February 2012

Romney in His Comfort Zone in Technology Speech

Appearing at home in front of an audience of technology executives and workers, Mitt Romney extolled the virtues of innovation, limited regulation, and low taxes to spur the US economy. "You have to have regulators in government who see their job as encouraging innovation in the private sector, as opposed to killing all potential risk," he told about 900 people at the Northern Virginia Technology Council. The crowd, often polite and quiet, interrupted the speech to clap at that line. They also applauded his calls to "staple a green card" to the Ph.D.'s that foreign students earn in the United States, or even abroad at top universities. Romney's speech sketched the broad outline of the business climate he sees as necessary for the U.S. to prosper, including the importance of allowing people the freedom to take risks, with few proposals specific to the technology industry.

Smart TVs cause a network neutrality debate in South Korea

Remember that whole network neutrality fight in the U.S. from 2009 and 2010? Well back then the issue was over applications hogging precious bandwidth, and ISPs hoping to charge the likes of Google, Netflix and others for the increasing traffic running across wireline and wireless pipes. Korea Telecom in South Korea has taken an interesting twist on the idea, and decided to block Samsung’s Smart TVs from accessing the Internet. That’s right, network neutrality isn’t just for applications anymore. KT cut off Samsung’s Smart TVs after a dispute over how much data those TVs consume.

How social media is making polling obsolete

Companies are high on social media for a number of reasons, but perhaps chief among them should be that social platforms provide the opportunity to create focus groups at a scale never before possible. Millions of people talk about all sorts of things online, and with the right systems and algorithms in place, it’s possible to decipher how they actually feel about the topics they’re discussing. If you want to know how the web-savvy world feels about a product, movie, team, you name it, millions of data sources should trump interviewing a few hundred people in malls across the country.

Sunday Shows Overwhelmingly White And Male: Study

A new study confirms, yet again, one of the more troubling features of the Sunday morning talk shows: that they are dominated by white men.

The study, released by the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts, is part of a new initiative by a wide coalition of Latino groups to bring more diversity to the Sunday shows. The NHFA tabulated every guest and commentator on "This Week," "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation" and "Fox News Sunday" from March-November of 2011. The lack of diversity on the Sunday shows is, of course, hardly news, but the seemingly cast-in-stone makeup of the shows at a time of rapidly increasing diversity is always noteworthy. According to the study, the guests on the shows are 88 percent white, 8 percent black, 3 percent Latino and just 1 percent Asian or Native American. The roster of commentators was similarly skewed: 83 percent white, 7.6 percent black, 4 percent Latino and .67 percent Asian or Native American. Women also represented by just 22 percent of guests.

Amazon’s Kindle Plays A Part In Penguin’s Library Decision

Penguin is ending its partnership with OverDrive and will no longer provide e-books or digital audiobooks to libraries. It’s become clear that OverDrive’s relationship with Amazon played a part in the decision.

Back in November when Penguin stopped offering new e-books to libraries, it also stopped offering e-books to library patrons using Kindles. A few days later, Penguin restored Kindle access, but also noted, “Penguin informed suppliers to libraries that it expected them to abide by existing agreements to offer older digital titles to libraries only if those files were held behind the firewalls of the suppliers.” If you have a Kindle and check out a library book on it, clicking “Get for Kindle” sends you straight to Amazon’s website instead of having you check out the book from within the library’s site. Kindle borrowing is done over the air, so if you check out a library book on Kindle it will be delivered wirelessly to your device, just like a book you buy from the Kindle Store. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

Why Google Is Getting Into Entertainment: Your Data

Everyone is suggesting that Google is busy designing and testing its own-branded hardware. This is fascinating on a number of levels, but one question about the rumor really stands out: Why? Google goes out of its way to appear to be serving the public, all the while gathering a precious resource it uses to earn its billions: Data. Ultimately this data from Google TV, from Google+, from Google Voice, from YouTube, from search, from Gmail and basically every other Google product turns into money for Google via advertising space. This space is sold to advertising partners on the understanding that a particular brand message is very precisely targeted at its potential market in a way that few other technologies can match, and so that every ad dollar spent is more efficiently employed. Basically Google wants to be off your desk, out of your phone pocket, and into your home. Because that's where even more advertising dollars can be found.

Lifeline Order Strikes Balance between Needs, Burdens

The Julius Genachowski Federal Communications Commission continued its mission to go down in history as the Commission that modernized telecommunications regulation for a broadband world (or at least attempted to do so) with its latest sweeping revamp of the Universal Service Fund. The new rules adopted in the Lifeline Reform Report and Order and FNPRM might be a bit short of a “sweeping revamp,” but they do appear to thoroughly close loopholes and accomplish a considerable amount of administrative reform in the Lifeline program in order to move towards a more streamlined, effective and organized support system for low income Americans. The FCC attempts to create balance between meeting the communications needs of low-income consumers and minimizing the contributions burden on those who pay into the Fund. The FCC also attempts to minimize administrative burdens for ETCs who provide Lifeline discounts while also ensuring that only individuals who truly qualify are enrolled. While most of the rules largely constitute housekeeping, the proposed pilot programs for Lifeline-supported broadband may prove more interesting.

63% of iPhones were activated outside the US last quarter

The U.S. is becoming a progressively less important market for sales of Apple's iPhones. The company is likely to report a sharp uptick in international sales this quarter, reflecting the crushing demand for the iPhone 4S exhibited when the device went on sale in China last month.

The Vital Role of Global Journalism in the Digital Age

[Commentary] The Committee to Protect Journalists has just marked its thirtieth anniversary, in a year notable for the breadth of international protest movements and the expansion of digital technology for the collection and distribution of information.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have become embedded in the dissemination of events as they take place and have impacted the definition of news in fundamental respects. In ways unimagined a decade ago, the streets are filled with amateurs. Their efforts at working around the repressive techniques of authoritarian governments have made a significant difference in newsgathering. Trained journalists and the "citizen" reporters who supply so much of the raw material for them are at the forefront of upheaval, with consequences that are as dangerous as they are illuminating. CPJ's annual report, along with the many additional surveys available on its website, provide unusually valuable insight into the organization's work: monitoring the role of journalism and defending the rights of journalists wherever unrest spreads.

Sebastian Brings Service to Isolated Town Without Electricity

California telephone carrier Sebastian recently brought DSL and voice service to the community of Iowa Hill which previously not only lacked those services; it also has no electrical service. The community of about 250 people between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe traces its roots to the mid-19th century. Astonishingly, Iowa Hill was once under consideration to be the state capital. Today, like many isolated rural communities, it has many older residents -- and they were becoming increasingly concerned about the lack of communications. When the state of California created a grant program to extend telecommunications infrastructure to unserved areas, the local county applied and received a grant for $2.25 million to bring service to the community, explained Rhonda Armstrong, vice president of commercial operations for Sebastian. But the incumbent telco, one of the large nationwide companies, was unwilling to do the deployment. Fortunately, Sebastian had purchased phone lines in nearby Foresthill several years earlier and after arranging to annex Iowa Hill into its serving territory, Sebastian was able to take on the project.

Benton

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