Meet IPv6 and the Broken Web.

Like most stories, the story of how IP will break down in 2012 is more complicated than the simple explanation put forward.

When we deplete available IPv4 addresses this year, to continue growth, the internet must switch to the new standard, IPv6. This seems to rival climate change in the public's ability to absorb and react to this fact.

But IPv4 depletion denial is only the simple affliction. Now the industry recognizes a second syndrome that will strike down several Continue reading...

Wow...we are in bad shape when even Intel can't find a proper name for a new category of device. These are the folks that supposedly pay six-figures for monikers for chips that once had names like T781ZXCS103.

That's right: we're supposed to officially call the latest trend "Hybrid Device."  And the new hybrid is just one part of the market that Intel calls "Mobility" along with the other better-known suspects, Netbooks and Tablets.

Notebooks are not mentioned here because this is Intel's new Netbook & Tablet division that's trying to wrestle to the ground the high-flying tablet market that caught the industry by surprise. Well, not exactly "surprise.."  There must be a different word for when the industry gets all excited about a concept (in 1999) and it seems to hit with a dud instead of a bang, but then years later (2010) it pops up as a great idea. How about "recidiviprise" or at least "reocurprise?"

Forget notebooks for the minute...many of the consumers have anyways. Let's look at the Mobility world through Intel eyes...

These are hallowed halls, these walls of the Munich Beer Hall. CeBIT's most famous place of distraction, the "Hangover Hall" behind Hall 3.

It's one experience that most CeBIT newbies carry home...along with the hangover and an appreciation of Bavarian culture (acquired, of course, via northern Hannover).

During the heyday of CeBIT, the robust woman who owns the Munich hall, her hands sporting diamonds on every finger, once explained to me she made 2 million euros per night during the show.

"All Your Software Needs Under One Roof," promised the Fry's ad. But whose roof? Generally retailers hate selling software.  It's more than what you'd call "a problem category:"  it's a "forget-it, let's-not-talk-about it" category.

If retailers are rather notorious about lacking interest in software, then they also never advertise software. So I clicked on the Fry's ad in SiliconValley.com hoping to learn what Fry's has discovered that the rest of us don't yet know...

That click led me to Continue reading...

Born 2010. Died 2012.

Life is so fragile, even for those born to rich parents.

The creator of Gmail (and founder of FriendFeed) says Chrome OS will perish or be merged with Android next year. The fact he now works for Facebook makes this look like sour apples (a New York way of saying he is motivated to make negative comments).

But Sergey Brin, Google co-founder, actually says Chrome and Android will merge over time. We're thinking Chrome OS will live through 2011, but not much longer... Continue reading...

A former Apple manager with responsibilities for the company's contract manufacturing in Asia was arrested for accepting kickbacks from half a dozen Asian suppliers of iPhone and iPod accessories.

He allegedly was paid for confidential Apple information he shared with contractors to help them secure Apple business on reasonable terms.

If he hadn't left the company…if only he had wiped his drive… then Apple would have never discovered a Microsoft Entourage database of e-mails and a cache of Hotmail Continue reading...

Heinz Nixdorf died on the fairgrounds at CeBIT. That thought keeps coming back to me. And he probably had minions to carry his bags.

It's 8pm on the evening before CeBIT 2010 officially opens and I am exhausted from laboriously dragging my too-many bags from the train station at Hannover-Laatzen across the people-mover bridge to the Hannover fairgrounds.

All the important folks are in warm seats at the Opening Ceremony but I am late, cold and walking into the show. The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is on stage tonight which tells you how important the CeBIT show is in Germany.

I descend from the covered people-mover that arches high over the flat landscape, wondering if my final distance will be 2km or 4 km by the time I reach my Hall. CeBIT takes the measure of a man.

Outdoors now, the cold hits me. It's a penetrating Northern cold...the type that bites your nose instead of nibbling your ears.

No one and no product could have lived up to the hype that preceded the Apple iPad launch. Not even Steve Jobs who cranked up the hype machine in the first place.

Steve Jobs stood there on stage, iPad in hand like Moses with The Tablet, and a list of his own Commandments: Thou shall create a product category between smartphones and netbooks. Thou shall not have strange devices before you. Thou shall not covet thy neighbour’s goods...

But this time, this very time when we knew what we wanted, when we knew what to expect...somehow it didn’t turn out to be the Second Coming we expected. (Actually for Steve it’s the Third Coming but why quibble?) Continue reading...