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President Barack Obama promised to "fight hard" to protect Internet freedom and said the Democratic Party will include the position in its 2012 platform.
While answering questions on social-media site reddit, President Obama wrote, “Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too.” “We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody — from those who are expressing an idea to those to [sic] want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle — and it will be reflected in the platform," he wrote.
President Obama to 'fight hard' for Internet freedom President Takes to Reddit to Endorse Internet Freedom (B&C)
Reddit, the link-sharing web community that more or less took over from Digg as the “front page of the internet,” has another feather in its cap to brag about: President Barack Obama showed up to take part in one of the site’s famous “Ask Me Anything” features, where he got to field questions about things like space travel and his favorite room at the White House.
Although his answers were by no means earth-shattering — and the chance to ask the sitting president of the United States a question created so much demand that the site had trouble coping with the traffic — his appearance helps bolster the site’s claim to being an alternative source of journalism. The president took part in the somewhat brief public Q and A session while at a campaign stop in Charlottesville, Virginia — which Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said was a nice touch, considering he and his co-founder Steve Huffman came up with the idea for the web community in the library at the University of Virginia while they we’re both studying there in 2005. Although Reddit was for many years seen as a pale imitation of the then-dominant Digg, Reddit continued to grow even after it was acquired by the Conde Nast publishing empire. When Digg’s fan base started to implode following some poorly thought-out changes in 2010, Reddit picked up the slack. More recently, Reddit’s “Ask Me Anything” feature has become a popular way of crowdsourcing interviews with public figures.
Reddit as journalism: Crowdsourcing an interview with the President The Best Moments From Obama's Reddit 'AMA' (AdWeek)
As companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft sell computing everywhere, the most dramatic changes may be in places most of us do not now see.
Already, places without clean water, decent sanitation or steady electricity are using supercomputers. Unlike the developed world, where speed, agility and cost are factors that make Amazon Web Services attractive, in the developing world it’s good to be on battery-powered phones and servers in California, instead of relying on an often-brittle electric grid. Amazon itself holds seminars for start-ups in India, Indonesia and many other countries, hoping to foster more consumption of advanced technology among the developing economies. So does Google, for its business applications, and it will very likely do more once its cloud computing offering, part of Google Cloud Platform, gains traction.
Cloud Computing for the Poorest Countries
The average U.S. household owns five devices connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, wired or cellular networks, according to new research from consultant Chetan Sharma. More than 6 percent of households own more than 15 connected devices, which includes smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, TVs and digital photo frames. That high number will become the norm for a growing percentage of consumers in the coming years, said Sharma. He estimated that about 70 to 80 percent of these gadgets can access the Internet via wireless connections.
Average Household Has 5 Connected Devices, While Some Have 15-Plus
A consultancy that helps marketers improve the effectiveness of their advertising spending is proposing that they significantly increase the amount of money they spend in the United States on ads on smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
The consultancy, Marketing Evolution, is offering its advice in a study that study recommends that an average of 7 percent of total ad spending be devoted to mobile marketing – a stark contrast to estimates that the current average mobile budget is 1 percent or less of total ad spending. And in the next four years, the study said, “marketers should increase their investment in mobile to approximately 10 percent.”
Study Suggests a ’7 Percent Solution’ for Mobile Marketing
Seattle-based Placed is broadening its horizons by letting mobile web developers take advantage of its unique approach to location analytics. Previously available for mobile apps, Placed cross-references location data against a massive database to paint a picture of where apps or sites are being used most.
Placed wants to redefine mobile web analytics with location
Kobo has struck a deal to sell e-books and its line of e-readers through independent U.S. booksellers, giving the Toronto firm a new chance to establish a foothold in the American digital books market. Kobo's agreement with the American Booksellers Association, the independents' trade group, is effective in October. The deal replaces one between the ABA and Google Inc., which has said it would end an effort to sell e-books through independent booksellers in January 2013, declaring the program had failed to gain traction. Many of the estimated 400 members of the ABA that signed up to sell Google e-books on their websites are expected to migrate to Kobo. The ABA has about 1,600 members operating about 2,000 stores.
Kobo in Deal to Sell E-Books
[Commentary] The Apple-Samsung jury's $1 billion-plus verdict breaks down to just under $48 for each of the roughly 22 million infringing phones sold by Samsung. To the jury, 50 bucks per phone must have sounded like a reasonable figure, and it may well to you too. But it's not — it's way too high — and here's why: The average smartphone may arguably infringe as many as 250,000 patents, not to mention myriad copyrights and other design-related intellectual property. If you were to divide the average retail price of a smartphone — about $400 — by those 250,000 potentially applicable patents, you'd find that each one would account for just $0.0016 of the phone's value. And, in reality, even that's too much, once you factor in the costs of raw materials, labor, transportation and marketing, which also contribute to a phone's value.
[Love is an assistant professor of law at Santa Clara University School of Law]
Apple-Samsung patent fight: Fuzzy math
[Commentary] Apple has achieved something almost as remarkable as transforming a phone into an iPhone. It has turned Samsung into an underdog. That takes some doing.
Samsung, with its 220,000 employees and 83 business divisions, astonishingly accounts for a fifth of South Korean exports and has such an overwhelming presence in its home market it is described by one detractor as an “aggressive octopus.” To regard it as the plucky – albeit “copycat” – upstart is the equivalent of getting people to root for Goliath on the grounds that “a big man like that just doesn’t stand a chance.” The irony of being seen as the scrappy challenger is that at home in South Korea, chaebol conglomerates such as Samsung are viewed as being too dominant. When it comes to hardware, Samsung’s integrated model may be a strength. It makes almost everything it needs for its phones and tablets, from the bright Amoled display screens to the powerful processors inside. If Apple now persists in attempts to get more Samsung devices banned or to extract royalties, the South Korean company may have no option but to come up with something completely new. Apple may have given it just the shove it needs.
Apple might give Samsung the shove it needs
Technology innovation in the United States will be driven by corporate tax reform and reduced regulation, according to a panel of prominent Republicans at a Republican National Convention event hosted by Bloomberg and Google.
The panel was convened to discuss how government might create policies to encourage investment in high-technology and Internet companies — one of the few areas of growth among startups in recent years, according to a Bloomberg analysis that was briefly presented at the event. However, as is often the case when talking about technology with backers of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the conversation kept returning to overall tax and economic policy. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum, called for an end to the taxation of repatriated capital by U.S.-based multinationals and a lowering of the overall tax burdens on U.S. corporations.
Tax Policy and Low Regulation Drives Tech Innovation for Romney Backers