By Brad
Via John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable, acting FCC Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn reiterated the Commission’s focus on mobile broadband while maintaining a “light” regulatory touch:
In her first speech as acting FCC chairwoman, Mignon Clyburn told a CTIA convention audience in Las Vegas Tuesday (May 21), that “maximizing the benefits of mobile communications will continue to be a top priority for the FCC” and that “mobile innovation is key to U.S. competitiveness.”
She said the FCC is on track to issue incentive auction rules by the end of the year.
By Brad
Here’s some good news in the world of education. IIA member AT&T has announced it is partnering with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Massive Open Online Courses provider Udacity to launch the first online-only Master of Science degree in computer science. From the press release:
Workers with skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are increasingly important to our business – and to nearly every business – because STEM drives innovation and innovation drives our economy.
During the next six years, 2.8 million STEM openings are predicted. But, today, many STEM jobs are going unfilled as candidates lack the necessary skills, training or degrees.
Through this new program, Georgia Tech will be able to offer employers like AT&T a larger and more diverse pool of highly qualified, STEM-trained workers and help the U.S. retain its global competitive edge.
Cool stuff. And on a related note, check out our recent infographic on the benefits of broadband access in eduction.
By Brad
A new report from Pew finds that teenagers are increasingly sharing information about themselves on social networks. Some numbers from the report:
• 91% post a photo of themselves, up from 79% in 2006.
• 71% post their school name, up from 49%.
• 71% post the city or town where they live, up from 61%.
• 53% post their email address, up from 29%.
• 20% post their cell phone number, up from 2%.
Also in the report: 95% of teens use the Internet, and a whopping 81% of them use social media sites, the most popular of which is still Facebook (though Twitter and Instagram are making up ground).
By Brad
Via Zack Colman of The Hill, Ben Bernanke is bullish on the tech sector:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke touted innovation and information technology as drivers of economic change in a Saturday commencement speech at Bard College in Massachusetts.
“Humanity’s capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history,” he said.
Bernanke also touted advancements in biotech, health care, and clean energy as helping keep the tech boom from becoming a bubble.
By Brad
According to Alexis Kleinman of the Huffington Post, there are a whole lot of non-humans active on Facebook:
Facebook loves to talk about its ridiculously high number of users. Yes, Facebook has a whole lot of accounts, but many of them aren’t humans. eMarketer released an analysis of Facebook’s audience, and it turns out more than 10 percent of Facebook’s reported monthly users are not human. Over 100 million active Facebook users are pets, objects or brands.
Weird.
By Brad
Despite strong warnings from the Obama administration, hackers in China are still attacking America’s networks. As David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth of the New York Times report:
Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.
By Brad
Search giant Yahoo! has just shelled out $1.1 billion to acquire blogging service Tumblr. From Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s official Tumblr page:
We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo! will help Tumblr get even better, faster.
By Brad
As people are increasingly wanting to consume their entertainment at any time and in any way, content creators are experimenting with ways to deliver it. At paidContent, Laura Hazard Owen writes about an unexpected issue one content provider is facing since taking their product online:
The original idea behind soap operas was that daily episodes would keep viewers hooked and advertisers happy. But few people have time to devote to mid-day TV any more, and as TV viewing shifts online, the model is changing.
It’s been just two and a half weeks weeks since popular soap operas One Life to Live and All My Children were reborn as online-only shows — but production company Prospect Park has already decided to cut back on the number of new episodes released online each week. The change in schedule, the company claims, is due to the fact that viewers are “binge-watching” instead of watching one episode a day, and this makes it too hard for them to keep up.
By Brad
In a speech before the Media Institute yesterday, Craig Silliman, Senior Voce President of Public Policy for Verizon, argued that outdated regulations risk holding back innovation and investment. It’s a similar argument other telecom providers have made recently. As Silliman told the crowd:
[W]e need to ensure is that we do not let an increasingly outdated regulatory regime for the Internet ecosystem slow innovation and investment. The 1996 Telecom Act succeeded in what it was designed to achieve, but almost two decades later it is leaving the FCC struggling to shoehorn Internet-era technologies into phone-era regulations. I am not suggesting that the answer is to abolish all regulation. But I am suggesting that we need a 21st century policy framework that is designed for 21st century technologies and marketplaces, not 19th century ones.
We need to start by asking the right questions. It has been suggested that a key question for the next FCC chairman will be how to keep the FCC relevant in the Internet era. I believe that is the wrong question. I recognize, of course, that tactical battles to secure budgets and resources are part of any organization or entity, including the federal government. But a strategic view of policymaking starts by asking what objective we are trying to achieve, and then asking whether regulation is needed, why it is needed, and who is best placed to administer it.
The full speech is worth checking out.
By Brad
Apple’s App Store, which launched in 2008, has already hit a massive number—and one lucky man received a big gift. Via Joanna Stern of ABC News:
Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio, hit the app jackpot Tuesday afternoon when he pressed the download button on a word game app called Say the Same Thing and sent Apple over the 50 billion app download mark, winning the $10,000 prize.
50 billion apps and counting. In an ecosystem that didn’t exist just five years ago. Wow.
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