industry online broadcasting founded 2001 headquarters ruston louisiana key people mike o neal chief scientist ; marcus morton president products niftytv number of employees 40 slogan we bring television to the internet website niftytv.com network foundation technologies llc nifty is a u.s. based online broadcasting company founded by dr. mike o neal 1 a computer scientist at louisiana tech university and marcus morton a music film and multi media entrepreneur . 2 the company pioneered an online broadcasting technology 3 that allows the computers and internet connections of its audience to help deliver a broadcast on to other viewers . 3 an application niftytv bypasses limitations inherent to online broadcasting by reducing bandwidth costs at the source . 4 nifty is headquartered in ruston la . on the louisiana tech university campus . the company largely employs graduates and students of the university s computer science program . 5 contents 1 background 2 technology 3 board of advisors 4 awards 5 references background edit founded in 2001 nifty was the first online broadcaster to incorporate the free for view model for professional sports leagues 6 and provides online broadcasts for the arena football league 7 and the professional bull riders 8 as well as grambling state university . 9 the company receives ongoing support from the national science foundation nsf as well as private funding and has been awarded nine u.s. patents with five pending . patents 7 035 933 10 7 512 676 11 7 536 472 12 7 543 074 13 7 664 840 14 7 818 407 15 7 843 855 16 7 895 324 17 and 7 925 726 were issued between 2006 and 2011 . technology edit nifty s technology centers on a balanced binary tree design where a broadcast stream is fed directly to a small number of viewers who propagate the signal to more viewers . the audience grows as the signal repeats to more end users but only a few nodes remain directly connected to the server . the collective capacity of the viewers computers and internet connections then power a significant part of the online broadcast in a polite and non invasive manner . 18 this technology overcomes the requirement that online broadcasters transmit a duplicate copy of each video stream to every viewer . employing end users computers to help broadcast the content stream reduces the server footprint and lowers energy consumption . 19 board of advisors edit nifty s board of advisors includes music executive clarence avant former chairman of motown records and board member of polygram records and william j. macdonald creator and producer of the hbo series rome . awards edit on february 15 2011 nifty received a tibbetts award from the small business administration . 20 the company also won the louisiana technology company of the year in march 2010 . 21 to date the national science foundation has granted nifty 1.2 million in research funding . 22 references edit mikeoneal.com . mikeoneal.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . imdb.com a b nsf.gov pdf . retrieved january 24 2012 . investing.businessweek.com . investing.businessweek.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . louisianaeconomicdevelopment.com archived march 1 2010 at the wayback machine . mediaweek.com . mediaweek.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . arenafootball.com . arenafootball.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . pbrnow.com . pbrnow.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . niftytv.com . niftytv.com . january 14 2012 . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . google.com . google . retrieved january 24 2012 . uspto.gov . uspto.gov . retrieved january 24 2012 . daily geoff november 24 2008 . app rising.com . app rising.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . crunchbase.com . crunchbase.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . sba.gov . sba.gov . february 15 2011 . retrieved january 24 2012 . the times picayune . nola.com . nola.com . retrieved january 24 2012 . thenewsstar.com dead link retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title network foundation technologies & oldid 702825843 categories internet companies of the united statesbusinesspeople in computingcommunications in louisianacompanies established in 2001hidden categories articles with wayback machine linksall articles with dead external linksarticles with dead external links from january 2012use mdy dates from january 2012 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent 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