FCC Chairman Genachowski confident in authority over broadband

Internet service providers are stepping up their campaign to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from regulating them like telephone companies and questioning the limits of the agency’s power over the Internet. The commission chairman said in an interview on March 2 at The Washington Post that he’s confident of the agency’s authority, and that his focus is on moving ahead with the administration’s campaign to bring high-speed Internet to all American homes. The FCC will present a national broadband plan to Congress in two weeks. The chairman said he plans to recommend unleashing 500 megahertz of spectrum for the next generation of smartphones, tablet computers and other portable devices that connect people wirelessly to the Web. But he wouldn’t answer whether the FCC is considering a move, urged by some public interest groups, to reclassify broadband service providers - the companies that provide access to the Web - so they more clearly fall under the agency’s jurisdiction.

Details Here

first published week of:   03/22/2010

First responders embrace social media

Federal contractors are using social media mainly for publicity, communication and collaboration. But there also is a growing interest in social media for emergency response.

According to a recent survey by the American Red Cross, many people are now using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to report emergencies or call for help.

The survey indicated that 18 percent of adults would turn to digital social media if calls to 911 were unsuccessful; 74 percent said that if they used digital media, they would expect help to arrive within the hour.

“The social Web is creating a fundamental shift in disaster response — one that will ask emergency managers, government agencies and aid organizations to mix time-honored expertise with real-time input from the public,” Gail McGovern, president of the American Red Cross, said in a news release.

Details Here

first published week of:   08/30/2010

FTC ends Google ‘Street View’ investigation without fines

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has called off its investigation of Google’s "Street View" mapping program without issusing fines to the company, according to a letter sent from the FTC to Google on Wednesday.

The federal agency had been investigating the fact that Google collected communications, including passwords and e-mails, from people who used open Wi-Fi networks in their homes.

The data collections, which Google says were inadvertent, happened while Google was driving around taking pictures for the Street View function on Google Maps, the Mountain View, California, company said.

The FTC said Google has sufficiently addressed the problem.

“Google has made assurances to the FTC that the company has not used and will not use any of the payload data collected in any Google product or service, now or in the future,” David C. Vladeck, the FTC’s director for consumer protection, says a letter to Google, which was posted on the FTC’s website.

Details Here

first published week of:   10/25/2010

Gap between advertised, actual broadband speeds growing

Here’ the good news for British Internet users: the average "actual fixed-line residential broadband speed" for most ISPs has jumped by an amazing 25 percent over the past year. That’ according to the United Kingdom’ telecom regulator Ofcom, which commissioned a tracking study on broadband rates conducted by the research company SamKnows.

The speeds have leaped from 4.1Mbps to 5.2Mbps over the last twelve months, with many ISPs offering faster packages.

But there’ also some troubling news. SamKnows found that the chasm between actual and advertised UK ISP performance is wide and getting wider, especially for copper-wire-based DSL services. Here are the newest stats:

Details Here

first published week of:   07/26/2010

GeoEye moves down the road into Fairfax County

GeoEye Inc., a provider of satellite and aerial geospatial information and services, is moving its Loudoun County, Va., corporate headquarters to Herndon in Fairfax County, Va., a move that ensures the company remains in the commonwealth.

The company will spend $10 million for the new facility and another $5 million for infrastructure to accommodate the planned addition of 100 new employees during the next three years. The current 230 employees in Virginia will move into the expanded corporate headquarters facility during the first few months of 2011.

A recent announcement from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s office said Virginia had successfully competed against Colorado and Maryland to keep the company in the commonwealth.

Details Here

first published week of:   11/08/2010

Geographic Intelligence
By Ravi Purushotma

The June issue of Technology Review contained both an article titled Do Maps have Morals? discussing the history of GIS and the moral implications of the power it gives its user, and one titled Group Rethink: Can Technology Raise Society’s IQ?. Ironically, these two articles could not have been better paired. The latter article discusses examples such as Surowiecki’s description of the search for the Scorpion submarine (audio), where, by aggregating the intelligence of a large diverse group of people, the Navy was able to achieve the seemingly impossible task of locating a sunken submarine across a vast geographic region. Implicit here is the suggestion that as technologies enable people to more effectively share data and aggregate expertise across diverse pools of people, society’s problem-solving ability increases exponentially [see a TR article on the group game ilovebees].

As discussed in the first article, while GIS technology has immense potential for a variety of positive uses, the history of it thus far has instead largely been one of only a few select groups such as the military using it for planning strategic nuclear targets. This year, however, both Google and Microsoft have announced visions in which advanced GIS tools will be made freely available to everyone. Already we have seen numerous ways in which Google maps has been used to effectively share everyday information such as where to find free wireless access -- and savvy Google maps users have been able to use it for fun things like getting out of speeding tickets. More significant, however, is that Google last month released all the API’s necessary to allow their satellite imagery and hybrid overlay technology to be integrated in with virtually any data source.

Details Here

first published week of:   09/13/2010

Volume 31

-->