I was on vacation in Mexico several weeks ago (we’re fine, thanks), and couldn’t help but notice that the local carrier TelCel was able to deliver robust voice coverage in my hotel room situated halfway between Cancun and Belize - while back home, just across the river from Manhattan, AT&T seems unable to deliver voice coverage in all but one 4-ft. corner of my apartment.

Returning home to NYC and in need of a quick news fix, I tried using the NPR iPhone app on 23rd St. one day.  After one sentence, the data connection dropped.  I tried restarting the app - this time I heard two sentences before the connection dropped again.  I tried once more before giving up, recalling NAB president David Rehr’s recent prediction that 130 million mobile devices will be receiving mobile video by 2012 and wondering what the chances of that really were, given that getting even audio to an iPhone in Manhattan is such a hit-or-miss proposition.
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Everyone’s buzzing today about Facebook’s plans to open up to third party applications. My first reaction — Finally!

With this change, it is expected that outside parties will (pending the approval of users) have access to the pool of user-provided information streams. In other words, stuff like Status Updates, Wall Posts and uploaded pictures will be able to take on a new life outside of the confines of Facebook.com on 3rd party applications.
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The 2009  NAB convention ended yesterday in Las Vegas.   With 25% of this year’s attendees coming from outside the US, and with terrestrial/cable /satellite television organizations together only representing 24% of this year’s exhibitors, maybe the name “National Association of Broadcasters” is a bit misleading - but nevertheless, the NAB show remains a major perennial media event.

Like this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (also held in Las Vegas), NAB 2009 saw attendance down about 20% due to the current economic climate - still, almost 84,000 people attended.  On the internet video front, Adobe’s announcement concerning its intention to get its ubiquitous Flash web video platform onto consumer electronics devices such as televisions and set-top boxes seems to be the big story.  In my opinion, though, while these analysts were covering the right company, they were covering the wrong story: by limiting their focus to the frankly old news (already mentioned several times here on digitalmissive) that Adobe had plans to embed Flash onto CE chip sets, they missed the gradual transformation of Adobe into an open source software  company.
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Got your attention?  I hope so, because for such a hot technology, there’s a surprising level of misunderstanding and general fuzziness out there around the precise meaning of the term ‘streaming‘ - even among some new media types Who Should Know Better.  Here, then, is a brief clarification (in an effort to keep the eyes-glazing-over syndrome to a minimum, I’ll keep it as short as possible):
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• Rumors of Android set-top box to show this fall in japan at CEATEC
  • …but motorola refutes such claims, says the set-top box won’t be one of them

• Twitter fights Yet more another worm - this one involving Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey

• We’ve already written about it here - and now,  more rumors out of China on an upcoming Apple 10-inch touchscreen netbook (take that, Acer!)

• The power of the couch: Adobe gets it; announces big push to move Flash to set-top boxes at NAB
  • …and an informative article on Adobe’s partners and prospects

• Germany proposes nation-wide federal ID checks for all YouTube viewers

• Noted tech reviewer Angelina Jolie’s firsthand impressions on the as-yet-unreleased Palm Pre smartphone

Maybe you’ve heard.  Oracle has is going to purchase Sun for $7.4bil, or $9.50 per share (a 42% premium over its current market cap).

We had been watching the dance between IBM and Sun for a few weeks now, and had speculated as recently as last week in “Worth a Click” that there was still a chance for those two crazy kids to work it out.   However, it appears possible that the ‘come hither’ noises Sun was making to IBM last week could have just been a negotiating tactic aimed at Oracle (Sun is going to Oracle for a mere  $0.10 more per share than IBM’s last best offer).
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When you find back-to-back Hulu and Verizon Hub commercials rolling across your TV screen, (as I recently did in New York), you know for traditional media delivery, the times, they are a-changin’.

Turns out, the TV spot for Hulu and Verizon Hub each mark a first for their respective parent company; pitching products previously not marketed on live television.
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Who doesn’t like Hulu.  As a fan of user interface design, I enjoy the elegance and simplicity of the site almost as much as the video streams themselves.  Launched in 2007 as a joint venture between NBCU and News Corp. (Fox/Paramount), the service has since grown to offer streams from many other content owners as well (recently Disney signed on, and is also reportedly planning to become an equity stakeholder).
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We’re trying out a new feature here at digitalmissive - a short list of topical links we find interesting and/or amusing. It’ll be updated and reappear periodically, as we come across things we think you might be interested in. (Feel free to add your own via a comment!)

• NBC hits 1bil streams - not counting hulu!

• Nielsen topline internet video data for march - growth in uniques slowing, youtube remains dominant

• Time-Warner attempts to test metered internet service plans - and a torch- and pitchfork-carrying public pushes back

• Apple patents front-facing mobile video camera - video chatting for the iPhone?

• There’s something heart-warming about this great mashup of YouTube musicians:

• Sun and IBM? …it ain’t over just yet - the dance continues

• Google hits an all-time high share of search market, Yahoo! slips - and may be back in talks with Microsoft again to join forces against against the Google search/ad juggernaut…

I’ve already written a few times (here and here) about DNS.

Why?

A concerted effort to drive readers away with dry technical information about internet plumbing, possibly?

No,  it’s because I don’t think DNS gets the love and respect it deserves - either for its sheer technical coolness as a massively replicated global peer-to-peer data structure, or for its vital importance to The Internet As We Know It.
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