My previous comments hold. The body of the home page looks fine, with no complaints. However, I find the reflection in the sub-brands of “News” and “Download.com” quite distracting, and hard to read. The Web 2.0 reflection will be very dated in the near future, too.

Download.com new logo design

CNET News new logo design…without the .com

Larger question highlighted by these sub-brand treatments: how long until CBS Interactive puts the domain news.com in the service of general news?

Today’s preview includes a .com for the download design, but it’s notably absent for news. Also, www.news.com redirects to news.cnet.com now. For too long, news.com redirected to the never-beloved news.com.com (long story…not now). For a few brief weeks earlier this year, before the CBS deal, the tech news site reclaimed its original 1996 home at www.news.com. It was quickly switched over to news.cnet.com. The pendulum of parent brands vs. individual brands swings back and forth at CNET, but it’s clear this time news.com is being prepped for bigger things.

This change makes sense, since News.com is just too tempting a domain name to limit to tech news, especially given the broader portfolio of the new CBS Interactive. But stop dribbling this change out. Get the team working on the new News.com in higher gear before these design changes dampen the, well, news.

My comments are as a fan and former employee, but no inside information.

I’ve read much Wallace Stegner, but not his Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil (scroll to the bottom). A future read, certainly.

I don’t need Adventures in $40 eyeglasses right now, but for the future…

Haven’t watched The Kingdom, but the opening credits sequence is nifty. (via)

The best 10 books of the year? So says The New York Times in its 2007 list. Despite my reading, I never even came close to one of this group, and had only heard of two.

I don’t pour myself into Twitter, but I recognize that’s its very open-endedness is a strength. What caught my eye about this analysis was simply its method: pictures and diagrams, in lieu of many words. My education continues.

Who has time to read Draft Business Model Innovation Manual (beta version)? Not me, and I haven’t even downloaded the PDF, but I love the audacity of someone creating a manual for innovation. Clayton Christensen has described innovation and its consequences on businesses wonderfully. But a “manual” implies prescription, which is much, much harder.

Among the least surprising headlines of the year, from December 4, 2007: “Hybrid Vehicle Owners are Wealthy, Active, Educated and Overwhelmingly Democratic, According to Scarborough Research” (PDF available from press page)

Domains are interesting to me. I have seven of my own, though I only use one. DomainTools introduced “Registrant Search,” with an offer of a free self-search. Yup…found them all. But I don’t try and hide.

I’m a sucker for things like this: “human history in 60 seconds.

Joe Jackson is starting another tour and will be in Redwood City in May 2008.

But if it’s so simple, how come no one has done it before?

I moved DNS for this domain, pencoyd.com, back in November 2004. I’m hardly alone in having warned people ahead of time, and then being relieved when the changes were propogated (or propogating).

I know I would have jumped to use this kind of tool, even though I did lower my TTL setting before making the switch. If you have the chance, wouldn’t you want your website to be visible as close as 100% of the time to as close to 100% of the Internet as possible?

OpenDNS does not equal the Internet as a whole. Not even close. But maybe we can start something here?

The most interesting part to me? There are fewer than 200 valid domains for the entire country — all listed in the post. Here are the ones which jumped out at me:

• avis.cm – Renting a car is universal, but no hertz.cm.
• orange.cm – Mobile phones are everywhere, but I didn’t recognize any other phone companies
• airfrance.cm – The French still fly to their former colony.
• bosch.cm – A local site for the big German-based multinational, but no Philips.

I didn’t see anything for their national soccer team, the Indomitable Lions who made their real splash on the world stage in the 1990 World Cup.

What’s your favorite .cm domain?

This is all part of Idealab, as is the current Snap.com. Although the results for Big.com come from Ask.com. Got that straight? Enough three and four letter URLs for you?

Let me come right out and say it: .mobi won’t change anything about mobile use of the web. Not a thing.

I helped deliver a mobile version of CNET News.com (http://m.news.com/) in April 2004. Back in 1999, I led development of a true WAP 1.0 version of Snap.com (the old one, not the new/current search engine), so I’ve been using the mobile internet intermittently for more than seven years. So, I have some experience with the area.

Let me say again: the problem is not the domain.

The limits are bandwidth, display, and the limited use cases.

Bandwidth: In the United States (at least) mobile data rates are not yet consistently speedy. I’m on Cingular with my Treo, and it’s tolerable to use sites formatted for mobile (read: small data loads, and focused pages). Not fun, but tolerable. I’m sure EVDO is a step up, but we’re still in the dial-up days when it comes to mobile browsing. But when dial-up was a reality for the majority of the people online, few users really knew that they were missing. Now, most everyone knows what the web (and e-mail) should deliver, based on their computer experience, with DSL/cable/Wi-Fi/LAN connectivity. The alternative is almost excruciating.

Display: The smaller display isn’t a crisis. It’s just not as much fun. My Treo 650′s display is quite sharp, but the device still fits in my pocket, so it’s not that large.

Limited use cases: The use case for mobile browsing is slices of time. It always has been. Maybe it won’t always be, but I’m not convinced otherwise. When you’re killing time, waiting, commuting, or otherwise between activities and (not coincidentally) between larger display, higher bandwidth devices, then mobile browsing helps avoid boredom and/or help busy people steal moments. But it’s not planned time, with the possible exception of commuting.

Browsing the web on a mobile device is worthwhile for certain pieces of data (phone numbers, directions, answering trivia questions), but you don’t actively choose to experience the internet this way if you have an alternative.

One more strike (yes, that’s four) against the .mobi domain: the mTLD group is promising to maintain standards (see the Guide). I can’t find details, but the general ethos seemed to be that certain usability guidelines would be enforced.

We have also developed rules and recommended best practices for developers to keep the mobile surfing experience consistent. [Vance Hedderel, a spokesman for dot-mobi and mTLD, speaking to CNET News.com]

Sounds like a walled garden to me, and hard to scale for growth. Who’s going to approve each website?

I, too, want connectivity everywhere, and high-speed connectivity at that. But .mobi is a solution for a different problem: the lack of “control” some media companies, carriers, and handset providers want to rein in for their benefit. I don’t think you can put that genie back in the bottle.

Is it just a coincidence that the .xxx domain proposal recently went down in flames? (See a list of recent domain name stories at CNET News.com.) And the adult industry cheered? Hasn’t the adult industry led various other technological innovations?

Mobile browsing will continue to grow, in spite of — not because of — the .mobi domain.