September 2012

90% of US households with computers have broadband

Broadband penetration in the U.S. is continuing to grow, and now stands at 90 percent of U.S. households that have a computer at home, according to Broadband Access & Services in the Home 2012, a study by Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

Five years ago, 65 percent of households with a computer subscribed to broadband service, LRG notes. Its research shows that broadband subscriptions go up with household incomes. The high broadband penetration in homes with computers explains why we are seeing slower growth in demand for new broadband connections. At the end of second quarter of 2012, there were a total of 80.33 million broadband subscribes in the U.S. according to LRG.

Hackers Claim FBI Has List of 12 Million iPhone and iPad ID Numbers

Why would the Federal Bureau of Investigation allegedly be keeping a list of 12 million unique identifying numbers for Apple iPhones, iPads and iPod touches? And why was a copy of that list on a notebook PC belonging to an FBI agent? And how did a group of hackers get access to that machine and steal that file?

Those are but three of the questions arising from the overnight dump of 1 million Unique Device Identification numbers by the hacker troupe known as AntiSec, the loosely organized group that has variously used the names LulzSec and Anonymous over the last year or so. In an otherwise rambling political message posted to PasteBin, the group included download links to an 89-megabyte file that certainly looks for real. The circumstances of how the hackers obtained it couldn’t be independently confirmed, but AntiSec claims it was taken during a breach of an FBI-owned notebook in March.

Former Cybersecurity Czar Urges Obama to Issue Executive Order to Protect Networks

Absent congressional action on cybersecurity, President Obama should strongly consider issuing an executive order to help secure American computer networks from attack, a chief architect of the White House’s cybersecurity proposals told National Journal.

Former White House cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt, who served in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, said that an executive order could help update government network security as well as encourage businesses to secure their own systems. “If there are things this Congress isn’t prepared to do, the president has a few options that he can move on,” he said. The call for action mirrors statements by many other former and current officials, but Schmidt takes a more tempered view that has long set him apart from many of his colleagues. Schmidt says he “has a hard time dealing with” claims that a “cyber 9/11” or “digital Pearl Harbor” could be just around the corner. “As a veteran, it somehow does a disservice to those who have served to equate physical war with cyberwar,” he said.

Tiny gigahertz antenna could mean 20 Gpbs wireless

A research institute in Singapore has developed a tiny antenna that’s capable of operating at 135 GHz to deliver wireless speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second.

The antenna, which offers 30 times stronger signal transmissions from existing antennas in the 135 GHz frequency band, was developed by the Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore. The IME is a research institute of the Science and Engineering Research Council of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. The breakthrough that helped this antenna shrink in size was the filling of the antenna slot with a polymer instead of regular old air. The press release detailing the new antenna says it is ready for integration with active circuits and that the resulting antenna is 70 percent smaller and is almost two-thirds cheaper than a conventional cavity-backed slot antenna inside devices. Combine the new antenna with other millimeter-wave capable equipment and the IME researchers believe it would support speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second. At such high frequencies however, you’re looking at a wireless technology that won’t travel very far or through walls. However, companies such as Samsung are researching the idea of using millimeter wave networks to boost wireless speeds, especially as spectrum at the lower frequency bands becomes more crowded.

Happy birthday, Skype. In 9 years you changed telecom

It is hard to imagine that Skype, a service that is so deeply embedded into our broadband life, is nine years old.

August 29, 2003 is the official birthday of the service, which celebrated its ninth birthday just ahead of the long holiday weekend here in the United States. It is a service that started as a simple idea – free calling for everyone who had an Internet connection. That radically simple idea changed the telecom industry and the voice-calling business forever. Looking back, it is clear as day that the service succeeded in what it set out to do. Research from Telegeography projected that at the end of 2011, Microsoft-owned Skype accounted for 33 percent of all long-distance minutes – 145 billion of the total 438 billion minutes. According to Skype CEO Tony Bates, Skype has 254 million monthly active users and is “growing somewhere around 40% year on year.” But that success comes bearing a harsh reality: What comes next for Skype, which admittedly has lost much of its sexiness?

By 2016, 70 Million families will keep tabs on each other with GPS

If you thought GPS in your phone was only useful for finding the closest Starbucks, think again. A growing number of North American and European households are using GPS and cellular location services to keep track of their family members.

Berg Insight forecasts that the number of active users of family locator services in those two regions will grow from 16 million in 2011 to 70 million in 2016, driven by smartphone usage. Tracking vehicles and assets is a big and growing segment in the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications industry, but tracking people is becoming just as important, according to Berg. Companies are using location services to keep tabs on their mobile workforces. Doctors and hospitals are tracking patients with conditions such as autism and epilepsy using special monitoring devices. The trend has spread to encompass the elderly living at home or in assisted living facilities.

Pro Football: NOT 'The Most Effective Advertising Delivery System Ever Invented'

New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliott wrote that "professional football is probably the most effective advertising delivery system ever invented. Ratings data provide evidence ...The most-watched series in prime time during the 2011-12 television season was not a drama, a comedy or a reality show: it was ‘Sunday Night Football’ on NBC. Likewise, Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5 was the most-watched program in American television history." To which he adds: "And most people watching football are watching the games -- and the commercials -- live rather than taping and replaying them. Advertisers far prefer live viewing because so many people skip commercials during taped replays." While it is a fool's errand to argue with Stuart -- who tracks advertising developments about as closely as anyone else in the world -- I might take issue with the notion that guys who watch pro football (and I am one of them) really pay close attention to commercials. The problem is that while telecasts of football games run from three to four hours, there are really only about 11 or 12 minutes when the ball is in play that require our attention.

Nearly 30 percent of Docs say EHRs Negatively Affect care

The impact of an electronic health record appears to be in the eye of the beholder -- or the physician trying to use it.

In its “EHR Report 2012: Physicians Rank Top EHRs,” Medscape found that while 36 percent said their EHRs had a positive impact on doctor-patient relations, 30 percent said it had a negative impact. "Staring at a screen leads to a more impersonal encounter," wrote one internist, according to Medscape. And while 15 percent said they were more productive using an EHR, 26 percent said they were less productive. Slightly fewer, 23 percent, thought their office was more efficient with an EHR. Physician attitudes going into an EHR implementation appeared to play a role, the survey found. Roughly 62 percent of physicians queried were “somewhat” or “strongly” supportive of an EHR before implementation. After implementation, the proportion feeling the same was 67 percent. After implementation, the proportion of doctors who were somewhat or strongly against an EHR increased from 12 percent to 14 percent. When asked to rate satisfaction with their EHR vendors, 45 percent were satisfied, 35 percent were neutral, and 21 percent were unsatisfied, according to Medscape. Doctors frequently complained that the EHR wasn’t tailored to their specialty. They also noted difficulties in working with their vendors’ IT specialists.

State Department Advisor lays Out Pros and Cons of Internet Diplomacy

The WikiLeaks scandal has inspired State Department officials to be more active online rather than less, says a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “[WikiLeaks] is largely made up of members and followers rather than paid staff,” Clinton’s Senior Adviser for Innovation, Alec Ross, said in an interview taped for C-SPAN’s Communicators program. “It has a Web address rather than a street address. It’s truly transnational and virtual in nature.” “When you recognize that an organization like that can so disrupt the conduct of foreign policy you can do one of two things,” Ross continued. “You can either curl into the fetal position or you can say, ‘you know what, these networks are of great power and great consequence in our foreign policy, so we need to be as strong as possible.’ Secretary Clinton is not one to curl into the fetal position. Nor are any of the rest of us at the State Department. So if anything, it’s affirmed the need for us to be Internet smart.”

In DNC Bloggers’ HQ, The Story Of American Innovation Writ Small

A former car showroom in Charlotte (NC), Packard Place has been transformed into a startup hub -- and, for a few days, a media office -- just as tens of thousands of politicos are descending onto the city to talk about how to create jobs and sustain the middle class in a new economy built on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Obama’s themes are the building's successes. Packard Place has been remade into a LEED-certified building. It houses a couple dozen startups in various stages, including several within an energy-focused incubator and another incubator for social entrepreneurs. Its ground-floor not-for-profit community center, called the Garage, has become the central (and free) meeting place for entrepreneurs and business-advocacy groups from throughout the city (as well as for regular Thursday-afternoon happy hours).

Benton

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