Like many of you, I am a recovering “road warrior” able to recite airport code names backwards and the exit row numbers for all types of aircraft (rows 20 & 21 for the “nerd bird” flights from Austin and San Jose, btw). For awhile in fact, I checked my frequent flyer account more than my bank account (which is unfortunately far less than the other…) Like many, though, my travel is far less now as I’m basking in the newfound benefits of Cisco TelePresence™ and other collaborative tools that make meetings near life-like, efficient, and permit more time with my family.

How many of you remember when airline frequent flyer programs expanded and began to work with one another - accepting each others miles and allowing us more freedom to choose? Now such alliances, whether they be OneWorld or StarAlliance, are part of a flyer’s expectation. Well, somewhat analogous to this are new, global inter-carrier and intercompany TelePresence capabilities available from Cisco and several service provider partners.

I am delighted to announce the formation of the Cisco SP Mobility Community. This community will bring together mobility experts to collaborate and discuss technical and business challenges in the mobility space. If you are not already a member, please check it out…here are some hot topics so far:

• WiMAX vs. LTE: Which technology will “win” and why?
• Business models being redefined
• The new iPhone: Good or Evil?
• Ask John Chambers Anything (well…almost!)

To mark today’s milestone, let’s look back and compare the video experience of the early televison era with that of today:

It was just a short time ago that I was on SP360 writing about cloud services and the impact it will have on the SP services market. This was in reference to the launch of Cisco’s Unified Service Delivery solution, and cloud computing certainly is one of the main topics that Cisco is aiming to address with USD.

But that’s not the only area I’m looking at with USD. Making an almost 90-degree turn from cloud computing and business services for IT, I’ve now got a unique opportunity to deliver a “one-two” punch to demonstrate the power of the Cisco Unified Service Delivery solution - this time talking about media and video services which generally target the consumer/residential market.

Watch to learn more about the study, the drivers, and some new applications that that help you dive into the details of the forecast and compare how your usage matches those of others around the world. Video after the jump…

One year, despite my best shopping efforts, I ended up giving him a blender. Dorky and desperate I know, but what made it even worse was that it was the year that he decided that wine was his thing, so the blender got no use…(and no, he doesn’t do smoothies!)

Service providers around the globe are facing the challenge of delivering rich media services in a world with explosive growth in video traffic, expanding sources of content and numerous end devices.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, Cisco introduced a concept called medianet, to address these service provider challenges with the premise of transitioning towards rich media optimized networks that are end-point aware, network aware and media aware.

Light Reading, the largest online communications publication in the world, wanted to check if Cisco could not only “talk the talk” but also “walk the walk” regarding our medianet solutions. In order to do so, Light Reading commissioned the European Advanced Networking Test Center AG (EANTC) to conduct a comprehensive independent test around these solutions including: Cisco IP NGN architecture with embedded medianet technologies, medianet end user experiences and Cisco’s Service Provider Data Center Solutions. No wonder this thing was dubbed “The Mega Test.”