In the July-to-September quarter, Apple controlled 95 percent of the emerging market for tablet computers, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. The Android operating system -- second largest on the market -- achieved just 2.3 percent share in the third quarter, but the share is expected rise in the current quarter.
President Obama has repeatedly made clear his commitment to equal opportunity and full inclusion for people with disabilities in all aspects of life, including access to technology. He most recently made this point when he signed into law the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which provides access to advanced technologies for people with disabilities.
FCC Chairman Genachowski has embraced this commitment wholeheartedly. In addition to leading the charge on implementing the recently passed legislation, in July he established of the Accessibility and Innovation Initiative, as recommended in the FCC's National Broadband Plan. The A&I Initiative promotes collaborative problem solving and uses the tools of public and private sector innovation to address accessibility barriers. As part of this initiative, on October 21 the FCC partnered with the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado and Raising the Floor, an international coalition of individuals and organizations who promote Internet accessibility for people with disabilities, to launch "Lifted by the Cloud: Visions of Cloud-Enhanced Accessibility" on GSA's new challenge.gov platform. The challenge solicits short multimedia presentations from the public on their visions of how cloud computing can create new opportunities for people with disabilities. Find out more information about this challenge, which will run until May 1, 2011.
As one of Congress' foremost voices on telecommunications, Rep Rick Boucher (D-VA) played a pivotal role in bringing high-speed Internet connectivity to his rural district in southwest Virginia. Now, with his reelection on the line, his political opponents have turned to the Web in their aggressive push to derail his 28-year run in Congress.
Rep Boucher fires back on his reelection site with a gallery of campaign videos featuring no-nonsense testimonials from rugged coal miners and veterans. Some of the ads tout the technology companies he's lured to his district over the years to create an estimated 5000 jobs, including AT&T, DirecTV, Dish Network, XM Satellite Radio and Verizon.
It might not seem obvious today, but we will soon be consuming nearly one gigabyte of data every month on our smartphones, thanks in large part to rapid improvements in technology and networks.
This is a similar growth pattern we saw on wired broadband networks; the faster the speeds, the more data we consumed. According to London-based market research firm, Informa Research, an average smartphone (globally) consumes a mere 85 megabytes of data every month. Nearly 13 percent of world's phones qualify as smartphones, and these phones are generating two-thirds of all traffic on mobile cell networks, Informa notes. For instance, so far in 2010, an average iPhone user consumes 196 megabytes of data each month, while an average Android phone consumes about 148 MB per month. Informa predicts that over next five years, there is going to be a staggering 700 percent increase in data consumption every month. Actually, I think they're being conservative, and it might not take that long. For carriers, this is a heaven-sent opportunity.
While they were unable to introduce per-bit metered pricing on broadband networks, they can now use the somewhat valid excuse of "limited" spectrum and the huge cost of build-out as a way to introduce metered pricing. Guess what? One by one, they've all started to shank the much-loved flat rate monthly plan in the back.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is seeking public comments on issues related to personal health records.
[Commentary] What's true about food is true of ideas: they get better when they're adjacent in the pan. Ideas -- particularly political ideas -- are meant to be shared, to redefine themselves over the blue flame of discussion. Consumed in isolation they taste bland. Kept too long they get rancid. That's a problem in America, where we increasingly live in separate information silos. In uncertain times the tribes gather close. People don't talk to outsiders.
Media trends aren't helping the situation. There is simple shrinkage, for starters. The Chicago Tribune used to cover the Midwest; now it covers Chicago, barely. And ideological fracturing: Fox News and MSNBC, as everyone knows, profit by preaching to their respective choirs. It's not the end of the world -- the objective approach isn't the only one that has value. Still, a massive retreat into ideological niches is hardly restricted to cable TV, and it doesn't help the nation address its challenges. The battered mainstream press has a mission here that can frame its work and maybe even energize it: helping to rebuild the democratic conversation. The key is not some namby-pamby civic sewing circle. Rather, the press should work toward the kind of earned authority that provides some common factual ground.
Some suggestions:
A creditors committee in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case has sued myriad parties involved in a 2007 leveraged buyout that it called "among the worst in American corporate history," alleging the deal pushed the company into bankruptcy less than a year later.
The committee of unsecured creditors in one of two lawsuits it filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware named as defendants Chairman Sam Zell, who bought Tribune in the $8.2-billion deal, and Tribune board members who negotiated with him, including Betsy Holden and William Osborn, saying the deal amounted to a fraudulent transfer of assets. Also named as defendants in the suit are former top executives, such as ex-CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who guided the transaction, and one-time major shareholders, such as the Chandler family, who cashed out through the deal. The second suit targets bank lenders who financed the deal and creditors who purchased that debt later. The committee seeks to reclaim profits and fees.
With the U.S. economy and the role of government emerging as crucial issues in the midterm elections, it's not surprising that President Obama has been the top newsmaker in the 2010 election coverage to date.
According to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Obama and his administration led in 343 election stories from January 1-October 31, 2010. (To be a lead newsmaker, someone must be featured in at least 50% of a story.) But the No. 2 campaign newsmaker rose from obscurity to become a household name in a matter of weeks, if not days. Christine O'Donnell, the tea party-backed candidate who won a stunning victory in Delaware's GOP senate primary, dominated 160 election stories examined by PEJ. O'Donnell's upset over Congressman Mike Castle -- as well as her penchant for controversial statements (some of them well in the past) about everything from dabbling in witchcraft to the separation of church and state -- has made her a media favorite. Indeed, four of the 10 top election newsmakers are representatives of the tea party movement, which has emerged as a key element in the election narrative.
The Obama Administration proposed a common set of security requirements for cloud computing that all federal agencies and contractors could share.
The move is intended to expedite the transition to universal Web-based services by eliminating the need for agencies to assess and authorize every information technology product. During the next decade, the White House wants agencies to shift their IT operations to the cloud -- the collective term for software, servers and file storage that users access online on a subscription basis -- instead of managing and owning individual, in-house infrastructures. The new blanket specifications, referred to as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), are designed to allow contractors and one agency to evaluate and sign off on security controls and then let every other agency use the same template. "Completing the security assessment and authorization process separately by each customer is redundant," the 90-page proposal stated. A "governmentwide risk and authorization program will promote faster and cost-effective acquisition of cloud computing systems by using an 'authorize once, use many' approach to leveraging security authorizations." Under the guidelines, all the security requirements, processes and forms will be available to every federal agency as well as vendors. The document said this decision epitomizes the administration's commitment to transparency. "Private industry will also finally have the full picture of what a security authorization will entail prior to being in a contractual relationship with an agency," the proposed rules stated.
GSA and the Chief Information Officers Council are encouraging the public to comment on the templates, guides, common security requirements and other aspects of the program by Dec. 3.
The White House is poised to announce changes to the way agencies buy about $80 billion in information technology annually.
The guidance, which the Office of Management and Budget will release on Nov. 19, represents the culmination of four months of meetings with agency IT chiefs and a close examination of troubled technology investments, OMB officials said. Leaders of the industry group the Professional Services Council, who met with OMB officials last week, said the new strategy likely will be similar to legislation proposed by Sens. Thomas Carper (D-Delaware) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) that passed the Senate in May. The bill (S. 920) would require project managers to alert chief information officers quickly of investments that have veered off course on cost, schedule or performance. Under the proposal, CIOs who see deviances of at least 20 percent must report them to their agency heads, relevant congressional committees and OMB. More extreme cases -- projects that are off target by at least 40 percent -- would spark remedial action, such as cancellation. Much of this information would be tracked on a public website similar to the Obama administration's IT Dashboard.
© 1994-2026 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.
