It's no surprise that Akamai offers HTTP Live Streaming services given that Apple, the main advocate for making the protocol an open Internet standard, is one of Akamai's investors. What's cool is that they're hosting a Video Showcase, which is a working demo of the future of streaming video and audio on the web without the need for a proprietary browser plug-in such as Flash Player. (It's a little bit ironic that Akamai sidebars a customer story about Adobe on one of their Live Streaming product pages.) The Video Showcase features free streams from NASA, USA Today, Fox News, NPR, Discovery Channel, Martha Stewart Living, MTV, Turner, and CBC. Android, Chrome, iPhone, iPod touch, and Safari users can play the streams, which will automatically optimize for their connection speed and screen size.
