April 2010

Stanford students' video helps effort to save preemies

Through an experimental class at Stanford's Graduate School of Business that tries to use social media for the public good, a trio of students posted a video to YouTube this spring promoting an organization that hopes to save the lives of millions of prematurely born babies in India and other developing nations by creating an innovative low-cost baby incubator.

A version of the students' video on behalf of the nonprofit organization Embrace will soon be appearing on digital billboards across India, after it was noticed on YouTube by the CEO of India's first interactive digital billboard company. That instant digital connection from Palo Alto to Mumbai — unthinkable before the era of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter — is the focus of "The Power of Social Technology," a new class that Stanford business professor Jennifer Aaker was inspired to teach after watching one of her students launch an effort on the Internet to find South Asian bone marrow donors for two friends who were critically ill with leukemia.

FCC AllVid Rule Would 'Ban The Set-Top As We Know It': Analyst

The Federal Communications Commission's proposed AllVid devise for providing a common way to access cable, satellite and telco TV services would, if enacted as a regulation, "ban the pay-TV set-top box as we currently know it from the U.S. market," according to IMS Research senior analyst Stephen Froehlich.

"Such a ban would directly affect more than 40 million set-top box shipments and $4.7 billion worth of sales annually," Froehlich wrote in a research report. On the other hand, such an FCC rule could "significantly decrease" the overall cost of customer-premises equipment for pay-TV operators by forcing them to migrate to standardized IP-based gateway architectures, in Froehlich's analysis. Furthermore, if the FCC's AllVid regime no longer required cable set-tops to include both CableCard and FireWire (IEEE 1394) components, that would eliminate about $600 million per year in set-top box costs for the cable industry, he added. networking interfaces, such as Broadcom, Entropic Communications, CopperGate Communications (owned by Sigma Designs), Atheros Communications, DS2 and other makers of Wi-Fi chip sets. Major set-top box vendors affected if the proposed rule is enacted would include Motorola, Cisco Systems, EchoStar, Technicolor, Pace, Humax and Samsung.

China's encryption rule could shut U.S. businesses out of big market

US businesses would be blocked from selling computers and other electronics to the Chinese government, unless they share their encryption technology with officials in Beijing by this weekend. Saturday marks the deadline by which certain tech firms must submit to China a series of details about their security tools. Failure to do so, according to officials, means those businesses will lose access to the multi-million dollar market for Chinese government contracts. The new rules do not apply to all tech products; rather only manufacturers of Internet firewalls and Web routers, among six total tech areas, must submit their encryption techniques. Still, only Chinese companies have so far submitted the necessary information, which experts fear China will only use to bolster its practice of rooting out online dissidents and blocking content on the Internet.

Charlotte, N.C., and Mecklenburg County seek stimulus funds for a shared broadband network

The city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County have united to create a comprehensive broadband network for their governments, and officials think stimulus money is an ideal way to help pay for it.

They've acted quickly. The jurisdictions sent their grant application during the second application window, from Feb. 16 to March 15. Those awards won't be given until sometime between June and September. "We think we have a great story for our application, but I realize we'll be competing against a lot of other applications. So this is not a foregone conclusion that our idea is the best," said Dennis Baucom, director of Charlotte's Network Technology Services (NTS) Division. Baucom oversees a robust city/county public radio system that's distributed across more than 10 sites and supports 17,000 subscriber radios. It's an analog Motorola wireless voice platform that serves not only departments in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, but also those in neighboring jurisdictions.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee calls for more Web censorship circumvention efforts in Iran

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a symbolic message to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) on April 27, urging its members to support "Internet censorship circumvention measures" in Iran.

Lawmakers on the committee unanimously approved the "sense of the Congress" amendment, pitched by Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware), as part of this year's State Department budget. The effort arrives as lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned by Iran's practice of detaining dissident bloggers and others who use to Web to further the state's burgeoning opposition movement. The measure that won committee approval on Tuesday has no force of law, but it nonetheless petitions the BBG to "expand international broadcasting in Iran," while promoting "means which provide for the dissemination of accurate and independent information... through radio, television, Internet, mobile devices and other forms of connective technology."

Comcast Profit Up 12%

Consumers signing up for digital cable TV and high-speed Internet services led to a 12 percent increase in first-quarter profit for Comcast Corp. The company also said advertising on its cable channels rebounded in the quarter, indicating that an economic upturn is taking hold. The nation's largest cable TV provider still sounded cautious notes Wednesday. It said that its growth could be hampered in future quarters because the jobless rate remains high and the housing market still is under duress. Such factors could lead fewer people to sign up for service. The quarter also showed how competition in the TV business is taking a toll. Comcast's overall video revenue fell, in part because the company wasn't able to raise cable TV rates as much as it had a year earlier.

Rural Aspects of National Broadband Plan Discussed at Broadband Properties Summit

There are a daunting number of rural American that do not have access to broadband, Rob Curtis, deployment director of the Federal Communication Commission's omnibus broadband initiative, said at the Broadband Properties Summit.

With 14 million Americans without access to broadband, or at least twelve-hundred feet from a fiber connection; Curtis tasked the FCC to finalize that number using various means of statistical data. The goal was to enable the distribution of first round broadband stimulus grants into the hands of applicants clamoring to build new infrastructure. His task included coming up with an economic model that realistically supported the best case scenario for economic viability. That included projecting a take rate; a payback, and cost analysis. This analysis included both wireless and landline applications which looked at using incremental economics by adding to existing plant. The team created the plan using a Census block group, finding that cost curves varied widely based on density and captured the disincentives; meaning less density and the cost goes up. The plan was submitted on a conservative basis; he said there was no "pie in the sky" numbers built into the scenario.

Comcast/NBCU Docket Filling Up

The Comcast/NBCU deal has drawn more than 1,300 comments so far, many of them a form e-mail opposing the deal. The Federal Communications Commission stopped the clock on the merger April 16 while it collects more information from the companies on the economic benefit of the deal and on its potential impact on online video distribution. The move also gave everyone more time to weigh in on the deal, a request that had been made by several groups opposing it.

Honolulu Joining Ranks of One-Paper City as 'Star-Bulletin' Gets Antitrust OK to Buy 'Advertiser'

The Justice Department's Antitrust Division said April 27 that it has closed its investigation into the purchase of the Honolulu Advertiser by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Star-Bulletin owner David Black was required by the Justice Department to try to sell the paper after he made an unexpected offer to buy the Advertiser. He intends to consolidate the papers into a single Honolulu daily. Dozens of layoffs are expected as a result. The sale attracted just two bidders, none of which were approved by Antitrust. Black is expected to consolidate the two papers, with the bulk of the layoffs coming from the Advertiser. Hawaiian media reports say the paper will be named the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The sale is expected to close Sunday.

Al Gore Wants To Democratize Television, Leaks 'Crowdsourced TV'

What if you could flip the mass media power of the TV industry funnel, making your viewers your producers, and then using communities to source, distribute and promote professionally curated content? Well, then you might have something that looked a little bit like user-generated video portal YouTube combined with a traditional television network.

That appears to be what Current Media plans to introduce soon, Chairman Al Gore hinted at during the closing keynote Tuesday at MEDIA magazine's Outfront Conference in New York. "Soon we will unveil a new, related concept that we call Crowdsourced TV," Gore disclosed during a speech that focused largely on the concept of a "sustainable advertising" marketplace, and what advertisers, agencies and the media could to do to help make it a reality. The industry needs to, Gore asserted, because, "the consumer is way ahead of us on this." Gore was alluding to the fact that consumers have already embraced social media platforms and new, inexpensive, professional quality technologies that have made them as much a part of the conversation as any marketer or media conglomerate, and that the best option for the media industry is to embrace it.

Benton

Search