If you are interested in being a mentor for Google's summer of Code 2010, please send me an email (jborn at neurostechnology dot com). The application deadline is Friday, Mar 12, so the deadline is basically here, and I'm filling out the application as we speak.

The focus of this summer's work is likely to be the Neuros LINK but there's no reason if you are interested in doing something with the OSD or OSD2.0 that wouldn't be appropriate. We're not going to be touching anything with the OSD3 yet or things that are too close to the hardware, we've learned our lesson from that nightmare in '08 with getting students emulators, etc. Any applicant (mentor or student) accepted will get a free device, which they can keep once the summer is over.

Here's an initial Ideas page to give you some idea of the types of projects we're thinking of.

If you haven't seen the new Boxee bookmarking feature, check it out. Its a very simple, elegant feature. You see a video at work, it gets forwarded to you, whatever, you bookmark it and it appears on your queue at home (on your TV if you use the LINK with Boxee). I'm really struggling with how to add text to this blog post since the thing is so damn simple, but it just looks funny to have a two sentence blog post. Maybe I should have just tweeted this, but I'm curious about the trackback feature so I wanted to post it here.

Fernando sent the below message to the Neuros list, and its just another reason why an x86 (with a powerful CPU) continues to make sense for the LINK.  Until the world becomes more standards based, as a manufacturer, we'll continue to need to be flexible to keep our customers from having to deal with these headaches.  That means x86 and having enough space CPU cycles to be able to deal with some inefficiencies in the system.

I wrote previously about Innovation following Infrastructure and this is basically the other side of that coin. I recently was introduced to the pedal-a-watt device its a device that turns your bike into a stationary bike with resistance provided by a generator that actually puts power into your home electric lines, offsetting some of what you use. Its a neat little thing and as someone that uses a stationary bike with a very noisy fan, I was excited to get one.

Many years ago, my forth grade teacher gave us an assignment to write a recipe about how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The next day, she took each set of instructions and showed how, without using any judgment, each set of instructions would fail to produce a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If the recipe said spread peanut butter on one side of the bread and then put the pieces together, she would put the peanut butter on the outside of the bread.

"Chicago was the place where all the classic games were made, because you could acquire all the parts that were necessary from local manufacturers" said Steve Kordek (who gave the world two-flipper pinball). It's a quote from the Feb '10 issue of Chicago Magazine. I'm sure it's something that went unnoticed by most readers, but I winced the second I read it. Why? Because 50 years later, Neuros moved its manufacturing (and a lot of the engineering) to China for largely the same reason.

The concept of an open home gateway is one of the least noticed and most important of the components of a national broadband plan, and I believe the US is at a critical crossroads. Please join Neuros in supporting a proposal for an open home gateway by voting or commenting on the FCC Post we submitted. The open home gateway is a standard that would mandate the cable companies deliver a box that other devices can integrate with in a seamless way.

On one path is an incredible opportunity:
to help close the digital divide,
to create an entire ecosystem of connected TV that allow a freedom of communication that can quickly reach virtually all citizens,
to create entire new industries for the US to pioneer

The FCC is in the process of developing a National Broadband Plan Please check out the site and make your voice heard. Here are some of my thoughts off the bat:

1. I would give a kidney to testify at the upcoming field event the FCC is having on the new National Broadband Plan. Our business is in making innovative, open set-top boxes. We are arguably the only open set-top box maker in the US. If my testimony is not of interest to them given their consideration home gateways and open set-top boxes, well, then its something of a farce. I'll be there on Monday if any of you know anyone involved with this, please pass them along to me.

2. The open gateway they talk about is really a no brainer to me. There is a direct parallel to the 1968 Carterfone decision which allowed the direct connection of 3rd party devices to the AT&T network. It looks comical in retrospect to think it was ever controversial, because it gave rise to fax machines, and most importantly modems, leading in a pretty obvious way to the modern consumer adoption of the Internet. It's very clear to me that something very similar can happen with net connected TVs (but only if its done in an open way that allows the next wave of small innovators to participate).

3. CableCard is a farce and probably unfixable. No small company (or innovator of any kind) can get approved for cablecard, and even if they could, the devices are hamstrung and made needlessly handicapped by the MSOs who won't allow pay per view and other "special content" to be available. The goal of protecting content is probably best served by a compromise like a individual watermark rather than DRM.