When the Presidential Inauguration and Michael Jackson Memorial Service were touted as two of the most-streamed live events in Internet history, Highwinds was there. When Tiger Woods took home the FedExCup in the PGA TOUR Playoffs this fall, Highwinds was there. When more than 100,000 people gathered on the National Mall in April for the nation’s largest Earth Day celebration, Highwinds was there. When Alicia Keys performed live on YouTube for World AIDS Day, Highwinds was there. And because Highwinds was there, many others were able to be there, too.

This year’s Streaming Media Editors’ Picks differ from those of years past in that we broadened our scope to include not just software and hardware solutions used by those inside the industry but also a couple of the most notable consumer-facing services that arose in 2008. When the history of online video is written, we’re betting that 2008 will be remembered as the year that internet-delivered video began making its first real strides toward maturity, not just as a technology but as a business proposition with long-term viability. So, without further ado, here’s our list of the top 10 products and services of 2008, as chosen by our editorial contributors.
—Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen

Seeing a real demand in the market, content delivery network Highwinds has been working for the past year on improving their web based reporting product and offering all of the functionality that customers asked for in the survey. In that time, I've had the ability to watch Highwinds product continue to evolve and have been able to get a few in-person demos along the way. To date, their reporting package is one of the best solutions I have seen from any of the CDNs in the market.

Some companies have overnight success that takes years and years of back-breaking work to get recognition; others catch a "lucky" break in their first year of business and rapidly rise to success.

For Highwinds, a content delivery network (CDN) based near Orlando, Florida, both are true: The company's CDN services only began operating in early 2008, but the company's multi-year heritage is one of moving large volumes of content across the web for longer any of the other major CDNs have been in business. In Highwinds' case, the company grew up as one of the primary delivery networks for the Usenet groups that generated extremely high-volume content delivery requirements for over 15 years.