According to a new study by GroupM, people are spending more time online, from a mean average of 27 minutes in 2005 to 46 minutes next year. However, that time spent surfing the Web did not appear to come at the expense of traditional forms of media, such as television. Rather, the study suggested that people are multitasking or carving out time to use both new and old media.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6572841.html?rssid=193
The House of Representatives has given final approval to a bill supported by providers of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services that will ease consumer access to 911 emergency services. The bill, dubbed the New and Emerging Technologies 911 Improvement Act of 2008, was previously approved by the House in November 2007 and this month by the unanimous consent of the Senate. The latter vote sent the bill back to the House for concurrence. The bill mandates that VoIP users be granted interconnection to incumbents, with VoIP providers gaining access at the same rates, terms and capabilities granted to cellular phone service providers.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6572930.html?nid=4262
The House Telecom Subcommittee discusses Universal Service reform today. Witnesses include George Lucas, Rey Ramsey of One Economy, Jane Smith of The E-NC Authority, and The Free State Foundation's Randolph May.
Watch it live at http://energycommerce.edgeboss.net/wmedia-live/energycommerce/11990/100_...
Read Charles Benton's "The Future of Universal Service is Broadband" (http://benton.org/node/14876)
The era of carefree, unlimited Internet browsing and downloading might be coming to an end. Industry leaders Comcast and Time Warner Cable have started testing traffic-metering and management techniques that seek to rein in heavy usage, and AT&T says such limits are inevitable for the most extreme users of its network. That means that for the first time since the era of dial-up access, Internet providers are looking to count how many bytes a customer uses, potentially ending or significantly altering the practice of all-you-can-eat broadband consumption. The providers say the initiatives - which are only tests at this point - are aimed at a certain subset of heavy users who consume an inordinate amount of bandwidth, threatening the performance of the network for other customers. Time Warner said the top 5 percent of users, largely peer-to-peer file sharers, consume more than half its capacity. Likewise, AT&T said 5 percent of its users consume about 46 percent of its bandwidth. But critics are worried that the limits may eventually stifle Internet consumption and frustrate technology innovations that have created an Internet economy upon which many have come to rely. "The message is we're maintaining a scarcity and we'll charge you for this scarce resource, but that's not a good model for infrastructure," said Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, a media advocacy group.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/23/BU9V11CIVA.DTL
Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the material violate community standards? That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values. The Internet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in an obscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought. In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.” The publicly accessible data is vague in that it does not specify how many people are searching for the terms, just their relative popularity over time. But the defense lawyer, Lawrence Walters, is arguing that the evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics -- and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/technology/24obscene.html?hp
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Preliminary figures for advance sales indicate that the cable channels will collectively sell about $8 billion in airtime to advertisers this season, up 7 to 8 percent from last year’s total. By contrast, the broadcast networks sold about $9.1 billion to $9.2 billion, up about 1 percent over last season. The shift in advertising dollars from broadcast to cable is not new, but it is particularly pronounced this year. There are several explanations, analysts say, including the fact that the most popular cable channels on their best nights, now attract nearly as many viewers as some of the less popular broadcast networks. Over all, the ratings gap, once vast, has been gradually narrowing. While all the broadcasters, save for Fox, posted significant ratings declines in the television season that ended in May, many cable networks are setting new ratings records. But ratings are not the only explanation. Other factors include the increasing fragmentation in media, which forces advertisers to place more bets in different places; the development of new niche channels, which can siphon ad dollars away from general-interest programming; and last winter’s writers’ strike, which made the fresh content available on cable look more attractive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/business/media/24adco.html?ref=todaysp...
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Microsoft, Google and PayPal are among the founders of an industry organization that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users. The Information Card Foundation is an effort to create a single industrywide approach to managing identity online that promises to reduce drastically the use of passwords and create a system that is less vulnerable to fraud. The idea is to bring the concept of an identity card, like a driver’s license, to the online world. Rather than logging on to sites with user IDs and passwords, people will gain access to sites using a secure digital identity that is overseen by a third party. The user controls the information in a secure place and transmits only the data that is necessary to access a Web site. In addition to simplifying online shopping, such information cards will reduce the number of phishing incidents — that is, the fraudulent use of someone’s identity to gain access to financial records.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/technology/24card.html?ref=todayspaper
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In uncertain times, Americans cling to their TVs. For those putting their dreams for a new home and car on hold, a flat-screen TV seems like a comforting alternative. The share of consumers planning to buy a TV set in the next six months hit an all-time high of 12.2 percent in May. "Households now seem bent on cocooning by staying at home to watch television rather than drive to the local theater and shell out more than $11 to watch a film (and an extra $5 on gas to get there)," Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg wrote recently. "Travel plans have sunk to their lowest in 30 years, so what else is there to do but stay home and watch TV?"
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN2344305820080624
Hurt by declining ad sales and cutbacks, local newspapers have seen better days. That's why at least two charitable organizations are funding projects designed to spur innovation in journalism and ensure people's access to regional news. On Monday, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation said it will spend $24 million over five years to fund challenges for innovation involving access to local information. Its project, called the Knight Community Information Challenge, asks community foundations across the country to propose new ideas on how to serve people information on their local area. Also Monday, philanthropist Leonard Tow said he would donate $8 million to two colleges toward the study of ensuring the survival of newspapers on the Web and training new-media journalists. His foundation, the Tow Foundation, pledged $5 million to Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and $3 million to the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9975760-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=...
With three years until the analog signal is switched off, only 43.3% of TV households in Japan own TVs able to receive digital broadcasts, according to a report released by the National Assn. of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan (NAB). However, only 34.8% of TV households are actually able to watch digital broadcasts, meaning that many with digital-ready sets cannot yet tune into digital broadcasts. The figures come from a NAB survey of 18,000 TV households conducted in March, with an 80.2% response rate. The far north and south of the country have the lowest digital diffusion rates -- not surprising since both areas are among the most economically depressed. According to the survey, 61% of households with annual incomes of 10 million yen ($93,210) had a digital TV, while only 24.2% of households with incomes of $18,550 or less had a digital TV.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117987966.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&nid=...
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