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With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world's largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec -- VP8. Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web's dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash). This ability to offer a free format on YouTube, however, is only a tiny fraction of your real leverage. The real party starts when you begin to encourage users' browsers to support free formats. There are lots of ways to do this. Our favorite would be for YouTube to switch from Flash to free formats and HTML, offering users with obsolete browsers a plugin or a new browser (free software, of course). Apple has had the mettle to ditch Flash on the iPhone and the iPad -- albeit for suspect reasons and using abhorrent methods (DRM) -- and this has pushed web developers to make Flash-free alternatives of their pages. You could do the same with YouTube, for better reasons, and it would be a death-blow to Flash's dominance in web video. If you care about free software and the free web (a movement and medium to which you owe your success) you must take bold action to replace Flash with free standards and free formats. Patented video codecs have already done untold harm to the web and its users, and this will continue until we stop it. Because patent-encumbered formats were costly to incorporate into browsers, a bloated, ill-suited piece of proprietary software (Flash) became the de facto standard for online video. Until we move to free formats, the threat of patent lawsuits and licensing fees hangs over every software developer, video creator, hardware maker, web site and corporation -- including you. You can use your purchase of On2 merely as a bargaining chip to achieve your own private solution to the problem, but that's both a cop-out and a strategic mistake. Without making VP

Microsoft last week launched its first serious effort to build IT into its cloud plans by introducing technologies that help connect existing corporate networks and cloud services to make them look like a single infrastructure. The concept began to come together at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference. The company is attempting to show that it wants to move beyond the first wave of the cloud trend, which is defined by the availability of raw computing power supplied by Microsoft and competitors such as Amazon and Google. Microsoft's goal is to supply tools, middleware, and services so users can run applications that span corporate and cloud networks, especially those built with Microsoft's Azure cloud operating system.

Good article discussing the rapid advance of a WebOS for Web Applications based on the WebKit JavaScript model. Author focuses on Apple's SproutCore - Object C framework, but provides a very broad scope of discussion. Interesting stuff concerning the relationship between JavaScript, the SproutCore Framework, and Ruby. I found the link to this at the ReadWriteWeb story, "The Future of the Desktop" ........ "Desktop web applications offer the convenience of desktop applications and the interconnected power of web applications. This article looks at what they are, how they may evolve and focuses on Sproutcore, an open source framework for building them: The Internet is still evolving and the familiar struggle over who will control the platform of future web applications is still ongoing. Companies like Microsoft and Adobe provide platforms that build slick web applications but their aim is to dominate with proprietary systems that will effectively replace the browser. On the other side you have Google and Apple who have developed or support open web standards for developing web applications. If the proprietary companies win, future web applications could be locked into their systems and the incredible innovation that has driven the web to date may begin to falter.

the obvious conflict of interest between the standards-based web and proprietary platforms advanced by Microsoft, and the rationales for keeping the web's client-side programming language small while the proprietary platforms rapidly evolve support for large languages, does not help maintain the fiction that only clashing high-level philosophies are involved here. Readers may not know that Ecma has no provision for "minor releases" of its standards, so any ES3.1 that was approved by TG1 would inevitably be given a whole edition number, presumably becoming the 4th Edition of ECMAScript. This is obviously contentious given all the years that the majority of TG1, sometimes even apparently including Microsoft representatives, has worked on ES4, and the developer expectations set by this long-standing effort. A history of Microsoft's post-ES3 involvement in the ECMAScript standard group, leading up to the overt split in TG1 in March, is summarized here. The history of ECMAScript since its beginnings in November 1996 shows that when Microsoft was behind in the market (against Netscape in 1996-1997), it moved aggressively in the standards body to evolve standards starting with ES1 through ES3. Once Microsoft dominated the market, the last edition of the standard was left to rot -- ES3 was finished in 1999 -- and even easy-to-fix standards conformance bugs in IE JScript went unfixed for eight years (so three years to go from Edition 1 to 3, then over eight to approach Edition 4). Now that the proposed 4th edition looks like a competitive threat, the world suddenly hears in detail about all those bugs, spun as differences afflicting "JavaScript" that should inform a new standard.

A billion Euros is chicken feed compared to other portions of the E.U. economic stimulus initiatives in the works that respond to the major recession under way. Still, this could be a significant foot in the door for satellite broadband in the E.U., perhaps enough to build out the infrastructure enough for a more serious challenge to cable and telephony broadband. But I wonder if there would be enough redundancy enabled by only a billion Euros to gracefully handle a satellite's death if it has far more broadband users.

Vivek Kundra, CTO of the District of Columbia, says he found two compelling reasons to switch the D.C. government over to Gmail and Google Apps: first, its cheap cost would save the taxpayer money by avoiding bloated software contracts. Second, he believes Google technology will help ensure business continuity and the safety of data in the event of a disaster or disruption. ......... Now we know why Google needs Chrome: they have the killer apps but are in need of a high end Web-App browser to run them in. Otherwise they can't begin to solve the problems of security and business continuity.

the growing popularity of cloud computing means corporate data centers will increasingly start to look like Internet data centers. Cisco has already recognized that as the "network" continues to become the focal point around which our digital personal and work lives revolve, the opportunity to make money will be immense. That's why Chambers never misses an opportunity to talk about "collaboration." For instance, in the press release announcing the company's latest numbers, he said: "We believe we are entering the next phase of the Internet as growth and productivity will center on collaboration enabled by networked Web 2.0 technologies." But Cisco isn't the only one with this vision - Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) are thinking along these lines as well, and are much further ahead in the game.

Google Chrome is Google's browser project based on the extraordinary WebKit portable layout engine. Yes, Google has written their own open source browser. The reasons for Google taking this unusual step are very compelling - as this excellent presentation explains. I also think Chrome will be a game changer. The WebKit engine shows up in Adobe's Apollo RiA and, Apple's SproutCore-Cocoa RiA model. Microsoft of course offers the OOXML-XAML-Silverlight RiA that is based on .NET-WPF proprietary formats, protocols and interfaces. These are RiA efforts can be used as either browser plug-ins or stand alone runtimes. Now Google has entered the RiA fray with both feet coming down hard on a browser based runtime engine. Google RiA isn't a "Plug-in". It's the browser as both a browser and RiA runtime engine. Very cool. Let the battle begin!

Interesting SaaS. Social Helpdesk? Folks post gripes about companies or products. Many companies have assigned folks to respond. E.g., Comcast has 9 staffers responding to customer support issues. Some start-ups are using the service as their only customer support web presence. If we view IT support on a continuum, we begin with in-house call centers, move to newsgroups and outsourced call centers, etc. Now a SaaS in the cloud for many companies' customer support? The company has a great (short) slideshow at . It has a fantastic punchline.

I was wrong. This page is the hub for Sun Blackbox containerized data center. Check the link titles to press coverage on the Perspectives page and you begin to get an idea why IBM was so desperate to force a hardware deal with Sun and Microsoft. Sun and Microsoft are ripping out and replacing IBM's hardware business.