We’ve been going on lately about how much sense netbooks make.  Evidently, some smart people out in Cupertino might think so too: within the last 2 days, the online rumor-mill about all things Apple has kicked into full gear again, this time started by reports that a Taiwanese firm has just signed an agreement to begin supplying large touchscreens to Apple later this year.

What we’re talking about here is essentially a large (9″ or 10″ screen) iPod Touch - physically, it could well end up looking very much like this mock-up concept imagined by gizmodo (at left) - but under the hood (or ‘glass’, rather), I wonder if it will run a stripped-down version of the Apple OS or follow the closed iPhone/iPod Touch “App Store” model - in other words, will it allow traditional fully-installed applications, or will it allow only the more limited (but easier and safer) widget-like software products (running one layer up on a virtual machine) available on the iPhone?

Either way, if unlike the iPhone and iTouch, this device will (finally) run Adobe Flash (the ubiquitous video streaming application behind Hulu and YouTube), then this will be a hee-uge hit..

I’ve written before on what an ill-suited viewing platform I feel the PC and web browser make for viewing internet video. Keeping that in mind, the big unknown about this sleek full-screen “net tablet” is whether it will run Flash. If so, it could make the whole web video experience a lot nicer - and a lot less tied to the workplace and/or deskop…

As an IT consultant/network administrator a few years ago, one of my clients was a small but fast-growing retailer with several remote locations spread across the country.  Having no trusted technicians available in some of these cities, it was a clear win when I chose to go with WYSE thin client terminals on many of these remote seats (I wrote a bit about that here).   While the idea of such simple and lightweight “web appliances” dates back to the late 90’s, despite a few short stints as The Next Big Thing, the devices never proved quite as popular as promised - but conditions now are more favorable than ever:

• Increasing functionality in the cloud mitigates much of the need for heavy client-side application installations (and the RAM/processor power/data storage they require)
• The current global economic climate certainly favors less expensive (and often computationally redundant) devices

There’s a third (and crucial) factor, though: now that wireless internet access has become nearly ubiquitous, we all place an increasing premium on portability (consider that by most accounts, laptop sales actually surpassed desktop sales for the first time during 2008).  What do you get, then, when you take all the innate advantages of thin computing and add today’s need for mobile computing?

The “netbook” - a small (8″ or 10″ screen) laptop with a lightweight operating system, long battery life, (and often) solid state disk (SSD) storage.  As with good bread, the Beatles, and text messaging, it’s Europe that’s been out in front on this, but that’s expected to change as US acceptance of the netbook grows.  In fact, while industry analysts at Gartner expect overall 2009 PC sales to decline by almost 12% (a historic high), they see netbook sales doubling.

To date, the low-power Intel Atom has been the netbook CPU of choice, but AMD and Motorola have each recently released new processors of their own aimed at this growing market.   As for what operating system runs on those chips, for now it’s come down to a battle between Microsoft and the Linux community (Apple having not yet demonstrated much interest in this lower-end market).  Google’s Android cell phone operating system has even been ported over to a netbook - an interesting possible future platform for the open source OS.

Many of the first netbooks ran a specialized Linux kernel, a trend that only looked to gain more momentum once Microsoft stopped stopped selling XP last June.  However, with the netbook trend starting to pick up, Vista proving too resource-hungry for many desktops (let alone netbooks), and with Windows 7 still months away, Microsoft had a change of heart - and recently decided to bring back XP Home, giving the OS a second life as their unofficial interim netbook operating system (until Windows 7 arrives, that is).  It’s an easy decision to justify: while netbooks are by definition leaner and meaner than traditional PCs, users still expect them to be more than mere terminals: in other words, people like their applications (and chances are pretty good the ones they’re used to are not going to be available for Linux).   Furthermore, despite (or maybe because of) the fate Vista met in the marketplace, many users still like XP - and in any event, to a less technical user, that oh-so familiar Microsoft desktop would have to look more reassuring (and less toy-like) than a Linux desktop - even if only on a purely emotional level.  Lastly, even if Vista was able to run on a netbook, licensing costs for the new OS would tend to put the machine well beyond the price point of the average netbook.

So, not surprisingly, the decision paid off for Microsoft: XP Home lives on and has beaten Linux out to ship on the majority of netbooks now sold (in a telling sign, HP recently stopped even offering Linux netbooks in otherwise penguin-friendly Europe).

Either way, in addition to all the other advantages, at only $200 to $400 each, these devices (much like smart phones) are inexpensive enough to be subsidized by long-term internet service agreements - so going forward it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which netbooks do not figure in heavily.   Microsoft, for one, agrees, and is committed  to releasing a lightweight version of Windows 7 optimized for netbooks (despite the economics of the netbook market dictating substantially lower license fees than Redmond is used to charging).

I think there might be one in your future too.

I know I want one - so it’s got to be cool, right?

The trend is unmistakable: the consumer electronics industry has discovered the internet, and activities that have until now always involved a “computer” (such as internet video viewing and mobile internet access) will be increasingly done using a new generation of leaner and meaner dedicated CE devices instead.  This is all well and good: arguably, the modern home computer – more flexible and powerful but also more complicated and (let’s face it) maintenance-intensive than ever – is clearly overkill for such activities.  But as the computer justifiably loses the battle to convince us it’s also a CE device, CE devices are in turn left to grapple with an issue of their own: how much and how best to emulate the computer.

I’m talking software deployment.  You buy a computer, it includes a license for an operating system, and you’re free to go and install whatever software (or malware) you want - in other words, “you buy it, you break it” (in a way, an inversion of the “Pottery Barn rule ” invoked by Colin Powell over the war in Iraq).  But what about a smartphone, or that internet-enabled television you’ll be buying within the next year or two?  While the availability of a rich selection of high quality 3rd party applications is in the best interest of both the device maker and the user, a wide open ”no guard-rails” software deployment policy is in both parties’ worst interest: poorly written applications can harm both the user  as well as the brand, and (news flash) the average home user is a lot less interested in taking on that kind of responsibility than many companies in the computer industry have ever really understood.

For their upcoming line of internet-enabled televisions, Yahoo/Intel have addressed the issue by going with a “widget” rather than “application” model: lightweight software running on a JavaScript engine rather than the OS itself.  Taking another approach, Apple (which in terms of revenue has been a CE company with a side business in computers for a while now) has come up with the iTunes App Store: applications for the iPhone (and likely for the Apple TV in the near future) are installed on the OS itself, but must be first vetted by (and subsequently purchased through) Apple.  This offers the best of both worlds: the developer base for the device is virtually unlimited, but nothing’s going to break, and apps are guaranteed to be secure.  In fact, the “app store” model is currently being imitated by other smartphone makers such as Nokia because it’s been so successful and popular with users.

Well, 98% of us, that is – there’s also a growing geek subculture out there that believes they have the right to do whatever they want to with something they’ve purchased, thank you very much – and they’re dedicated to removing the iPhone’s software restrictions - “jailbreaking”, as it’s called.  Although the practice is in direct violation of the iPhone EULA (software license agreement), it’s gotten so widespread now that a Google search of “jailbreak” and “iPhone” currently yields 3.6 million results -and so the two sides (the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Apple) are set to face off this spring.

Apparently, this dispute is subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act , originally meant to fight piracy of copyrighted “works” such as film and music – therefore, it will ultimately fall upon those famously tech-savvy folks at the Library of Congress to decide the issue.  A case can be made for either side – but although I have to admit I’d love the ability to put my iPhone on a network that covers the NYC metro area better than AT&T , I tend to side with Apple on this one – not only because I feel the iPhone EULA puts them on a pretty strong legal footing, but also because I feel that it’s “good and right” to treat software for CE devices differently than software for computers.

One thing is for certain, though – just as developers will continue to write great App Store applications for Apple, others will continue to hack open the system.  What’s unknown is whether Apple go to the length of actually suing users – a tactic that didn’t work very well for the RIAA .

I know this is not a political blog. But Washington’s elected officials seems to have gone (finally) seriously digital. 

And I just can’t help myself but chime in.

I recently wrote about the Obama administration’s fervor for online social networking and viral (political) marketing.

Turns out US Congress representatives have long taken similar interest in making Web 2.0 their own. 

No matter where you stand politically, I believe this is generally good news for the technology industry, plus associated consumer software products and applications.

From mundane announcements of “one minute speeches” to instantaneously delivered results on House votes, at least since November 2007, the Clerk of the US House of Representatives regularly provides copious live updates “scraped” right from daily session inside the House chambers.

Then I got curious. Did I also miss the US Senate’s foray into micro-blogging? 

Sure enough, I did 

Although seemingly limited to Senator votes on the floor alone, Twitter has been carrying those posts at least since November 2007.

Turns out, they all nicely track back to govtrack.us, an independent Web site to “help the public research and track the activities in the US Congress.

Little did I know, D.C.’s interest in twittering created a new virtual C-SPAN if you will, sort of the “local access” approach parsed out one online message at a time.

And during yesterday’s historic session (voting on a trillion dollar support budget no less), US House representatives took to Twitter like college students (secretively, under their desks), pushing Blackberry and smartphone keys - eager to issue last-minute statements right from inside House chambers.

To top it all off, now even closed-door Presidential meetings experience their first Twitter “leaks”.

So, if this is not a political blog, why am I (still) writing about this stuff?

I am simply excited about how Web 2.0 is rapidly growing up, maturing from its early teenage “angst” appeal to a “mainstream” text and video channel - all within a couple of years.

Think of it.

As more politicians, news outlets and civic organizations thrive to adopt Web 2.0-style concepts, instant viral messaging from elected officials and others raise the legitimacy of collaborative software as a whole.

From Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Qik, or Utterz, you name it, this is good for the devices and the connecting broadband services that support Web 2.0 at home and on-the-go.

If you still think this trend is not real, the US Postal Service announced today a fiscal-year loss of at least $6 billion, due to a 4.5% drop, or 9 billion items replaced by email and other forms of digital viral communications. 

And although it is not entirely clear to me that the same $6 billion shifted into Web 2.0 software in its entirety  (most social networking and micro-blogging services are free or ad-based at best), it clearly shows a fundamental shift in how we capture and disseminate information these days.

On that note, have you twittered today?

I’m looking over some recent numbers from nielsen online and I’m struck by something: while hulu may indeed be a big fish, long-form internet video is still a pretty small pond.  Consider:

Of the four major broadcast networks, hulu partners Fox and NBC saw the largest month-over-month increases in October 2008:  Fox was up 165%, while NBC (helped by Tina Fey’s triumphant if temporary return to SNL as America’s favorite eye-winking, Russia-seeing hockey mom) saw a whopping 312% increase (by contrast, ABC was up 105% and internet video laggard CBS was only up 38%.)

312 % and 165 % increases over the course of one month? Let’s celebrate - professionally produced long-form video has finally come into its own, right?

Wrong.

From that same Nielsen report, here’s another statistic: during October, YouTube had almost 82 million unique visitors to hulu’s 6.3 million - that’s a factor of fifteen (even with Tina Fey’s Palin sketches driving users to hulu).

A direct comparison between the two by total streams delivered would skew unfairly towards YouTube due to the shorter running time of the average user-generated video - but what the heck, let’s do it anyway, just for fun…  because the difference between those Nielsen numbers is even more stark than you might imagine: YouTube delivered almost 38 times the total number of streams delivered by hulu.

That’s thirty eight times more streams from YouTube than hulu.

Granted, hulu is one well-executed website.  Yet clearly, long-form premium video over the internet still has a long way to go.  What’s the takeaway here?  In my opinion, the answer is somewhat obvious: people don’t want to sit alone in front of their computers for a half hour or more at a time to view long-form video - in other words, the effectiveness of the personal computer as a video-viewing device is inversely proportional to the program length of the video being viewed.

The numbers in this report clearly put Hulu and YouTube in stark contrast against one another in terms of actual usage.  However, it would be a mistake to fail to take into account the fundamental differences between the short form/long-tail (user generated) and long form/short-tail (professionally produced) video viewing experiences - or the fact that we don’t have a truly compelling lean-back device for delivering long-form internet video viewing just yet.  Therefore, it would be a mistake to infer from reports such as this that internet video will remain primarily a short-form UGC medium.

For long-form premium video over the internet, it’s going to take a new generation of device that offers content directly from the couch before we can make any such comparisons.   The user interface on these devices will not be a web-browser, instead it will be simpler and optimized for lean-back media. Companies such as boxee (at left) and Yahoo/Intel are working on just such user interfaces. While I’ve already written a bit on the Yahoo initiative here, Boxee is more recent development. Right now it’s just a Windows/Mac application that aggregates disparate video sources (including Hulu) into a cohesive whole. While that’s pretty cool in itself, what makes Boxee really interesting is that the company plans to bring dedicated set-top Boxee hardware to the market within the next year or so - and in ther meantime, the software can be installed on the Apple TV device today. As I’ve said before, I think the prospect of Boxee on - well, a box - changes everything.

We shall see - but in the meantime, a quick reality check is in order: while well-suited to workplace video snacking, the computer and web browser are inappropriate (and ultimately intermediate) solutions for viewing long-form video - no matter how well-implemented a given website (such as Hulu) happens to be.

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 viable long-form internet video delivery platforms - 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 interdisciplinary Digital Home Group, active in both processor design and standards development, is particularly close to my heart, as it’s made up of social scientists 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, this could be Yahoo’s last best shot at redemption - so look for them to bet the farm (or “throw the long ball”, for you American football fans) on this one.

Amazon has an industry-leading online retail business to support its ‘Video on Demand’ internet video initiative. Netflix has an industry-leading DVD rental business to support its ‘Watch Instantly’ internet video initiative.  The iTunes video service?  Apple is, well, Apple.   And Movielink is owned (and supported) by Blockbuster.  Alone among the major video services, relative old-timer CinemaNow was out there by itself in the still very nascent long-form premium content internet video space.

Until yesterday.

As Sonic Solutions’ Chief Technologist Jim Taylor was sitting on a Future of Television East panel here in New York yesterday, his company was announcing the acquisition of CinemaNow.   Known for the Roxio DVD authoring software, Sonic had recently chosen CinemaNow as the storefront service partner for their Qflix DVD-burning system (CinemaNow’s other main partner to date is HP, which offers direct access to CinemaNow from their MediaSmart line of HD TVs and Connect set-top box - in fact, both ship with $20 CinemaNow coupons).

Since we believe the next phase of internet video will be about long-form premium content accessed directly from dedicated  network-enabled CE hardware, we were particularly interested to read Sonic Solutions’ CEO David Cook’s take on the move:  “With broadband-connected consumer electronics hitting the market in ever greater numbers, there is a growing need for a service that gives consumers one-click access to premium entertainment on any device in the digital home.  The combination of CinemaNow’s content and embedded device strategy with Sonic’s technical prowess and broad PC and CE distribution promises to fulfill CinemaNow’s original mission.”

A smart move for Sonic Solutions…  unlike the current Qflix system (which requires a PC), look for a combined Sonic/CinemaNow to offer Qflix-enabled hardware with embedded access to CinemaNow - no computer needed.   Such a device could compare very favorably to an AppleTV or Amazon/TiVo solution.

The New York Times has discovered (or rediscovered) thin computing: a small simple device (or ‘terminal’) with just enough under the hood to send mouse & keyboard clicks to a server doing absolutely everything else.  Initially hyped as a challenge to Microsoft’s domination of the workplace desktop, the concept had its 15 minutes as The Next Big Thing a few years back, only to fall from favor due to network performance issues (while it’s acceptable if an application’s a teensy bit slower over the network, sluggish mouse and key response is a non-starter for most users).

But look at the advantages, though: rather than a $1000 workstation with Windows and Office installed, we’re talking about a simple paperback-sized box and monitor for $400, all in.  Granted, MS Terminal Server (and especially Citrix) licenses do cost, but on the other hand consider that there’s no fan noise, no hard drive failures, no long boot-up time, no virus susceptibility, no user-installed malware, space savings, power consumption savings – the list goes on and on.

And I speak from experience – several years ago, as the network administrator for a small business with half a dozen retail and office locations spread across  the country, I moved a good portion of my remote users to these devices.  This not only solved my problem of how to install and maintain remote these workstations, my client (who was growing quickly at the time) loved the immediate savings compared to the workstations they had been buying (even taking the cost of terminal server licenses into account).  I was a hero; life was good (in a keep-the-trains-running job like network administration, you tend to savor those win-win moments). 

While I chose devices from Wyse, as the NY Times article points out, thin client computing is becoming The Next Big Thing all over again - so there are more and more manufacturers out there.  So many, in fact, that it begs the question:

What about the home market?

What I’m getting at is the return of the web appliance.  Like thin clients, this is another concept from a few years back that never quite took off – the only difference being the addition of an onboard web browser of some sort (maybe the well-received Opera browser, since Sony is already embedding that into its new Internet Video Link hardware).  Because in a world of Hulu, Flickr, and Google Docs (services which, unlike Windows Terminal Server or Citrix, are generally free), a simple little box with a browser and a handful of drivers for peripherals would about do it for a lot of folks, wouldn’t it?

Clearly, cloud computing is The Next Big Thing now – at least Google thinks so, and Microsoft thinks so too.   The potential reliability and privacy issues of cloud computing might be a little easier to take if one also imagines potential upside of being able to radically simplify things for the home user.

So thin computing is back. Who knows, maybe the time is finally becoming right again for the web appliance too; maybe the browser is the new operating system.