“Three screens and a cloud.”

That’s how both Chief Software Ray Ozzie and CEO Steve Ballmer repeatedly described the future of computing in general over this past year.

Inside Microsoft’s crystal ball, traditional desktop computing is decreasing as applications move up into the internet, and a new generation of lightweight ‘screens’ (thin clients, mobile devices, and network-enabled televisions) become the three prevailing client-side hardware models.

It’s a good little slogan - and about as unambiguous an endorsement of the conventional wisdom on the bright future of cloud computing as one could imagine.

Microsoft has had its share of advertising/PR issues over the last few years (think Jerry Seinfeld as a symbol of forward-thinking 21st century coolness, or the Windows 7 launch party infomercial).  It would be a shame if similar promotional missteps end up preventing the Microsoft Azure initiative from garnering the media buzz it deserves, though, because the company is every bit as dedicated to the cloud as the above quote would suggest – and they’re putting their money where Ray’s and Steve’s mouths are.

Consider the Chicago data center (pictured at left), part of the massive global build-out of the Azure infrastructure that occurred over the past year.  Completed this past June, the facility occupies 700,000 sq. ft. - the size of 12 US football fields.  To populate a data center this size, 40 ft. shipping containers are packed full of servers and installed as power-efficient and easier-cooling modules (note to the firm handling Microsoft’s PR: that would make some pretty servicable B-roll news segment footage).

Sadly, though, the remarkable physical build-out of Azure has been one of the more overlooked stories of 2009, and as the service is poised to go live for the enterprise tomorrow on New Years Day, there remains relatively little coverage in the general or trade media.

So what is Azure?

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• AT&T solves its New York City coverage issues overnight!
• mozilla exec “bites the hand that feeds”…
• bird drops baguette into super collider…
• exhibit A: your spouse’s facebook profile

A few weeks ago, we wrote that while a recent panel discussion of the iPhone NPR app was focused on the ability to access any NPR station despite its over-the-air local broadcast range constraints (geographic independence), the primary value proposition of the NPR app is the ability to access any program despite its scheduled air time constraints (temporal independence).  Put another way, this app represents the ‘tivo-ization’ of NPR.

In fact, the intrinsic ability to time-shift content is arguably the primary value proposition of any internet media platform.

Some recent coverage of Apple’s forthcoming Apple TV subscription model misses this point entirely, though…

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“What we are seeing in the U.S. today in terms of smartphone penetration, 3G data, nobody else is seeing in the rest of the planet,” said Ralph de la Vega of AT&T during a conference call the other day.

“The amount of growth and data that we are seeing in wireless data is unprecedented,” he added.

As the long-standing negative buzz on AT&T’s network has peaked over the past few weeks (due in part to a recent Consumer Reports article and an aggressive advertising campaign from Verizon), AT&T has shifted from the somewhat defiant and dismissive stance taken earlier this year (when such reports were characterized as “anecdotal feedback” and “sweeping generalizations”) to a more plaintive tone - as demonstrated above.

Whether or not it’s good long-term policy for any company to publicly complain about how difficult it is for them to provide the service they’re being paid to provide is open for discussion - particularly when that company’s current windfall success is almost entirely dependent upon a soon-to-expire exclusive partnership with another company (i.e. Apple).

In any event, while the technical challenges AT&T faces may be very real, I would be more receptive to the recent “data networks are hard” excuses coming out of the company if it were able to a better job of getting even voice coverage up to par in the NYC area - above is a screen shot from my iPhone, taken from my home office.  My apartment (the blue dot) is located within 2 miles of downtown Manhattan - not exactly the middle of nowhere.  Yet, I get almost zero bars - and an unusable voice connection.

In AT&T’s defense, the company has recently launched an iPhone app to allow users to send the company location-specific reports of poor service (of course, in cases of no coverage you’d have to put the iPhone on an available wireless network for the app to function).

So that’s what I’ve done - I’ve installed the app, sent in my report, and am waiting  to see if my voice (let alone data) service improves.

In the meantime, while at my desk at home, it would appear I own an expensive  iTouch.

We’ve written about DNS before - how important it is, how remarkably well it works, how often it’s attacked, and how taken for granted it is by the general public.

As such, last week’s announcement that Google is getting into the DNS business is worth paying some attention to (historically, DNS has been provided for at the Internet Service Provider level, but there’s no intrinsically technical requirement to do so).

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The keynote event at the Future of Television East conference here in New York a few weeks ago was a conversation with Paula Kerger, President & CEO of PBS.  During the discussion, the subject of the iPhone NPR app came up as a model of  what digital distribution of PBS content could someday look like.

Although the tremendously successful  BBC iPlayer might have been a more apt example, I was happy nonetheless to hear one of my favorite iPhone apps getting some recognition.

Of course, the ability of internet radio to provide access to any station regardless of the geographical limitations of its over-the-air broadcast range were touted -  Kerger, as it happens, enjoys listening to Maine public radio (where she has a summer home) while traveling.  However, what was left unsaid about the NPR iPhone app was what I feel is its most notable feature:  the “Programs” section, a comprehensive implementation of all available on-demand streams organized by program rather than station.  Not only that, but news shows such as “All Things Considered” are broken down by individual segments, so one can actually browse within the show (of course, for a more passive experience you can still play all segments sequentially via a playlist).

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Comcast has bought a controlling share in NBCU.  Maybe you’ve heard.

Just what this means for hulu is now topic du jour.  For those unfamiliar with the service (are there any left?), hulu is a browser-based premium video website that launched a year and a half ago as a NBC/Fox joint venture and has since became wildly popular (and deservedly so: on a technical level, the streaming is very well implemented, and on a user experience level, the UI is  very cleanly designed).  Since April, when Disney bought into hulu, CBS has been the only major broadcast network left outside of the hulu fold.

More than any other service, Hulu was looking like the future of premium online video.

Then along comes Comcast and makes things interesting: the largest company in the vertical industry most threatened by the advent of online premium (non user-generated) video is now part owner in the nascent medium’s industry leader.

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Turns out, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend catching up on my subscription to The Online Reporter.

As I am going through weeks and weeks of back-issues of the popular Internet and CE digest, I catch myself repeatedly noticing the growing number of consumer software start-ups with particularly short and vowel-rich companies names.

Think Google, Hulu, Lala, Vudu, and Veoh. Oh, and then there’s Rollyo, Slooh, and Bebo, of course. And that’s only the beginning.

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