“Connect to Compete”

Announced today by the chairman of the FCC, an initiative called Connect to Compete is being launched in conjunction with Microsoft, Best Buy, careerbuilder.com and monster.com to try to increase the broadband footprint in America.  The intent is to improve internet literacy and general computer skills for students and working individuals.  This will come in the form of support from Geek Squad providing classroom training in conjunction with groups like Goodwill, Boys and Girls Club, and a few others; Microsoft offering free training and certification on-line; and the career sites providing job skills training, resume writing, and other job related training online for free.  The most positive byproduct that I can personally connect with is the intent to also increase funding for public libraries and school computer labs to provide the means for after class time training. 

Being a technologist, I would love to see greater computer skills training, but is this really just a ploy to get more potential buyers into Best Buy stores and online to support Microsoft’s initiatives?  I hope those involved remain true to the spirit of this initiative and give us reason to applaud these efforts as they progress.  Good luck guys…

ICANN Opens Up Custom TLDs

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/ICANN-Approves-Custom-Generic-Top-Level-Domains-775234/

I wonder if this will be the next IPv6, or if companies will seriously invest in their own custom top level domain.  I would expect the larger guys like IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc. to jump on this.  Anyone with a product that is delivered via a browser definitely seem to me to be likely candidates for early adoption.  But what about the smaller guys?  I am not so sure we will see the like of .salesforce and definitely doubt we will see .bobshardware.  (Maybe .lowes or .hd/.homedepot?)

It was inevitable that we would exhaust all reasonable TLD names before we exhausted the demand for them.  Given that ICANN has a directive to try and prevent similar sounding domains from being registered, I do not that I think they have been overly successful historically, but have definitely improved.  For example, it was common knowledge that whitehouse.com had nothing to do with the US capitol, but it has since been snatched away from the porn industry and is now a pointer to house.com.  Google has registered gogle.com and googl.com as pointers to them selves, but someone else owns gogle.com (which triggered my antivirus program the second the page loaded).

ICANN stated that they are setting the initial price high enough to prevent squatters from trying to snatch up desirable domains with unscrupulous intentions, and intend to put a screening process in place that will evaluate all applications for TLDs.  This should help prevent .facebook from becoming a bargaining chip in the war for social supremacy, but I don’t think it will help the likes of mySpace become any less tawdry in the public eye.