Vince Cerf often labelled the "Father of the Internet" now works for Google and was the keynote speaker at the Third Annual Conference On Innovative Journalism at Stanford Univeristy in California. Vince shared commentary on the growth of the internet especially in emerging countries, usage of XML and RSS technology as marketing tools, the growth of video blogging and how the mobile handheld device is becoming a mainstream tool for creating and publishing personal content.

Growth of Internet and Services:

"On radio and TV your run out of time, with print you run out of space, on the internet you run out of neither.  What you do run out of is the attention span of the users, a finite resource.  In China the statistics are dramatically different, there are more Chinese 300M online than there are US Citizens, they spend more time, 10 hours a week on average for Americans, in China it's 15 hours.."

Blogging as a technology driver:

"The blogging world is online and machinable (read, indexed, searched by programs) which allows feedback you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.  The feedback loop on eBay for transactions could be similarly used for information on blogs.  In print media, the bylines have email addresses, where you could potentially interact with the writer."

Bandwidth and mobile services:

"The ability to work faster or slower than real-time, instead of being confined to real-time is a dramatic change for the distribution of these mediums. In Stockholm you can buy 100Gbps for 100 Europes, download a 1hr movie in 16 seconds."

Mobile handheld as prefered tool and enabler:

"The mobile is one example, a small display, but incredibly useful.  In an internet enabled world, there is no reason that a projector could not be online and downloading images, maybe using the Blackberry as a control device. Surrounded by networked equipment that is reachable anywhere, devices harnessed on a temporary basis to do something for you and then released.  I am predicting that during this decade, we will see more systems interacting with other systems like this and in journalism it will become part of our toolkit for sharing and feedback."

See the full article on Ross Mayfield's site.

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