In an era where just about every possible cool name for a company or product is taken, startups and entrepreneurs find themselves dipping into the strange, the wacky and the just plain weird. I have no idea what the heck a VelvetPuffin is supposed to be--other than perhaps an extremely tacky piece of wall art--but the service itself is as cool as the name it might have had, had it debuted before the nomenclature land rush began in earnest. Still, I digress.

The VelvetPuffin service is one of an increasing number of concepts that I've seen over the past 12 months that makes me say, "Wow. I don't know whether this company is going to succeed, but it just works the way things should." So, what is it? It's an instant messaging-based social network for mobile phones, coupled with a socially active desktop, according to R. Chandrasekar, co founder of Singapore-based Radixs, the company behind the service. In plain English--and this is the brilliant simplicity that impressed us--the interface on both the phone (Java 2.0 phones with GPRS or 3G connections only) and the desktop (just Windows for now; the Mac client is forthcoming,) look just like a typical IM client: a vertical rectangle. This makes it an optimal interface for instant messaging. But it also ends up working well on the phone for managing your photos, blogs, video and polls (an easy way for you and your VelvetPuffin-equipped peers to vote on which restaurant to eat at or which movie to go see.)

DRMs, like promises, are made to be broken. So it should come as no surprise that the AACS copy protection scheme employed by both Blu-Ray and its rival HD-DVD, has already been cracked. The HD-DVD implementation of AACS fell late last year before the might of determined hackers, followed by Blu-Ray a few days ago. And while it's true that Blu-Ray has another layer of protection called BD+ which has yet to be broken, one has to assume that it's not a matter of if, but when.

The music industry is already experimenting with a small number of DRM-free albums and tracks. But since we consume music very differently than we do movies--a song is often listened to repeatedly, whereas a movie or a TV episode is usually watched once then put away for some time--it's difficult to see Hollywood following suit anytime soon. Far more likely are continued experiments with a variety of business models--like disc rental (Netflix), free streaming video with advertising (AOL Video) and paid downloads (iTunes)--in hopes that studios can stave off the pirates long enough to inculcate good behavior on the part of us consumers/would-be thieves. In other words, they'd like to keep the honest people honest. But in a BitTorrent world, that may be a bit too much to ask. No pun intended.