August 2012

SPECTRUM/WIRELESS

VERIZON SPECTRUM DEAL NEARS APPROVAL
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Amy Schatz, Thomas Catan]
Federal regulators are preparing to clear Verizon Wireless's $3.9 billion deal to acquire airwaves from several cable companies including Comcast, according to people close to the negotiations, after the companies reached broad agreement to settle antitrust concerns. To clinch their deal with Verizon Wireless, the cable companies have agreed to limit the scope and duration of side agreements to sell each other's services, the people said. Consumer groups and other critics had said the joint marketing pacts were effectively agreements between the companies not to compete for customers seeking broadband Internet, television and phone services in their homes. Although some details are still being worked out, Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission officials are preparing to approve the deal in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to begin the process this week by circulating a proposal to approve the deal among the agency's four other commissioners, according to several agency officials. The Justice Department is also preparing to drop its objections to the deal after the companies agreed in principle to limit the duration of the joint ventures to five years or less, after which they will have to reapply for antitrust clearance for a new tie-up, people familiar with the discussions said.
benton.org/node/132162 | Wall Street Journal
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MOTOROLA CUTS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Claire Cain Miller]
Motorola Mobility, the ailing cellphone maker that Google bought in May, told employees that it would lay off 20 percent of its work force and close a third of its 94 offices worldwide. The cuts are the first step in Google’s plan to reinvent Motorola, which has fallen far behind its biggest competitors, Apple and Samsung, and to shore up its Android mobile business and expand beyond search and software into the manufacture of hardware. One-third of the 4,000 jobs lost will be in the United States. The company plans to leave unprofitable markets, stop making low-end devices and focus on a few cellphones instead of dozens, said Dennis Woodside, Motorola’s new chief executive.
benton.org/node/132115 | New York Times
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OWNERSHIP

APPLE RESTS ITS CASE
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Howard Mintz]
Ending its case in a blaze of dollar signs, Apple's final witness in its smartphone legal war with Samsung calculated the record damages -- up to $2.75 billion -- Apple is urging a jury to award if it finds in the iPhone maker's favor. Apple expert Terry Musika's estimate of what could be owed to Apple was the final touch after three weeks of federal court testimony on Apple's claims that Samsung copied the iPhone and iPad in its smartphones and tablets. Musika followed a parade of other expert witnesses who testified on Apple's behalf the past two weeks in a case alleging that Samsung "slavishly copied" the iPhone and iPad. Apple executives and designers also testified, revealing some of the inner secrets of how the Cupertino tech giant develops its signature products. When Apple wrapped its case, Samsung immediately moved for a judgment in its own favor, arguing that Apple had failed to prove patent infringement or that it violated Apple's "trade dress" rights, which center on claims that Samsung's products mimic the general appearance of the iPhone and iPad. But U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected the legal maneuver, which is always a long shot because the standard for dismissing a case midtrial is difficult to meet.
benton.org/node/132157 | San Jose Mercury News | Wall Street Journal
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GOOGLE FIBER AND CABLE
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Afzaal Akhtar]
Google knows how to make a splash in new markets. Like Search, Gmail, Maps and other innovative products from the company, Google Fiber is shaping up to be a market disruptor. This time, Google’s sights are set on the TV and Internet services industry. Google Fiber includes so many breakthrough elements that it will serve as a learning lab not just for Google, but for its competitors in the cable industry as well. But what exactly are those competitors hoping to learn? This is what the cable industry will be watching most closely as Google Fiber rolls out to consumers.
Business models that allow Google to increase the revenue pie
The business case for “fiberhoods”
Can Google keep payments simple?
Will the Nexus 7 tablet more deeply engage subscribers?
Where will Google take programming?
What kind of support will Google need to provide?
benton.org/node/132089 | GigaOm | Google
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

THERE’S ONLY ONE TRULY OPEN PLATFORM: THE WEB
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Mathew Ingram]
As Twitter and Facebook continue to fight a variety of skirmishes in the ongoing “platform wars,” with both companies trying to control as much of their networks as they can in order to monetize them as quickly as possible, it’s worth remembering what Sir Tim Berners-Lee did 21 years ago, when he created the first truly open internet-based platform: namely, the World Wide Web. In an early interview about his invention, Berners-Lee confessed there was a time where he considered taking a different route and trying to profit from what he had developed, but he chose a different path. The amount of social and commercial value that has been created as a result is almost impossible to calculate. This is something that’s worth thinking about as we see the social web becoming a mainstream phenomenon, with all that implies. The choices we make when it comes to the platforms we use, and the choices those platforms make about how they choose to monetize their networks, will have far-reaching implications.
benton.org/node/132087 | GigaOm
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NEED FOR SPEED
[SOURCE: The Economist, AUTHOR: ]
Nothing drives an elected official to indignity faster than the promise of something for nothing. When Google announced that it would build a fiber-optic broadband network capable of delivering one gigabit-per-second internet—roughly 150 times the average American internet speed—to residential users in an American city, mayors lined up to debase themselves. Duluth’s jumped into a frozen lake, Sarasota’s into a shark tank. The mayor of Topeka changed his city’s name (for a day) to Google. Ultimately Google decided on Kansas City, and next month it will start providing its blazing-speed internet for $70 a month. But that service will not be available to all Kansas Citians. Instead, Google has divided Kansas City into 204 districts (which it annoyingly insists on calling “fibrehoods”), has invited consumers who want the one-gigabit service to register in advance, and will deliver service to the 46 areas with the highest concentration of interested consumers. Only one American city offers one-gigabit internet connections to every resident, and it is not tech-savvy San Francisco or university-laden Boston, but Chattanooga, Tennessee’s fourth-largest city, nestled in the Appalachian foothills.
benton.org/node/132076 | Economist, The
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PHONE COMPANIES AND BROADBAND
[SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Peter Svensson]
Phone companies are losing the high-speed Internet game. In the second quarter, the landline phone industry lost broadband subscribers for the first time, as cable companies continued to pile on new household and small-business customers, thanks to the higher speeds they offer in most areas. The flow of subscribers from phone companies to cable providers could lead to a de facto monopoly on broadband in many areas of the country, say industry watchers. That could mean a lack of choice and higher prices. Phone lines, designed to carry conversations, and often decades old, are poorly suited to carry Internet signals compared to the heavily shielded cables that carry TV signals. That means cable companies find it much easier and cheaper to provide fast Internet service compared with DSL that phone companies provide in most areas. Cable providers now offer download speeds of 100 megabits per second in many areas, about 20 times faster than DSL. The country's largest Internet service provider is cable company Comcast, with 18.7 million subscribers, followed by AT&T, with 16.4 million.
benton.org/node/132153 | Associated Press
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CYBERSECURSITY

LIEBERMAN-COLLINS SPLIT
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Tony Romm]
The architects of the Senate’s lagging cybersecurity bill don’t exactly see eye to eye on whether the Administration should implement reform by fiat. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) said he still hopes Congress can finalize a law this year, but he added: “[If] Congress cannot get its act together to protect our nation from the real, urgent and growing threat of cyber attack, then the president must do everything he can by executive order.” That said, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairman acknowledged there’s just “some things” an executive order can’t accomplish (potentially including liability protection) that instead “can only be done by statute.” Yet Lieberman’s close ally, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), isn’t so fond of the idea. “Given the threat, I understand the administration’s desire to act, but an executive order should not be a substitute for legislative action,” she said in a statement. “I am deeply disappointed that the Senate failed to pass our bipartisan bill before the August recess, but it remains imperative that this Congress address this issue. An executive order could send the unintended signal that congressional action is not urgently needed.”
benton.org/node/132104 | Politico
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ROBUST ROLE FOR CYBER-SPECIALISTS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
The Pentagon has proposed that military cyber-specialists be given permission to take action outside its computer networks to defend critical U.S. computer systems — a move that officials say would set a significant precedent. The proposal is part of a pending revision of the military’s standing rules of engagement. The secretary of defense has not decided whether to approve the proposal, but officials said adopting the new rules would be within his authority. “Without a doubt it would be a very big and significant step forward,” said a senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It would account for changes in technology that will give more flexibility in defending the nation from cyberattack.” Currently, the military is permitted to take defensive actions or to block malicious software — such as code that can sabotage another computer — only inside or at the boundaries of its own networks. But advances in technology and mounting concern about the potential for a cyberattack to damage power stations, water-treatment plants and other critical systems have prompted senior officials to seek a more robust role for the department’s Cyber Command.
benton.org/node/132109 | Washington Post
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HEALTH

BROADBAND HEALTH CARE NETWORKS IMPROVE QUALITY OF CARE FOR RURAL AMERICANS, REDUCE COSTS AND HELP SAVE LIVES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Broadband health care networks improve the quality and reduce the cost of delivering care in rural areas, according to a Federal Communications Commission staff report evaluating the Commission’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program. The report details the benefits of the Pilot program, as well as the lessons learned from the Pilot, which supports 50 active projects in 38 states. The five largest projects are statewide networks in California, Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina and West Virginia, which are on target to connect over 800 health care providers. Broadband networks of rural and urban providers save lives by providing rural Americans with instant access to specialized services that are not available in rural areas, saving time that is critical in stroke care and other emergencies. High-speed broadband networks capable of supporting telemedicine and telehealth applications also provide rural patients access to more routine telehealth consultations with medical specialists, efficiently transit health records, and facilitate training of nurses and doctors. But rural health care providers operate on thin margins, and may not be able to afford broadband communications without assistance from the FCC’s Rural Health Care program, the report says. The FCC launched the Pilot in 2006 to explore how best to help rural health care providers harness the power of broadband to improve care.
benton.org/node/132138 | Federal Communications Commission
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CONTENT

GOOGLE SEARCH TO BE ANTI-PIRACY ENFORCER
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Tony Romm, Michelle Quinn]
Websites that are subject to frequent copyright removal notices will soon begin to appear lower in Google search rankings — a new effort to crack down on piracy that has Hollywood happy but consumer groups fearful of potential abuse. Announcing the new policy on its blog, Google said that sites with “high numbers” of “valid” removal notices would be affected as the search company tries instead to “help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily — whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.” To movie studios and recording artists, that’s good news. The new Google policy could limit access to movies, songs, books and other digital documents often peddled illegally online. But public-interest advocates like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation say the search company’s new plan is ambiguous. They say those “valid” takedown requests aren’t often valid, and they fear some legal sites could be caught in the fray.
benton.org/node/132078 | Politico | Public Knowledge | Talking Points Memo
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GOOGLE BUYING FROMMER
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jeffrey Trachtenberg]
Google is acquiring the Frommer's travel brand from publicly traded John Wiley & Sons for an undisclosed price in order to bolster its offerings of local reviews around the world. Google sees an opportunity to broaden its consumer offerings outside of restaurant reviews. That Frommer's provides information about hotels and destinations globally made the acquisition that much more attractive. The deal is expected to close shortly. Google hasn't yet decided whether the Frommer's guidebooks will continue to be published in print or whether they will eventually migrate entirely to online. It is also possible that the Frommer's brand could be melded into the Zagat brand. One publisher suggested it was unlikely that the Frommer's sale would generate significant antitrust concerns. "The travel book business is small potatoes even for the Justice Department," said Bill Newlin, publisher of Avalon Travel, an imprint of the Perseus Books Group that publishes travel expert Rick Steves and the Moon branded guides. Newlin isn't worried about Frommer's titles getting an unfair advantage in search, either. "There's only one way to spell Rick Steves," he said.
Frommer's dates back to 1957, when Arthur Frommer, founder of the Frommer's series, with a book that offered travel advice to Americans visiting Europe for those able to spend $5 a day. Wiley acquired the Frommer's brand in 2001.
benton.org/node/132112 | Wall Street Journal
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WHY FROMMER’S?
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Liz Gannes]
The news that Google is buying Frommer’s elicited a gut reaction that’s starting to feel familiar: Google is a search company, so what the heck is it doing buying content? What’s Google doing? What it has been doing for years: YouTube has put up hundreds of millions of dollars for video production; Android’s Andy Rubin licenses music and magazines for Google Play; Google even was in the bidding to buy Hulu from its major media company owners. Frommer’s may have a well-known name, but the buy is only costing Google a reported $23 million — or basically nothing in Google terms. The property will be absorbed into Zagat, which reportedly cost all of $125 million. What’s slightly different about the Frommer’s deal is that the travel guidebook creator had an editorial team to write its content, whereas Zagat was perhaps one of the first user-generated content services. But if you look at the language Google is now using, it’s grouping all this local and travel content as “reviews.” Google said the Frommer’s deal will help it fill in reviews for venues all over the world. The reason Google wants to bring this particular type of content in-house? Search is increasingly about answers (at least as long as those European regulators don’t get in the way). That’s especially true on mobile.
benton.org/node/132159 | Wall Street Journal
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E-BOOK LENDING
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Mathew Ingram]
[Commentary] We’ve written before about how complicated the process of lending an e-book is, and how much of this is a result of conflicting DRM locks and platforms, as well as a reluctance on the part of publishers to allow their books to be loaned. But authors can also be a roadblock when it comes to lending, and we’ve just had a classic example of how that can happen with the brouhaha over LendInk, a service that allowed readers to connect with others in order to share e-books. The site has effectively been put out of business by a virtual lynch mob of authors claiming it breached their rights, even though what it was doing was perfectly legal. Much of the negative response to LendInk came about because of a series of misunderstandings about how the service worked, and also a lack of knowledge about how Amazon handles lending for Kindle books. But the incident also says a lot about how authors view lending of e-books to begin with — many seem to see every book loaned as a potential sale that has been lost, just as the music industry used to look down on file-sharing of music as theft. But they are just as wrong.
benton.org/node/132086 | GigaOm
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E-BOOK PRICING
[SOURCE: paidContent.org, AUTHOR: Laura Hazard Owen]
Attorney and Royalty Share CEO Bob Kohn is seeking permission from U.S. District Judge Denise Cote to file an amicus brief in the Department of Justice’s proposed e-book pricing settlement with book publishers. In the brief that Kohn filed with the court, he says the DOJ’s own investigation into Amazon’s e-book pricing practices shows that the company engaged in predatory pricing. He asks the Court to demand that the DOJ turn over all documents relating to its investigation of Amazon’s e-book pricing practices. In addition, Kohn asks Judge Cote to hold a hearing on the settlement — something that the Department of Justice is opposed to — and asks permission “to participate in oral argument at any such hearing to address issues that have been raised by the Justice Department’s response to the public comments.”
benton.org/node/132084 | paidContent.org
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NEWS FROM THE FTC

FTC APPROVES FINAL SETTLEMENT WITH FACEBOOK
[SOURCE: Federal Trade Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has accepted as final a settlement with Facebook resolving charges that Facebook deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers' information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party. The FTC vote to approve the final order and letters to members of the public who commented on it was 3-1-1 with Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch dissenting and Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen not participating.
benton.org/node/132095 | Federal Trade Commission | Politico
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LETTING COMPANIES SETTLE WHILE DENYING GUILT RECONSIDERED BY FTC
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Edward Wyatt]
The Federal Trade Commission said it would re-examine its own practice of allowing companies to settle charges of wrongdoing while denying that they had done anything wrong. The turnabout came in response to a blistering dissent from the Facebook settlement by one commissioner, J. Thomas Rosch, who said that allowing the company to deny charges it was agreeing to settle undermined the commission’s authority. Commissioner Rosch agreed with the general outlines of the Facebook settlement, but wrote in his dissent that the Federal Trade Commission Rules of Practice “do not provide for such a denial” of the charges. He also advocated further tightening of the commission’s rules, which in addition to outright denial allow a settling company to say that its agreement “is for settlement purposes only and does not constitute an admission by any party that the law has been violated.” That is tantamount to a denial, Commissioner Rosch said, and should be disallowed. Commissioner Rosch also dissented from the FTC’s settlement with Google and in at least one earlier case. The Google settlement allowed the company to deny charges that it misrepresented whether it would place tracking cookies on Apple’s Safari browser.
benton.org/node/132093 | New York Times
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FTC CAUTIONS ON PRIVACY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offered tips to business executives about how to avoid ending up like Google, which agreed to a record $22.5 million settlement over privacy violations last week. In a blog post, senior FTC attorney Leslie Fair urged executives to carefully scrutinize the details of their privacy policies to ensure they match their companies actual operations. She said companies also need to remember that if they agree to join a self-regulatory group, they have to follow the group's policies. "Membership in self-regulatory programs is your call, but once you advertise your adherence to an industry code, live up to its terms," she wrote. Fair said companies should ensure that their executive, lawyers and technology teams are communicating effectively so that everyone understands what it is really happening behind the scenes at the company. "Your information technology staff needs to run a strong lead-off with smooth baton passes to your marketing execs and legal advisors," Fair wrote in the Olympics-themed post. "But victory depends on a solid anchor leg from top management committed to crossing the finish line in front."
benton.org/node/132136 | Hill, The | FTC
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GOOGLE FACES RISING FTC IRE
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Adam Mazmanian]
Google may be wearing out its welcome with the Federal Trade Commission. Antitrust lawyers and other experts say the agency seems to be developing an institutional dislike for the company after pursuing a series of actions against it. If that's the case, it couldn't come at a worse time for Google, which is facing an ongoing antitrust investigation into the workings of its search engine.
Government antitrust lawyers as a matter of course adopt an adversarial stance toward the companies they investigate. But not every target becomes a white whale. It happened to Microsoft when government attorneys reached a point where they felt they could not believe anything the company said. Several former FTC attorneys contacted by National Journal suggested that the pileup of probes into Google could be breeding ill will among current staffers.
benton.org/node/132091 | National Journal
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FTC’S GOOGLE FINE COULD CRAMP INNOVATION. OR NOT.
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Aliya Sternstein]
After the federal government dealt Google a record $22.5 million fine for allegedly misrepresenting its service terms in violation of a previous privacy settlement, a free market group called the punishment a loss for citizens. Other consumer advocacy groups said the sentence was too light because the company didn’t take responsibility for its actions. And some bystanders chalked up the whole thing to a parlor game. The Competitive Enterprise Institute described the Federal Trade Commission’s penalty as an overreaction that will chill innovation and scare startups away from the Internet. “Although Google found itself in the FTC’s crosshairs this time, the agency could have just as easily targeted any number of other Web companies for similarly minor missteps,” Ryan Radia, CEI associate director of the Center for Technology and Innovation, said in a statement, adding the settlement will benefit regulators and lawyers “at the expense of the consumers the agency is supposed to protect.”
benton.org/node/132082 | nextgov
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

RYAN AND SOCIAL MEDIA
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Steve Friess]
Mitt Romney didn’t just get a running mate in Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) — he inherited a robust, engaged social media apparatus that will be critical to volunteerism and conservative voter turnout. Rep Ryan is an anomaly in the House. He’s a star politician who had more Twitter followers before the announcement than Republican House Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), and almost any other congressional figure save current House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The tea party groups who are crucial to the GOP’s chances may be some of the most active, savvy online denizens in American politics. Romney’s social media profile is broad but not deep, meaning he has a lot of followers — almost 4 million on Facebook and more than 800,000 on Twitter — but the enthusiasm and engagement expected from such a large audience was muted.
benton.org/node/132079 | Politico
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PAUL RYAN IS NOT MASTER OF HIS DOMAIN NAMES
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Adam Mazmanian]
Most of the beachfront real estate covering the Romney-Ryan ticket has been snapped up by domain speculators. Paulryan.com, VPPaulRyan.com, RomneyRyan.com, and RomneyRyan2012 are all waiting for bidders — presumably from the campaign or an allied group. Romney-Ryan.com even has a price tag on domain registration site GoDaddy — it’s available for $49,880 as of this writing. One exception is PaulRyanVP.com, which was registered on Friday night by Ohio University sophomore Matt McKnight, right when he heard that Ryan was the likely pick. He was prepared to do the same no matter whom the campaign chose, as a way of protecting the domain from potential abusers. “I’m sitting on it so no one else can get their hands on it,” he said. McKnight says he’s a big supporter of the ticket and not looking to cash in on the domain; he says he would transfer it to the campaign if asked. “It would be cool to get some VIP tickets to a rally,” he said.
benton.org/node/132133 | National Journal
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WHAT VOTERS KNOW
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, AUTHOR: ]
As the presidential campaign enters its final three months, most voters say they already know what they need to know to form a clear impression of the candidates. But fewer say this about Mitt Romney than about President Barack Obama. Indeed, the latest Pew Research Center knowledge survey finds that while voters know many key things about the candidates and their issue positions, voters are less familiar with Romney than with Obama.
benton.org/node/132131 | Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
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FCC DATABASE
[SOURCE: Roll Call, AUTHOR: Rebecca Shabad]
A Federal Communications Commission plan to make television stations disclose how many political ads they have sold is creating administrative headaches for network affiliates in battleground states that deal with a dozen or more campaigns or political groups in a single market. An online database the FCC launched last week is designed to eliminate the need for people to obtain hard-copy files of advertising agreements from individual stations. Instead, the stations must scan the agreements into computers, convert them into PDF files and upload them to the database. “There isn’t any question that it’s using up station resources in terms of time spent for some people who normally had full-time jobs doing something else,” said Lou Schottelkotte, director of sales at ABC affiliate WEWS in Cleveland. In battlegrounds such as northeast Ohio, Schottelkotte said, there can be 10 to 12 political entities jockeying for air time simultaneously. One native of the Buckeye State, T.J. Basalla, a marketing specialist for a technology company, recently tweeted, “You can honestly go through an entire local newscast in Cleveland and see nothing but political ads.”
benton.org/node/132071 | Roll Call
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PRIVACY

DATA BROKERS PUSH BACK
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Brendan Sasso]
An advertising trade association dismissed lawmakers' concerns about companies that buy and sell information about consumers. A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wrote to major data brokers last month and questioned them about their business practices. “By combining data from numerous offline and online sources, data brokers have developed hidden dossiers on almost every U.S. consumer,” the lawmakers wrote. “This large scale aggregation of the personal information of hundreds of millions of American citizens raises a number of serious privacy concerns." But in a response, the Digital Marketing Association said the lawmakers are questioning "legitimate commercial data practices that are essential to America’s job creation, economic growth and global leadership." The group said that targeted advertising is "the fuel on which America’s free market engine runs."
benton.org/node/132101 | Hill, The
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STREET TRAFFIC SURVEILLANCE
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Nate Berg]
It's an increasingly common navigational experience in the age of connected and app-enabled phones: you can see yourself as a little dot on the map, moving on your screen as you move in the physical space of the world. You see your map, your map sees you. And if your map is a Google Map and your screen powered by the Android operating system, you can see your map seeing you and many of the people around you. This collection and sharing of locational information is the basis behind the traffic-tracking layer on Google Maps. By combining all those devices' location points and detecting the speeds at which they're moving, Google is able to infer how quickly traffic is moving on major streets and highways. Originally launched in 2008, it can be a really useful layer of urban information, representing real-time conditions. And as the company recently announced, it's growing. More than 130 cities and small towns all over the world have been added to the project, including places like Kalamazoo, Michigan, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Latin American cities like Bogota, Colombia, and San Jose, Costa Rica. With more than 400 million Android users throughout the world, Google is finding that it has enough of a data mass in many more cities to provide this information. This map shows all the locations throughout the world where Google is mapping traffic conditions using phone data.
benton.org/node/132077 | Atlantic, The
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TELEVISION

ALABAMA PUBLIC TV
[SOURCE: Salon, AUTHOR: Alex Seitz-Wald]
Alabama was the first state in the nation to create a public television network in the early 1950s, but now, the network may be the nation’s most vulnerable, thanks to an attempted coup from its conservative overseers. A judge in the state heard testimony this week in a lawsuit on the alleged wrongful termination of the network’s former executive director and CFO, who were apparently fired after refusing to air overtly religious content. The network’s license is up for renewal this year and donations have dropped off, raising the stakes of the conflict between the network’s politically appointed commissioners and its professional staff. Though the controversy has been largely missed by the national media thus far, it gets at the heart of key questions about religion in public life and government spending that have gripped the nation in the Obama era. “We feel like we’re victims of a hostile takeover,” an Alabama Public Television employee who helped blow the whistle on the commissioners’ plan told Salon. The employee asked to remain anonymous because the chairman of the Alabama Educational Television Commission, the board of political appointees who oversee the network, has issued a gag order with an implicit threat of retaliation against employees who speak to the media. “This is going to set a national precedent. Everyone is gunning for public television; this is how they’re going to do it,” the source said. At the center of the controversy is the work of David Barton, whom NPR called in an unrelated story, “The most influential evangelist you’ve never heard of.”
benton.org/node/132074 | Salon
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MEDIA AND THE OLYMPICS

WATCHING THE OLYMPICS IN THE US
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Tim Baysinger]
The Games of the XXX Olympiad were the best ever for NBC, as more than 219 million viewers tuned in over the 17 days, making the London Olympics the most-watched TV event in U.S. history, according to Nielsen. The 219.4 million viewers were up 2% over the 215 million that watched the Beijing Games in 2008. NBC averaged 31.1 million viewers over the two-week event, the most for any non-U.S. Summer Olympics since 1976 (Montreal), beating Beijing by 12% and Athens (2004) by 26%.
There were a total of 159.3 million video streams, 110% over Beijing. Of those 159.3 million, 64.4 million were live. Those 159.3 million streams made up 20.4 million hours (13.6 million of them live), which more than doubled Beijing. The NBC Olympics Live Extra and NBC Olympics apps were downloaded over 8 million times.
benton.org/node/132152 | Broadcasting&Cable
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

PUBLIC SAFETY NETWORK
[SOURCE: Government Computer News, AUTHOR: William Jackson]
Faced with a need to upgrade the department’s aging, stovepiped tactical communications networks while reducing costs, the Homeland Security Department is considering a “game changing approach” by using emerging commercial and public safety networks on a subscription basis. “Use of a subscription model reduces the ownership and operating costs by sharing the network ownership costs across a wider user base,” DHS said in announcing a program for developing prototype networks. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate is soliciting proposals from government, private sector and academic research and development facilities for prototype public safety networks. It expects to award up to $8 million to fund developing and testing. The Next Generation Tactical Wireless Broadband program envisions a seamless national network of interoperable commercial and public systems that can be leveraged by federal, state and local public safety agencies across the country, including DHS.
benton.org/node/132073 | Government Computer News
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

STATE DEPARTMENT’S KINDLE PLAN OFFERS A LESSON IN DIPLOMACY
[SOURCE: Government Executive, AUTHOR: Andrew Lapin]
The initial reaction was stunned outrage. After Nextgov first broke the news on June 11 that the State Department was mulling a $16.5 million contract with tech giant Amazon to purchase 2,500 Kindle Touch e-readers for overseas programs, one particular calculation started making its way around the Internet: $6,600—the amount the department reportedly was planning to pay per Kindle. Considering the e-readers normally retail for $189, this set off many alarm bells on Facebook, Twitter and beyond as yet another needless government contractor markup. “The State Department is buying Amazon Kindle e-readers for nearly 3,500 percent of their list price,” the Heritage Foundation tweeted. But it wasn’t true. Once the obliquely worded contract was properly explained, it turned out that State has a plan in mind that is somehow both more reasonably priced and much more expansive than what was first reported. The five-year contract could include as many as 35,000 devices, and while State plans to buy the individual Kindles for 10 percent below retail price, the deal also includes 3G Internet access, language translation software and tons of preprogrammed content, along with the potential to download more directly from the department in the future.
benton.org/node/132069 | Government Executive
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NEWS FROM ABROAD

SOUTH KOREA POLICING THE NET
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Choe Sang-Hun]
A government critic who called the president a curse word on his Twitter account found it blocked. An activist whose Twitter posting likened officials to pirates for approving a controversial naval base was accused by the navy of criminal defamation. And a judge who wrote that the president (“His Highness”) was out to “screw” Internet users who challenged his authority was fired in what was widely seen as retaliation. Such a crackdown on Internet freedom would be notable, but perhaps not surprising, in China, with its army of vigilant online censors. But the avid policing of social media in these cases took place in South Korea, a thriving democracy and one of the world’s most wired societies. The seeming disconnect is at least partly rooted in South Korea’s struggle to manage the contradictions in eagerly embracing the Web as one way to catch up with the world’s top economies, while clinging to a patriarchal and somewhat puritanical past. In a nation so threatened by Lady Gaga that it barred fans under age 18 from attending a concert, the thought of unlimited opportunities for Internet users to swear in “public,” view illegal pornography and challenge authority has proved profoundly unsettling.
benton.org/node/132113 | New York Times
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BRAZIL TELECOMS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Samantha Pearson]
Complaints in Porto Alegre, Brazil, have sparked a national crackdown by the telecoms regulator, Anatel, over the past few weeks, raising fears about the direction of one of the world’s most attractive mobile phone markets. Foreigners have piled into Brazil, enticed by the possibility of strong growth in Latin America’s biggest economy as its middle class expands and its legions of mobile phone users upgrade to smartphones. President Dilma Rousseff has also made wider internet access a priority ahead of Brazil hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the next Olympics in 2016. The four biggest telecoms companies are all at least partly foreign owned – Telefónica’s Vivo from Spain, Telecom Italia’s Tim mobile unit, Claro, owned by Mexico’s Carlos Slim, and Oi, part owned by Portugal Telecom. But aggressive moves recently by Brazilian regulators have shaken the industry and raised concerns about increasing state intervention.
benton.org/node/132062 | Financial Times
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