A recent survey showed that 27% of respondents (the biggest slice) believed "Online Video / Internet TV" would be the dominant tech meme for 2007 (browser based apps came in at 22%, Mobile Web at 15%. Rich Internet Apps - WPF/E for instance - came in lower but IMO that represents the time it's going to take for people to get to grips with what that technology can deliver).

It's certainly something that's been a long time coming. The huge success of YouTube, Google Video, AOL Video and of course Soapbox proves that there is a huge appetite for non-studio produced content (and certainly a huge pool of people keen to produce that content).

Projects like the forthcoming Venice Project (from the creators of Skype), the Democracy video player/sharing platform, Tioti, tVadio and a number of other independent peer to peer video (P2PTV) distribution mechanisms are promising to deliver the best of that content (both user generated and studio produced) in an efficient, high quality, free/low-cost manner. However with some of those the legality of some of the content is questionable. With others the breadth of available content is also going to be a limiting factor. For many users the sheer bandwidth requirements are also going to be an issue if users are on capped or shaped plans that limit their consumption (or have heavy financial penalties for high usage)

The production companies themselves are not standing idly by while this happens. In the UK the BBC are about to launch iMP - a p2p application which allows users to watch shows up to 7 days after they've aired, and Channel4 have a similar service. NineMSN in Australia is offering a Catch-up TV service (download, not p2p) and in the US networks are making episodes of popular shows available via the iTunes store (wonder what that will do for syndication of the lists of CSI:, Lost, 24 and Battlestar Galactica?) though as it's mostly targeting the video capable iPods that quality isn't as good as HDTV yet. ClickStar and RealNetworks are both heavy-weight players in this space. Even Netflix (the DVD home delivery pioneers) are looking at electronic delivery as an option.

In conjunction with various networks Microsoft are making TV episodes and movies available (in SD and HD quality) for both Xbox and Media Center Edition users for download and rental.

So what does this mean for consumers?

Well, in the short term I think lots of confusion. Different services will offer access to different slices of content and you may well end up having to subscribe to three of four different providers to get the mix of Sci-Fi Movies, first-run TV drama and home-made bizarre juggling accident videos. Like the iTunes music store and PlaysForSure there will be incompatible DRM solutions, different restrictions on viewing, archiving and sharing and platforms supported.

During 2007 I think we'll see a whole bunch of new start-ups offering "the" best solution but it's going to take most of the year to work the kinks out, get a decent momentum (and convince the mainstream producers that it's a viable proposition) and let the dust of acquisitions settle.

Meantime the advertisers will be looking at new ways to monetise the content!

About a year ago I found a report that Korea was looking to mandate standard cellphone connectors. A great idea that was long overdue as mini USB adapters, cables, car chargers are now easy to come by.

A year on and we've got the happy situation in our house that my K-Jam, Storms Dash and our 'spare' RAZR all share USB chargers.

Looks like the days of Nokia and Sony having their own chargers are even more numbered with China getting in on the act as well.

This will all be good as long as everyone can agree on which of the 3 mini-USB plugs to use, and stop messing about adding proprietary lumps to the connector (Fuji, I'm looking at you and your really annoying cameras that won't charge off a standard cable but require a dongle as well).

Next step will be to standardize headphone/headset connectors so I can find good accessories and re-use them. I'm happy to use the mini-USB jack for that as well (especially as Brando have a good mini-USB to headphone solution) that at least makes listening to music on the device a little less of a trial. Longer term I'm hoping to find a simple Bluetooth headset that operates as a mono single ear Borg attachment for phone calls when I'm walking around but when I'm at home and want to use my PC (to listen to music or for Skype) I can attach the second earphone (ideally with a frame to support the weight rather than my ear) and listen in comfort wirelessly - but still answer the phone (or Skype) without fumbling.

Ah, standards. Steps on a road to happiness I suspect. It's just sometimes it's a very long and difficult road!

I suffer badly from the symptoms of Digital Amnesia at home. Too many machines, too many duplicate files and I never know where the latest, greatest (or even only) version of something is!

Two desktops, a Media Center, a Maxtor NAS, a couple of USB drives, 4 laptops (one Vista, two WinXP and one OSX PowerBook) means we're not the most organized of people.

I'm really hoping the Center for Digital Amnesia Awareness do announce a cure as promised....

It's good to stay in touch, but it's hard to explain why some of the new tools out there are so good unless you've experienced them.

I'm lucky enough to now be working somewhere that gets the idea of unified comms (although I'm still trying to work out how to get everything integrated into one place - I think we need to buy a mobile operator to hook into our in-house IT to finally close that loop!) but I saw this and it expresses the benefits in a much better way than I can...

Video: The Devil wears Prada .. and does Unified Comms!

And don't forget to check out the (similar themed) introduction to the really cool video conferencing tool - Round Table

I really must see this movie before the spoofs totally ruin it for me forever!

It's late evening on Boxing Day here in Redmond and the snow has started falling again. It looks like something out of Narnia right now (and my car appears to have terrible dandruff)

I wonder if the offices will be open tomorrow. Or the post office. Or the Company Story. The forecast wasn't for sub-zero temperatures so it might not last, but for Rhiannon and Bryns sake I really hope it does!

Apart from one Christmas vacation back to the UK while I was living in Australia I've only seen snow twice in the the last ten years... and that's twice now in 30 days. I'm sure I'm eventually going to get bored of the weather here in Western Washington, but right now (having had a "proper" Christmas) even with the rain and the cold I'm enjoying this so much more than Queensland.

Who'd have thought. I thought I'd gone to Aus to escape the English weather. Obviously I was confused all this time!

One of the few remaining points that Firefox scores over IE7 is inline search - I've always found the popup to be much less intuitive (and for that matter useful!) than the way that it worked in Firefox.

Luckily I didn't have to wait too long after IE7 shipped to find a very neat solution to the problem in the shape of the accurately named "Inline Search" from IEForge.

Installation is as simple as running the installer and restarting IE, from that point on the new inline search pops up where you would normally have seen the floating window, and it's keyboard driven (so F3 does a "find next" just as you'd expect).

Currently they don't allow you to customize the keystrokes it uses, or keep a history of searches (and there's no 64 bit version) but the development seems to be active and on-going.

My only wish... that I'd found this a couple of years ago! Along with the IE Script Debugger and Developer tools this is one of those essential add-ons that everyone should know about.

It was really nice after ten years in Australia to have Christmas Day back in a cold climate. Somehow it just doesn't seem right sitting outside sweltering at a BBQ.

A roast meal, eggnog and having to rug up to go for a walk all make it feel a little more special.

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, passed away on Christmas Day.

The hardest working man in show business finally takes a rest. His legacy will continue to shape music for a lot longer though.

A few years back he recorded Christmas in Heaven.... makes you wonder.

I only saw James Brown live in concert once (thanks to some friends in his record company who managed to get me last minute tickets at a small London concert a lifetime ago) but it was one of those experiences that are literally once in a lifetime. You can go and see a superband perform and they have an energy and a power to them. James had a connection to each and everyone in the audience - his energy and sheer performance supassed anyone, with the exception of Prince, that I've seen perform.

He'll live on in the hearts of his fans, in the samples we hear every day and the people he's touched.

By now you should be familiar with Spotlight in Media Center, and it's ability to delivery radio, games, TV episodes and movies right to your media center PC ... and from there to your big screen TV when you want it.

You're didn't know about Spotlight? Well find a Windows PC with Media Center Edition and check out what's on offer in your region. In Aus the answer was "not much" but here in the US the choice is pretty amazing.

Well, the Xbox team didn't want to feel left out. Sure they can act as an extender to a Media Center, but there are some folks who've got one and not the other. For the Xbox only crowd there are now movies and TV episodes available for download and rental in the Marketplace.

The price of the new Xbox offerings are really good (especially considering you can select HD, or choose SD for a discount) and the range has stuff for me, my wife and my daughter (actually we're all fans of Avatar - the last Airbender)

They both use different purchase models and rules - Spotlight links to a number of alternative third party providers, whereas the Xbox Marketplace uses Microsoft Points (a familiar currency for Zune users as well)

Now in an ideal world the content on both Spotlight and the Xbox Marketplace would be common, content could be selected on the Media Center and viewed on the Xbox, Content could be bought or rented or kept on a subscription basis and shared between MCE, Xbox and Zune... but like the disconnect between Zune and PlaysForSure they're different (and as yet pretty much unknown) markets so time will tell what's a practical direction for these to go.

The Xbox service seems to be doing really well so far... getting good reports from users.

... and now I've got to worry about F#!

F# is a programming language that provides the much sought-after combination of type safety, performance and scripting, with all the advantages of running on a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system: .NET.

Unlike other scripting languages (JScript of VBScript) it executes at or near the speed of C# and C++, making use of the performance that comes through strong typing. Unlike many statically-typed languages it also supports many dynamic language techniques, such as property discovery and reflection where needed. F# includes extensions for working across languages and for object-oriented programming, and it works seamlessly with other .NET programming languages and tools.

Now I don't pretend to understand most of that (although by the second read it started to make sense!) it's a pretty cool language that you can develop using Visual Studio (even the free Express version).

The performance claims are not exaggerated. It can be used to churn through huge amounts of data quickly and (possibly even cooler) write XNA based games for the XBox360.

So much to learn, so little time! I'm glad they skipped D# and E# (they did skip them didn't they... I didn't miss something else important?) or I'd never be able to keep up!

Update: looks like I did miss D and E, though I guess I'm ahead of the game as I did use Z back in the days when I wrote code that ran under CICS (I've still got the manuals somewhere I think - probably in the attic along with my Smalltalk and Prolog ones!)