When ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate-Thrush, an accomplished attorney, said last year that he wouldn't let one of his own clients agree to a contract that could be unilaterally changed after it was signed, the Internet community breathed a sigh of relief. But when the Chairman backed away from that stance earlier this week in Nairobi, it became clear that we should have held our breath a little bit longer.

A while back we did a paper looking at the CPU marketplace and how new chips help to foster new software sales. A chart from Gizmodo sums up one of our points: Every chip manufacturer is playing in the iPad/Slate/tablet game.

Yesterday, I attended Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policy address on Internet Freedom at the Newseum in Washington, DC. I wanted to know from the Secretary what the State Department would do to help a U.S. tech company with a subsidiary in China whose employees are being taken to jail and whose equipment is being hauled away because the company refuses to give information about its users to the Chinese government.

Today, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith discussed the potential for cloud computing in the future and how government can help at the Brookings Institution. Smith suggested that there was a lot to be done to achieve a safe and open cloud for business and consumers, including the need to update privacy and transparency laws to better reflect our portable data world.