Okay, everything seems to be okay now. All right. Hello everyone. Welcome to today's live stream. I am your teacher Robin Shaw and I'm here to answer your questions about English and life and anything you want to ask me you go ahead and ask me and I'll answer I'll do my best to answer. Let's see who's in the chat. Oh, there's as usual, there's a lot of chat going on Frida was first. Hello, Lolly Lolly, Dewey and hello and sleepwalker sleepwalker. I wonder how long how much more we'll be able to see sleepwalker. One day sleepwalker is gone because youtube is gone for sleepwalker. I hope everything's going well with most of you. Hey, Fernandez here. Hello. You can't find the button to be a member. There should be a join button. Thanks for your coffee. Anyone who wants to join and support this channel. Thank you very much. Okay, Kavino's here. Palavi's here. Who else is here? You guys have a lot of chat going on. You guys are talking to each other more than me. Michelle. Hello, Michelle. Good to see you here. Palavi got the vaccine. All right, let's see. I might have missed some people. I'm trying to scan. She habs here. Good to see you again. She had first truly Anjali. Hello, Nisha Nero. Hello and Tika's here. So Tika's here. We can start if anyone has any. Wait a minute. We're missing Leila. Where's Leila? Leila must be in a car accident if she's not here. Where's Leila? We cannot continue without Leila. Maruan is Sam. Hello. Oh, Lolli Lolli. Thank you for the coffee. I couldn't buy coffee today. I had no money and now Lolli Lolli, thank you. I can buy coffee tomorrow. Thank you very much, Lolli Lolli. I'm losing my voice already. Sleepwalker, what was in your video on the other channel on Monday? Walking outside, I saw a notification, but when I wanted to watch, it was deleted already. Yeah, on my other channel, I was just testing Sleepwalker. I was testing. So I just tested for about a minute and then I stopped the test. So nothing special. If you have any questions, let me know. Marianne Gilbert. Okay, I see you there. I'm sorry if I don't pronounce your name correctly. It's hard to know how to pronounce some of these names, especially the Maruan is Sam. All right, so if you have any questions, let me know. That's why I'm here. And Maruan Maruan is Sam asks a question. So let's go to the digital board here. The digital board.  Let's see if we can get that. Oh, my pictures down here. I was making videos for my university. All right. So your question here is, I start teaching English. How can you help me? So yeah, a lot of teachers, you know, I don't just talk to students. I also talk to teachers all around the world and they're always asking me how can I teach my students? Well, you know, I'm not an expert. We all, every teacher around the world, whatever you're teaching, you have to struggle. It's hard. It's really hard to get students' attention, especially because of the phones. Everyone's attention span. Let's write that up on here. My students, my student's attention span is low. So attention, your attention span means, yeah, they cannot pay attention for very long. They get bored easily. And that's because of these things.  But if you go to an English class, it's going to be one or two hours. They don't have attention span for that. So you have to make it interesting. Teachers have to make it interesting because to get that attention, the attention from the students, I haven't been in the classroom since COVID started. So when I go back to the classroom, I have a lot of speaking activities planned because I teach English speaking. Excuse me. I want to focus on speaking when I get back into the classroom. So, you know, games help. If you're teaching children, I don't teach children. I don't have many. I have taught at public school. I've taught elementary school in the past. It was not a good experience, but I'm not really good with children. So how can I help you? Well, tell me a little more about your school. Sleeparker. Oh, so nothing was missed. Nothing is ever missed in my videos. Which location do you like my image? Do you like it down here? Over here, up here, top left, bottom left, bottom right, top right. Where do you like to see me? Let's take a vote. Oh, Tika has a question here. Let's take a look. What's the difference between towards and toward? Nothing. Nothing. So these movement words, backwards, backwards, towards, towards, they mean the same thing. They're both accepted nowadays. Both are accepted. They mean the same thing. And Tika says, I think both are the same right. Yep, they mean the same thing. So this is, you know, these kind of words. Oh, yeah, let's make sure I spell it forward and forwards. Let's move forwards. Let's move forward stuff like that. Backwards, backward. Same thing. Lolli, Lolli. Let's see what you got. Lolli, Lolli. What's the difference between my bag was stolen and my bag got stolen? Thanks, Robin. Good question. I think the word got is more of an American word. The best way to say my bag was stolen, but you'll hear got more and more for speaking. It just means that event is similar to ones that event happened. So I don't know if British people use got that much. I don't think British people use got that much. Let me just do it. I wish I'm just doing a check. So yeah, that's mainly for British or not British people. American people started using got more than when something is stolen, especially this situation, my bag got stolen. My bag was stolen means the same thing. But I don't think British people say that. Sleepwalker. Oh, the questions are coming. Robin is expression, I'm content. Osmore, do I agree or I'm pleased? Interesting. I'm pleased. I'm gonna say yeah, I'm pleased more of the I'm satisfied content. I'm pleased. I'm satisfied. I'm happy. That's more of that. Not the I agree. Okay, Covino. Hello. And a for Anna has a comment about tick tock. I like talking about tick tock. I don't use tick tock because sometimes I download tick tock to look at other teachers channels. But tick tock is so addictive, like so easy, just thumb, stimulation, stimulation, stimulation, it is so easy to use tick tock. So I have to delete it. In the past two years, I've probably downloaded tick tock five times. Very quickly, I'm wasting hours on tick tock. And it's like, oh, I got to delete this. It's too addictive. Yeah, it's tick tock. For students, young people tick tock is terrible for everyone tick tock is terrible. It is entertaining. But it's, you know, it just waste your time. It's waste your time. It's bad entertainment. I don't know. You guys use tick tock. She have I would buy a coffee, but this feature is not available in my country yet. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, it is weird. Layla's not here. Up left seems better in my view. So we got a vote for up left from Farida and Marwan from Morocco. Top right is another vote. So one for top left, one for top right. And sleepwalker has a question to should we use the word charming charming only towards men and you can see you can use towards or toward same thing. He no no no he is charming. She is charming. Both of those are okay. Now, yeah, she can say she's charming. That's fine. That's perfectly fine. No problem. You can use it for men, women, whoever. But there is a famous Prince called Prince Charming. And Prince Charming is I don't remember where is he from? Like Snow White or something? Where's Prince Charming? Prince Charming is from just a general name for Prince, like in Snow White Sleeping Beauty Cinderella, we'll call that Prince Charming just a very charming Prince. Oh, I think yeah, if I notice if it's over here, it's blocking the word. So I think I'll put it back top left. All right, so Charming there's we say Prince Charming to mean a very charming man. But we can say she is charming. He is charming. Both are okay. Lavie. Sir, Robin sir, I want to say that you maybe I can't join your live stream because I'm not feeling well. Okay. Yeah, of course, if you're if you're sick, you don't have to watch. Hello in and sleepwalker has another follow up question with charming. Is it okay to say charmingly using this word like an adverb? If I mean that something is nice, we don't use it very I would be very rare. Very, very rare. I think it's possible. He spoke charming me. I think that is possible. Something like that, but very rare. And I'm just going to go to you glish quickly to see if many people know I can't find charming. I can't think of an example. But this is possible. He spoke charmingly. Very rare. Very, very rare. We never open TikTok application good. Don't ever don't open it. It's a drug. Don't start. Frida, yes, I use TikTok for sure. But I don't always use it every day as you watch cute animal videos and funny videos. Yeah, there's a lot of kinds of videos and they're you know, it's entertaining. But dangerous. Hope Layla is all right. Yeah, this is very strange. I don't think Layla has missed my live stream in years.  This is really strange. Or if see if she said also, where are you? Hey, Layla, I'm doing my live stream. Where are you? Oh, Lolli Lolli has a question. I went shopping yesterday. Are I went? No, I went shopping. The event yesterday. I went shopping yesterday. These are the gerunds. Gerunds are verbs that act like a noun. I went swimming. I went camping. These events. Yesterday, I went shopping yesterday. I went swimming yesterday. I went camping yesterday. Those all can work. Lolli Lolli. TikTok is banned in India. Why is it banned in India? So these days, I'm considering about the pronunciation. When we speak s, it can be pronounced like yes. So when you have the s sound at the end of a word, so I can take big examples here. Let's do chairs, kids and it's yeah, don't ask me for examples. So chairs. So let's get the IPA spelling of chairs. So I'm just going to the Oxford dictionary and type in chairs. It just has singular, but I know the plural. I can write IPA. Let's get American pronunciation. So when I put that in with this chairs, definitely the IPA is going to have a z there. So this is how the we really say the word air kids. Just grab the IPA. So this would be the how we actually say it kids, kids, kids that I'll be a z and it's so not everywhere. We'll just use it's, it's, we'll have an s. So sometimes, especially plural there, you're gonna have it's other words, it's. So yes, that s at the end, sometimes it's gonna have this sound, sometimes it's gonna have this s sound. Do we call any prints Prince Charming? No, we don't call any prints. I think we call the Disney princes, like Prince Charming, like you wouldn't call real like, like Prince Harry or Prince William in England, we wouldn't really call them Prince Charming. What is the meaning of Charming? Charming? Well, Mohammed, I'm not a dictionary. You can check that word anytime and try to make a sentence. I check sentences. I don't, I don't teach words.  Okay, so yeah, Mohammed, I'll check that I'll check your sentence. So it's up to you to make a sentence, bring it back and I'll say, okay, use Charming correctly. I think Layla's internet connection isn't good now. She never had a problem before. Michelle has a question. Good, let's get Michelle's question. I don't know when I should write shall instead of will for a very, okay, yeah. Is there a rule? A rule is a dangerous word. I shall meet you later. All right, so we're talking about the future. And I'm going to meet you next year, let's say or let's say just later, like I wrote, I shall meet you later. I will meet you later. So Michelle is wondering, when do we use shall? Because actually, this shall and this will mean the same thing. Something's going to happen in the future. Well, Michelle, there's no rule, but I'm going to say this is a little bit old style. So like 100 years ago, 200 years ago, probably more people use shall. It's very polite, but it's a little bit old style. So not many people use it anymore. So of course, will is more common. But sometimes you will, you will hear shall. So is there a rule when we use it? And I'm not sure when we use it. Do I use it? Let's see if there is a rule. I don't see a rule. Yeah, it's old. There might be some cases we use shall, but I can't really think of them right now. It's not so common. But you're better, you're better to use will. That's the modern, modern way. Okay, I hope that helps. We shall be charming. I looked at this masterpiece and thought it's just charming. Charming might, Muhammad listen. Charming is not really good for, it's good for just describing people. Sometimes we use it to describe furniture or housing. But I don't think we're going to describe a masterpiece. I guess we could. Yeah, I guess we could. Yeah, I think this is okay. Never mind. It's fine. Rita, oops, oops. I dropped my phone. Jose, Jose. Hello, Gonzalez. Everyone's doing well. Layla drew my photo charmingly. Well, this is a I'm glad you wrote this win. Because what do you want to say? She didn't draw a photo. She didn't draw a photo. She drew a picture. So Layla drew my photo charmingly. Layla drew a charming picture of me. So I'm going to say you, this is wrong. Because you're saying when she's drawing your, your photo, she's the method she's drawing is charmingly. And we never described some sort of method as charmingly. Like he took out the trash charmingly. It doesn't really work like that. So as I said, charmingly is not really common. And we probably, we would never say these kinds of sentences. So you're focused here on more of her action was charming. As she was drawing, it was very charming. And that's a little strange. That's not how we use it. So this is better. This is how we're actually going to use charming as an adjective. So let's make a works best bets best as an adjective. Not it can be an adverb. But I think it this is my opinion. Charming works best as an adjective not an adverb. So this would be a better sentence. Layla drew adjective. What kind of picture a charming picture of me? Okay, are you guys really like charming? Oh, let's see. A for Anna. Let's take a look is charming persona has caught my eyes. I guess that works. Yeah, that's correct. But I think persona seems a little too formal. Yeah. Yeah, that can work. Alex, take a look. Hi, Rob. Does the intonation of words change depending on the dialects of English? Sure. Yes. That's the need. That's the easiest question today. Yes, you know, pronunciation, intonation changes region to region, wherever you are in the world. Sometimes it's big changes. Sometimes it's small changes, but intonation will change intonation and word stress will change. These countries are, I guess America is closer to Canada. But Australia will be very different. Australia would be very different than Canada and America. Intonation, right? And I know I'm caught up on the questions that I meet. Did I miss any questions? Let's see what else? Let's fool around with charming. This is from the dictionary. The cottage is tiny, but it's charming. Right. So the cottage, if cottage is a small house, and I'm going to show pictures here, see, these are these are cottages kind of houses, nice houses. They look like, like from Lord of the Rings, Hobbits houses. Houses usually not in the city, outside in the countryside. These kind of kind of vacation houses. So this, the dictionary example says the cottage is tiny. It's small. So it's kind of a complaint, but it's charming. It's very attractive. So it could be something like this. Very tiny, small, but charming, very attractive. Where's another tiny, still bigger than my house. Maybe that, well, that's not, that doesn't look charming too much. Tiny and charming. Okay, maybe like that. It's tiny, but charming. I'm embarrassed. Let's see, what the expression? I mean, oh, I'm embarrassed by that's the expression. Is this expression only carry a negative connotation or can we say it with a smile on it first? I'm experienced by doesn't sound good. I mean, you didn't finish the sentence. What are you embarrassed by? I'm embarrassed by I'm going to go to Euglish to see the common. I'm just going to Euglish here. I'm putting in, I'm embarrassed by to see what other people say it. I don't even know how to pronounce his name, which I'm embarrassed by. Okay, I'm embarrassed. That's going to be negative. If I'm embarrassed by something, I do that thing. If I'm embarrassed, I'm embarrassed by it, but I want to be clear. I'm embarrassed by it. Is it negative or just, yeah, if I'm embarrassed is kind of a negative word. It's not a, it's not a positive word if there's an embarrassing action. So you're embarrassed by something. It's probably not a good action, but is that a really negative word or is it just describing the negative experience? I wouldn't classify it as a negative word saying something bad. It's just you're talking about an experienced and how you felt during that experience. And usually that experience is not good if you're embarrassed. Robin is charming. Nobody. I am not charming. But thank you, Farida, for your example. All right. My name is Robin. I go by Rob. I go by commonly used in Canadian is I don't want to say Canadian English is the English, all English. Yeah. I go by is another way to say call me Rob. I go by Rob. So that would mean the same thing. So call me Rob. I go by Rob. So what you're doing is express. Oh, it wouldn't be Robin. Well, yeah, there is a difference here because yeah, call me Robin. Call me Rob. So, okay. So my name is Robin. So in this, we're going to use your sentence because your sentence is very important. My name is Robin. So I am saying my name Robin.  So sort of my nickname or shortened name. So certainly I go by means this is what other people call me.  I go by Rob. So call me Rob. I could use call me Rob or I go by Rob. But actually I don't go by Rob. My name is Robin. I go by Robin. Who's a Robin? Do you have any plans to travel to other countries this year? I'm I want to depends on COVID. Of course, I will try to. I won't know I think until May. So in May, I'll take a look at the world. Is the world safe? Is there COVID? Is there war? Is the world safe enough to travel? And then I'll start making a plan. Rita, but honestly, I think you're cute. I'm embarrassed by Farida's comments. I ached my eye bones. Is it correct? No. Which types of can I use ache? Okay. Ake my stomach. All right. All right. I'll help you out here, win. So first of all, your eyes do not have bones. So you cannot say I bones. That's the problem here. And you don't want to say eight, like a verb here. You want to say I have or or my eyes ache my stomach aches my heart aches. I'm going to do what else aches my headaches. All right, this is possible.  It's possible to me and make these sentences. But this is not how we do it. So eyes, we usually say my eyes are strained that instead of ache for eyes, we use strained to say they hurt. You've been using them too much or watching too many watching tick tock too much for hours.  My stomach aches that's possible. But of course, usually people express that I have stomach ache stomach. I think stomach ache is one word. So so now my heart aches. So that doesn't mean this one's special because if you say my heart aches, that's not really a physical thing. That's more of an emotional thing. So I have a stomach ache or my stomach aches. That's physical. Ah, I ate bad food. I have a stomach ache. My heart aches. This one is more of an emotional thing. I'm sad. But if you said I have heart ache, this would be this would be physical, something, something physically wrong with your heart. And my headaches. Yeah, oh, that hurts that hurts. And then yeah, I have a headache like that. So so for physical problems, my eyes are strained. I have a stomach ache. I have heartache. I have a heartache. Sorry. And I have a headache. That's how we'd use that you. Uh, you can't say I ache. Doesn't work. I ache something. So Robin, how was that testing of a walk and stream on the other channel? Well, um, I need some sort of equipment because I tested the walk and stream and you know, I have to hold the phone. And you know, after about a minute, my arm got very, very tired. So I'm going to need to if I want to actually do that, I need some sort of equipment, some sort of a stick or something or some some sort of something to hold the phone. So that's something I will check a for Anna. My blood pressure fluctuates due to the hectic life before the deadline. Dateline? No. What's the question? My blood pressure fluctuates due to the hectic my blood pressure fluctuates due to the hectic life before the deadline. Yeah, that could work. That's possible. I wouldn't say deadline. Eye socket. No. We don't say eye socket for anything. Does your eye socket hurt? I don't think people's eye socket hurts your eyes hurt. So they are strained and Anna has a follow up question. What's the difference between heart broken and heart ache? Well, heart broken is someone broke your heart. And so this is about love heartache that could be about love but that could be about I was walking home. I saw some kittens, some small cats, some kittens and their mom was dead. I can't I can't bring them home. So my heart aches for them. So that's not about romance. So my heart aches for them. I have a pain. I feel sad. Oh, they look so cute and charming. But those kittens I cannot take care of them. I have sympathy for them. So my heart aches for them. I wouldn't say my heart is broken for them. Heart broken is more about love. A for Anna, I expected I expect you to know more about heart broken by now. What's what's different between ache and pain? No, that's the same thing. So we have in English hurt, pain and ache. These all mean these are all synonyms. And this is how we can express herself. So my head hurts.  I have a headache. So these would be very similar. This if you went to the doctor and you said I have a headache, well, they know, okay, that's not a serious problem. If you said I have some pain in my head, doctor might be Oh, what kind of pain? And then you can say, Oh, just a headache. Okay, it's a headache. But if you say I have some pain in my head, maybe there could be something serious and the doctor might check. And again, if you said, Oh, my head hurts, that could be a headache. But it could also be you're in a car accident. Bang, my head hurts. That's, it's a little more serious than a headache. So they all mean the same thing, some sort of pain. Yeah, it's not easy holding my camera. Maybe you should get a GoPro, something like that. So, yeah, the problem is the budget. I think I'm thankful for viewers like Lolly Lolly and Dewey and who else is Michelle and Mohammed and Layla who's not here and everyone else who helps the channel. But that's not enough to buy equipment new equipment. So if this channel ever became really, really popular, of course, I'd go out and get new equipment, but buying new cameras and such. I'm very cheap. I don't like to spend money. Yeah, a selfie stick. Well, there's selfie stick, but there's already other kinds of equipment to. Yeah, there's a selfie stick, but there's other kinds of equipment that holds a camera. And that's expensive. Selfie stick is cheap. But still, you got to hold a selfie stick. But there's, there's certain equipment that like harness for your body and it holds the camera. Hey, Fanny, you're late. And Mohammed, thank you. Four months. Mohammed's been here already. Any. Farida, what are you saying? I actually have shared the info, do some of these synonyms to WhatsApp groups. Okay, yeah, that's good to know. Hey, Frana, yeah, I can't continue the membership heartbroken. My heart broke into pieces. Yeah, for the membership channel membership, you know, every country has different rules about using credit cards and things. So some countries doesn't work. I don't know. I don't worry about that stuff. Oh, this is from Jose.  I didn't sleep well last night. So if I was your doctor, was it a headache or something else? So that's what I would add. Ask Jose. If he came to me and I was a doctor and he says he has a pain, I say was it a headache or something else, something else, more serious pain? And then I might ask Jose, were you drinking some alcohol? Maybe that's causing the pain. I don't know. All right, we had some good questions here. I will finish up in a few minutes. Oh, Mohammed. Oh, Mohammed, thank you very much, Mohammed.  Thank you very much. Not very often people give me money here, but you don't have to.  But if you do want to send me a coffee from time to time, I appreciate that not because of the money, but because you made the effort to show me that you care about these live streams. Sometimes I wonder people care. But you know, when I come here and I see people talking, I'm very happy. All right, sorry, Alex. I'm trying to learn English on my own. You can't do it on your own. But I'm finding it hard to find an effective routine to follow. Well, you can't do it on your own. You need coaches and guides and teachers I got the feeling that my English is stuck even though I try to practice it every day. Any tips? Well, I think the key word here is routine. Now let's let's focus on this. So you're you're looking for the effective routine. And I think this is part of the problem. A routine because once I've taught a lot of students and of course we made a schedule and okay, follow this schedule.  So you're focused on an effective, efficient routine. I would focus on a rotating routine. Now I'm just making this up right now. What do I mean by rotating? There might be a better word. Your routine should be always changing.  But how can I express this? It's hard for me to express this. So for example, week one, I'm doing this. I'm focusing on this week two. I'm focusing on this week three. I'm focusing on this week four. I'm focusing on this. Don't make all four weeks a similar routine. So kind of get a rotating rotating routine. Okay, this week, you know, I'm going to study reading, writing, speaking and listening. But this week, I'm going to focus a little more on listening. And then next week, I'm going to focus more on something else. And this week, I'm going to study a textbook. And next week, I'm going to study a storybook. So from my experience, the problem is getting a perfect schedule, what I want to say is a perfect schedule routine will fail. And you're like, really? Yeah, because I've seen hundreds of students, they get the time, they arrange the daily time. I'm going to study this book every day.    And they get the full monthly schedule. And they start doing that schedule. And it is boring. I would say dry dry means not not very interesting. It's just studying. So I've seen a lot of people with they had the time. They had the effort. But it didn't work. And why didn't work? It's just something about routine that made them, you know, didn't succeed with the perfect schedule. So again, I would focus on more of rotating, always changing your schedule routine, what you study, just keep doing it, moving forward. Hope that helps. Hope that helps. We, we has the funniest comment today. I have pain we'll say in my eyes when I look where you put past tense, but I'm going to use just look means it's a regular routine. So I have pain in my eyes when I look in my wallet and there isn't any money. Let's fix up that sentence. So this is a common thing in your life. I have a pain in my eyes when I look into my wallet. And there's no money. My name is win. I don't know how to pronounce that. Win win. I go by win. I just wrote it for remembering the usage usage. Yeah, you're writing use edge, but usage is no use of go by. Okay, I go by win. Yep, you go by win. Nope, I haven't drunk alcohol recently. It's a mild headache. Well, good, good expression there. So it's a mild headache. So mild is kind of middle. If you want to go up higher, it's severe headache, or strong headache. So as a doctor, if you said mild headache, I wouldn't be so worried. Not too bad. It's actually on the left side. Hmm. I've I often get headaches in Korea because of air pollution. So maybe in your area, Jose, you have a lot of air pollution because that causes me headaches. Frida nowadays, I practice listening also learn new words, you're always learning new words. Even during this live stream, you learn some new words. Sometimes to take a rest from learning is a good thing to yeah. Yeah, I agree from learning. But I think there's things you can really enjoy about English or learning language that you never need to take a rest. For example, if you're watching your favorite TV show in English, you know, you're learning and you love it and you know, it doesn't feel like studying. So but yes, I understand what you're trying to say, sleepwalker, if you're if you're studying and studying and studying, yeah, dig a rest, dig a rest. And Covenu, well, Covenu is having technical problems. There was a power cut, sir. I was cut and logged in again. Okay, so good, good expression. So the here's I'm going to clean it up. The power went out. The power cut. If we just say the power went out or the power went off. Maybe something happened in nature, like there's some thunderstorm and some lines went down and power went off power went out. Or maybe there's some construction somewhere, the power went out went off. And the power was cut. You can say that but sometimes that means you didn't pay the bill. You have a power bill every month. Here comes the bill. You don't pay the bill. So they cut the power. Hey, friend, I go by Anna. Nice to meet you. All right. I'm going to finish up soon. If you have any last comments, get them in. I have enjoyed the live stream. Thank you very much. I was filming in the studio very early this morning. I filmed some new videos for Shaw English. And this week, maybe Thursday, I'll release start releasing new videos on the Shaw English website. So check those out. I've made a lot of money this live stream over $7. That's, you know, a coffee in Korea. If I go to Starbucks, one coffee would cost about $7 in Korea. But I don't go to Starbucks. Thank you very much for watching. And I appreciate some good questions today. And I'm sure Layla will watch this later. We missed you, Layla. And I hope everything is okay. All right. So good night. Sleepwalk. Well, sleepwalk. I hope to see you next week. I hope YouTube is not cut for you. My name is Frida. I go by fairy. Well, we always call you Frida, not fairy. Here, the power was cut for six hours per day. Who cut the power? Michelle, thank you, Michelle. All right. Thank you, everyone. And see you next week.


Good morning. I'm Kristen Velletti and welcome to Newsdesk on Silicon Engle TV for Wednesday, March 20, 2013. What does the CIA want with Amazon? Join us now to answer this question is Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman. Good morning, Stu. Good morning. Happy first day of spring. Thank you. The CIA has agreed to a cloud computing contract with electronics commerce giant Amazon worth up to 600 million over 10 years. Now, Amazon already has a public cloud for government as part of AWS named Gov cloud. So why is the CIA engagement a big deal, Stu? Yeah. Well, first of all, Kristen, of course, since this is the CIA, realize everything that we're talking about is a rumor. So we don't expect to have any real confirmation. So everybody's reporting on it. There was a government blog that kind of broke this news. But as you said, Amazon was already had the public cloud offering for the government agencies. But now this is actually a private cloud and not a virtual private cloud, which is the infrastructure as a service that Amazon offers on Amazon's data centers. But this would actually be built in government facilities on government infrastructure using Amazon's software. So this is, as far as we know, a first of this nature. And as you said, it's a big deal. I mean, you know, 600 million over 10 years is nothing to sneeze at, especially if you look at it was estimated that the AWS revenue was a little bit under $2 billion for last year in 2012. And it could be upwards of $3 billion this year. Now, Stu, what will AWS help the intelligence agency with that wasn't possible under the CIA's previous cloud efforts? Yeah. Well, as I said, so first of all, Amazon had the offering that they had a private cloud, that Gov cloud that you mentioned, where we could put government services and it was cordoned off from everything else. So they already had what was really considered a secure public cloud, especially made for the government. And there was the virtual private clouds that could be done on that site. But really, the whole focus here is this is going to be done, you know, not on Amazon's infrastructure, but on the government's infrastructure. And as the government had a real push towards cloud, it really brings up this discussion as to what is the most cost effective and most secure. Is it the public cloud or is it the private cloud? And, you know, the federal government is a huge chunk of business for, you know, not only what Amazon's doing, but all of the traditional infrastructure players, you know, HP, IBM, and all of the like have lots of services and lots of solutions that they put into the government channel. So Amazon is cracking that business in the private cloud environment. So it's sizeable news that has everybody buzzing about. So speaking of secure, what's the security angle on this whole deal? Yeah, so, you know, one of the big challenges is even if a solution is cordoned off from everything else, or if it's a multi-tenant environment, you know, what is the security and how secure can it be? So the CIA obviously wants to keep their information, you know, utterly secure.  They're very tight-lipped as to what they can tell you about the deployment. So, you know, with the CIA bringing this in-house in a private cloud, but using Amazon means that there is a, you know, high level of trust in what Amazon is doing. They feel that the software is secure. And that's a big deal. So, you know, Amazon, while they are a big player in cloud, they are not, you know, until recently thought of really on the same level of a, you know, Cisco and IBM or some of the big companies that the government sets, you know, their contracts with. So the solution, you know, absolutely has to be secure. And the government is sending some clear signals that Amazon's solution is mature enough to be considered secure for CIA environments. Amazon is already the revenue leader in public cloud. Do you see the steel as sort of the first step towards Amazon's push into private data centers? Yeah. So four years ago, Amazon had launched their virtual private clouds. And as we said, this is the first time that we know of Amazon putting on premise, you know, an Amazon based solution. There are partners such as Eucalyptus that help customers kind of take the Amazon solution and integrate it with their kind of on premise data center environment. And there are Amazon like solutions out there. But I really don't expect Amazon to put a huge presence into existing data centers. If you look at what Amazon has, its strength is really the scale of their environment. And they're really low margins. And it requires a lot of touch to be able to get into the premise environments. Talk to Amazon actually a couple of weeks ago, and their push into the enterprise is really going to be done through the channel. But all of these solutions are really to be able to do infrastructures of service or other types of solutions that are not going to be on the customer premise. So I don't think this is a harbinger for Amazon to put deep into the private cloud. They will be doing more the private cloud like solutions that are still done, as I said, in service provider and Amazon's data centers. Stu, Amazon's been making a lot of recent moves. Is it too late for OpenStack to get off the ground and compete? Yeah, so it's funny. Dave Vellante said recently that, you know, we think of Amazon as kind of the 800 pound gorilla. But as a market leader, they're not a gorilla. They're moving really fast. They're a cheetah in this space. If you look at how Amazon is releasing new features, you know, people are getting updates, you know, if not daily at least weekly with new functionality that's coming in. And OpenStack is lagging. So obviously, Rackspace has a huge push with OpenStack. They have a nice private cloud that they're offering, which is going to get into customers data centers and allow customers to really operationalize their environment. So that's a good place that I think OpenStack can push into. But if you look at the service providers and public cloud offerings, OpenStack has not matured. If you look at their release cycles, they're releasing updates every six months while Amazon is much more flexible in getting things in there. So OpenStack is behind and they're not catching up right now. Amazon is continuing to grow and it's going to be, you know, tough for the IBMs and HPs of the world to be able to push OpenStack and catch up to Amazon. But that doesn't mean that there aren't lots of customers that are going to want to choose their existing infrastructure providers. We talked recently about how VMware is really trying to push more into the service provider market in the public or hybrid cloud offerings. So, you know, Amazon definitely has a strong lead and they're going to have competition, but it's going to be tough to catch Amazon as they have razor thin margins that nobody else really can meet. And they are moving fast. Well, Steve, great chatting with you. Thanks for taking the time with us this morning. Thank you.  But first, John Casaretto will join us to talk about those other cell phone manufacturers.