Idiots Among Us

I'm a conservative, but I often find that other conservatives confuse passion with a lack of critical reasoning, giving conservatives a bad name when it comes to engaging in the debate of ideas.

In that vein, there's a conservative movie reviewer whose reviews, for all intents and purposes, read like those of an uneducated idiot.

Dr. Ted Baehr, whose title might imply the habits of an educated mind, appears to be one who likes to cast aspersions at "motes" without considering the "beam" in his own eye. Specifically, Dr. Baehr's review of the movie Avatar from James Cameron reaches a new low, apparently written in haste by a someone who can't quite put coherent thoughts together.

Ignoring, for the moment, the intent of Dr. Baehr's review and whether he understands the difference between environmentalism and colonialism (hint: the latter has to do with taking something that's not yours, from someone who owned it before you, via some form of "divine right" justification), let's look at the basic mistakes he makes in putting forth his argument.

Dr. Baehr's review is full of grammatical, logical and theological errors. Here are just three examples:

1.  "If only someone had edited this movie, it may have been more interesting" 

Ironically this sentence follows shortly after Dr. Baehr declares that "when you put spectacle first, you turn a great little movie like King King into King Bore."  In other words, Dr. Baehr forgot to edit his own snipe at Cameron's editing. Both visual and textual editing require review, and Dr. Baehr fails the grammar check on this point.

2. Dr. Baehr's paraphrase of Aristotle's sequencing of "entertainment" (according to Dr. Baehr) or "tragedy" (according to Aristotle) is wrong.

"Great entertainment puts plot first, character second, dialogue third, idea forth, music fifth and spectacle last, as Aristotle noted."


Dr. Baehr, in bastardizing the tragedy list for his own entertainment purposes, missed a few of Aristotle's points. The proper order is: plot, character, thought, diction, song, melody. At least Dr. Baehr could appear to be a "learned man" by getting the sequencing right.

3. Dr. Baehr makes a disturbing theological leap of faith when he suggests that all the aliens in Avatar needed was Jesus Christ. Seriously . . .

"What the . . .  aliens in the movie need to deliver them from their severe group think is the loving salvation available only through the true God, Jesus Christ."


Does Dr. Baehr really believe that aliens can be saved? If so, is he suggesting Christ went to die on multiple planets, and not just Earth?

I've sent an email to Dr. Baehr asking him to expound on those two questions.

His answers will tell us exactly what his theology consists of, which could be more dangerous than the flaws he attempts to explain in Cameron's fictional Avatar movie.

Maybe he would've been better off sticking with a single-sentence review in "movie speak" that translates just as effectively for conservative viewers as it does for liberal ones: Avatar is Pocahontas (Terrence Malick's The New World) meets Apocalypse Now.

An Impressive Choice

In a recent survey, Americans were asked to choose what they would like to do most, based on a series of options.

"Half of Americans chose laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a ceremony in which they'd most like to participate. That swamped the other choices: lighting the Olympic torch, tossing the coin to open a Super Bowl, starting the race at the Indianapolis 500, ringing the opening bell at the stock exchange and throwing out the first pitch at the World Series."

The result was surprising on one hand, but having had the honor of laying a wreath when I was 18, I understand the awe it inspires (and still remember, to this day, the gloves of the honor guard, sopping with sweat as they execute very precise maneuvers).

Metadata: Certainly Not Boring

Especially in this interview that Peter Cervieri recorded at last week's Streaming Media West 2009 show.

Peter's interviews for his ScribeMedia.org often focuses on topics that are both timely and somewhat controversial, but metadata often doesn't fit in the latter category, unless you count Peter's triple-X rated title for the interview.

While my slightly-pseudo-Southern accent always reminds me that I talk a bit slower now than I did when I lived in my native New York, Peter did a good job of steering the conversation to cover many of the points from my recent metadata article: Metadata: What You Need to Know (And Why You Need to Know It)

Running time for the interview is 12:29

Embarrassment in Entrepreneurship?

A great quote from the founder of LinkedIn:

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late."

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/the-iterate-fast-and-release-often-philosophy-of-entrepreneurship-ben-parr




iPhoned

Opportunity: Green Power, Packet Origination

Next week, I'll have the opportunity - through a green-power startup that I'm assisting - to meet with David Boggs in Palo Alto. The startup is in stealth mode, but I hope to spend the time discussing a few marketing options and the operational implications of data-center power retrofitting

For those of you who know your Ethernet packets, David's name may not be quite as familiar as that of his boss, Robert (Bob) Metcalfe. Yet both of them are listed on the Microsoft academic search for a few interesting papers, including this one in 1975:

R. M. Metcalfe, D. R. Boggs : 

Ethernet: distributed packet switching for local computer networks

 

, 1975

 

(Citations: 8)

In both 1975 and 1976, Ethernet was being presented by and at the Berkeley Workshop on Distributed Data Management and Computer Networks.

Boggs, Metcalfe and colleagues went on to deal with issues facing early Ethernet implementations, including:

Robert M. Metcalfe, David R. Boggs, Charles P. Thacker, Butler W. Lampson : 

Multipoint data communication system with collision detection

 

, 1977

(Citations: 3)

I asked a friend, who recently went to hear SRI's Doug Engelbart speak during the 40th anniversary of his famous "mother of all demos" on Augmentation, why we seemed to be getting the opportunity to meet these pioneers when they live so close to many of Silicon Valley's newest, hottest upstarts.

"It's because we care," she said.

Cutting the Cord

In a post at www.workflowed.com, I posited about the armies amassing on the borders of streaming media for the next land grab.

I dubbed this The Third Wave as part of a series of articles I've been writing on satellite providers, traditional broadcasters and cable MSOs.

Speaking of the latter, there's an interesting article about "cord cutting" by cable subscribers.

Cable operators have been concerned about the concept of cord cutting where subscriber cancel their cable subscription and opt to watch online video.  While analysts downplay it, I can attest that it seems as prevalent as the cord-cutting phenomenon of local telephone service, where consumers opt for just a mobile phone and a cable-internet combination if they can't get "naked DSL" from the local telco provider.

Yet some of the MSOs seem to think that changing consumer behavior is the way to get consumer to "respect" subscription revenues.

He said the current OnDemand Online trial - offering viewers access to cable channel shows in exchange for identifying themselves as subscribers - was not an effort to "change the advertising model or get a minute back from content providers," rather it is a way to "

"We need to get in front of the biggest social movement I've ever seen," said Comcast's COO, Steve Burke. "Online video consumption is off the charts, and if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors, we're going to wake up and see an entire generation cord cutting."

Wait, I have to respect my MSO enough to pay them money? Talk about an entitlement mentality!

Previously c

Do You Believe In Miracles?

Growing up in the late 1970s near Lake Placid, New York, I vividly remember the burgeoning Olympic presence, with its raccoon mascot, visitors from the City, and Bauer skates. Especially the Bauer skates.

My six-year-old mind was convinced a pair of Bauer skates would not only let me follow the big kids as they shoveled off a make-shift hockey rink on the lake, but that Bauers were key to assisting in any playground hockey victory. Yes, it was before I learned what advertising and branding were all about.

This evening, Lake Placid is the center of attention for a different reason: NY 23's third-party candidate is none other than Lake Placid's Doug Hoffman, who lives close by to where John Brown's body lies a moulderin' in the grave.

Hoffman's the one Sarah Palin went rogue for a few weeks back, endorsing him over the Republican candidate, who has since withdrawn from the race and is now backing her Democratic opponent. Final election results may be delayed until tomorrow, as the area's trying out some new voting machines.

This article on Hoffman uses the "Miracle on Ice" as a framing device that will resonate well with those in and around Lake Placid.

[Update: While this was a personal reminiscence of growing up in the district, perhaps Hoffman should have run a local campaign, rather than just reaching for the stars. The Watertown Daily Times' pet projects often appeal to a small, but vocal, constituency; in this case, however, the editorial board nailed the defining issue in the last paragraph.]

More great benefits . . . Starbucks

Whenever I see an email that starts with words like "improving" and "more great benefits" I know I'm about to lose some of the benefits I already had. Sure enough, Starbucks is now promising me that . . .

Except none of the benefits that Starbucks is offering me are of any benefit at all.

First, the really good stuff, offering "benefits such as free flavored syrups or brewed coffee refills that many of you have asked for". Did I ask for flavored syrups in my solo espresso? Do I want to pour brewed coffee refills into that tiny cup? Neither one of those seem a benefit to me.

And then the kicker, which starts with "while it will not provide the 10% discount" of my current program, it will be FREE. As if Starbucks thinks that we don't realize the bargain we get with the current paid card . . .

Three more reasons to ditch Starbucks for the new Panera next door. Nothing to see here, please move along.

Perspective: SUPERCOMM Panel

As mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been asked to speak on a SUPERCOMM panel this Thursday, October 22, 2009, at 4:15 PM Central Time.

Overview details mention that bloggers, journalists and industry analysts will discuss all things broadband, including:




- The current state of broadband infrastructure and technology
- Key broadband industry developments and trends
- National broadband strategy
- Broadband service delivery
- The future of broadband service and infrastructure

A few other topics I'd like to see discussed include:

- FTTH / FTTx (fiber to the premise) as it corresponds to streaming media and the need for IPv6

- Network neutrality (love it, hate it, or want to marginalize it, net neutrality ties closely to the philosophy of an open network that has gained ground in other parts of the world)

- The consistent digital divide between urban and rural locations (keep an eye on this topic during the deployment of the $7.2 billion in loans and grants in the stimulus plan)

In addition, I'd been asked by the moderator, Patti Reali, to discuss my blogging approach and philosophy. As a heads-up for the audience, I'm the newest blogger in the group: while I'm an
early adopter in many areas, I'm one of those long-time holdouts on blogging for a variety of reasons (tools that limited my ability to blog effectively on multiple platforms, lack of an editor to grammar / reality check my work, etc).

I find that I may post "articles" or "mini articles" that might not have a home in any of the magazines I write for, but are still newsworthy from an analytical standpoint. I'm not really interested in micro-blogging or twitter since I can't see immediate value in 140 characters, unless it's to send a URL to a longer analytical piece.

I am very interested in applying the "on the record / off the record" and basic journalism mindset to the analysis I provide, though, so I also see a move to blogging as a way  to supplement prior articles that were required in a more timely "news" manner.

I'm still learning about blogging processes. For instance, as additional information reveals itself, one philosophical question I have is whether to go back and update the original blog post, or to apply a newspaper-like approach with an additional follow-up story.

Oh, and I think the FTC rule about bloggers revealing compensation for product reviews is a good thing . . .

Opportunity: Global Entrepreneurship Week "Debate" on co-working vs incubation

Along with my friend and colleague, Jose Castillo, who runs the SparkPlaza co-working space, I'm going to be part of a "debate" on the merits of co-working versus incubation for those businesses that want to move from the spare bedroom to the boardroom.

The event, held in conjunction with the Northeast Tennessee Technology Council, debuts at SparkPlaza in Johnson City, TN, from 8:00-9:30 AM on 23 November 2009. It's also been added to the LaunchPin calendar.

A potential list of topics / questions, comparing supervised growth vs organic growth (the two basic tenets of entrepreneurial growth, here are the topic points:

1. Why do entrepreneurs move from their spare bedroom to a co-working or incubation facility?
2. What services are provided by each (tactical, such as copier, fax, phones, internet; strategic such as small business advice, mentoring)?
3. How big can one scale a company inside each?
4. What does "graduation" from a co-working space and from an incubation space?
5. What equity stake does the co-working or incubation group take in the companies that are part of each facility? In other words, is co-working peer-to-peer or are some peers more equal than others?

We've also decided to add two guest debaters to help tag-team two topics of great interest:

First, Yvette Fragile, formerly with Knoxville News-Sentinel and now with iShoptheTri.com, will help Jose and Tim make sense of the the roles of social and traditional media in business startup marketing. Second, Rayford Johnson from the ETSU innovation lab will help expand the incubation / co-working debate when we look at for-profit versus not-for-profit incubation.

Look forward to seeing you there, if you're in the area and can make it.

Perspective: Jan Maciejewski, MD of SUPERCOMM

[Update: plans have been finalized, so come see the panel if you're going to be at SUPERCOMM!]

While I wait to hear about the uncertain fate of my SUPERCOMM panel, I had the opportunity to speak today to Jan Maciejewski, whose role as Managing Director is to bring the show back into heightened relevance.

Maciejewski has been in the telecommunications industry for some time, having served as an executive at both Alcatel and Spirent, and is based in London as part of EXPOCOMM Events LLC, the event-management company responsible for the multi-year contract with the owners of SUPERCOMM.

Our discussion covered a wide range of topics around SUPERCOMM, including how to leverage an existing brand, broadening the show's perspective to broadband across both wireline and wireless, and the requirement to attract top speakers to help set the tone for the future of the show. Attracting Aneesh Chopra to speak was the topic of a previous WriteThinkSpeak post, which has had a surprising number of reads, now ranking second in Google searches only to the official SUPERCOMM announcement.

"We are extremely grateful for Aneesh's decision to come speak about broadband," said Maciejewski, noting that Chopra's role as CTO of the United States provides a good platform from which to discuss the transformation of the US into a broadband nation, including rural and urban deployment, as well as providing direction on the strategic and tactical goals of stimulus funding.

"We will also have sessions that follow along the lines of Aneesh's vision," Maciejewski continued, "providing attendees with guidance on how to apply for funding. Beyond Aneesh's keynote, we also have representation from the NTIA and speeches from the CEOs of leading service providers to help give attendees a sense of the direction of industry."

The NTIA presenter referred to is Larry Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Along with Jonathan Adelstein, Administrator, Rural Utilities Service (RUS) from the USDA, they will discuss the $7.2 billion allocated to national broadband stimulus.

The show has traditionally been in June in Chicago, although it ceased to exist two years ago, with the owners of the show going off to start up separate shows, known as TelecomNext and Nextcomm, respectively. When EXPOCOMM was engaged in March, 2009, to manage the re-emergent SUPERCOMM, plans were underway to hold the show in June, but a few months later the decision was made to shift the time slot to October.

The timing of the show is shortly after the release of a part of the first round of stimulus funding," said Maciejewski, "so we feel vindicated in the decision to move the show to the October time slot. As for the venue, we plan on keeping it in Chicago for at least next year; we take a sounding from the exhibitor community and use that to account for the next year's event location, but all indications lead to SUPERCOMM being in Chicago next year."

In the discussion of the strength of the SUPERCOMM brand, Maciejewski emphasized both the staying power of the brand and the ability to use this inflection point to expand the horizon of future SUPERCOMM shows.

"We wanted to re-establish a well-known brand, that had been weakened slightly by the events of the past few years," said Maciejewski. "Moving it beyond an infrastructure wireline show and toward the concept of 'Broadband Life' isn't a reaction to that, however, but merely an acknowledgement that the broadband expansion in the US is being led by the service providers who traditionally attend the show."

"We're not going to be moving toward the consumer end, or consumer equipment," he continued, when asked whether the show ran the risk of brand dilution when shows such as Mobile World Congress or the Consumer Electronics Show also have a broadband convergence factor. "We want to focus on the business-to-business aspect of the service provider who might buy a set of products or services to augment its offering to the consumer. As the industry moves further in to a time where putting a PC in the back of a consumer television is standard practice, we would also expect many set-top box manfacturers to exhibit at SUPERCOMM. After all, it's all part of broadband expansion."

SUPERCOMM, hosted by owners TIA and US Telecom, also commissioned a survey, in which "nearly 70 percent of all respondents believe uninterrupted broadband access should be as readily available as other utilities like electricity and water."

Maciejewski sees this as a key sentiment that will help both the US - which lags in broadband deployment against Asian and European countries - and the show in general.

"Broadband is at the core of how we live and work today," he said. "Beyond our survey findings underscore the fact that the world has taken on a ‘Broadband Life’ mentality, SUPERCOMM brings together, under one roof, the companies and people that are at the forefront of driving broadband technology innovation to improve our quality of life."

SUPERCOMM runs from October 21-23, 2009 at Chicago's McCormick Place exhibition hall. Portions of the event will also be streamed.

Perspective: Aneesh Chopra to address SUPERCOMM

One of the areas I've worked in over the past few years has been economic development, specifically technology-based economic development in the rural Tennessee-Virginia border area.

During a multi-year stint launching a Chamber of Commerce small business initiative (KOSBE) and the launch of a non-metropolitan World Trade Center (MountainSouth WTC), I had the opportunity to work with Aneesh Chopra.

At that time, Aneesh was the CTO for the Commonwealth of Virginia, but he has since moved on to the national level. I was delighted to hear that he will be speaking at SUPERCOMM on the same day as my session.

Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. and Associate Director for Technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will deliver a keynote at SUPERCOMM 2009. Chopra--appointed by President Obama to "promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities"--will deliver his vision of how broadband will transform the American economy on Day 2, Thursday, October 22, 2009.

Lease termination for not displaying pro Obama merchandise?

Wow, if this is true, our local mall is in a world of its own, forcing local entrepreneurs to display pro Obama merchandise along with best-selling anti-Obama merchandise: http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/News/print.php?ID=71327

Have sent the following email to the mall's management, requesting a reply:

Is it true, as stated in the JC Press and on WJHL Channel 11, that Graphic Edge's Mr. Fuchs was asked to display pro-Obama merchandise or risk termination?

Will report on what I hear back.

Opportunity: SUPERCOMM Panel

[Update: plans have been finalized, so come see the panel if you're going to be at SUPERCOMM!]

SUPERCOMM, the show that was, then wasn't, but now is again, has apparently decided to host a panel of journalists and bloggers at its upcoming show. Earlier today, I got an invitation, which reads, in part:


I work with the SUPERCOMM team and the reason for my email is to invite you to participate as a panelist for a session we're programming for the show. The panel session comprised of journalists from business and trade publications as well as industry bloggers. If you're available, we would love to have you as a panelist.


The panel is slated to take place on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 4:15 PM Central Time.


Each panelist comes to the table with a strong voice and opinion on the state of broadband and broader industry issues, but also have varied perspectives given your key reader constituents. We anticipate a highly interactive, lively and thought-provoking discussion that will be blogged and tweeted about days, weeks and months following the show.

Still trying to figure out what kind of topic would be blogged and tweeted about for "days, weeks and months following the show" but perhaps one of the panelist will make a statement, like Jan Ozer did a few years ago ("MPEG-4 Is Dead") that will send the rest of us to our keyboards to counter the argument.

More on the session as the event approaches. Details on the SUPERCOMM 2009 show, which is back in Chicago, can be found here.

Lured by Fox News . . .

Time, the weekly magazine whose parent company also owns CNN, is apparently upset about Glenn Beck.

Upset enough that it wants everyone to know, in a recent article, that he can't write ("he gets alot of help from his staff") and is making money ("the value of his Fox contract is reliably said to be about $2 million per year").

Yet, since CNN and Time are jointly owned, Time should be willing to reveal this fact to its readers.

"Lured by the Fox News Channel from CNN's Headline News channel last year, Beck has lit up the 5 p.m. slot in a way never thought possible by industry watchers, drawing upwards of 3 million viewers on some recent days."

No mention at all about the relationship between Time and CNN in the quoted sentence, or anywhere else in the article.

Doing so might make Time suspect in its muckrakng against Beck. At the very least, this begs the question of conflict of interest. Worse, it appears Time is exercising payback against someone who left the CNN fold and has since trounced CNN in the ratings war.

Despite the way it accuses Beck of stirring up discord, the article leaps out of the Beck-bashing mire to a lofty final sentence designed to show Time is above the fray:

"If the time comes when every audience is screaming, who, in the end, is left to listen?"

Perhaps it's worth a moment of Time to reflect on the magazine's own conflicted screaming.

An Uninvited Friend

Facebook, the company, just became your friend, even though you didn't choose them. And they just crashed your party, Big Brother style.

When Facebook added the Like/Unlike option alongside comments, many users asked for a "Dislike" option if they felt their friends were going over the top in terms of expressing a particular viewpoint.

Not a bad idea.

Facebook, though, has ignored those requests and chosen, instead, to add a "Report" option, in the same vein as "flag@whitehouse.gov" for those "fishy" posts so that we can now report our friends anonymously. But who do we report them to? To our friend in the sky, Facebook.

The choices when reporting a friend's wrongdoings are "inappropriate content", "inappropriate or pornographic picture" or "attacks individual or group".

Think about it: if I choose my friends, what right does Facebook have to arbitrate amongst us friends? Are they the all-knowing Friend, choosing what is appropriate between myself and those I've chosen to keep in my circle of friends? It's not as if this content is available to everyone on the web; it's only available to friends I've chosen.

Maybe Facebook meant well, and I can certainly see their point on pornography. But we already have the option to limit what we see from feeds of friends who go over the top, and it works as intended, without the threat of banishment from Facebook.

On matters of politics, lifestyle, et al, for Facebook to suddenly become the arbiter amongst a group of friends makes Facebook the equivalent of the schoolyard monitor at recess; yes, they control the joint, but you really don't want them mucking up your free time before they drag you back into the classroom.

Facebook won't be able to effectively police the bullying, and the unintended side effect of the "Report" feature will be a chilling impact on those of us who might choose to have friends of different political or lifestyle persuasions, for fear one of those friends will "report" us and we'll lose our Facebook accounts.

Way to go, Facebook: you've now inadvertently segmented a growing community of eclectic friendships back into small camps of like-minded (whether narrow or broad) people.

Google Purchases On2 - Additional Thoughts

Dan Rayburn, whose Business of Video blog is integrated into the StreamingMedia.com home page, alongside articles that I and others write, posted this morning about the Google-On2 acquisition. In his blog post, labelled Google's Acquisition of On2 Not a Big Deal, Here's Why, Dan listed off a series of reasons why Google may not have been interested in purchasing On2.

A fascinating read, and a bit of a different take from the streamingmedia.com news article I'd written early this morning, which outlined the deal.

In between writing mine and reading Dan's I had spent some time thinking through what Google might be up to, so I posted the following as a comment on Dan's blog:

I think Google's got a nice three-base hit going on here, with the outside chance of a home run. As you mention, open sourcing VP8 could deal with the objections that have been raised more loudly since the Open Video Conference in June and the subsequent impact on the HTML 5 video tag discussions.

As mentioned in the streamingmedia.com articles I did around both of those topics, Google's made it plain, at least with Chrome, that it's wiling to play both in the open-source and standards-based video worlds.

The original open-sourcing of the VP codec that Theora is based on, VP3.2, has raised valid objections about the open-source community's use of a "tired" code base to attempt an assault on H.264.

The thing is, Google doesn't have to open-source VP8 to be a part of the open-source movement toward a "free" codec; they can open-source VP7 instead, which provides a chance for the open-source community to mount a decent effort to catch up with H.264 (and for Wikimedia and Mozilla and Chrome to get what they wanted during the HTML5 debate)

Based on the comparisons I did a few years ago (in Dec 2007, available at www.on2.com/file.php?195) between VP6, VP7 and H.264, if they released VP7 as open-source it would bring open-source and standards-based codecs close to parity.

The second-base play is that Google gets H.264 as part of its On2 purchase. That's what the Hantro part of the On2 purchase gives Google a double benefit.

The third-base play is that Google gets to make the open-source community happy, play in the standards-based world with H.264 and keep VP8 all to itself as a proprietary codec for live, low-latency, bi-directional streams (beyond Googletalk, think Skype, AIM Triton, the Chinese telecom that On2 has as a client for video IM, etc.)

Will it be a home run? I think the economies of scale Google gets from buying out of an unknown licensing fee might look like a way to get that final base, but the real final sprint from third to home plate will be all about Google's ability to execute on a vision like the one I'm conjecturing. Regardless, the gestalt of these moves means Google gets a chance to keep something for itself, while building a barrier to entry on the innovation side.

Someone followed up with a response, asking about the patent litigation that could follow, and whether the Hantro portion of On2 (H.264 embedded) would be as big an issue, so I posted the following clarifying comments.

One of the reasons, as least in my mind, that On2 bought Hantro was to hedge its bets and further embed itself into the embedded device space. What On2 got from Hantro, then, was a set of expertise that it could couple with a group of the original RPI researchers that form the core of On2's development team.

The latter group has been continually innovating for well over a decade, and while it's not a surefire method for success, since so much money has to be rolled back into research and development, it certainly has allowed a small company like On2 to keep pace with the industry as a whole.

Will this keep the IP lawsuits at bay? I suspect not, but since Google specifically calls out the R&D and innovation as a factor in the purchase, one wonders - if Google can keep them happy - what greenfield innovations the small team will be able to perform with somewhat limitless resources and a mobile / embedded platform that's a potential alternative to RIM and Apple's offerings.

It's still early in the process, and On2 has its earnings call tomorrow, but it seems like a decent plan if Google's on track to do even a fraction of this . . .