February 2012

iPads help charge reading instruction

East Haven (CT) reading specialist Gina Tomassi sits with second-grader Isaac Florentino for a quick reading evaluation, listening to him read a short story about a riverside village. She’s conducted these informal, frequent assessments countless times with other students in her career, having nailed down a stop-watch monitoring, hand-tapping, note-taking routine that certainly seems a challenge for the uncoordinated or inexperienced multitaskers. But on this recent morning at D.C. Moore Elementary School, it’s all done with the touch of an iPad. School officials see the gadgets as a possible answer to the district’s achievement gap, deciding at the end of last year to spend more than $120,000 on 220 iPads and software and equip every school with a set. The thinking behind the investment is that the technology will help teachers identify struggling readers faster, use time previously spent calculating and reviewing reading assessments to work with students or adjust lesson plans, and offer kids another learning tool to use in the classroom.

Forget consumers, gigabit networks are ready for business!

Consumer applications have driven the rapid take up of faster broadband services in the U.S. in the last decade as people downloaded iTunes songs and apps and watched streaming movies via Netflix. But as Google and others build gigabit networks to see what can be done with them, maybe it’s time to bring businesses back into the innovation cycle.

Bram Cohen: My goal is to kill off television

BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen demoed his P2P live streaming protocol at the San Francisco MusicTech Summit, which he said could potentially stream live video to millions of computers with no central infrastructure. Cohen said that the protocol could potentially be used for video conferencing, live streams of video game tournaments or even live sports events. “My goal here is to kill off television,” he joked.

Google: Mobile Devices Influence Purchases

New findings from Google suggest consumers are using smartphone, tablets and desktop computers throughout the purchase process.

Based on research conducted with Ipsos, Google found that people use smartphones in particular at different points as they move toward a purchase. Nearly half (46%), for instance, said they researched an item on their smartphone before going to a store buy it. And 37% researched an item on their phone before buying it online. Four in 10 people who use their mobile phones to shop said they had made a purchase through the device itself. While people use all three devices- -- phone, tablet and PC- -- to research purchases, some activities are more popular on specific devices. Tablet owners, for instance, read product reviews and looked for product information more from their tablet devices than from their PCs or smartphones (77% compared to 67% and 70%, respectively).

What Obama's Budget (And A Second Term) Would Do For U.S. Innovation

President Barack Obama is the man in control of what's arguably the world's only current superpower. At 50, he's looking for a second go at the country's top job. In order to get there Obama's relying, in part, on his Net-savvy staffers to whip up a storm of interest on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and even Instagram. Obama's campaign proved successful last time around, running on a pro-tech ticket. Let's look at what a second term would mean for innovation -- and for us. Startups and entrepreneurship really do seem to be close to the President's heart, and Facebook's looming IPO, at $100 billion of value, makes a loud and positive statement for the Silicon Valley system.

Here's What Google (Plus Microsoft And Amazon) Will Sell At Their Stores

Apple's foray into retail was supposed to be a disaster. Now Apple's competitors – Microsoft, Amazon and Google --are hoping to repeat Apple's success in the retail space. What are all these digital market leaders trying to sell in the physical world? The answer isn't primarily physical products. Yes, these companies hope to sell a lot of products, but that's only a by-product of a more important item they want to sell: their brands.

FCC seeking comment as sun sets on digital TV carriage rules

One of the key elements of the transition to digital broadcast television was to assure that no consumers were left behind due to the lack of a digital receiver. Another was an exemption from the requirement that MVPDs pass along non-degraded high-definition broadcast signals granted to small systems. The rules expire this summer, and the Federal Communications Commission is seeking comment as to whether or not they need to be extended. The FCC is waiting for the matter, officially in the books as a Fourth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Declaratory Order, to be published in the Federal Register. Once that happens, it will establish a 25-day deadline for comments, with 10 additional days provided for reply comments. The current rules evaporate 6/12/12 unless extended.

LightSquared Customers Plead with FCC

LightSquared has been signing up customers for its planned wholesale LTE network from the beginning despite the fact that it didn't have Federal Communications Commission clearance to launch the service, forging contracts with more than 30 companies. Now, some of those companies are asking the FCC to let LightSquared light up its network amid increased uncertainty over whether the service will ever get the green light.

LightSquared's network has been shown to have a widespread impact on GPS receivers, and the FCC has said it will not allow the service to go live until the interference issue is addressed. Six companies including PowerNet Global Communications, AirTouch Communications and Karma Mobility sent separate letters to the FCC this week petitioning the agency to clear LightSquared for launch. Hometown Telecom and SI Wireless, two other LightSquared customers, made their own pleas last week.

BBC to issue global apology for documentaries that broke rules

The British Broadcasting Corporation will apologize to an estimated 74 million people around the world for a news fixing scandal, exposed by The Independent, in which it broadcast documentaries made by a London TV company that was earning millions of pounds from PR clients which it featured in its programming. BBC World News viewers from Kuala Lumpur to Khartoum and Bangkok to Buenos Aires will watch the remarkable broadcast, available in 295 million homes, 1.7 million hotel rooms, 81 cruise ships, 46 airlines and on 35 mobile phone platforms, at four different times, staged in order to reach audiences in different time zones. The BBC will apologize for breaking "rules aimed at protecting our editorial integrity".

Budget Targets LightSquared

Buried on page 1120 of President Obama's budget, the wireless startup LightSquared gets an indirect shout out. And not in a good way.

"SEC. [628]618. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Federal Communications Commission to remove the conditions imposed on commercial terrestrial operations in the Order and Authorization adopted by the Commission on January 26, 2011 (DA 11-133), or otherwise permit such operations, until the Commission has resolved concerns of potential widespread harmful interference by such commercial terrestrial operations to commercially available Global Positioning System devices."

In the Defense Authorization Act signed by Obama last year, Congress prohibited the FCC from approving LightSquared's plans until the interference issue is addressed.

Benton

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