The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued a joint Final Rule implementing the E-911 grant program authorized under the Ensuring Needed Help Arrives Near Callers Employing 911 (ENHANCE 911) Act of 2004. The Act authorizes grants for the implementation and operation of Phase II enhanced 911 services and for migration to an IP-enabled emergency network.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Waxman (D-CA) and Subcommittee Chairman Boucher (D-VA) released information about the top recipients of high-cost subsidy dollars from the federal Universal Service Fund. The information released by the Committee was provided by the Federal Communications Commission in response to an April 1, 2009 letter requesting that the agency provide an update to an earlier data request.
A new research initiative called the Global Education Research program will analyze and measure the impact of technology on students' educational experiences in various areas, ranging from first grade through higher education, both inside and outside the classroom. The program is an initiative of computer maker Lenovo and was announced during Lenovo's recent 12th annual Think Tank education conference. Although educational institutions have embraced using technology such as laptops, multimedia materials, and interactive whiteboards over the past decade to help students develop 21st-century skills, streamline operations, and connect administrators, a more complete view of the role and impact of technology in all aspects of the learning environment is needed, the company says.
Call it high standards or a lack of loyalty, but North American consumers are far faster to cut ties with email marketers than their Asian counterparts, according to a new global consumer email study from direct marketing agency Epsilon. A clear majority -- 55% -- of North American consumers report occasionally unsubscribing from email lists, while a full 14% admit to frequently unsubscribing, according to Epsilon.
The Associated Press plans soon to sic a scraper-bot on the Web to find swiped AP content. While no one would argue with taking on scraper sites, the vagueness of AP news editor Ted Bridis might be worth considering. Bridis insisted the news organization would not be going after bloggers or publications excerpting a paragraph of AP content and linking to the original. He admitted AP sometimes borrows excerpts from newspapers and crafts their own story around it. But Bridis stopped there and made no such concessions about usage of headlines and AP ledes. Arguing the so-called "hot news misappropriation" doctrine, this could affect search engines, aggregators, and sites like the Drudge Report who display headlines and the first line of an article.
[Commentary] Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask. The social warmth of all those stray details shouldn't be taken lightly. But there is something even more profound in what has happened to Twitter over the past two years, something that says more about the culture that has embraced and expanded Twitter at such extraordinary speed. Yes, the breakfast-status updates turned out to be more interesting than we thought. But the key development with Twitter is how we've jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of. In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.
Senate Rules Chairman Charles Schumer (D-NY) and ranking member Robert Bennett (R-UT) offered colleagues some tips this week on how to use Internet-based new media since September 2008 changes allowing senators to move beyond their official Senate.gov sites to take advantage of innovations like the micro-blogging service Twitter and video sharing site YouTube.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will continue to keep Internet and cellphone-based broadcasting services out of its regulatory reach in part because it fears that changing this stance would choke innovation. "We found that the Internet and mobile services are acting in a complementary fashion to the traditional broadcasting system," CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein said. "Any intervention on our part would only get in the way of innovation." The CRTC also said it has not been presented with convincing evidence to suggest that increased support was needed to create and show Canadian broadcasting content online.
Unless newspapers can figure out how to reduce their high fixed costs of printing and circulation, their already low credit ratings could fall even farther, Moody's Investors Service warns. Moody's calls it a "structural disconnect" with just 14% of cash operating costs, on average, devoted to content creation, while about 70% of costs are devoted to printing, distribution and corporate functions. The remaining 16% of costs are related to advertising sales -- another example of devoting too few resources to the principal revenue driver. "This disconnect is a legacy of the industry's vertical integration beyond content creation and into the production and distribution of newspapers," Puchalla said. The high fixed costs -- combined with high debt among many newspaper companies -- is squeezing cash flow as revenue declines.
Many Internet and media companies that were busy buying start-ups in the boom years could shed assets they no longer deem central to their business, as the recession imposes an age of frugality. Venture capitalists, who invest in start-ups and recover their money by taking them public or selling them, say the dealmaking has already begun. Many expect more sales and spin-offs in the next few months as companies squeeze their assets for cash and reassess business strategies.
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