Central Florida. Which explains why she sometimes multitasks during breaks, combining lunch with her laptop when the restaurant offers WiFi ac-cess to the Internet.

“I probably get at least 100 e-mails a day,’’ she said. “I’m also a grad student at UCF, so I’m do-ing some online research related to my thesis.’’

E-mail overload. Vibrating cell phones. The digi-tal connection goes to meetings, where BlackBerry messages can be furtively typed by thumb under the table on tiny keyboards. And on it goes: at dinner, in the airport -- even on va-cation, so-called knowledge workers remain tied to the workplace.

“This creates a burden for society -- people having no downtime,” said Ronnie Korosec, a University of Central Florida professor specializing in infor-mation technology and productivity.

“There is no time when people can’t be reached, so we see stress levels increasing,” she said. “It also creates an opportunity for people to shirk some responsibilities, because they can say they

worked on their lunch hour, so they’re entitled to a little time off back in the office.”

Tim Burrill recently watched as the head of a construction crew, frustrated by frequent e-mail interruptions, yanked his BlackBerry off his belt and angrily threw it to the ground, vowing not to use it again.

Burrill, a construction-project administrator at Florida Hospital in Orlando, came to the rescue. He set up an e-mail filter so the BlackBerry would vibrate only when it had a message from someone the frustrated worker considered very important.

“If you’re not extremely tech savvy, you can get bogged down by using a product ineffectively,” Burrill said.

Even with proper training, diligent workers can find themselves working harder than ever, un-able to escape the invisible, electronic tether.

Maureen Brockman tackles her e-mail each morning at home before her children get up. When riding in a car with her husband, she checks e-mail on her smartphone. Even on vaca-tion, the vice president of marketing and communications for the Metro Orlando Eco-nomic Development Commission works on her e-mail, so there won’t be hundreds of messages waiting when she returns to the office.

“There’s never a real mental break anymore,’’ she said.

UCF President John Hitt starts the day with a bowl of cereal and a computer, going online to

catch up on news, e-mail, and a daily calendar that always seems to need updating.

But he has set limits on how far he’ll be pushed. “I’ll take my cell phone when I go fishing,’’ he said, “but I won’t do e-mail from my boat.’’

The American Management Association is a proponent of better training in the use of technology, Reilly said, so workers can take smarter advantage of rising productivity. Cell phones, e-mail, the Internet -- they can also waste time in the workplace by blurring the line between important and common tasks, and by making it far easier to spend company time on personal interests.

“Providing people with better coping skills means helping people use technology to or-der and prioritize their workday,’’ he said.

“People need to understand the relative im-portance of the job and what’s most important.’’

Some of the same issues arose at the turn of the last century, when the U.S. auto industry was swept by technological change.

“The introduction of the assembly line was an enormous improvement,’’ Reilly said.

“But not everyone ran their assembly lines with the same level of efficiency.’’

That was the era of the 53-hour workweek. No one had yet imagined a 31-hour day..

Chris Cobbs can be reached at [email protected] or 407-420-5447.

Plugged in 31/7The latest technology allows workers to multitask and accomplish more in less time but also exacts a price.

By Chris Cobbs | Sentinel Staff Writer The Orlando SentinelJune 5, 2006

oRlAnDo sEntinEl | 06.05.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Managing Brief — Internet: Make sure you don’t get blogged out of your job

By Vickie ElmerThe Washington Post June 24th, 2006

IF YOUR BLOG includes word of a new product you’re helping launch, you may need to launch a job hunt, too.

Blogging carries risks, from dirtying a company’s reputation to drawing lawsuits. Nancy Flynn, the director of the ePolicy Institute and author of

“Blogging Rules,” offers this advice for workers bal-ancing a blog and a job: Don’t post anything about your employer. Don’t allow unscreened comments and replies to your blog. If you’re writing anything potentially inflammatory or damaging, wait 24 hours before posting.



thE wAshington Post & wsj onlinE AisA | 06.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlER

By Jan VonThe Chicago Tribune January 28th, 2006

thE chicAgo tRibunE | 01.28.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlERthE nEw yoRK DAily nEws | 02.03.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlER

Don't be seduced by 'Kama' e-wormTECHNOLOGY

A file-eating "Kama Sutra" worm is poised to attack hundreds of thou-sands of computers today and for

some users it may be too late to stop it.

Experts warn the cyber worm has already infiltrated computers by enticing users with pornographic-sounding e-mails with headlines like "crazy illegal sex" and "give me a kiss" that started to appear Jan. 16 worldwide.

"There's a danger that it could be on your computer and you don't know about it," said Lawrence Phipps of Se-reniti, Inc., a Jersey City-based home computer security provider.

Phipps said the worm, also known as "Grew.A" and "MyWife," is like a ticking time bomb set to go off 30 minutes af-ter unsuspecting users turn on their computers this morning. He advised computer users who have not already updated their anti-virus programs to do so immediately upon logging on.

The worm burrows into systems when the culprit e-mail attachment is opened. Thou-sands of computer users have already allowed the worm into their operating sys-tems by unwittingly opening the e-mail attachments, which are usually blank.

"It is already underway and will be activated unless people get removal tools," said Ken Dunham of the computer security firm VeriSign Corp.

Once the worm starts to work, it can cor-rupt files, including spreadsheets, financial statements and family photos. It can also shut down a computer's keyboard and mouse.

Eric Yoshizuru of PandaLabs, a California computer security firm, said the worm also searches infected computers for e-mail addresses on which to spread the virus. The worm is such a worry, Microsoft put out a security advisory this week informing users offering updated anti- virus programs for free at: www.windowsonecare.com.

By Bill Hutchinson The New York Daily News February 3, 2006

thE nEw yoRK DAily nEws | 02.03.2006

DAviD ZwEiFlERthE sAlt lAKE tRibunE | 07.16.2006

Online Safety: Teach your children safe computer use

Summer is a time of swimming, reading, riding bikes and eating popsicles. But it's also a time when

many kids spend long hours in front of the computer screen. All that surfing can leave children and the family PC vulnerable to threats.

"Internet use among children is stag-gering, but parental involvement in this activity can be virtually absent," said M. Fahim Siddiqui, chief execu-tive officer of Sereniti Inc., a home networking solution provider. "Eighty-seven percent of kids ages 12 to 17 use the Internet, and more than half of them go online daily. Preschool chil-dren are actually one of the fastest growing groups of Web site visitors."

Surprisingly, though, only about half the adults polled said they use any type of filtering software to protect their kids online, he added.

Here are some tips from Siddiqui for keep-ing kids safe while online this summer.

* Utilize parental controls and establish access guidelines for your children, such as limiting the times they can go online and controlling which sites they may visit. Establish times that your children can and can't access the Internet.

* Keep the family computer in a visible and widely used part of the home so you can see what your children are doing on-line.

* Instruct children never to provide any identifying information to an unknown Web site or in a public message such as chat or bulletin boards or over e-mail. Do not share that information via e-mail un-less you recognize the e-mail address and know the person.

* Teach your children safe Internet habits. Spend time with them while they are searching online and discuss possible dangers that are on the Internet. The Internet can provide needed family time and be used as a wonderful learning tool.

* If children make friends online, become just as familiar with them as you are with the friends they make at school or in the neighborhood.

* Teach children not to open e-mails from addresses you do not recognize or sub-jects that do not make sense or are suggestive. Never respond to e-mail, chat comments, instant messages or other messages that are hostile, bellig-erent, inappropriate or in any way make you feel uncomfortable.

* Keep an open line of communication between you and your children. Estab-lish rules for online habits and talk to your children about what they are view-ing online. Create a list of rules and post them next to the computer.

"The Internet is a wonderful resource for families, but it must be used safely and securely, with appropriate parental involvement," added Siddiqui.

- Jennifer Barrett

By Jennifer Barrett The Salt Lake Tribun July 16th, 2006

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