Clay Shirky and accountability journalism

NYU Professor Clay Shirky published an essay, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“, that suggested that journalists needed to radically rethink the assumptions that have made market-supported newspapers possible. It was a bombshell, cited and commented on thousands of times. Today, Clay outlined the arguments of the essay at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School [...]

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Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller at Transparent Text

Ellen Miller, the founder of the Sunlight Foundation, wants to redefine public information as online information. To have government accountability, we need “information for media and citizens alike” – and we need to find ways to make this information comprehensible through visualizations and other tools. To date, Sunlight has been focused primarily on the US congress. [...]

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Stephen Downes, Anders Sandberg on Cloud Intelligence

I had the pleasure of sharing the stage at Ars Electronica’s symposium on “Cloud Intelligence” with Stephen Downes and Anders Sandberg. I wasn’t able to liveblog their presentations, in part because I was jetlagged, and in part because they both gave extremely dense, thoughtful presentations. Better late than never, here are my notes days after [...]

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Comcast Channel Shifts — Looking for info.

I'm getting email about Comcast migrating MSNBC and CNN out of its expanded tier to a higher priced tier while keeping Fox News on expanded tier in a number of markets. If this is actually going on, I'm mightily curious. Such shifts do not happ...

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Education and the cloud at Ars Electronica

Pablo Flores has been instrumental in the spread of the OLPC laptop in his native Uruguay, helping communities learn how to use these new computers to blog and communicate to the wider world. (See this blog as an example of the work he’s doing with the support of Rising Voices.) Through Project Ceibal and One [...]

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Does the FCC Have Jurisdiction to Regulate Wireless Handsets?

As the FCC launches a number of inquiries into the wireless marketplace, some opponents to such scrutiny have raised the argument that the FCC has no legal basis for regulating wireless handsets, much less interfere with exclusive distribution agreements. This strategy does inject fear, uncertainty and doubt possibly leading to the argument that regulatory uncertainty constitutes the sole basis

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FCC 30% Cap on Cable Operator Market Penetration Vacated

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has vacated the FCC's 30% cap on national market penetration by a single cable operator. Look for Comcast and Time Warner to acquire more operators and market share. Whether this consolidation will harm consumers depends on the cross-elasticity of alternative services including DBS, IPTV, and telephone company provided video services. It also depends on whether

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The House Committee Letter on ICANN: All politics is local

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Four ICANN Board members dissent in vote on NCSG charter

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Some Unsolicited Advice for AT&T re Google Voice

The FCC has posed a number of provocative questions to AT&T regarding the fact that iPhone subscribers cannot download and use the Google Voice application. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/technology/companies/01google.html AT&T should stifle every motivation to play cute or clever with the FCC. Apple adopted such a strategy when it suggested to the Library of Congress and others that it

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Revealing the Inner Geek: E Layer Skip

During a tortuous 10 hour family drive the ionosphere sparkled. More specifically a layer of the ionosphere became more agitated and dense than usual—matching my mental state. With density this part of the atmosphere, approximately 65 miles above earth, reflected certain radio signals that normally pass through it.The FM radio band became active with distant signals coming in strong from up to

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Getting my Mac to read to me

On Tuesday, I go in for long-scheduled retinal surgery. Based on the last time I had this procedure, reading will be impossible for roughly four weeks and painful for another month after that. So I’m taking August off, shutting off the computer and spending a month mostly offline. This leads to very different time off than [...]

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Now Associated Press Has A Plan So Cunning Even They Don't Know How It Works.

It seems every now and then I see some company or organization that finds itself challenged by the fact that the internet gives people lots of interesting alternatives and thus upsets traditional business models. This prompts said company to flail...

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Could NTIA Please Put ICANN Out of Its Misery Before It Embarasses Itself Further.

I mostly follow the ICANN follies from sentimental reasons. Can it really be more than ten years ago when naive Clintonistas conspired with engineers trying to insulate themselves from politics and a slew of bullies from the intellectual property ...

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Are you listening, ICANN?

A wonderful thing is happening on the ICANN public comment board. Public interest groups from all over the world have mobilized to express support for the NCUC charter proposal. What seemed to be an obscure procedural issue months ago has attracted worldwide attention. Civil society groups are objecting strongly to the ICANN management's attempt to manipulate and control its allegedly "bottom up" policy making structures. These are not your standard two-line ICANN public comments, "I support this, I hate that." These are not your usual commenters, the same ICANN insiders who have held the same positions in the GNSO for 10 years. The entries are from new people, many of the comments are unusually long and articulate, and motivated by a sense of disbelief and injustice.

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The Google Telephone Company?

Google has undertaken a beta-test of a telephony platform that includes the opportunity to route incoming calls to multiple devices and telephone numbers as well as free domestic long distance service. See http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html.Google offers a service that fits somewhere between computer-to-computer, Internet telephony and Voice over the Internet Protocol telephony with

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IGP files comments on proposed Noncommercial Stakeholder Group charter

The IGP filed comments today in ICANN's second proceeding on GNSO Stakeholder Group Charters. In its comments IGP identified both substantive issues in the revised NCSG charter proposal drafted by ICANN policy staff, as well as procedural flaw in ICANN's proceeding. In light of these concerns, IGP asked that ICANN immediately drop its attempt to impose its revised NCSG charter proposal, and instead reinstate the original Noncommercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG) charter proposal submitted by the NCUC for consideration by the Board.

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Alex MacGillivray explains the Google Books settlement

John Palfrey introduces Alex MacGillivray as one of the first students of the Berkman Center. He’s now a major player in the world of internet law, formerly serving as Senior Product and Intellectual Property Counsel at Google. He’s represented Google in a number of key cases as one of the first lawyers to join the [...]

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Brief Update on Wireless Microphones: Where Mike Marcus and I Disagree

As Mike Marcus pointed out in the comments on my previous wireless microphone piece and on his blog, he and I disagree on the advisability of allowing prisons to jam cell phone communication. Let me begin by saying that Mike has both tremendous...

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Will The Broadband Stimulus Package Get Strangled In The Craddle? And Why That Would Be A Disaste...

More and more, I'm feeling like a volunteer for the “Mark Sanford in 2012 Committee” finding out what “hiking the Appalachian Trail” really means. I have been a huge supporter of this program from the beginning. Even thoug...

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