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The Federal Communications Commission caught flak from a number of industry groups for its conclusion that broadband is not being deployed in a reasonable and timely manner.

"The FCC's 706 report discounts the significant efforts being made by the private sector -- despite uncertainty for investment stemming from a persistently weak economy and repeated attempts by the Commission to exercise greater direction and control over this inherently unpredictable yet consistently innovative sector -- to continue building out broadband infrastructure," said the Internet Innovation Alliance. "Contrary to the FCC's assertions, more government control over the telecommunications industry with new rules is absolutely not a prerequisite for closing the digital divide." The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation also took issue with the FCC. "The FCC's latest 706 Report on the progress of broadband deployment in the United States reaches the erroneous conclusion that we're not making reasonable progress toward bringing broadband networking to all Americans," the group said. Broadband for America co-chair and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. called the FCC assessment inaccurate because it overlooked the vast private-sector investment. The report did cite that investment, but concluded it was not enough.

A team of wireless researchers in Germany proposed a way to improve the communications abilities of first responders, the brave people who rush into disastrous situations to help save the victims. But the proposal hinges on something many private citizens and privacy or security advocates will likely find uncomfortable: creating an “emergency switch” that lets government employees disable the security mechanisms in the wireless routers people have set up in their own homes. This would allow first responders to use all the routers within range to enhance the capabilities of the mesh networks that allow them to communicate with each other. In a mesh network, each node or device can route traffic to the other devices on the network through a series of hops. Adding devices (in this case wireless routers) thus improves the network's stability and performance.

The Government Printing Office has announced federally published eBooks will now be available for purchase through Apple. GPO also makes government e-books available through partnerships with Google’s e-bookstore, Barnes & Noble, OverDrive, Ingram, Zinio and other online vendors.

How do social media actually shape elections? What does research say about how social media have affected elections in the past? When you take public discourse and run it through the Twitter spaghetti maker, how does it look?

Having looked at the literature, here are the nine things I think we can definitively say about how social media can shape elections, based on the way it already has done so, in elections around the world:

1. People and campaigns mostly use social media for dissemination, not dialogue.
2. Campaign websites remain the hub of US Presidential campaigns.
3. But non-major parties tend to converse more on Twitter. Especially pirates.
4. Elite journalists converse, too -- with each other.
5. But there's a potential for non-elite, anonymous users to succeed.
6. Discussion tends to happen around news events that are already being covered.
7. So what remains special about social media is that non-elite users control distribution.
8. Participating more in political discussion online doesn't necessarily increase political knowledge.
9. The huge effect social media have in elections, then, is that they allow non-elites to frame and distribute content made by elites. For better or for worse.