February 2014

IBM Wants Developers to Make Watson Mobile

IBM challenged mobile developers to make use of its Watson cognitive computing engine for new smartphone apps.

The company launched the IBM Watson Mobile Developer Challenge, a competition it hopes will attract developers to create useful apps using Watson, the computing platform that first gained fame by beating two human champions of the TV game show “Jeopardy.” The challenge will last three months, and three winners will be selected, all of whom will get consulting help from Big Blue to build their app. Watson is designed to answer questions presented in natural language, and so it “reads” millions of pages of information on many subjects. In the same way that it was interesting to have IBM supercomputers challenge human players at chess in the 1990s, the game show challenge was both an interesting PR stunt and an interesting challenge in computer science.

IDC: Smartphone Growth Rate to Slow in 2014

Smartphone shipment volume shot up over 39% in 2013, exceeding 1 billion units for the first time. That pace won’t be kept up in years to come, however, with smartphone shipment growth slowing to 8.3% in 2017 and 6.2% in 2018, according to the latest forecast from IDC.

2014 will mark an inflection point, and downturn, in growth rate, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. IDC forecasts growth in leading markets including North America and Europe will drop to single digits, with Japan “contracting slightly.” IDC expects high growth rates in emerging markets, which will lift 2014 growth in worldwide smartphone shipments to 19.3%, or 1.2 billion units, up from 2013′s 1 billion. The slowdown will drive manufacturers to lower price points quickly as they seek to unload product. That will make for a challenging business environment, IDC says. The worldwide Average Selling Price (ASP) for smartphones was $335 in 2013. That will drop to $260 in 2014.

FCC Commissioner Clyburn Defends FCC's Critical Needs Study

Federal Communications Commissioner and former acting chairwoman Mignon Clyburn defended the commission's Critical Information Needs study, saying she would never try to chill speech or influence journalists and that the study was an effort to gauge the market, not shape it.

Commissioner Clyburn said that the intent of the study, which was put out for public notice last May when Commissioner Clyburn was heading the agency, was to "gather data and other information about whether there are any market entry barriers, preventing local communities from receiving important information." "As a person who spent 14 years running a small weekly, I would never be a part of any effort to chill speech, shape the news or influence news gatherers," she told her audience of media execs, lawyers and others. "I am about facilitating ownership and opportunities and making sound decisions about our most critical industries based on solid research and not rhetoric."

Nexstar's Sook Argues For Keeping JSAs

If the Federal Communications Commission approves the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, logic dictates that the commission should not impose more onerous rules for broadcast joint sales agreements and shared service agreements (JSAs and SSAs), according to Nexstar CEO Perry Sook. The Comcast-TWC deal would combine the two largest cable companies. If the FCC allows that, then what's the problem with sharing agreements including JSAs and SSAs that enable broadcasters to own multiple stations in a single market, Sook wonders.

Sens Rockefeller, Thune, Pryor, Wicker Letter on STELA

Several provisions of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) are set to expire on December 31, 2014. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-WV) and Ranking Member John Thune (R-SD), and Communications, Technology and Internet Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS) sent a letter seeking input on the scope and impact of the STELA reauthorization from a diverse array of stakeholders, including satellite TV, broadcasters, cable television, online video, broadband, public interest groups, and free market think tanks.

Proposed Federal Rules Target Junk-Food Marketing in Schools

First Lady Michelle Obama, in a White House conference with US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, unveiled proposed new rules that aim to shield students from junk-food advertising during the school day.

The new proposed school wellness rules will help ensure that foods and beverages that are marketed to children in school align with the recent Smart Snacks in School standards and will improve upon local student-nutrition policies in the Healthy-Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Once in effect, advertisements for foods that do not meet federal guidelines, such as junk foods and soda, will be banned from campuses during the school day. Schools that do not wish to comply with these guidelines would be allowed to leave the National School Lunch Program, and forgo their corresponding government reimbursements. To aid schools with the implementation of these policies, the Agriculture Department will launch a new "School Nutrition Environment and Wellness Resources" website that will include wellness policies for districts and resources for on-campus food marketing practices.

Computer Science: Not Just an Elective Anymore

Computer science education is getting something of a fresh look from state and local policymakers, with many starting to push new measures to broaden K-12 students' access to the subject.

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia now have policies in place that allow computer science to count as a mathematics or science credit, rather than as an elective, in high schools -- and that number is on the rise. Wisconsin, Alabama, and Maryland have adopted such policies since December, and Idaho has a legislative measure awaiting final action. At least eight more states are in the process of reviewing proposals for similar legislative or regulatory changes.

The Problem With Easy Technology

[Commentary] The choice between demanding and easy technologies may be crucial to what we have called technological evolution.

Just what is a demanding technology? Three elements are defining: it is technology that takes time to master, whose usage is highly occupying, and whose operation includes some real risk of failure. By this measure, a piano is a demanding technology, as is a frying pan, a programming language, or a paintbrush. So-called convenience technologies, in contrast -- like instant mashed potatoes or automatic transmissions -- usually require little concentrated effort and yield predictable results. Even on its own terms, convenience technology has failed us. Our technologies may have made us prosthetic gods, yet they have somehow failed to deliver on the central promise of free time. The problem is that, as every individual task becomes easier, we demand much more of both ourselves and others. Instead of fewer difficult tasks (writing several long letters) we are left with a larger volume of small tasks (writing hundreds of e-mails). We have become plagued by a tyranny of tiny tasks, individually simple but collectively oppressive. The risks of biological atrophy are even more important. Convenience technologies supposedly free us to focus on what matters, but sometimes the part that matters is what gets eliminated. We must take seriously our biological need to be challenged, or face the danger of evolving into creatures whose lives are more productive but also less satisfying.

[Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School]

Comcast And Netflix -- What’s The Big Deal?

[Commentary] While some commentators think the Netflix and Comcast deal is problematic, the reality is that the agreement reflects a common market transaction that yields an outcome more efficient and more quickly than any regulatory intervention could have.

When Netflix pays Comcast, the cost is passed through to Netflix subscribers. This is both efficient and fair, because the consumer of Netflix services is paying for the cost of that service. In the absence of such an agreement, quality would suffer or the ISP would bear the cost. The ISP might recover these costs by increasing prices to subscribers generally. This would involve a cross-subsidy of Netflix subscribers by non-subscribers, which would be neither efficient nor fair. Alternatively, Comcast could increase prices for those subscribers who consume a lot of bandwidth, which might have similar effects to the just-announced deal, but would probably lose some efficiencies. In any event, it is difficult to see how such an arrangement would be better for consumers than the announced agreement.

House unanimously passes FOIA bill

The House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that would make Freedom of Information requests easier with potentially faster response times.

The FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act of 2014 (HR 1211) was co-sponsored by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA) and ranking member Rep Elijah Cummings (D-MD), and puts into action an executive memorandum from President Barack Obama that calls on all agencies to have a "presumption of disclosure" to all FOIA decisions. Perhaps most significantly for journalists, the bill would create a centralized online portal for FOIA requests under the Office of Management and Budget, and set up a group that will recommend future improvements to the FOIA process. The bill would also require agencies to release information publicly once it is released to individual journalists.

Benton

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