On the eve of the 2009 CES show, perhaps it’s time for a few more thoughts on what should prove to be The Big Story at this year’s show: televisions and set-top boxes with internet access baked in, for direct internet video access.

For the last few years, numerous companies in the ‘computer’ business (on either the hardware or software side) have made repeated attempts to market solutions involving the PC as a viable long-form internet video delivery platform - with little to no success. Lately, though, perhaps enough anthropologists and/or behavioral scientists have been hired to finally convince at least a few of these companies that despite all the bells and whistles, a computer might never be a television after all (as they say in the south, “you can put a brick in the oven, but that don’t make it a biscuit”).

So while certain companies might have enjoyed a substantial technological head start in internet video, through a stubborn insistence on leveraging the home computer, the opportunity was missed. But no matter: here comes the CE industry - as of Thursday in Las Vegas, it’s their market now.

Apple undertook a conscious expansion into the CE industry several years ago with the iPod (in fact, dropping ‘Computer’ from their corporate name) - is it too late for other computer-centric companies to make a similar move? 

The recent Intel/Yahoo initiative is a particularly interesting case in point.  Both companies, as Yahoo Connected TV vice president Patrick Barry poetically puts it, “emerged from the ocean of the PC”.

Intel Intel has been especially forward-thinking regarding the convergence of the home computing and consumer electronics industries for some time now, having launched the Intel Digital Home Group several years ago.  The Digital Home Group, active in both processor design and standards development, is particularly close to my heart, as it’s made up of both anthropologists as well as computer scientists.

Yahoo We’ve been pretty hard on Yahoo lately, but they do have some heavy OEM hitters lined up to implement their embedded internet TV ‘widgets’ system: Sony, TiVo, and Samsung. Also worth noting, the Connected TV initiative intends to follow a purely advertising-supported model, and studies routinely show consumers prefer advertising to subscription fees.  Lastly, yet another issue (and one that holds true for all internet video contenders) is the remote: as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently noted, a Nintendo Wii-like pointing remote will likely be required as internet-enabled television hardware matures.

At any rate, given their recent setbacks, expect Yahoo to bet the farm on this one.

Net Neutrality.  Up to now, the conventional definition of the concept has been that internet service providers shall be prohibited from “blocking or slowing content from some applications or companies” (as quoted from a recent NetworkWorld article).  Arguably, the definitive infraction against this particular notion of Net Neutrality was Comcast’s recent ‘managing’ of Bit Torrent traffic via the insertion of spurious connection reset packets.

However, the whole issue the issue of Net Neutrality (at the last mile between the ISP and the consumer, at least) is rapidly becoming a moot point: in preparation for the expected explosion of demand for longer-form video over IP, most major carriers are now scrambling to assemble and/or acquire proprietary content delivery networks (CDN)s to avoid the ever more congested and unpredictable system of routers out there in the public cloud (a recent post about just what Google, Microsoft, and Verizon are up to can be found here).

So while your neighborhood ISP might maintain a commitment to Net Neutrality itself, the real action is well upstream, as major corporations join already established CDN players such as Akamai, Edge Networks, and Yahoo’s Cloudfront to distribute and/or cache digital media content out along the edge of the cloud, in effect forming competing private mini-clouds to minimize the role of the public internet itself.

Put another way, in the purest sense of the term, Net Neutrality has already become something of an anachronism – not due to any localized slowing down of unfavored packets at the ISP level, but due to a globalized speeding up of favored packets on CDNs, before they ever reach the ISP.   A recent Wall Street Journal article touches on just this nuanced distinction: according to Google, their recent proprietary internet/CDN initiatives “do not rely on the carrier’s unilateral control over the last-mile connections to consumers, and also do not involve discriminatory intent“ - and even the independent public interest organization Public Knowledge (whose directors include internet academic and Obama advisor Lawrence Lessig) now maintains that “caching in no way is a part of the Net Neutrality issue.”

I’m of the opinion there’s considerably more gray area here.  But no matter - since the public internet will simply not scale to meet the anticipated bandwidth demand once short-tail (mainstream) premium digital media over IP becomes widespread, both carriers and content owners will increasingly invest in proprietary content delivery networks - and as consumers buy into the mass-market internet video offerings made possible by these high-performance CDNs, the very concept of Net Neutrality will seem increasingly quaint - and the “internet” as a whole will come to resemble the American health care system: multi-tiered and largely privatized.

So to the extent long-form video over IP ultimately enjoys widespread mass-market success,  the innocent ideal of a truly egalitarian and fundamentally neutral internet is destined to end, no matter what your local ISP’s policies are.

Don’t shoot the messenger…  

Last week, I quipped about president-elect Barack Obama’s recent commitment to video-taping the weekly Democratic radio address.

The more I think about this though, the new presidential over-the-top social viral video strategy brings up some interesting questions:

For starters, as the new administration is keen to leverage the benefits of ubiquitous online video distribution, what keeps the public from possible Obama video fatigue? 

As of today, we are in week five of the elect-president’s weekly video address and already audiences are dropping off faster than a second rate soap opera could on broadcast TV.

As of writing this post, the new administration’s first video address posted to YouTube on November 15 generated 247,600 average weekly video streams.

However, for Mr. Obama’s more recent weekly messages, viewer attention declined noticeably.

Videos published to YouTube in week three and two generated only 174,805 and 115,106 streams respectively - that’s as much as 46% fewer streams delivered compared to Mr. Obama’s first weekly video address.

But then again, last week’s video addressed the nation’s pressing issue of steadily raising job losses, as a result garnering a record 445,613 streams in only seven days. 

Clearly, subject matter matters as audiences have an acute understanding of what they deem important enough to log on, view, and listen repeatedly. 

The other thought I had, the idea of a regular viral presidential video address will capture eyeballs and minds not just among US audiences, but also around the rest of the connected globe.

By design in and outside of YouTube, Web video by nature is shared freely and abundantly. Mr. Obama’s taped messages make no exception.

Thus, from East to West, North and South, the first of these weekly video messages are likely spreading globally and virally as we speak.

Does that mean Germany’s Chancelor Angela Merkel will soon start her own weekly video campaign?

Are any regular video posts forthcoming from the heads of state in France, the UK, Iran, or Iraq?; prepared to deal with the resulting online feedback of citizens everywhere chiming in?

Interestingly, as little as ten years ago all of this would have been unimaginable.

YouTube and its ample offspring of amateur video snack sites simply didnt exist. Neither did the prerequisite broadband lines, nor PCs with processors fast enough to make Web video fun.

Fast forward, in one swoop the US presidential web video address legitimizes how far we have come in democratizing media in the past years.  

This one’s for the history books.

Rather than trying to avoid (undesireable) discourse and debate, the new White House resident seems to signal honest interest in point-to-point dialogue versus the age-old hub-and-spoke system of commercial journalism. 

The question remains whether the idea of open viral dialog can help jointly create something better down the road. 

Or is the Web’s innate capability of cheap and ubiquitous distribution to and by all merely a zero-sum game?

Well, history books might tell.

The groundswell of interest in finally getting internet video over to the television in such a way that avoids the clunky computer-centric workarounds we’ve seen to date is picking up steam - just in time for next month’s CES show.

While this is much as we expected, a more surprising (and related) development is the resilient strength in game console sales:

• As of October, the video game industry is up 18% year-over-year, and remains on track for a record year.
• Microsoft reports November was its biggest xBox month ever in Europe, with sales up 124% over last November.
• According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey, more than half of American adults play video games, and 20% play every day.  More importantly (because after all, this is the future we’re talking about here), a full 81% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 are home video gamers.  And the gender gap is less than one would think: while 55% of adult males play, surprisingly, 50%of adult females report playing as well.

Needless to say, given the current economic climate, numbers like these are quite impressive – and suggest the game console could be a much more viable solution to that pesky internet video ‘last yard’ problem than previously thought.  With that, a brief overview of the three competing platforms:

Sony Due to an ongoing price war, Sony now loses money on each PS3 it sells, according to Macquarie Securities analyst David Gibson.  However, the company is firmly committed to the PS3 as an integral part of their long-term internet video strategy, and just rolled out a newly revamped Playstation Network direct video download service for the PS3.  What’s unique about the PS3?  Sony is able to leverage its unique position as both a CE manufacturer and a major film studio, and recently made Sony Pictures’ summer Will Smith vehicle ‘Hancock’ available via download prior to the DVD release.

Microsoft The complex and expensive prospect of upgrading the home PC to Vista Premium or Ultimate just to get internet video to the television has unsurprisingly proven less than compelling to most consumers.  In contrast, over the recent Thanksgiving weekend Microsoft reports a 25 percent increase over last year’s already robust sales of 310,000 xBox units - in short, it’s clear where the growth is.  Like Sony, Microsoft has a direct video download service for their game console (and like the Playstation Network, the xBox Live Marketplace offers a large number of titles in HD).  What’s unique about the xBox 360?  The Microsoft download library is larger than the recently launched Sony service’s, and in addition, the xBox can now also stream content from your Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’ queue (in other words, but an xBox, get Roku functionality for free).  While (like Roku) titles must be added to the queue from the Netflix website, the ability to both stream and download (and the better selection for both) gives the xBox an edge over the PS3 in terms of internet video functionality.

Nintendo Here we have a bit of a wild card.  Thanks to their groundbreaking motion-sensing remote control (and a unique selection of games made possible by it), the Nintendo Wii is the market leading game console in the US, selling 34.6 million units for 2008 Q3 (compared to 16.8 million for the PS3 and 22.5 for the xBox).  The company has been remarkably circumspect regarding its plans for internet video, though – so look for some kind of announcement shortly, perhaps at CES in January.  What’s unique about the Wii?  With no hard drive, any internet video solution would be streaming-based – which is just as well, since the Wii has only 480p (DVD) resolution anyway (although it’s worth noting that real-world demand for HD video has proven surprisingly low).   But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Wii is the motion sensing remote – as user interfaces get more advanced to support direct internet video access from the TV, we expect this point-and-click technology to replace the cluttered button-filled remotes of today.

Who knows, Apple TV and Vudu have certainly gotten a lot of things right, but neither has yet made a meaningful impact on the market – perhaps the Trojan Horse of online mutli-player video gaming will be just the added value proposition needed to make for a compelling ‘Last Yard’ solution.

OK. I admit. I am pretty psyched about president-elect Barack Obama’s recent commitment to video-taping the weekly Democratic radio address.

Psyched because it seems much more than a simple “move-over-radio” battle cry; more than just postulating the World Wide Web as the latest of many presidential (one-way) bullhorns available.

For one, the “YouTube”-ization of the weekly Democratic radio address means that a rather arcane political messaging system is coming of age.

In other words, the good old weekly radio address (finally) preps to going (legitimately) video and viral and social, in the same way as anyone’s video blog out there could.

In a way (unknowingly) echoing this season’s ABC and NBC marketing slogans, Barack Obama and team invite us to “start here” and “chime in” - but this time outside the very TV broadcasting system that for so long determined what we would see, when, and for how long.

It is certainly nothing new that a publicly elected official is unafraid to engage in a form of political messaging that - once out the door - is no longer in his control.

That’s how traditional TV (or radio and print media for that matter), works. In this the Web is no different.

But it is major that aforementioned politician whole-heartedly embraces the collaborative Web and the truly conversational two-way nature of online video given that this is past his election campaign, and that he is none less than the next President of the United States going social on his entire constituency. 

Recently asked by CNN’s Sunday talk show host Fareed Zakaria about what advice if any he would give the incoming president, Al Gore’s response was simple: “Make more expository speeches. … [the] people are downloading”.

The presidential radio address as a viral video message for all to engage with plays right into that, ups the ante for you and me, the White House versus traditional media.

Let’s see if and how this will pan out.

Have you pinged the president-elect lately?

One of the most daunting technological challenges we face is scaling up this old internet of ours to meet the bourgeoning consumer demand for bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming media, telecommuting, and cloud computing - and as internet video demand moves from short-form/long-tail/low quality content to long-form/short-tail/high quality content (i.e. from YouTube to Hulu to movies), internet video only becomes a larger and larger part of this equation.

Just a heads up: as of now, the public internet will cease to be able to meet bandwidth demand by 2012, according to an excellent study by research firm Nemertes (if you read just one of the external sources linked to from this blog, make it this one).  Citing independent research from the University of Calgary, the study finds that the three largest US content providers (Microsoft, Google and Yahoo) have already “built out dedicated infrastructures” in advance of just such as scenario - in Google’s case, as evidenced by their recent pursuit of ‘dark’ (unused) transcontinental fiber.

In short, a trend towards content providers “investing in technologies to accelerate traffic to their sites ahead of that on the regular Internet” over higher-performing paid or private “overlay” networks.  Put another way, the egalitarian net-neutral internet we of today will become just the lowest rung of a multi-tiered system composed of competing proprietary networks – nothing less than the commercialization albeit by technical necessity) of the internet.  “The oligarchy, in other words, is devolving into individual city-states” is how the Nemertes study puts it.

So that’s what’s up on the content provider side – what about the service provider?

It turns out ISP industry recognizes the trend as well, and moves are well underway.  Because they lack the resources of a Google or Microsoft to implement their own parallel physical internet backbone data links, proprietary  CDNs (content delivery networks) are the direction they’re going in instead.  What’s a CDN? Through both network optimization/caching software and the brute-force deployment of multiple content-caching servers placed at strategically positioned and geographically diverse locations along the edge of the internet, CDNs are networks designed to circumvent the increasingly messy core of the publicly routed internet to provide the higher bandwidth, lower latency and increased scalability required to meet the challenges of the future.  The third-party wholesale CDN market is relatively mature (industry leader Akamai now maintains over 34,000 servers located in 70 countries), but several large ISPs have recently opted to ‘roll their own’: in June 2008, AT&T announced it was building out a CDN of its own using  software licensed by several smaller firms (ExtendMedia, Qumu and Stratacache), and just last week at a conference, I was handed a press release from Verizon announcing a CDN partnership with UK CDN firm Velocix.

Why have two of the largest US carriers now decided to buck the outsourcing trend and create their own CDNs, especially during such challenging economic times?  There are several reasons:

• While most residential ISP customers are on (ostensibly) all-you-can-eat plans, CDN usage is metered – so while the ISP’s per-user revenue has remained largely static, their costs from the 3rd party CDNs they’re currently contracting with have been steadily going up.  This makes the prospect of cutting out the middleman increasingly attractive.
• On a technical level, the synergy of an integrated CDN/last mile solution offers potential performance advantages an external wholesaled CDN would have difficulty matching – and as the last mile becomes faster due to increased presence of fiber (i.e. FIOS) and/or Docsis3.0, the integration of the CDN with the last mile makes even more sense.
• To the extent an ISP is able to build a demonstrably better mousetrap on their own, the quality of that company’s proprietary CDN could well become a primary competitive differentiator driving subscription growth – especially if, as expected, long-form internet video usage continues to grow.
• Unlike AT&T, Verizon is planning to leverage the price/performance advantages of their new proprietary CDN on the content owner side as well, and has already contracted directly with Starz Entertainment to offer Starz content to Verizon customers (in this way, the in-house CDN could very well resuscitate the largely failed ‘walled-garden’ model).

Are 3rd party CDN wholesalers Akamai and Limelight losing sleep?  Probably not – deploying an effective CDN is an incredibly huge undertaking, and as such will be a realistic option only for the AT&Ts, and Verizons of the world.  But for the combined residential CDN/ISP, does being in both businesses concurrently present some interesting antitrust/conflict of interest issues?

Regardless of how it plays out between content providers’ pivate backbones and service providers’ private CDNs, what is clear is that the landscape will likely look profoundly different in five years – the internet as we know it could well become the equivalent of the public post office - while the equivalent of a parrallel  higher-performing ‘Fedex’ internet emerges, for the sole purpose of getting you that HD internet video stream or workplace desktop session you require.

On a purely technical level, it remains an exciting future – but will the incorporation of the internet (and the de facto end of net neutrality) happen at the expense of innovation?

I’ve long been of the opinion that longer-form (professionally produced) internet video will happen on a truly widespread scale only when the problem of getting that content over to the television is solved – and that current discussion of internet video (and how to how to best monetize it) is often based on two false premises:

1. The personal computer will continue to be the primary internet video delivery device.
2. Internet video is about short- and mid-form content.

Such discussions often completely fail to adequately recognize how profoundly game-changing direct access to the internet from the next generation of TVs and set-top boxes will be.  In other words, while short form internet video (user-generated or otherwise) will always be a workplace diversion, the main event has not happened yet - we’re still in merely a transitional, evolutionary phase of the process - a process which will end at the couch, not the desk.

Where are we now?   Several major CE manufacturers are currently offering their first generation of standalone internet-enabled devices (each partnered with one or more internet video services):

Hardware:                                Service:

• Sony Bravia, PS3               Sony Playstation Network, Amazon on Demand
• Roku                                   Netflix, more to come…
• LG                                      Netflix, more to come…
• AppleTV                             iTunes
• TiVo                                   Amazon, Netflix
• HP MediaSmart                  CinemaNow, including others
• Microsoft xBox360            xBox Live Marketplace, Netflix

The problem with the above scenario is that no computer means no web browser, which means no Flash – so each OEM wishing to offer multiple services directly via their network interface-enabled hardware (TV, DVD, PCR or set-top box) has had to implement the interface to each service partner individually – a tremendously inefficient reinventing of the wheel.

Therefore, I’ve long felt that what’s needed is a standardized technical protocol for CE hardware to interface with these multiple video services.  Last week, Reed Hastings of Neflix expressed a similar view, noting that in the absence of standardization, “Everyone’s going to have to do customer interfaces for each device”, and further, that it’s “slowing down the market tremendously.”

While the web standards we now take for granted were developed in the shelter of academic and government agency environments, there’s a huge amount of money (and an equal amount of competing agendas) at stake in the internet video space – so the development of a new standard from the ground up at this point seems highly unlikely.  Instead, an embedded web browser running Flash (and/or Microsoft’s Silverlight) sounds like the better idea (Sony has already moved in this direction, embedding the highly-regarded Opera browser into its Bravia line of network-enabled TVs).

Admittedly, though, web on the TV leaves a bad taste in the mouth – previous attempts suffered from three major issues:

• Bandwidth
• Screen resolution
• User interface

Of these three, two are already solved: most broadband connections are now capable of streaming at least SD video, and increased resolution of HD TV makes web text quite readable. The third issue alone remains: the user interface.  Recognizing this, Hastings predicts a new generation of Nintendo Wii-like pointer/motion remotes to replace the primitive up/down/left/right arrows (and four dozen other never-used buttons) on today’s remotes (interestingly, Apple has recently filed for a patent on some technology for just such a device).

Look for this to be the big story at the CES show this January…

On first glance, the latest Neilsen Online numbers suggest Youtube continued its utter domination of the web video streaming space in September, delivering over 20 times the number of streams delivered by runner-up service Yahoo Video and roughly 35 times the number of streams delivered by Hulu.

But take into account that while the typical Youtube stream averages only 2-4 minutes in running time, the typical full-length TV episode Hulu streams tends to be at least 10 times that length - and that while the ongoing Viacom lawsuit has effectively forced Youtube to remove all unlicensed copyrighted material from its site, Hulu offers more widely appealing current mainstream TV fare.
Then the simple aggregate number of streams delivered starts to make a less illuminating metric.

So, program length and mass appeal – two attributes that fundamentally differentiate Youtube from Hulu.  As it happens, Youtube is moving to address both.

Program Length Although a 10 minute/1GB maximum remains in place for the unwashed masses, this restriction has been removed for a select number of approved Youtube Channel partners.  One such partner is CBS, which is at least sticking a toe in the water by making full-length episodes of vintage shows such as ‘Star Trek’ and ‘MacGyver’ available.  Not exactly ‘The Office’ –  but while (like theWB.com and the Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’ queue) the tentative nature of the move is betrayed by the staleness of the content, it’s interesting to note that major Youtube parner CBS also happens to be the sister company of Youtube’s intellectual property rights nemesis Viacom (CBS and Viacom were spun off from each other in 2005).    What’s also worth noting is that it’s not only full-length TV content Youtube is moving towards – with its Screening Room channel, YouTube is streaming an increasing number of full-length independent films – an entirely new paradigm for the king of short-form video over IP.

Mass Appeal Historically, the prototypical Youtube content provider has been the amateur, uploading self-generated content of the ‘check-out-my-dog-skateboarding’ variety (in other words, amusing stuff but not worth sitting through embedded ads for).  These days, however, the typical Youtube upload is just as likely to come from a corporate entity such as Universal Music Group, the BBC, Britney Spears, or CBS - all of which currently post clips of their proprietary content via dedicated Youtube Channels (with customizable wallpaper, the channels can look almost as individually branded as mySpace, although thankfully less visually chaotic and noisy).
The most-viewed of these channels is in fact run by CBS.

So…  is Youtube looking to compete against Hulu directly?  It would appear so: some CBS clips now contain very Hulu-esque embedded ads - another paradigm shift for Youtube.  With its unrivaled amount of eyeballs, the Google-owned service has already proven to be a potent (and free) promotional resource for the commercial entertianment and advertising industries – so as Youtube now moves from streaming short-form clips and viral videos to long-form/short-tail (mainstream) commercial entertainment, it’ll be interesting to see if their dominance in short-form/long tail (niche) user-generated video will be a factor - and if the non-embedded ad revenue model will give way to more embedded ads.

But for either Hulu or Youtube, one issue remains – the longer the running time of the content, the more necessary it becomes to bridge that pesky 10-yard gap from the home internet access point behind the computer to the television in front of the couch.

Here at digitalmissive, we believe that sooner or later it’s gonna come down to hardware.

How much traction is online digital distribution gaining?  Look at what’s going on these days vis à vis DVD release windows…

Hancock Several months ago, Sony crossed a line when it announced it would be releasing the Sony Pictures/Will Smith vehicle “Hancock” over the internet (exclusively to the Sony Internet Video Link device) prior to the DVD release date of November 25.  A good move on Sony’s part: leveraging their unique position as one of the six major film studios and a major CE manufacturer to help drive sales of their new video over IP hardware.

Wall-E At the time, I wondered if there might be similar synergy (remember that word?) in an exclusive release of Pixar’s “Wall-E” exclusively to iTunes/Apple TV before the DVD release, given the close Disney-Apple relationship (when Disney acquired Pixar from Steve Jobs, he became Disney’s largest individual shareholder and was given a seat on the Disney board of directors).   As it happens, Disney/Pixar is planning to release “Wall-E” to Apple TV concurrently with the DVD release, on November 18th  (and will do the same for “The Incredible Hulk” on Ocotber 21st).

The Office On the TV front, last month the well-received Fox/NBC-Universal initiative Hulu announced the online availability of several NBC shows’ 2008 season premiers (including flagship comedy “The Office”) prior to their air dates.  I thought this was a particularly bold move, and was frankly surprised by the relatively little press attention it received (see my take on Virginia Heffernan’s theWB.com article here).

Iron Man Sony Pictures and Disney have obvious options for hardware partnerships (Sony and Apple, respectively), but what’s a Paramount to do?  Enter Dell: the two companies have just announced that for an extra $20, Dell customers can now have the Paramount summer hit (along with bonus footage) pre-loaded onto the hard drives of newly ordered Dell machines.  But while watching a sitcom on the computer is (marginally) acceptable, what about longer-form content such as movies?   Um, no.  Not gonna happen, at least not on any meaningful scale.

For that, you need two additional specialized pieces of hardware:      a television.     and a couch.

Dell Fact 1: Dell and Paramount know the limitations of movie-watching on a PC.   Fact 2: Dell also makes televisions.  It all adds evidence to the rumors of Dell rolling out even more CE hardware and (drumroll…) an iTunes-like service at some point in the future…. but to do that, Dell will have to do two things: retool its workplace-centric brand, and hire some new product design talent  (because I’m not sure Dell understands the benefits of simplicity).

Does the world need another blog post on the iPhone?  I’m gonna go with ‘probably not’ – but as in most big cities where a car culture doesn’t hold sway, we’re all about our mobile devices here in New York – it’s something to do on the trains we ride and the streets we walk, so maybe our smartphones matter a little more to us here.  With that in mind, here’s the first of a few posts on some thoughts I’ve had about my “leetle friend”…

1. no adobe flash
And don’t expect it anytime soon.  While I’m sure Adobe would be happy to whip up an iPhone/Safari-optimized Flash Player, it think Apple would rather sit back and see if the iPhone can’t instead help drive more adoption of their QuickTime platform for video streaming .  Although Adobe’s Flash is the ubiquitous video streaming browser plug-in, Apple’s Quicktime does a perfectly credible job of streaming video content in the open MPEG-4 format (witness the Quicktime-based youtube iPhone App).
If that’s Apple’s strategy, it appears to be working - content providers are coming around: hit the NBC.com site from your iPhone, navigate to a show, and you now can stream episodes in MPEG-4/Quicktime - despite NBC (along with Fox/Paramount) happening to also be behind the well-received (and Flash-based) Hulu initiative (on a wifi network, the experience is pretty impressive).

But speaking of streaming…

2. no streaming (or over-the-air 3G sync) of audio podcasts
While there are a few nice iPhone IP radio apps out there (Pandora and Flycast come to mind), what about podcasts?  With this shiny new 3G network we’re paying for, it’s a little disappointing to have to wait until getting back to the mothership (i.e. a computer runnning iTunes) to sync up and get the newest ones.

Streaming and/or syncing podcasts via 3G would be a Cool Thing (I’m never satisfied).

However, as is often the case when a seemingly obvious (and perfectly technically possible) idea remains unimplemented, dig a little deeper and you’ll find a business-side issue:  in this case, it involves AT&T - my guess is we’re just all on the internet with our 3G iPhones a lot more than they had planned on, so they’ve been caught a bit unawares… (take one exceptionally well-designed mobile device, put it on one speedy all-you-can-eat data plan, add water, and stand back…)

But there is at least one alternative:  Podspew, a website that AT&T and Apple can’t be too happy about.  While it won’t sync podcasts onto the iPhone itself, what it wilI do is convert a good selection of popular podcasts to simple MPEG-4 web links that the iPhone can then stream via Safari and Quicktime (totally subverting Apple’s podcast model, come to think of it).  It works well and is worth checking out (until they get that cease-and-desist letter, that is…)

At any rate, it’s probably obvious by now I’m on the internet a lot with my iPod , walking around and taking the subways here in New York City.   Which brings me to the next issue of battery life, but that has to do with chemistry and electrical engineering rather than with 0’s and 1’s (remember Dell’s pickup truck-destroying laptop? - that was at least as much about pushing the physical battery design envelope as it was about any manufacturing defects – but that’s another story).

Did I mention I love my iPhone?