The FCC’s Net Neutrality ruling might have similarities with the Verizon-Google joint proposal, but it also has problematic differences. The biggest problem is that the Verizon-Google proposal called for congressional action and not an FCC acting against the will of congressional.

Once you’ve tried finger based scrolling on smartphones and tablets, it makes you realize how antiquated the Desktop User Interface (UI) is, especially the scroll bar. A plugin called “Wet Banana” adds mouse drag tablet-like scrolling but it’s about time all desktop operating systems get a UI upgrade.

All the speculation that Google is going to overthrow the H.264 video compression standard with their own VP8 technology for their WebM standard appears to have been debunked by Google. Google has confirmed that there is no current intention of removing H.264 support from YouTube or Android OS.

Netflix stands to save hundreds of millions of dollars per year on postage as they migrate to digital video streaming. The postage savings allow them to acquire more content licenses for online streaming and grow their subscriber base. The increase in video streaming will grow CDN and broadband infrastructure.

By removing native HTML5 H.264 video delivery, Google effectively derailed the imminent universal migration to HTML5. The biggest loser under such a scenario is Apple because they’ve foreclosed on the possibility of supporting Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight which leaves HTML5 the only option on Apple iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, and that helps Google Android.

Google’s WebM strategy and VP8 acquisition was a masterful bluff to force the MPEG-LA to commit to an indefinite free H.264 license for free video streaming. By removing H.264 from Chrome, Google will likely get a free H.264 plugin from Microsoft the way Mozilla Firefox got a free H.264 plugin and save another $6.5M/year.

Google will be removing H.264 video compression support from its Chrome web browser despite the fact that we’ve already paid for the patents and acceleration software. Now we are supposed to use VP8 which has no indemnity on patent infringement and no hardware acceleration.

Can we simply get rid of the wireless carriers and just rely on ad-hoc radios? The spectrum commons people seem to think so and they argue why Wi-Fi innovation could be a model for the future of mobile networks, but the engineering and economic realities argue otherwise.

You don’t get to remotely control a 10-foot tall alien but this is extremely cool and the future of online interaction.

UPDATE – Looks like it’s no longer rumors, Microsoft will put Windows 8 on legacy-free x86 systems (I’m assuming something like Intel Moorestown) as well as ARM based systems.  I guess this is the shotgun strategy to cover every possibility in the hopes that one of them succeeds.  Sounds like a good strategy to have every [...]