This October, comScore noted that 175 million US Internet users watch online video, which included more than 5.2 billion viewing sessions in just one month. By 2013, the number of online video viewers in the U.S. is estimated to hit 188 million.

There’s no doubt the exponential rise of online video viewing will have a massive impact on the Internet. To ensure that we are constantly innovating online and providing the best user experiences, VeriSign created a grant program to foster new research, advance security and stability and improve the Internet infrastructure to meet this growing demand. Since online video is increasingly popular, it is not surprising that Infrastructure Applications are one of the four categories open for grant submissions. Other categories include Domain Name System (DNS) Security, Internationalization of the Internet, and overall Internet Infrastructure.

There are four grants available this fall, each totaling $75,000. In order to qualify, applicants must be members of an academic institution, researchers, a non-profit organization or a technology high school with an international sister school. The deadline to submit applications is November 15.

Think you have an idea for how to improve the Internet? Apply now.

The celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first domain name registration (symbolics.com) began in March with the Policy Impact Forum in D.C. I was on business travel that week so I wasn’t able to attend the event – which was a huge bummer for me because the keynote address was given by Dr. Fareed Zakaria and headlined by President Bill Clinton. Luckily for me, I wasn’t already booked so I was able to attend Wednesday’s dinner in San Francisco. The event was hosted by comedian Dana Carvey – but Scott McNealy gave him a run for the money to see who could get more laughs. Scott’s “top 10ish” list of reasons why he was surprised we were celebrating the 25th anniversary had me cracking up.

You can read more about the 25th anniversary and all the things VeriSign is doing to celebrate it here.

For more information about all the festivities, check out …yes, a .com http://www.25yearsof.com/