How long will it be before .com names are replaced by something more chic? 10 years? 20 years? Even sooner? When that time comes, things are going to be a mess– domain name fights and lawsuits everywhere. The only other example, (that I can think of on a coporate level) where there’s a rush to register names are vanity phone numbers: (800) MY-NAMES or something of the sort.

Why trade stocks and precious metals when you can trade internet domain names, instead?… Also, has anyone ever noticed that GoDaddy = god addy = god addresses?… Interesting…

We all have a lot of electronic data that has accumulated. The amount of data that we’d like to keep (photos, videos, music, documents, etc.) keeps growing. I’m betting that photos and videos far outpace personal documents in the MB/GB race, so multimedia dominates our storage needs. People will soon realize that hard disk drives are unreliable for long-term data storage and that, worse yet, CD’s and DVD’s have finite shelf lives. Many dollars are put into personal mp3 investments (rather than CDs), and someday video (movies) will take the same sort of download model. What happens if your iPod dies and your laptop HDD breaks (or worse yet is stolen)? Will the music play on?…

The answer is online data storage. I advocate it for non-sensitive data like mp3 files, photos, and videos. The problem with data these days is that multimedia files are huge and keep growing as we push high def technology. Now, families can easily have 200-300 GB of data on the home PC.

The biggest bottleneck to a successful online storage business model is the upload link speed to the storage server. Our ISPs are the key to unlocking online data storage. If I were an ISP, I’d partner with a giagantic storage solution partner (maybe Google, IBM, Amazon S3, etc.) and write special software that would allow high-speed uploads (software that would enable a high-speed, high bandwidth mode on the DSL/cable modem). The ISP pipe would be allowed to open up for these special online storage softwares, and the cost would be bundled with ISP coverage.

Currently, the only way to upload 300+ GB of data online is sending in your hard disk (not always an option and clumsy, too) or going to your local high-bandwidth university and uploading that data over many hours. Perhaps Web 3.0 will address personal storage solutions. The need is silently growing… I’m looking forward to the solution!