One of our favorite stops for internet radio is somafm.com, out of San Fransisco, California.  They’ve got a channel for almost everything, and (unusual for independent internet radio) the programming is of uniformly high quality.

While working, our favorite channel is Groove Salad for chilled out electronica (it makes us feel smart).  At this time of year, though, the Xmas in Frisco stream is also well worth a listen, although the silly and irreverent take on holiday music - from kitschy to historic to moderately offensive - might not be for everyone (warning: some of the hip-hop material could not be considered even remotely ‘office-friendly’) .

What we wanted to draw your attention to, though, is mission control.  This somafm channel is a stream of ambient electronic music combined with the live communications feed  from the current STS-129 Nasa Space Shuttle mission.  It’s a fascinating listen - minutes of ambient music will go by, and suddenly some mundane communication between the shuttle and Nasa will occur, rendered somehow strangely poignant by the underlying music.

The classic argument against space exploration - that there are more than enough problems down here on Earth to invest in fixing first - has sadly never seemed more valid.  However, mission control is a great example of the kind of innovative niche programming available over the “long-tail” of the internet, and a great case study in the technology-enabled blurring of the lines between art and science.

The STS-129 mission is scheduled to touch down on November 27th.  That should be interesting - I know where my internet radio dial will be set to that day…

For while now, we’ve been puzzled by the surprisingly large number of industry analysts operating under the assumption that “internet video” represents just another (albeit fast-growing) computer/web browser use case.  It  comes up most often during panel discussions and articles covering the seemingly intractable problem of how to monetize internet video - “how can we get internet video users tolerate a TV-like higher ad load?” is often the point at which shoulders start to shrug, hands get thrown up in the air, and the discussion grinds to a halt.

“By making the internet video user experience more like TV” is one obvious answer - and one that at least allows the discussion to continue…

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Peter Kafka from All Things Digital writes today that Apples is thinking about launching a $30 per month iTunes-based subscription service to carry cable and broadcast television programming early next year.

According to unnamed sources, over the past few weeks Apple has been pitching the idea to several of the major broadcast and cable networks.  As the article correctly points out, it’s a tough sell: cable networks will are not going to do anything to jeopardize the lucrative business model currently in place, in which they receive both a large cut of the advertising revenue as well as subscription fees from the cable carrier - and everyone is probably tremendously cautious about the effect on ad load, given the inability so far to monetize internet video through advertising (even industry leader hulu has had trouble selling its inventory).

However, there’s something we think the ‘All Things Digital’ article misses…  something important…

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Several decades after the advent of CAD, electronic ignition and anti-lock brakes, digital technology continues to make new inroads into the auto industry. A few of the more interesting examples:

Advertising?  There’s an app for that. Volkswagen is planning to promote their new GTI (the performance version of the Golf) exclusively via a licensed and rebranded mobile game app released for the iPhone and iTouch.  Recognizing a substantial overlap between the iPhone and GTI demographics, VW is apparently counting on the free app alone to get the job done, and at a much lower cost than traditional commercials and print ads.  The game uses the iPhone/iTouch motion-sensing, includes a virtual VW showroom (at left), and in a clever promotional move, VW plans to give away free cars to the six highest-scoring players.  If effective, look for more convergence between apps and advertising going forward…


The car network Another innovation from Germany: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in collaboration with manufacturers such as BMW, Audi, and Daimler, is working on the specification of a network standard to unify the various (until-now) standalone digital systems found in the modern automobile. Dubbed “Security in Embedded IP-based Systems“, the research project is aimed at reducing complexity and ensuring security, and will be based on Ethernet networking technology and the same Internet Protocol upon which the internet is based. We’re thinking such a system could easily find its way into the aviation industry as well. Yet more uses for ethernet - after over 30 years, maybe the most successful, extensible and long-lived networking technology ever invented.

At this week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker had a lot to say about the future of mobile computing, most of it strongly positive.


A few points from her presentation:

• Apple makes a great device, which has helped drive explosive growth in mobile computing
• The stock market is a leading indicator of economic recovery
• Mobile computing means carriers face “surging demand but uncertain economics”

Granted, these proclamations are hardly revelatory - in fact, they’re nothing you haven’t heard a few dozen times before. But while it’s hard to know what contribution (if any) yet another restating of such already thoroughly accepted truisms will make to the current level of reverberation going on within the echo chamber of technology and economics analysis, there was (as usual) a great deal of other useful information packed into her presentation.

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Last week, I watched a great technology-related segment on The Daily Show.  The subject was flash trading - the algorithm-based automated trading of securities executed by high-performance computers on high-performance networks at certain exchanges - done at an extremely fast pace.

It’s not something those involved want to make too much noise about, but countless such trades are being fired off by machines continually throughout the trading day - and it’s on the rise.  Often, these are trades you or I might be interested in making - but flash trades execute just a few crucial milliseconds before ours would, often adversely affecting the prices we get in (or out) at.  Reported by a cow suit-wearing Samantha Bee (’cash cow’, get it?), last week’s segment on flash trading was The Daily Show at it’s finest: intelligent coverage of an otherwise under-reported issue, all wrapped in a layer of funny.

It got me thinking about technology …and gaming the system.

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ICANN might be the most important non-profit organization you’ve never heard of.  Based in nondescript office building just off Lincoln Boulevard in the Marina del Rey section of Los Angeles, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is charged with (among other things) mapping human-readable domain names to internet IP addresses   Although technically a sovereign organization, historically ICANN has been under the control of the Dept. of Commerce of the United States, the country that invented the plumbing for - and tacitly claims ownership of - the internet.

Until now.

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I’m now at week 3 of my 7 week contract project here in Berlin.   I’ve gotten used to my German keyboard layout, I’ve learned not to go for irony when making jokes, and with the help (and patience) of some friends here, I’m even building up my Deutsche vocabulary, however slowly (I’ve decided to ignore the various grammatical cases and noun genders – and the resulting 16 different situations affecting how one says the word ‘the’ - for now).

Anyway, over the past few weeks I’ve had ample opportunity to pick up on some of the differences differences between how Germans and Americans approach technology, both in and outside of the workplace…

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We try to avoid taking positions on provocative subjects here at digitalmissive - health care town hall meetings, South African track star gender issues - things like that. But I’ve recently found myself sitting in front of a completely Microsoft-free workstation at my current client site - no Windows, no Word, no (gasp) Excel, no nuthin’. So at the risk of upsetting a few of the religious faithful on either side of the great Cupertino-Redmond divide, I now find myself with a few (somewhat unexpected) observations to share.

I’ve been a Windows user for some time now. The bloat, the ambivalence (at best) towards open standards, the security concerns - all this can get annoying at times. By and large, though, I’ve been one pretty happy XP camper for a while now (like many, I sat out Vista). Lately, though, like many of us John Hodgman types, I’ve secretly wondered if I too could one day be as cool as Drew-Barrymore-boyfriend guy….

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The open source software development model has made substantial inroads into the mainstream consumer and enterprise markets over the past few years – to the point that even Microsoft is now tentatively testing the waters by supporting the Apache Foundation (the folks behind the ubiquitous open source Tomcat web server) and even contributing some code to the underlying kernel of the open source Linux operating system.

Software created by an open community of contributing developers with full access to pre-compiled source code - how secure and stable can it be?   Such long-held concerns have now largely faded, as robust and secure open source applications have flourished over the past few years.

When it comes to online video, though, open source remains a bit of a work in progress.

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