June 2009

Over the last decade or so the Internet has created 1.2 million jobs, many paying higher salaries than average, a new study finds. Internet business contributes 2.1%, or $300 billion, to the total GDP (gross domestic product) of the U.S. And IT and related online business may be faring better in this recession than they did in the dotcom bubble of 2000-2002, still growing revenue but at slower pace. Consumers are now making 10% of their retail purchases online, with the exception of groceries, on the Internet, and Internet-based advertising has increased four-fold since 2002 to more than $20 billion, said John Deighton, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, and one of the authors of the study along with Hamilton Consultants.

The Homeland Security Department's science and technology office plans to triple spending on cybersecurity research and development, the acting undersecretary told Congress on Tuesday, with most of the additional funds in President Obama's fiscal 2010 budget request focusing on new ways to protect the nation's critical infrastructure, including transportation and the electric grid. The Directorate for Science and Technology, which is the primary research and development arm of DHS, requested $968 million for fiscal 2010, a 3.8 percent increase over the previous year's enacted budget. Of the $35 million in additional funds requested, DHS would earmark $5.4 million for cybersecurity, Brad Buswell, the directorate's acting undersecretary, told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism. Buswell said cybersecurity would gain a 300 percent funding increase, compared with fiscal 2009, for the development of "leap-ahead technologies" that secure the nation's computer networks and information infrastructure -- including energy, transportation, telecommunications, and banking and finance.

Engineering chiefs from major stations groups were busy Thursday reviewing their plans for what will be an even-busier Friday, as a digital TV conversion that began some 13 years ago comes to a conclusion when local stations permanently cease their analog operations by midnight today, June 12. They say they are ready for the turnoff and don't expect any major problems, though most won't be getting a lot of sleep as they oversee the logistics. "So far, everything looks pretty non-eventful on our side," says Ardell Hill, senior VP of broadcast operations for Media General. "It's playing to a Y2K-type of attitude." Like many other groups, Media General already had a few stations successfully turn off analog early on the original turnoff date of February 17. A number of its stations that are still broadcasting analog have already ceased regular programming, and are running informational messages.

Former House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-MA) says he expects there to be some "confusion and dislocation" in the switchover June 12, but added that it could and would have been much worse had not Acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps appeared on the scene to quarterback the late-game comeback drive to digital. He also said the Obama administration was right to move the date, pointing to the over 3.5 million households that were able to prepare for the switch. The game-changing moment, he said, came when the FCC decided to go with a digital rather than an analog standard--the first digital switch, as it were--and said that came after he "aggressively advocated for such a switch and successfully convinced the FCC in 1990 to begin pursuing a digital standard." Rep Markey chaired the first House hearing on digital television in 1987.