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.

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.

I recently received this message from defectivebydesign.org:

The MPAA is pressuring the FCC for the authority to cripple recording devices so Hollywood could shut off the video outputs on your cable box, DVR, or other recording device when particular movies or shows come on. If granted, people who wanted to watch those movies would have to buy special defective by design devices subservient to remote "Selectable Output Control," and a dangerous precedent would be set for even more control in the future.

Please tell the FCC to keep Hollywood's restrictions out of your living room: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/mpaa-drm-tv
Thanks for taking action!

Its pretty obvious to me that whenver you create "interfaces" of any kind that are open and available to all, innovation and experimentation and even entrepreneurship thrive. When you created a giant sealed off infrastructure of any kind, only the giant verticals that created them can modify them and things just naturally stagnate. It's pretty widely understood that big entities aren't good at innovation, so why would the FCC even consider shutting off an interface like the analog outputs that allow some level of experimentation (such as Neuros and others are doing).

The piracy argument is so weak here its just hard to justify. Its clear that effectively none of the p2p content available has been generated from analog recordings from set-top boxes, etc. Its just a big red herring to justify the fact that they simply want more control. Let's face a simple reality, innovation is mostly bad for entrenched interests, it changes things, and change is undesirable if you are doing well with status quo. And that's fine, I have no problem with doing whats best for your shareholders. But the fact that these folks have the gall to lobby a government entity to fight something that seems obviously a help to innovators is shameless to me. Can anyone dispute that this helps innovation or that innovation is vital to our national interests?

Neuros has long spoken about digital rights and their important roll in innovation. They are rights that have long been under siege from big media. Google, however, has long been a company that we, as Internet users, have invested a great deal of trust in. It's very disappointing, and even more scary to me, to see them, through YouTube, come down on the side of a more proprietary, restricted Internet. Recently they started excluding certain device manufacturers from displaying videos add this to the recent move to give partners more ways to block viewing. These actions are almost certain to stymie innovation and freedom of communication in variety of ways. We can imagine many of those ways, but the saddest of all are the ways we can't imagine which will never be realized because they were blocked from ever seeing the light of day.

Open standards are a practical necessity for innovation. If Google, or anyone else, is picking the winners and losers up front, we can be certain that precious clever ideas will be lost before they ever get a chance to grow, morph and become the next big thing. No one should know this better than the folks at Google and YouTube who once took some of the most unlikely ideas and made them central to our lives. Imagine if Microsoft, IBM or any other entity had been able to act as gatekeeper at the inception of Google and YouTube. I think just about anyone can imagine those services would never have gotten to market. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with Google profiting from YouTube, and we welcome their experimentation in a variety of means to do that, but they need to do so in an open, non discriminatory way that allows small and big entities alike to experiment and innovate.

It goes without saying that I want to see our own Neuros products get a chance at the market, but as an interested citizen I also want to see Boxee, Miro, Moovida and a host of other innovative services, applications and devices make it to market. I want to see a world where we go from being passive consumers of content to active participants in adding our voices to the news of the day. Google needs to quickly decide if they are to be a force that helps accelerate that or impedes it.