We promised to launch it on the first birthday of the CIO WebStudio and missed the date by a few, but like they say – better late than never! We’re thrilled to be able to announce the formal launch of CIO BandwidthTV, a web channel that will host all telco-related content.

The traffic on the WebStudio continues to grow while we dedicate a team of CIO Pakistan to gathering content for Bandwidth TV. So you’ll continue to find audio and video shows about Pakistan’s Technology sector here at the WebStudio, while BandwidthTV will have content that is telecom only. Experts, gurus, issues and progress in the Communications industry of Pakistan are all going to find their home online at BandwidthTV. As with the WebStudio, it’s going to take us a little while before we streamline things there, so bear with us.

As always, thank you for your overwhelming support for the WebStudio, and we look forward to continuing the interaction over at Bandwidthpk.tv!  Drop by and say Hello!

The first few days of anything new are often described as a blur. The excitement, the adrenalin rush and then before you know it, you’re thinking about how to celebrate the completion of the first year. But add the fact that you actually enjoyed every day of the 365 days, and the rush leaves a more profound impact.

We kind of forgot that the CIO WebStudio went live a year ago today. While I was running a final preview on Naveen Naqvi’s episode of Mash Ups, it occurred to me what today’s date was, and I promptly turned around to a colleague of mine and remarked, “oh… last year at this time, I was freaking out because we finally went live with the WebStudio website.” We remembered. That was good enough.

Over the course of this first year, we’ve uploaded more than 1,100 video and audio podcasts across almost 37 shows. Some of them are still regulars while others were meant to only last until their hosts simply ran out of time. We’ve accumulated more than 2588 comments across those 1,100 posts. Our traffic continues to increase to almost 500 unique views a day, a number we hope to slowly and gradually grow.

But we were never interested in the numbers. After working with so much television, we realized in the early part of the last decade that the Web was the perfect place to aggregate, generate and archive the kind of content we had the ability to showcase. Even if a hundred people view that content and yet a handful of people are able to increase their networking or networth out of the interaction, we’ve done our job. 365 days later, we’ve done more than what we set out to with the WebStudio, and we continue to tread down the path.

In the next few weeks, you’ll see another web property unveiled, similar to the WebStudio, but something that shows just how diverse our ICT industry is. In the next few months, there is one more property that will make its way down the pipeline. As our comfort level continues to increase, so will our ability to continue showcasing the industry and sides of Pakistan that the world may not otherwise have a chance to witness or interact with.

Thank you to all those of you who stopped by, supported us, dropped in comments and wrote us the harsh emails to inspire us to stay on track. Thank you to the hosts and guests for taking time to help us realize our dreams and materialize our vision. None of this would have been possible if it weren’t for all of you.

Thank you.

We’re approaching the first year milestone for the CIO WebStudio. A year ago at this time, we were running around like headless chicken, trying to celebrate the new year with a new product offering through this website – bringing a dream we’ve spend almost 7 years dreaming, to life. Almost 350 days and more than a thousand videos and audio files later, we’ve developed a really fun showcase of who and what in IT in Pakistan. Interviews, commentary, news, some humorous stuff and then the technical how-to’s…

We’ve had about 17 different programs with multiple episodes that have enabled professionals to give their opinions and face and a voice. All technology.. All Pakistani.

With the passing of the new year, we hope to introduce many more shows… some that talk about Green Tech while another is featuring the CIOs across various companies. Some marketing programs and another show that talks about the legal rights in Cyberspace. Keep the ideas coming and we promise to continue developing programs and uploading the episodes. That’s the least we can do.

As we always say, the CIO WebStudio is all about putting a face and voice to the Pakistani ICT Industry. Almost 350 days and more than 1,000 productions later, we know we’re still onto something really cool!

There have been a lot of queries from people asking when we will be updating the WebStudio with all the footage that was taken during the P@SHA ICT Awards morning and evening sessions. We’ve already started putting some and will continue to first put up all the video presentation and product demos, followed by the actual evening awards ceremony.

If you’re interested in getting “pinged” when these are up, be sure and submit your email address for our Mailing list so Feedburner (frontpage sidebar) can give you the updates on what is ongoing here everyday. Also, you can follow the RSS specifically from the P@SHA ICT Awards 2009.

On behalf of the CIO Pakistan and IDG teams, I’d like to congratulate all the winners and sponsors for putting up such a great, intense show and also thank P@SHA for giving us the opportunity to produce such a monumental event – your trust in us for everything from the content to design and execution, is sincerely appreciated!

Since we’re taking benefit of some serious downtime of a few days when we’re recuperating and tweaking our servers because everyone who follows us is ALSO on leave, we’d like to take the opportunity to wish all of you Eid Mubarak! Do keep your efforts inclusive and plans for collaborations across the community all about the greater good! See you again on Thursday with a brand new episode of PakCrunch!

All the best!

There is nothing to watch on this post. We just wanted to let you know that the CIO WebStudio is undergoing some scheduled maintenance and though we’re not restricting access to the site, some of the videos or files may not work. Please keep up posted through comments if you are experiencing any problems. We should be done and back up at full speed, within 24 hours! We’ll resume with normal, scheduled programming as soon as things return to normal and you can take off your seatbelts..

Thanks for your patience! CIO WebStudio Admin

So from January 2009 til today, we’re approaching the 700th post on the WebStudio! It’s been a pretty amazing ride so far and we’ve learned a great deal! Thank you for all the constant feedback and comments. Just a note that we’ve been experiencing an unprecedented load on our servers, something we are working on.

In case you are a Firefox user and don’t see a “video screen” when you click on any of the audio or video files, try viewing the post in another browser. After the 3.0.12 update, there seems to be something strange going on – Having said that, please share your usability experience with us, so we can try and sort through as much of it as possible! Many thanks for your patience!

So we seem to be getting a little more active on the giveaways front… We did a great campaign with Nokia Pakistan on the E63 giveaway (yet to be given away!) for Cool Tools For Fools, we’re planning a tweetup tomorrow (Sunday, July 26 2009) and have a CarePackage giveway campaign with CokeStudio for Caching It In which will go on for the next 9 weeks or so…  And of course, we had a GREAT celebration of #PakCricket making the TrendingTopics on Twitter where a few bloggers dropped by to the WebStudio and talked about how they did it! So something new every week on the WebStudio! Stay tuned!!

Well, you won’t find the review in this post – we’ve got a standard review coming up on tomorrow’s episode of Cool Tools For Fools, but here are some photographs of the demo phone we got!

Just a quick update before we head back to our respective desks and try and grab a nap while MORE videos render! *phew!

Last post, I wrote in that we were approaching the 400th post… somewhere this week, we crossed that mark!! Wait.. that’s not right. We sailed right by it!! We FLEW passed it! So yes, this post takes us upto 411 (which, in some countries, is actually a significant numbaa!!)!!

We’ve been busy as hell this past week – We’ve had Sania Saeed come into the studio to interact with bloggers and record a show on IN THE LINE OF WIRE with Jehan Ara – which was a TON of fun! Her video views is a racked up a whopping 320 unique views, though analytics shows us that the page has been hit about 2,200 times so far – so that includes people who are re-watching the episode… which is GREAT!

We’re also partnering with OPEN Silicon Valley’s OPENforum’09, where we’ve got a bunch of things planned with the OPENSV’s orgnanizing committee, so stay tuned for those updates, and interviews before the 13th June conference.

Then there is also the MITEF (MIT Enterprise Forum), the video for which will be making it onto the web towards the end of this coming week. But some great work being done there and activities will continue into the next several months. We hope to keep up with the updates for you.

Finally, the final round of the Microsoft Imagine Cup has its finalist! Stay tuned on Tuesday, June 9, 2009, for THAT video and the names of the winning university!

A bunch of stuff has been going on and we sincerely hope that the collaborative spirit can be kept alive! Thank you!

Almost 400 posts on the CIO Pakistan WebStudio! This is a HUGE deal for all those people who scratch their heads and wonder what keeps us so darn busy! You can’t see it, but I am holding up my mouse to congratulate our hosts, guests and all the visitors who make it a point to poke and prod us so that we remain on track.

400 posts and well, 565 comments.. wow! So you see, you give us great reason to shout (read: yell!) at all those people who doubted that there was ever ENOUGH Pakistani tech-related content to sustain something like the WebStudio on a daily basis. Having said that, we’ve got the content, but we’re always running into people who say, “Huh? You guys do what?! Are you insane?!” So yes, traffic continues to be a challenge. But I’ll let you in on a secret – we’ll keep doing this as long as you keep coming back and commenting and make your voices heard. We’re approaching 400 posts of originally generated content since we formally launched the CIO Pakistan WebStudio – things will only grow from here!

Thank you for your support, faith and, great feedback!

In our hustle to create fresh content on a daily basis, here’s one piece of news we simply forgot to share with all of you! The CIO WebStudio received its nomination for the World Summit Award Global Contest as the best e-Content example in e-Science & Technology from Pakistan.

The acknowledgment has been a great source of inspiration and encouragement for us, and the only we can express our excitement is to keep producing and serving content that truly represents the diverse local ICT industry. A heartfelt thank you to all those who regularly stop by the CIO Pakistan WebStudio to keep us alive and kicking, along with each of the people who frequently stop by to watch and interact with the hosts and guests.

As far as we’re concerned, all of us are winners for putting in so much effort to accurately represent the talent, skill and diversity that our industries have. Thank you.

Just wanted to give phone freaks a heads up – Host reviewed the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music on Cool Tools For Fools. The episode will be up on it’s scheduled day on Thursday, but here are a few sneak-peek photographs.

Okay! Just when we think we’ll be holding our breaths for a longer time, the lines of code fall into place and voila! the embed code has enabled itself for the videos! Thanks for your patience and continuous emails with the ideas. If you have any additional suggestions or ideas, please feel free to share them! While we would prefer that you SHARE the posts rather than EMBED videos, your options are obviously increasing!

Thanks again!

We’ve had a number of requests to enable EMBEDDING of content onto other websites. Just wanted to give a heads up that we’re working on making this feature possible.. We would request, however, that in the mean time, the videos NOT be downloaded or played in 3rd party players. It is our objective to make this content as widely available as possible, but because we make frequent updates and changes to LIVE videos, we’d request that bloggers and content aggregators be a little patient with us. It’s a BIG task to keep feeding the frenzy and we’d like to maintain control over the quality of the videos being produced. We’re testing a bunch of things every day and need to be able to monitor the expansion carefully.

Thanks for your support and patience (and repeat visits)! For any additional questions, feel free to write to us or read the privacy information in the About Us section of this website.

Just an update – Videos seem to work on IE now – Anyone still unable to view them, is requested to give feedback so we can continue to work on the problem if it is still needed addressing! Many thanks for your patience!

A number of emails are coming in where people are reporting issues with not being able to watch the video in Internet Explorer. For the time being, we’d request you to use Firefox to view the videos while we de-bug! Do share your streaming experience (browser, internet speed, etc..) so we can tweak the audio and video quality to better suit you! Thanks!