December 2011

Amazon has been jumping with two feet into the mobile world -- launching an app storefront, an enhanced selection of cloud-based content, its own customized mobile platform and a tablet to run it in less than a year. Now, as the newest client of UK-based mobile billing company Bango, Amazon could be getting ready to introduce a new way of getting users to pay for all of that.

Publicly-traded Bango released a brief statement to the market to announce it had signed a deal with Amazon to provide the company with its mobile payment services. The announcement was short on details, and a Bango spokesperson declined to give more information when we contacted the company by phone. But it looks like it could be a move by Amazon to introduce carrier billing into its growing mobile operation. A look at what Bango does already could be the clue to how it will work: Bango currently provides mobile billing services for content companies and content distributors, which are integrated into apps (covering both downloads and in-app purchases), mobile web content and other content delivered through mobile devices. The company offers two routes for payment: either via credit cards or by charging directly to a users’ phone bill. The carrier billing element is already used by two other app stores. It could be that Amazon wants to use Bango’s services specifically for its own app storefront, which runs on Android devices, including the Kindle Fire, and was introduced earlier this year. The Appstore has yet to make its way outside of the U.S. and this could be one route to making that a reality, too.

In a representative democracy, average citizens should be able to easily monitor the public actions of their representatives and the politically powerful who seek to influence those representatives. New semantic web technologies make such monitoring more cost effective to do than ever before. But while these technologies have been widely used to monitor the weak, they have not been used to monitor the powerful, who often cite privacy and cost concerns as excuses to avoid such monitoring. This paper recommends asking the president of the United States to 1) use the new technologies so the American people can more easily monitor his public, official actions, and 2) serve as a showcase for Congress and the rest of the executive branch of government-wide information sharing for democratic accountability.

In a new report, the Parents Television Council examines the good, the bad and the ugly of MTV’s most-watched reality programming. PTC’s new study is based on a content analysis of the most popular primetime cable reality shows among children and teens ages 12 to 17 during the 2011 TV season. The top four programs all aired on MTV and include: “Jersey Shore,” “Real World,” “Teen Mom 2” and “16 and Pregnant.” The overarching question PTC sought to address was, “What messages are being communicated to young viewers through the lens and language of reality television?” The findings suggest a disturbingly unrealistic portrayal of “reality” with harsh, demeaning, degrading and sexualized dialogue. While women were routinely the recipients of denigrating language, they also were more likely than men to be negative to themselves and to other women.

Major Findings:

• Only 24% of what females said about themselves was positive across all shows combined.
• Positive dialogue between females focused on their appearance, sense of accomplishment and emotional resilience.
• Overall, women were more disparaging than men when speaking of themselves or someone of their own gender.
• While terms men used for each other were often viewed as complimentary (e.g., big man, dawg, superhero, MacGyver, winner), women used far more degrading language when talking about other females (e.g., b*tch, c*nt, rodent, skank, trash bag, slut, trick, ho).
• Females talked about sex acts more than men, talked about sex more graphically than men, mentioned sexual body parts more than men, and talked about intercourse and foreplay more than men.
• Although 88% of the sexual dialogue between females and males across all shows focused on intercourse and preliminary activities leading to intercourse, the topics of virginity (0.2%), contraceptives (1.4%) and STDs (2%) were only mentioned 4% of the time.
• “Jersey Shore” made up 47% of the disparaging remarks and 59% of the sexual references across all four shows.
• The majority of disparaging language on “Jersey Shore” came from Ronnie and Sammi. Collectively, the two accounted for almost 21% of the disparaging language across all shows.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that recipients in 34 states and one territory will receive funding to improve access to health care and educational services in rural areas. Funding is provided through the USDA Distance Learning and Telemedicine (DLT) Program.

The grants, administered by USDA Rural Development through its Rural Utilities Service, will help fund 100 distance learning and telemedicine projects, including six in North Carolina. In Duplin County – about 60 minutes from Fayetteville, James Sprunt Community College will receive a $192,870 grant that will enable faculty to offer college-level and advanced placement courses to a network of five surrounding high schools. Other North Carolina recipients include UNC-Chapel Hill, East Carolina University, Easter Seals UCP NC & VA, Sampson Regional Medical Center and Mission Healthcare Foundation, Inc.

Also included in this round of awards is funding to the Maine Sea Coast Missionary Society to buy video equipment for a ship-based medical examining room. In Sac City, Iowa, Loring Hospital will receive video conferencing equipment to connect the emergency room, outpatient and inpatient centers with local schools and area nursing homes. In Mississippi, a grant will link the University of South Mississippi with 27 schools to provide a wide range of classes to students. The Kiamichi Technology Center in Oklahoma will use grant funds to provide training to firefighters, emergency medical technicians and community members. The DLT program provides expanded educational opportunities to students in extremely remote areas. For example, in Native communities above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, there are sometimes up to three grades in a single village classroom, and DLT funding allows teaching through remote teleconferencing. In Barrow, Jana Harcharek, Director of Inupiaq Education, uses distance learning to provide dual-credit courses through Ilisagvik College. She uses the Inupiaq values, culture, history, language and philosophy as a foundation from which to provide instruction to students over a distance learning system.