The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the non-profit agency responsible for, well, assigning names (domain names ) to numbers (IP addresses).  In today’s thoroughly commercialized internet, this involves fundamental issues of both Intellectual Property and Internet Protocols.

In case you haven’t heard, they have some big plans to change the way the domain name system (and by extension, the web) works - starting next year.

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Although I’ve been thinking about this for a while, it took a recent Union Square Maoz lunch with the folks from Incubakor,  to write one more rave about how urban and digital lifestyles increasingly seem to meet and merge.

This one’s about the sizeable number of new sleek and modern looking vertical micro eateries that have popped up in Manhattan and other cities across the country.

Think Chop’t, Chipotle and Maoz respectively for do-it-yourself salads, burritos, or falafels. Think Rice to Riches for not-quite-your-mother’s-favorite milk rice. Or Yolato, Pinkberry, Red Mango and Berrywild , all eager to declare the next renaissance for frozen yogurt on-the-go.

Essentially, if your parent’s culinary experience at McDonalds, IHOP, or Olive Garden appears rather Web  0.0 passe to you, these aforementioned new and casual eateries are clearly all out Web 2.0.

For one, designed to have you pick-and-choose your items as easily as you select your favorite video snacks from your preferred YouTube channel, this new breed of fast food spots is all void of sit-down menus, deliberately limiting your selection to but a few tastes and choices.

Still sounds too close to the age-old salad bar approach? Not so fast.

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We’ve been watching (and writing) about the rumored Apple tablet netbook for a while now - essentially an iTouch with a 6-10″ touch screen, we feel like this thing is gonna be huge.

Hulu’s been working on an iPhone App (using the more Apple-friendly MP4 format rather than than Adobe Flash) for a few months now - imagine a 10″ tablet for the home that can access iTunes, YouTube and Hulu.  Imagine all this running over your fast home internet connection rather than AT&T’s under-performing 3G data network.  Imagine (the admittedly more remote) possibility of the otherwise Microsoft-centric Netflix streaming service coming to the iPhone OS as well.

In short, this could be one compelling consumer electronics internet video device.

We had speculated on a holiday 2009 release, but recenty the Financial Times reported the iTouch tablet/netbook might hit as soon as September. There’s one (as yet unsolved) problem most of the somewhat breathless coverage of this device fails to mention, though:

Battery Life.

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We’re fans of Will Richmond’s VideoNuze newsletter here at digitalmissive.   However, we have to take issue with a recent VideoNuze article on the future of long-form online video - like many such forward-looking articles we’ve come across lately, it’s tacitly assumed that since we view internet video on a computer and web browser today, the situation will remain unchanged  indefinitely.  It’s surprising how many articles attempt to predict the future of internet video while failing to consider the role a new generation of consumer electronics devices (i.e. televisions and set-top boxes) with network interfaces and baked-in internet video functionality might play.

First and foremost among the conclusions often drawn from this flawed premise is that “advertising alone will not be sufficient for profitable long-form program distribution online”.

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• NY Times considers subscription model
  

• Failure to browser makers to agree on single codec hobbles HTML5 video tag

• Congressman calls for cyber-reprisals

• Microsoft gung-ho on Silverlight3

• Google Chrome OS as extension of Google Native Client

• Pandora gets another $13M in funding

• Netflix rolls on (to bravia)

…netbooks
….microsoft azure
… google apps, chrome OS
…mobile internet devices
…internet-enabled televisions and set-top boxes

We take it for granted now, but it was over 25 years ago that a man by the name of John Gage said it first: “The Network is the Computer“.   At the time, he was one of the first few employees at a small startup in Santa Clara, and this prescient statement became their unofficial motto.

That company was Sun Microsystems.

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For two reasons, Brian’s recent TV Everywhere post caught my renewed attention.

For one, earlier today, Comcast announced expansion of its online TV video efforts to an impressive 23 networks. From full-length movie channels - think Cinemax, HBO, IFC, an Starz -  to cable TV favorites such as A&E, E!, Food Network, and WE,  Comcast’s 5,000 trial homes are now among the very first to enjoy online video akin to legacy TV.

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Long-form internet video vs. short-form internet video:  As a recent article in the New York Times noted, online video  program length is starting to increase beyond the short 1- or 2-minute user-generated YouTube clips we’re used to snacking on from the workplace.  The NY Times piece correctly identifies at least one factor behind the trend: increased bandwidth and video quality.

However, like most coverage of internet video, the article labors under the short-sighted assumption that “internet video” is necessarily a function of the  computer and the web browser (evidently under a similar assumption, another New York Times article was recently able to proclaim that “Putting Network TV on the Internet is Not Disruptive”).

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Microsoft has a web browser - Google comes out with a browser.

Google has a great search service - Microsoft comes out with a great (bing) search service.

Microsoft has an operating system - Google plans an operating system.

Google’s recent announcement to have a Chrome operating system available in about a year has generated a lot of chatter lately - but is it really a Windows-killer?  I think not - not anytime soon, that is.  Although the era of Vista will soon be behind Microsoft and Windows 7 (still in beta) is earning favorable early reviews, the primary reason Google’s OS won’t vanquish Microsoft’s Windows operating systems is that while the two companies’ browsers and search engines fulfill exactly the same roles, a direct Windows-Chrome OS comparison is a lot less apt.

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You’ve heard about their growing popularity, you’ve seen them on airplanes -  in this challenging economic climate, the rise of the ‘netbook’ is one of the few recent bright spots in the computer hardware space.   We’ve written about netbooks before - optimized for portability, low price,  and long battery life, these smaller, less expensive laptop computers fill a niche between the smartphone and the full-powered notebook - and they’ve have had that market pretty much all to themselves.

Until now, that is - witness the emergence of a entirely new category of machine (with accompanying acronym): the “MID” (Mobile Internet Device).

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