GigaOM

Comcast said today it plans to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” in cooperation with P2P companies and other ISPs. The bill is supposed to be a catalog of best-practice recommendations for P2P companies and ISPs alike, but the announcement was more than vague about what those recommendations might look like. NewTeeVee has the full story.

This winter holiday season, visitors to Best Buy will be able to purchase televisions and DVD players with the ability to transmit wireless video in high definition. But before getting too excited about dumping your cords, you should know that there are currently four different ways one can watch wireless HD, and it’s unlikely all of them will be built into consumer devices.

That’s right, the variety of wireless HD technologies are sowing the seeds of a new standards war. And standards wars stink. Whether between Blu-Ray and HD DVD or the varying shades of Ultra-Wideband technologies, when the fight centers on technologies, consumers lose. This year, SiBeam, a company participating in the WirelessHD standard operating in the 60 GHz band, plans to have products on shelves, as does a UWB vendor. Products based on the third standard, known as WHDI, are expected to be on shelves this winter as well.

Device makers have yet to choose a standard, so it’s hard to say which technologies — and related startups — will win out. Continue Reading

We taped the 35th episode of The GigaOM Show this past week. I interviewed Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems where we discussed different topics including the importance of fundamental research, how Sun is changing and why he bought MySQL.

With this episode, we are going on a brief hiatus. While The GigaOM team - Liz, Katie & Chris - along with Joyce Kim had been doing a great job in keeping the show going, [thanks guys] to ask them to continue was above and beyond their call of duty. Being the show host, I felt I needed to return to the show to keep its fidelity but even taping a single episode proved to be quite taxing.

My doctors have urged me to now not to pursue activities that can raise stress and my blood pressure, and taping a show every week falls in that category. So for now we are taking a little break and will return sometime later this summer with a new look, once the doctors give me the thumbs up. Meanwhile, enjoy the episode and check out archives of the previous episodes.

Wow. Host Joyce Kim takes off for one week and things go crazy on this week’s episode of The GigaOM Show. We step into the world of Second Life with founder and CEO Philip Rosedale, who gets a virtual grilling from Wagner James Au (author of the new book The Making of Second Life). Rosedale gives us “The State of the Second Life” union address, talks hype cycles, and explains why the tech sector should still care about his company. Also on the show, we talk a little Hulu, and if Mary Tyler Moore is watching, I’m sorry for butchering your theme song (the producer made me do it).

UPDATE: Well this puts a different spin on this week’s episode: Philip Rosedale stepped down as CEO today. The company is searching for a replacement with more management experience.

You can also download the show for QuickTime, Windows Media, or Xvid.

NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes catches up with BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker and talks about the company, Comcast, traffic shaping and other sundry topics. Enjoy the video, and read Liz’s post over on NewTeeVee.