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September 2013

Our dream library: Unlimited e-books for less than $10 a month

The new app Oyster is heralded as the "Netflix for books."

Pay a monthly fee, get access to an unlimited number of 100,000 titles available in Oyster’s app. The app is beautifully designed and certainly rivals that of Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks version. But whether its business model is as much of a threat, and whether it lives up to the Netflix legacy it’s brought on itself, is another matter. Right now, the Oyster app is limited to an iPhone-oriented version, though iPad and Android versions are in the works. Oyster is currently invite-only, and it offers its services at $9.95 a month ($2 more than a Netflix streaming subscription).

Samsung Scores FCC Waiver For Retail-Focused CableCARD Device

A CableCARD-based retail video device from Samsung that’s expected to hit the market in time for the 2013 holidays took a big step toward that goal on Sept. 6 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a waiver that will allow Samsung to sell the device without an analog tuner.

Samsung has not widely promoted its plan for the device, but details about it were revealed in May, when Samsung filed documents tied to its waiver request. The hybrid QAM/IP product under development, referred to as the Smart Media Player, will use CableCARDs to support linear digital video services from cable operators alongside access to over-the-top video apps such as Netflix and Vudu. The debut of the product will mark a rare, new entry of a product with a CableCARD slot that is tailored for the retail market.

Report: Carriers Deployed More Than 7 Million Wi-Fi Access Points

More than 7 million carrier-grade Wi-Fi access points have been deployed by telecom operators worldwide as of year-end 2012. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5%, that’s going to grow and reach 15 million by 2018, according to a new research report from Berg Insight.

Berg analysts forecast that the installed base of Wi-Fi-enabled handsets will grow from nearly 1.5 billion units as of year-end 2012 to more than 4 billion in 2018. Now convinced of Wi-Fi’s capabilities and faced with fast growing demand for mobile data services, mobile network operators and equipment vendors are increasingly turning to the wireless Internet standard as a solution.

Nominate a Connected Educator as a White House Champion of Change

In honor of Connected Educator Month this October, the White House will host a “Champions of Change” event to celebrate local leaders in education, whose creative approaches in using technology to enhance learning serve as examples of what we should strive for in every classroom, for every child. The White House is asking you to help it identify standout local education leaders by nominating a ConnectED Champion of Change by midnight on Friday, September 20th.

Wireless USB to get high-speed jolt from WiGig

The WiGig high-speed wireless standard will power a new wireless version of USB through a deal between the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Universal Serial Bus (USB) Implementers Forum.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has transferred a specification for the WiGig high-frequency technology to the USB-Implementers Forum (USB-IF) as part of a broader effort to work with third parties to make WiGig useful. WiGig can achieve several times the speed of Wi-Fi by using unlicensed 60GHz frequencies within a short range, typically within one room. The new Wireless USB specification will use existing USB 2.0 and 3.0 drivers and APIs, which should make it easy to add to new devices. It could be used for any type of data transfer typically associated with USB, such as backing up content or linking peripherals to a PC.

Facebook offers real-time feed of user data to online and TV news

Facebook revealed a new tool that enables news organizations to tap into user comments and display them online or on TV in real time.

The social network launched two tools, the Keyword Insights API (application programming interface) and the Public Feed API. The keyword API is also able to display anonymous, aggregated results based on gender, age and location. A TV show can for instance use this option to include how many people on Facebook talked about a topic and show where they are located while showing if it is most popular among men or women and in which age groups..

Online TV Public Inspection File Update: A New Political Reporting Approach Proposed

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission had asked for comments on whether or not to extend the political file component of the online public inspection file requirement to all TV stations.

When the online public file system was first put into place in 2012, only Big Four network affiliates in the Top 50 markets were required to upload their political file materials. Now, public interest groups (the Public Interest Airwaves Coalition (PIPAC), the Sunlight Foundation, and the Center for Effective Government) are suggesting a Federal Election Commission-like reporting system for TV stations. They are urging the FCC not only to extend the requirement to all commercial TV stations, but also to institute an entirely new online filing format for political materials. If the proposed online filing system really would make everybody’s life easier, it would be good for the FCC to know that. But if the proposed system would impose considerable additional burdens – and, frankly, we suspect it would, but again, we don’t have a lot of first-hand experience here – the Commission should know that, too.

Cowboy of the NSA

On Aug 1, 2005, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander reported for duty as the 16th director of the National Security Agency, the United States' largest intelligence organization. He seemed perfect for the job.

Under Alexander’s watch, the breadth, scale, and ambition of its mission have expanded beyond anything ever contemplated by his predecessors. The NSA was already a data behemoth when Alexander took over. In 2007, the NSA began collecting information from Internet and technology companies under the so-called PRISM program. In essence, it was a pipes-bending operation. The agency has collected so much information that it ran out of storage capacity at its 350-acre headquarters at Fort Meade. At a cost of more than $2 billion, it has built a new processing facility in the Utah desert, and it recently broke ground on a complex in Maryland. There is a line item in the NSA's budget just for research on "coping with information overload." Yet it's still not enough for Alexander, who has proposed installing the NSA's surveillance equipment on the networks of defense contractors, banks, and other organizations deemed essential to the US economy or national security. Alexander cast himself as the ultimate defender of civil liberties, as a man who needs to spy on some people in order to protect everyone. But those who've worked closely with Alexander say that lately he has become blinded by the power of technology. And now, for the first time in Alexander's career, Congress and the general public are expressing deep misgivings about sharing information with the NSA or letting it install surveillance equipment.

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Friday, September 27
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
http://www.itif.org/events/internet-protocol-transition-where-do-we-stand

The two most pressing issues before the FCC this year are spectrum reassignment and the transition from traditional telephone networks to broadband, Internet Protocol networks. This panel discussion will explore where the nation stands with the phase-out of the PSTN and the full deployment of IP broadband, on both the policy and technical fronts. The major questions are:

  • How far along is broadband IP deployment, and what options exist for achieving universal coverage?
  • What portion of American homes and businesses subscribe to a broadband IP service, and what barriers need to be overcome to achieve 100% adoption?
  • What level of performance needs to be achieved before a broadband IP service can be considered adequate, and what's the ideal?
  • Where does the Digital Divide stand today, and what measures must be taken to bridge it?
  • Are other countries doing better, and if so what policies can we import to improve America's communication ecosystem?

Participants:
Robert D. Atkinson
President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Moderator

Richard Bennett
Senior Research Fellow, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Presenter

John Bergmayer
Senior Staff Attorney, Public Knowledge
Presenter

Blair Levin
Communications and Society Fellow, Aspen Institute
Presenter

Prabir Neogi
Visiting Fellow, Canada-India Centre of Excellence, Carleton University
Presenter

David Young
Vice President, Verizon Public Policy
Presenter


Horizon Report 2013 K-12 Edition

New Media Consortium, the Consortium for School Networking, and the International Society for Technology in Education
2013

Key Trends

  1. Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning, and collaborative models.
  2. Social media is changing the way people interact, present ideas and information, and communicate.
  3. Openness — concepts like open content, open data, and open resources, along with notions of transparency and easy access to data and information — is becoming a value.
  4. As the cost of technology drops and school districts revise and open up their access policies, it is becoming more common for students to bring their own mobile devices.
  5. The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is challenging us to revisit our roles as educators.

Significant Challenges

  • Ongoing professional development needs to be valued and integrated into the culture of the schools.
  • Too often it is education’s own practices that limit broader uptake of new technologies.
  • New models of education are bringing unprecedented competition to traditional models of schooling.
  • K-12 must address the increased blending of formal and informal learning.
  • The demand for personalized learning is not adequately supported by current technology or practices.
  • We are not using digital media for formative assessment the way we could and should.

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