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[Commentary] "I'm sorry Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS," GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told PBS anchor Jim Lehrer, during the first presidential debate. "I like PBS. I love Big Bird," Romney said, referring to the popular ‘Sesame Street’ character. "I actually like you, too. But I’m not gonna keep spending money on things and have to borrow money to pay for it.” With these words, Big Bird became an unwitting and unwilling prop in campaign 2012. Within moments “Big Bird” and “PBS” were each earning 17,000 tweets per minute -- more than Romney earned during his nomination acceptance speech at the GOP Convention, which hit a high of 14,289 tweets per minute. Of course, none of these numbers indicate whether the tweeters were for or against Romney on the "Big Bird" subsidies, but it does indicate a lot of interest in an issue that does not often rise to the level of presidential debate when every sentence, every gesture, every expression of the candidates comes under heavy scrutiny.
“I’m Sorry Jim”
Phone booths: In our collective cultural consciousness, they’re time machines, places for superheros to emerge, or even just a quaint place where people used to make phone calls. In New York city, though, a company called City24x7 is giving phone booths an upgrade to make them relevant to everyone--even people who have fully charged cell phones sitting in their pockets. Gone is the phone; in its place is a 32-inch iPad-like touch screen that lets users see real-time news happening around them, local events, transportation information, reviews of nearby bars and restaurants, promotions from local merchants, warnings of local environmental hazards, and more. Users can also quickly leverage the phone booth, which doubles as a free Wi-Fi hotspot, to notify the authorities of an emergency. And eventually, people will be able to use the SmartScreens to make Skype calls--perhaps a nod to the phone booth’s former life.
Turning Old Phone Booths Into Digital Information Hubs
Japan's Softbank, which is in negotiations to make a major investment in U.S. operator Sprint Nextel, is also mulling a competitive bid for MetroPCS, Japanese media reported. The reports from sources such as the Nikkei, Japan's main business daily, and Kyodo News agency come as MetroPCS is in final negotiations to merge with Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile USA. The Japanese firm is mulling a total investment of over $30 billion in Sprint and MetroPCS.
Reports: Japan's Softbank eyeing MetroPCS as well as Sprint
[Commentary] The reaction to the Federal Communications Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to establish the parameters of its much-anticipated broadcast spectrum auctions has been a stunned silence -- not because there were any real surprises in the NPRM, but because the NPRM made clear to those not previously involved in the process the sheer enormity of the tasks ahead. Also feeding the industry's muted reaction is the fact that, because there were no surprises, the industry doesn't know much more now than it did before about how the auctions will be structured. Instead, we are left with many excellent but unanswered questions asked by the NPRM, leaving the auction rules and structure a very ethereal proposition.
A Spectral Incentive Auction?
Peter Berg, the producer and creator of "Friday Night Lights," is slamming the Romney campaign for plagiarizing a popular line from the high-school football drama, and he wants the Republican presidential candidate to cook up a new slogan. In a letter addressed to Mitt Romney, Berg asks the presidential hopeful to stop using the line "Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose" in campaign literature and speeches and says it "falsely associates" the show with his bid for the White House. Your politics and campaign are clearly not aligned with the themes we portrayed in our series," Berg writes.
Peter Berg to Mitt Romney: 'Stop Using 'Friday Night Lights' Line'
Technology developers will learn in the next three to four years how to better secure sensitive health data sent to and from mobile devices, reports the market research firm Frost & Sullivan. Those breakthroughs are needed to allay concerns about data security. Cellphones and mobile monitoring technologies offer significant opportunity to monitor and communicate with patients remotely, but users continue to say they are worried about hackers stealing their health data, Frost & Sullivan concludes in its report.
Mobile Health IT Proponents Must Address Security Issues
New tools to help patients better manage and access information in their electronic health records (EHRs) have been selected as challenge winners by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Health 2.0 Sixth Annual Fall Conference in San Francisco.
The Blue Button Mash Up Challenge, launched on June 5, 2012, builds on a prior Blue Button challenge to make personal health information more usable and meaningful for the individual consumer or patient. Solvers were required to mash up Blue Button data – personal health data a patient can download using a health plan’s, doctor’s, or hospital’s Blue Button function – with other open health data and information to achieve the goals of the three-part aim of the Innovation Center in HHS’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The three-part aim consists of better care for individuals, better health for populations, and reduced costs through continuous improvement. The combination of Blue Button data with open health data from sources such as HealthData.gov and the National Library of Medicine will help patients make their personal health information and take action to improve their health.
The winner, iBlueButton, submitted by Humetrix of San Diego, Calif., is a dual-app system that provides an intuitive, patient-centered, secure two-way mobile solution, where patients can connect to their Blue Button and other health records. iBlueButton includes features such as patient-optimized and physician-optimized displays and dashboards, medication look-up, and new tools to download or print health information.
Humetrix was awarded $45,000. The second place team, Intelligent Decisions, received $20,000 while Get Real Consulting finished in third place and received $10,000.
The EHR Accessibility Module Challenge, launched on Jan. 30, 2012, asked solvers to create and test a module or application that makes it easy for people with disabilities to access and interact with the health data stored in their EHRs. Successful submissions would be able to download data from EHR systems, be simple to learn and use, and comply with standards for people with disabilities.
The winning team, Pinaxis, created Apollo, a fully accessible Internet portal that will allow patients to interact with any provider’s existing EHR system over the Web. Apollo’s patient portal is designed to enhance the user experience for patients. The Pinaxis team, Luke Peterson, Anthony Veach, and Jared Schwartz, was awarded $60,000, and the two runner-up teams, RegisterPatient and Remedy Systems, each received $5,000.
Two Innovation Challenge winners announced
ESPN Radio is about to get blitzed. After dominating for two decades, ESPN will take a big hit come January, when Cumulus Media will drop its programming from 47 stations and pick up rival CBS Sports Radio.
In addition, Cumulus will syndicate CBS to other independent stations and work to woo Madison Avenue. The moves are part of the partnership Cumulus struck with CBS over the summer to help get the fledgling sports radio network off the ground. CBS also boasts a sizable radio presence with its own stations in big markets, including New York, Boston and Dallas. It owns WFAN-AM, one of New York’s most popular sports stations. As a result, CBS Sports Radio will air on around 100 stations, reaching about 10 million households, when it officially launches on Jan. 2. It also claims it will be the “most listened to sports radio network in the top 50 markets.” ESPN, however, will continue to beat in total audience by a long shot.
Cumulus Media to add ESPN rival CBS Sports Radio to 47 stations
In just three weeks on the market, Apple’s iPhone 5 is already accounting for more Web traffic than the rival Samsung Galaxy S III, which has been on sale for nearly three months. When looking at Web traffic from the two smartphones, the iPhone 5 now accounts for 56 percent of pages, compared to 44 percent for the Galaxy S III. And the mobile advertising network says that the Galaxy S III itself has been a strong seller, outpacing the iPhone 4S in the U.S. for the month of August.
Three Weeks In, and the iPhone 5 Is Already Dominating the Mobile Web
A look at the casualties of a privacy loophole on Facebook—the fact that anyone can be added to a group by a friend without their approval. As a result, these people lose control over their secrets, even though they may be sophisticated users who attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings to shield some of their activities. In the era of social networks like Facebook and Google Inc.'s Google+, companies that catalog people's activities for a profit routinely share, store and broadcast everyday details of people's lives. This creates a challenge for individuals navigating the personal-data economy: how to keep anything private in an era when it is difficult to predict where your information will end up.
When the Most Personal Secrets Get Outed on Facebook