Commission unveils plans to 'green' ICT | EU - European Information on InfoSociety

EurActiv.com - Commission unveils plans to 'green' ICT | EU - European Information on InfoSociety: "The report, called 'Smart 2020', was carried out in conjunction with consulting firm McKinsey by the 'Climate Group', which features top ICT companies such as Cisco, Vodafone, Nokia, Microsoft and Intel.

Thanks to the widespread use of smart applications, the ICT sector could provide a 15% cut in CO2 emissions by 2020, with an overall savings for the economy of 600 billion euro, the study estimates. Intelligent logistics systems could massively boost the efficiency of transport and storage, it continues, predicting energy savings worth 280 billion euro in Europe alone.

The report claims that smarter designs and more automation have the potential to cut emissions from buildings by 15% in the US, while improving India's electricity grid could reduce energy loss by 30%."

Creativity Ambassador: Europe needs someone to take it seriously | EU - European Information on Innovation & Creativity

EurActiv.com - Creativity Ambassador: Europe needs someone to take it seriously | EU - European Information on Innovation & Creativity: "What are the main hurdles to unlocking creativity and innovation in Europe?

There needs to be someone who takes it seriously. I think businesses ought to take creativity as seriously as they take finance and legal affairs. We need someone in every organisation who is directly responsible for creativity and new ideas, who organises training and puts together lists of new thinking, who listens to new ideas, who transmits them and stands behind them."

RP trade profile continues shift toward services - Business - Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs - Latest Philippine News - BETA

GMANews.TV - RP trade profile continues shift toward services - Business - Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs - Latest Philippine News - BETA: "Services emerged as the Philippines’ biggest export winner last year, growing by a third to nearly $8 billion, while traditional dollar-earners like electronics, clothing, and automotive products have either slowed down or contracted, data from the World Trade Organization (WTO) showed.

The latest WTO statistics showed that the Philippines is the world’s No. 48 exporter of merchandise goods, with $50.5 billion worth of exports last year, up by 6% and equivalent to about half a percent of the global market."

EurActiv.com - How Europe could leapfrog the US in productivity | EU - European Information on Innovation & Creativity

EurActiv.com - How Europe could leapfrog the US in productivity | EU - European Information on Innovation & Creativity: "Atkinson believes Europe can boost its productivity through more widespread use of ICT. To achieve this, ICT will have to be put 'at the centre of its economic policies for trade, technology, competition, the labour market and regulation,' he says."

E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: Survey: Customers Give E-Tailers Low Service Marks

E-commerce has certainly not been immune from the recession battering the U.S. economy, but for reasons that can only be guessed at, most of the leading e-tailers have not stepped up their efforts to retain customers by providing improved service, according to a recent customer satisfaction survey.

Only two e-retailers scored above 80 on a 100-point scale in the annual Top 40 Online Retail Satisfaction Index: Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com and Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) Latest News about Netflix, both with 84. The survey's methodology is based on the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index, in which a score of 80 is generally considered the threshold for excellence.

The achievement of the two e-tailers that ranked above 80 is muted by the fact that one of them, Netflix, cannot be considered a traditional e-tailer, said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, which conducted the survey.

E-Commerce News: E-Commerce: Survey: Customers Give E-Tailers Low Service Marks

CDS Central Clearing Platforms Approved by Regulators

Regulators approved in late December a proposal from NYSE Euronext Liffe and a separate proposal from CME Group and Citadel Investment Group to provide centralized clearing of credit default swaps, setting the stage for competition between the clearing solutions.

The approvals follow a tumultuous year in the financial markets that saw the collapses of Bear Stearns in March and Lehman Brothers in September, which raised fears over global systemic risk in the credit derivatives markets fueled by counterparty exposure. Regulators pressed the industry to set up a centralized clearing facility for CDSs to mitigate counterparty risk, setting a deadline of Dec. 31, 2008.

CDS Central Clearing Platforms Approved by Regulators

Top-Paying IT Jobs: The Six-Figure Edition - Salaries

A few positions at large firms (with gross revenues of $500 million or more)—including VP of information services, director of systems and programming, and data warehouse manager—saw pay bumps well beyond the norm between June 2007 and June 2008. Four IT titles—VP of consulting services, systems project manager, software engineer and systems programmer—saw percentage-point decreases in the double digits. Smaller firms (with gross revenues below $500 million) saw less of a drop-off in salary. The median salaries cited in this article are those in the top quartile for each job title listed, as determined by Janco.

Top-Paying IT Jobs: The Six-Figure Edition - Salaries

Act 221 has been successful - Tech View - Starbulletin.com

In 2001, sensing a missed opportunity, the legislation commonly known as Act 221 was passed with the idea of stimulating the growth of the local technology community.The results have been very positive and point toward success in expanding Hawaii's economic base.

Act 221 has been successful - Tech View - Starbulletin.com

Cyber Espionage Targets Sensitive Data

Cyber espionage blasted on the scene in the mid 90s and has grown at a steady pace along side the adoption and use of the Internet by business, government and industry. Even though cyber espionage is relatively new, countries like China have already invested in building large and well trained cyber-espionage forces. By the beginning of 2009, Spy-Ops estimates about 140 countries and over 50 terrorist and criminal/extremist groups will be developing cyber weapons and espionage capabilities.

Cyber Espionage Targets Sensitive Data

सो बंद हे वास गुड?

Only 21 days to go before another Bush president hits the dustbin of history.

Government, U.S. Firms Collaborate on Lithium Battery - Latest News

Aiming to mass-produce a lithium battery for vehicles, 14 U.S. companies with expertise in batteries and advanced materials have formed an alliance with a government laboratory, the lab said on Thursday.

The alliance, which includes battery industry giants such as 3M Co and Johnson Controls-Saft, intends to secure $1 billion to $2 billion in U.S. government funding over the next five years to build a manufacturing facility with an "open foundry" for the participants to pursue the goal of perfecting lithium-ion batteries for cars.

Government, U.S. Firms Collaborate on Lithium Battery - Latest News

Challenging IT Assumptions - Trends

Prior to the credit crisis, around 75 cents of each dollar was spent to keeping existing systems up and operational. Now, overlay the reductions due to the recession, and the result is that a lot of business needs are chasing very few discretionary dollars.The future of IT depends on a bigger idea—one that incorporates key trends, such as easier-to-use technology, potentially more savvy business partners and extended organizational ecosystems. More importantly, it’s an idea that addresses the perennial IT challenge of how to satisfy the seemingly infinite demand with limited capacity.

Challenging IT Assumptions - Trends

Five Ways Generation Y May Reinvent IT - IT Management

They've been called everything from narcissists to "Generation Me," but those wily post-Gen X employees might just show their elders how to revamp an enterprise.

They depend too much on their parents' money, they need constant hand-holding, they have no job loyalty, but do show remarkable acumen for demanding more than they're worth, showing disrespect for older employees, and displaying stunning naiveté about corporate culture.

Five Ways Generation Y May Reinvent IT - IT Management

How Google Works - Projects Management

Google is more than just a leading search firm. It's a pioneer that may be defining information management for the next generation of Web-centric businesses.

Google's information management approach, which often goes unnoticed, is both highly effective and efficient. And may be the way other organizations deploy technology in the future.Here's why:Story Guide:# Google's Extreme Infrastructure# What Other CIOs Can Learn from Google# Google's Beginnings# Why Parallel Processing Makes Sense# Behind The Google File System# How Google Reduces Complexity# Google's Secret Arsenal# Would Google's File System Work for You?# Inside Google's EnterpriseAlso in this Feature:# Google Basics# The People Who Power Google# Google Courts the Enterprise# How Google Manages a Global Workforce

How Google Works - Projects Management

How to Ensure a Successful VOIP System Implementation

Traditional telephone services have typically gained a reputation of providing excellent voice quality and superior reliability. Consequently, users take for granted that their phone systems will provide high quality with virtually no downtime. Yet many voice over IP (VOIP) installations fail to meet these expectations, primarily because organizations have not adequately evaluated their network infrastructure to determine whether it can adequately support applications that are very sensitive to latency, packet loss, jitter and other similar performance factors.

VOIP requires a steady, predictable packet delivery rate in order to maintain quality. Jitter, which is variation in packet delivery timing, is the most common culprit that reduces call quality in VOIP systems. Jitter causes the audio stream to become broken, uneven or irregular. As a result, the listener’s experience becomes unpleasant or intolerable.

The end results of packet loss are similar to those of jitter but are typically more severe when the rate of packet loss is high. Excessive latency can result in unnatural conversation flow where there is a delay between words that one speaks versus words that one hears. Latency can cause callers to talk over one another and can also result in echoes on the line. Hence, jitter, packet loss and latency can have dramatic consequences in maintaining normal and expected call quality.

How to Ensure a Successful VOIP System Implementation

Uncertainty grips sectors, says Ficci

A state of uncertainty is gripping over many services sectors, including financial services, software, outsourcing, civil aviation and real estate, due to the global financial crisis, credit crunch and higher interest rates during the recent months, according to a survey by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci).

The feedback gathered from industry shows that while during the first half of current fiscal (April-Sept 2008) there was moderation in the growth of several segments of the services sector, from October 2008 onwards a marked deterioration in performance was seen in many areas.

Uncertainty grips sectors, says Ficci

Biz-Tech 3.0 - IT Strategy - What is IT Transformation, Really?

Roberts looks at IT transformation as a shift from being reactive, order-taker cultures to driving business growth and improvement. A key part of that, he says, is positioning your IT shop as the "internal consultant of choice," versus whatever consulting/advisory services are out there in the marketplace.

But it's easier said than done. On top of the communication issue, there's another problem that Roberts, among others, have emphasized to me lately: "CIOs and IT leaders easily revert to their technical comfort zone," Roberts says. "You have to think about it as looking from the outside in. People in IT work their tails off trying to hit the bulls-eye on customer value, business value, and being more strategic. They're hitting the bulls-eye every time, but it's their bulls-eye, not their clients' bulls-eye."

Biz-Tech 3.0 - IT Strategy - What is IT Transformation, Really?

Why Big Businesses Are Turning to VoIP

A recent VendorGuru.com article, Seven Reasons VoIP Business Service Is Ideally Suited for Big Business, highlights the benefits. For companies with a high volume of calls, VoIP phone systems help cut expenses and add to the bottom line as savings are linked to every call made. Also, for businesses with multi-site operations, communications costs can quickly increase along with the number of calls made to other office sties, with a VoIP phone system these costs can be eliminated since all calls made are made on one network, reducing costs, regardless of where the office is physically located.

Why Big Businesses Are Turning to VoIP

Paul Krugman's depression economics - How the World Works - Salon.com

The words "depression economics" don't necessarily mean that we are in a depression or inevitably headed toward one. A more accurate definition would be that we are witnessing economic problems reminiscent of the Great Depression, long after many economists concluded that the question of how to avoid depressions had been permanently solved. Not true, says Krugman. If we don't watch out, we could steer the current recession right into depression territory.

Paul Krugman's depression economics - How the World Works - Salon.com

In Transition | FCC - washingtonpost.com

In 2008, the FCC budget was $313 million, up 7 percent from $293 million in 2005.

Under Obama: New rules would prevent communications operators from slowing, blocking or discriminating against certain Internet content over their networks. The rules, known by the term "net neutrality," have been strongly opposed in recent years by cable and telephone giants, though some have softened their stance over the past year. The president-elect has also pushed for more broadband access in rural and other underserved areas, which he said would help generate more jobs to build wireless, cable, fiber and other networks.

In Transition | FCC - washingtonpost.com

Mike Musgrove - PS3's Virtual Home Is Inhospitable - washingtonpost.com

It's possible to never spend a dime in Home, which is a free download, but Sony is hoping that users will be willing to part with a little money to spruce up their characters. The default offerings in your virtual closet are a little boring, you see, but the nearby mall allows you to spiff up your wardrobe with selections generally priced at a dollar or less. You can even spend a few bucks and buy a vacation home in Home, if the default studio apartment that you're allotted isn't stylish enough for you.

Mike Musgrove - PS3's Virtual Home Is Inhospitable - washingtonpost.com

American Collapse

I support Obama's infrastructure initiative wholeheartedly, but with two cautionary notes. First, a general one: Don't shortchange long-range planning and restructuring in the short-term interest of creating jobs by giving top priority to projects that are "shovel-ready." American leaders recognize the need to alter how this country uses energy; they may be less clear that this need should inspire them to fundamentally rethink American land use patterns and reconsider which patterns the government should discourage and which it should support. (To give one obvious example, higher density settlements reduce the need for frequent long-distance travel and thereby facilitate more efficient mass transit.) Second, a specific one with far-reaching ramifications: Don't ignore the gross inefficiency of the American construction industry on which many of these infrastructural initiatives will depend. (Studies estimate that somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the total time spent on the average American construction site is wasted.) Use our New New Deal to push that problem-rife industry toward long-overdue restructuring, which should be no less dramatic--and enormously more economically significant--than the one that everyone recognizes the comparatively small and comparatively efficient auto industry needs. For a devastating diagnosis, Barry B. LePatner's Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry is a good place to start, and it must be a start, as this critical problem plaguing such a large percentage of our economy is not even on the public's or policymakers' radar screens.

American Collapse

IT Has Great Green Expectations for Obama - Commentary

In the IT channel, people will be watching how new administration policies will affect their business. Despite some trepidation about potential new regulations on taxation and workers' unions, there is a great deal of hope regarding the Obama administration's green efforts.

Those efforts might translate to higher sales of power-conserving technology, more efficient processors and applications and increased demand for server consolidation and virtualization. Incentives for telecommuting, already in place in several states, are likely to become more prevalent, creating yet another opportunity for the channel.

IT Has Great Green Expectations for Obama - Commentary

For Stimulus Plan, Obama Team Weighing 'Green' Jobs vs. Traditional Projects - washingtonpost.com

The debate has centered on two competing principles in the evolving plan: the desire to spend money on what President-elect Barack Obama calls "shovel-ready projects," such as highway and bridge construction, vs. spending on more environmentally conscious projects, such as grids for wind and solar power.

For Stimulus Plan, Obama Team Weighing 'Green' Jobs vs. Traditional Projects - washingtonpost.com

Wall Street Bailout Spawns Subsidy Database

Pew has engaged the Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency group, to construct the technical infrastructure, compiling data and building Subsidyscope's database. Among Sunlight's other projects are PublicMarkup.org, which seeks to open legislation to online and public review; Earmark Watch, an open review of Washington spending; and OpenCongress, a government transparency effort with news and blogging about Capitol Hill.

"This project represents an exciting opportunity to shine a light on various ways that increasingly scarce federal resources are being spent," Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, said in a statement. "While we don't know precisely what the project will find, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant.'"

Wall Street Bailout Spawns Subsidy Database

OpenDocument Format Alliance :: Governments Increasingly Turn to OpenDocument Format as ODF Alliance Marks Unprecedented 2008

"We congratulate these governments for recognizing what ODF can do to transform e-government."

Looking ahead to 2009, the power of the public purse is expected to further advance the use of open standards like ODF among governments. "Open standards-based procurement initiatives in the European Union, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, promise to speed ODF's uptake in the public sector," noted Graham Taylor, Chief Executive of OpenForum Europe, which coordinates Alliance activities in the European region.

OpenDocument Format Alliance :: Governments Increasingly Turn to OpenDocument Format as ODF Alliance Marks Unprecedented 2008

After the Crash: How Software Models Doomed the Markets: Scientific American

The software models in question estimate the level of financial risk of a portfolio for a set period at a certain confidence level. As Benoit Mandelbrot, the fractal pioneer who is a longtime critic of mainstream financial theory, wrote in Scientific American in 1999, established modeling techniques presume falsely that radically large market shifts are unlikely and that all price changes are statistically independent; today’s fluctuations have nothing to do with tomorrow’s—and one bank’s portfolio is unrelated to the next’s. Here is where reality and rocket science diverge. Try Googling “financial meltdown,” “contagion” and “2008,” a search that reveals just how wrongheaded these assumptions were.

After the Crash: How Software Models Doomed the Markets: Scientific American

Clinton Moves to Widen Role of State Dept. - NYTimes.com

As Mrs. Clinton puts together her senior team, officials said, she is also trying to carve out a bigger role for the State Department in economic affairs, where the Treasury has dominated during the Bush years. She has sought advice from Laura D’Andrea Tyson, an economist who headed Mr. Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Clinton Moves to Widen Role of State Dept. - NYTimes.com

Demand for quants still strong, but... - FierceFinance

No one thinks that Wall Street is done with the quantitative approach. If anything, there's a new quest underway for better algorithms. Here's how Andrew Lo, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Financial Engineering, puts it: "It's an arms race where no one has an incentive to pull back on their own." It's interesting that more universities--such as Columbia--are already planning to tweak their curricula to help graduates understand the broader dimensions of their trade.

Demand for quants still strong, but... - FierceFinance

Financial meltdown slows wind power - Green Machines- msnbc.com

Doyle is paid just over $35,000 a month for the seven wind turbines in his soybean and corn fields. Those turbines and thousands others across the Midwest the past few years were part of an unprecedented build-out for the wind-power industry.

That expansion is now drastically slowing as financing dries up for many projects because of the global economic crisis. Companies that bankrolled much of the boom — the insurer AIG, now-bankrupt financial service company Lehman Brothers and Wachovia Corp. — are among the meltdown's biggest losers.

Financial meltdown slows wind power - Green Machines- msnbc.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Plan Calls for $44B in Broadband Spending

President-elect Barack Obama should spend $44 billion in broadband stimulus funds over the next three years as part of his immediate economic program, according to a new study from the media reform group Free Press. The proposed tax incentives and grant programs would not include projects previously planned by telecommunications companies.

Plan Calls for $44B in Broadband Spending

Alibaba Upbeat about Ecommerce in 2009

CEO David Wei said, "Our international marketplace attracted a record number of users, increasing 74% year-on-year, suggesting that traders worldwide are increasingly turning to the Internet as a new channel of e-commerce."

Alibaba Upbeat about Ecommerce in 2009

Taking Command - washingtonpost.com

We have a president-elect who has set out a pragmatic, nonpartisan, visionary course. It's time to lay to rest the old stereotypes about feckless, pacifist Democrats and authoritarian, war-mongering soldiers. If there were ever a time to get the relationship between Democrats and the military right, this is it.

Taking Command - washingtonpost.com

At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item - NYTimes.com

Mr. Siekaczek (pronounced SEE-kah-chek) says that from 2002 to 2006 he oversaw an annual bribery budget of about $40 million to $50 million at Siemens. Company managers and sales staff used the slush fund to cozy up to corrupt government officials worldwide.

The payments, he says, were vital to maintaining the competitiveness of Siemens overseas, particularly in his subsidiary, which sold telecommunications equipment. “It was about keeping the business unit alive and not jeopardizing thousands of jobs overnight,” he said in an interview.

At Siemens, Bribery Was Just a Line Item - NYTimes.com

The Reckoning - Bush’s Philosophy Stoked the Mortgage Bonfire - Series - NYTimes.com

The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money.Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history.Mr. Bush, according to several people in the room, paused for a single, stunned moment to take it all in.“How,” he wondered aloud, “did we get here?”

The Reckoning - Bush’s Philosophy Stoked the Mortgage Bonfire - Series - NYTimes.com

Obama’s First Trade Priority Is Helping Displaced U.S. Workers - Kiplinger.com

Barack Obama and the 111th Congress will move quickly to expand Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which provides help for workers displaced by trade agreements. It will most likely be included as part of a big economic stimulus plan that Democrats hope to pass in January. They'll enlarge TAA to cover service workers as well as manufacturing employees. In addition, they'll extend the benefits to those displaced by trade with countries that don't have free trade pacts with the U.S., such as China. And they'll beef up funding to states to pay for job training programs.

Obama’s First Trade Priority Is Helping Displaced U.S. Workers - Kiplinger.com

Obama Has One Chance to Get Infrastructure Spending Right | Autopia from Wired.com

# Train the workforce – Creating jobs through infrastructure spending is more difficult than simply handing out shovels. America 2050 calls for a methodical job training program to provide workers with the skills they need to do the job and make sure we get top-notch work out of them.

Obama Has One Chance to Get Infrastructure Spending Right | Autopia from Wired.com

Driving business innovation through collaboration | 17 Dec 2008 | ComputerWeekly.com

One posting on a ‘collaboration’ blog recently asked, ‘Given recent events, it's fair to say that IT managers everywhere are going to be asked, "OK, so what can you do to help us get through this downturn?" One of the suggestions was the use of open source collaboration solutions which offer a combination of cutting-edge capabilities and lower operating costs.

Collaboration has been described as the next phase of the Internet, and a $34 billion market opportunity. So this Executive overview of Innovate: Collaborate will examine the burgeoning relationship between innovation and collaboration and put key collaborative issues into context, such as the importance of ‘presence’ and whether unified communications can or should be delivered as a service.

Driving business innovation through collaboration | 17 Dec 2008 | ComputerWeekly.com

Why Has Google Demanded a "Fast Lane"? - Columns by PC Magazine

Google is asking for trouble. The search giant has suddenly begun to talk about the need for a fast lane for its offerings—opening a hornet's nest of debate regarding its motives. After all, Google has servers all over the planet sitting on world-class fiber, and we all know it's one of the most responsive sites online. So what's this baloney all about, really?

It's about Google maintaining its edge by having an advantage, not in perceived speed but in back-end speed. People moan and groan that this violates net neutrality principles. This isn't about net neutrality; it's about squashing the competition.

Most net-neutrality arguments are centered on the specious logic that someday an ISP will have its own search engine, and that it will choke off Google and others so much that people will have to use the ISP's search tool. "Everyone should have equal access," the populace screams.

Why Has Google Demanded a "Fast Lane"? - Columns by PC Magazine

Biz-Tech 3.0 - Obama and IT - Pushing Innovation: The Government's Job?

Put aside any negative feelings about more government bureaucracy or intervention into business and look at the reality of today. Obama is talking extensively about a new New Deal-like projects to revive the nation's infrastructure and stimulate the economy and job growth. With that, he's preached a new wave of innovation, and technology plays a huge role, as any CIO will tell you (and as evidenced by his successful use of collaboration, Web 2.0, etc. in his campaign).

Biz-Tech 3.0 - Obama and IT - Pushing Innovation: The Government's Job?

Biz-Tech 3.0 - Obama and IT - Pushing Innovation: The Government's Job?

Put aside any negative feelings about more government bureaucracy or intervention into business and look at the reality of today. Obama is talking extensively about a new New Deal-like projects to revive the nation's infrastructure and stimulate the economy and job growth. With that, he's preached a new wave of innovation, and technology plays a huge role, as any CIO will tell you (and as evidenced by his successful use of collaboration, Web 2.0, etc. in his campaign).

Biz-Tech 3.0 - Obama and IT - Pushing Innovation: The Government's Job?

Obama, Democratic Leaders Expanding Health Measures in Stimulus Package - washingtonpost.com

"We're going to be very busy here in Congress," he said in an interview. Baucus aims to begin marking up a stimulus bill the first week of January in hopes that it can be ready by Inauguration Day. He is pressing to include provisions that would steer money into health technology, such as adoption of electronic medical records, and reauthorization of the SCHIP program for two to three years.

"It's very important that health IT be part of the economic recovery," he said. "It represents the beginning of health-care reform."

During the campaign, Obama spoke of spending $50 billion on modernizing the health-care system by helping doctors and hospitals install and use computers. Sources involved in preparing the stimulus package said it might include $10 billion of that as a down payment."

Investing in the health of the American people is a crucial part of the nation's economic recovery," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "Modernizing our health-care system through better use of information technology is the key to easing the heavy burden of health-care costs."

Obama, Democratic Leaders Expanding Health Measures in Stimulus Package - washingtonpost.com

November video game sales near $3 billion - washingtonpost.com

U.S. retail sales of video game hardware, software and accessories jumped 10 percent last month from the year-ago period to $2.91 billion, boosted by strong sales of Nintendo Co.'s Wii, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and the alien shooter game "Gears of War 2."

November video game sales near $3 billion - washingtonpost.com

The IT Organization, Circa 2015 - Trends

The problem with the current culture of business operations, specifically when it comes to the role of the IT organization, is that best practices barely exist. Sure, plenty of IT organizations have built notable track records of success, but they’ve done so in unique ways, varying across businesses of different sizes, mindsets and industries.To find consensus on what the ever-changing—and downright thorny—role of IT organizations will be in the future is about as easy as agreeing on a college football champ. CIO Insight set out to do just that, and its efforts revealed the truly arduous challenges IT leaders face in adapting to the future needs of business.

The IT Organization, Circa 2015 - Trends

Obama`s IT Reality: Will It Be Change, or Just Hope? - IT Management

As is true for any organization, making good things happen with technology in government is primarily a management challenge, not a technological one. Technology investment must flow from a clearly articulated strategy, and technology must be deployed by and into organizational structures that are designed to make holistic decisions about it and to take full advantage of it.

Obama`s IT Reality: Will It Be Change, or Just Hope? - IT Management

Economies of Scale in the Spam Business - washingtonpost.com

"Barak Obama Is on the Verge of Death!"This header on a piece of pre-election spam had credibility problems (spelling the candidate's first name correctly might have helped), but it got people's attention. It was one of a slew of junk-mail blasts that used campaign-related topics to trick unwary readers into open­ing the message. This particular missive carried an image that, when clicked, jumped credulous recipients to an online pharmacy site.

Economies of Scale in the Spam Business - washingtonpost.com

How does Obama's broadband New Deal come to fruition? - FierceBroadbandWireless

Now the dirty work begins. How does this all come to fruition? How will the funds be doled out, what companies and technology will benefit and what strings will be attached in terms of regulations? Will it come in the form of support for nationwide operators or a nationwide licensee that would require the winning bidder to open up 25 percent of its network for free broadband access? (Earlier this week I got an email from M2Z PR folks with the subject line: "Obama Adopts M2Z Plan, Promises 100% Broadband Availability." M2Z has been pushing the FCC to adopt rules next week that would license a nationwide wireless broadband operator and set aside a portion for free broadband to the country's have-nots.)

How does Obama's broadband New Deal come to fruition? - FierceBroadbandWireless

The Bangalore Backlash: Call Centers Return to U.S. - washingtonpost.com

Catering to consumers put off by the accents of Bangalore, Manila and other call-center hubs around the globe, Dell will guarantee -- for a price -- that the person who picks up the phone on a support call will be, as company ads mention in bold text, "based in North America."

The Bangalore Backlash: Call Centers Return to U.S. - washingtonpost.com

How does Obama's broadband New Deal come to fruition? - FierceBroadbandWireless

Now the dirty work begins. How does this all come to fruition? How will the funds be doled out, what companies and technology will benefit and what strings will be attached in terms of regulations? Will it come in the form of support for nationwide operators or a nationwide licensee that would require the winning bidder to open up 25 percent of its network for free broadband access? (Earlier this week I got an email from M2Z PR folks with the subject line: "Obama Adopts M2Z Plan, Promises 100% Broadband Availability." M2Z has been pushing the FCC to adopt rules next week that would license a nationwide wireless broadband operator and set aside a portion for free broadband to the country's have-nots.)

How does Obama's broadband New Deal come to fruition? - FierceBroadbandWireless

We Need A National CIO, Not A CTO - Opinion

How many cybersecurity czars have we gone through since 9/11? I count at least three (Amit Yoran, Howard Schmidt, Greg Garcia and I’m sure there have been more) along with long gaps between selections. I think what happened was in the panic to develop national security there was an unwillingness to admit that a national security plan could take years and years to develop as competing agencies, privacy concerns and security processes needed to be considered. A national CTO could face the same difficulties.

We Need A National CIO, Not A CTO - Opinion

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Obama Calls for Broadband Initiative

Again pledging his commitment to technology, President-elect Barack Obama said Dec. 6 that investing heavily in computers and broadband connections for schools and hospitals will be part of his immediate economic recovery plans after he takes office Jan. 20.

Obama Calls for Broadband Initiative

Congressional report: FCC chair abused power | Politics and Law - CNET News

Over the course of his tenure, Martin manipulated and withheld information from the other FCC commissioners and from Congress, neglected his statutory responsibilities to produce certain information to Congress, and ignored evidence that certain national communications programs were being grossly mismanaged, according to the report issued by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, titled "Deception and Distrust: The Federal Communications Commission Under Chairman Kevin J. Martin." (PDF)

Congressional report: FCC chair abused power | Politics and Law - CNET News

Know It All - The Industry - IT Remains a Bright Spot in Gloomy Jobs Data

"Once again, IT employment rose in the face of otherwise horrible job numbers. Today's release of November statistics from the BLS shows a jump of 2.7% in computer systems design and related services. Management and technical consulting services, meanwhile, rose 1.7%."

Know It All - The Industry - IT Remains a Bright Spot in Gloomy Jobs Data

After the Crash: How Software Models Doomed the Markets: Scientific American

If Hollywood makes a movie about the worst financial crisis since the Great De­­pres­­sion, a basement room in a government building in Washington will serve as the setting for a key scene. There investment bankers from the largest institutions pleaded successfully with Securities and Ex­­change Commission (SEC) officials during a short meeting in 2004 to lift a rule specifying debt limits and capital reserves needed for a rainy day. This decision, a real event described in the New York Times, freed billions to invest in complex mortgage-backed securities and derivatives that helped to bring about the financial meltdown in September.In the script, the next scene will be the one in which number-savvy specialists that Wall Street has come to know as quants consult with their superiors about implementing the regulatory change. These lapsed physicists and mathematical virtuosos were the ones who both invented these oblique securities and created software models that supposedly measured the risk a firm would incur by holding them in its portfolio. Without the formal requirement to maintain debt ceilings and capital reserves, the commission had freed these firms to police themselves using risk tools crafted by cadres of quants.

After the Crash: How Software Models Doomed the Markets: Scientific American

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Panel urges Obama to consider hacker-response plan - washingtonpost.com

"Responding to a cyber attack is a tough issue," said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think-tank that organized the commission. "Do operators respond with law enforcement, espionage or military actions? The guidelines are really unclear. The rules designed in the 1980s are slow, and the Internet is fast."

Panel urges Obama to consider hacker-response plan - washingtonpost.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Obama Vows Broadband Expansion in Recovery Plan - 12/7/2008 6:11:00 PM - Broadcasting & Cable

"Most industry players concede that there needs to be greater stimulus for broadband rollout, but there are disagreements over how relevant the rankings are given that some of the leading countries are smaller and easier to wire. They also disagree on the best way to close the gap."

Obama Vows Broadband Expansion in Recovery Plan - 12/7/2008 6:11:00 PM - Broadcasting & Cable

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Other Paul Volcker - washingtonpost.com

"Volcker is not just an expert in economic turnarounds, however. He is also the acknowledged elder statesman of public service reform. The son of a city manager from Teaneck, New Jersey Volcker was raised to believe that public service is a noble calling and followed through in what has been a classic "in-and-outer" career."

The Other Paul Volcker - washingtonpost.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Web 2.0 Security: 3 Key Questions - Security

Hoping to reduce its promotional costs and sell more slow-moving products, an online sports retailer added an inexpensive ad widget to its site, pushing the latest promotions to desktops based on the user’s browsing habits. Because they neglected the proper due diligence, the retailer didn’t discover that the provider of the ad widget also installed a key logger. Now when the unsuspecting user conducts transactions on any Web site, the key logger captures the user’s sensitive information, which is then sold in the underground market and exploited by crooks.

Web 2.0 Security: 3 Key Questions - Security

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Obama to Announce Choice of Richardson for Commerce Secretary - washingtonpost.com

"The job will add to an already lengthy Washington résumé for Richardson that includes stints as secretary of energy and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during President Bill Clinton's administration, as well as nearly two decades as a congressman representing New Mexico. He left the nation's capital in 2002 to run for governor of New Mexico and was reelected with 69 percent of the vote four years later."

Obama to Announce Choice of Richardson for Commerce Secretary - washingtonpost.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Obama Names Innovation Team

"Assembling a team of telecom lawyers with deep roots at the FCC Federal Communications Commission, technology industry leaders, academics, financial experts and former government officials, President-elect Barack Obama named his technology, innovation and government policy reform working group Nov. 25."

Obama Names Innovation Team

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Free Web Plan Being Pushed by FCC Head - WSJ.com

"The free Internet plan is the most controversial issue the agency will tackle in December. Mr. Martin shelved plans to consider a wider variety of sticky issues pending at the agency, including a request by the Hollywood studios to hobble TVs and set-top boxes so studios can offer copy-protected theatrical releases sooner."

Free Web Plan Being Pushed by FCC Head - WSJ.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Gore: Don't Count On Magic | Newsweek Future Of Energy | Newsweek.com

We should tax what we burn, not what we earn.

Gore: Don't Count On Magic | Newsweek Future Of Energy | Newsweek.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Hawaiian Telcom files for bankruptcy protection - Forbes.com

Hawaiian Telcom postponed a $26 million interest payment in November and was in the midst of a 30-day grace period, which ended Monday. Hawaiian Telecom is carrying more than $1 billion in debt, the result of financing that was arranged three years ago for the company's $1.6 billion sale to Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm based in Washington, D.C.

Hawaiian Telcom files for bankruptcy protection - Forbes.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

A Market-Oriented Economic Team - washingtonpost.com

President-elect Barack Obama is assembling a deeply experienced team of top economic advisers whose key members firmly believe that limited government spending combined with free markets can create lasting prosperity.

A Market-Oriented Economic Team - washingtonpost.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Speech, Bernanke --Deflation-- November 21, 2002

Here is the Fed's position on any worries about deflation. Written in 2002 but it outlines the tools Bernanke will use to fight off a recession.

Of course, the U.S. government is not going to print money and distribute it willy-nilly (although as we will see later, there are practical policies that approximate this behavior).8 Normally, money is injected into the economy through asset purchases by the Federal Reserve. To stimulate aggregate spending when short-term interest rates have reached zero, the Fed must expand the scale of its asset purchases or, possibly, expand the menu of assets that it buys. Alternatively, the Fed could find other ways of injecting money into the system--for example, by making low-interest-rate loans to banks or cooperating with the fiscal authorities. Each method of adding money to the economy has advantages and drawbacks, both technical and economic. One important concern in practice is that calibrating the economic effects of nonstandard means of injecting money may be difficult, given our relative lack of experience with such policies. Thus, as I have stressed already, prevention of deflation remains preferable to having to cure it. If we do fall into deflation, however, we can take comfort that the logic of the printing press example must assert itself, and sufficient injections of money will ultimately always reverse a deflation.

Speech, Bernanke --Deflation-- November 21, 2002

Blogged with the Flock Browser

'Encouraged by a wicked wizard, Greenspan, Bernanke toils at his printing press' - Telegraph

"The original Frank Baum story was written as a political allegory of America's entry on to the gold standard in 1879. The strictures of sound money coincided with a vibrant post Civil War economy. The result was deflation: prices fell by 1.7pc pa between 1875 and 1896. The farmer, as depicted by the scarecrow, was held captive by falling agricultural prices and mortgages owed to the big banks, the wicked witch of the east. The spell of tight monetary policy cast a pall over the poor tin woodsman: every time he swung his axe, he chopped off part of his body. It was a depiction of the economy's shuttered and rusting factories."

'Encouraged by a wicked wizard, Greenspan, Bernanke toils at his printing press' - Telegraph

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Op-Ed Contributor - What They Hate About Mumbai - NYTimes.com

"Mumbai is all about dhandha, or transaction. From the street food vendor squatting on a sidewalk, fiercely guarding his little business, to the tycoons and their dreams of acquiring Hollywood, this city understands money and has no guilt about the getting and spending of it. I once asked a Muslim man living in a shack without indoor plumbing what kept him in the city. “Mumbai is a golden songbird,” he said. It flies quick and sly, and you’ll have to work hard to catch it, but if you do, a fabulous fortune will open up for you. The executives who congregated in the Taj Mahal hotel were chasing this golden songbird. The terrorists want to kill the songbird."

Op-Ed Contributor - What They Hate About Mumbai - NYTimes.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Henry Waxman, Green Energy and Technology Win First Fight of the New Congress

"The winds of change are sweeping Washington even before President-elect Barack Obama is sworn in Jan. 20, heralding new agenda priorities on a wide range of issues affecting technology, from climate change to health care reform to network neutrality.

In the U.S. House, Democrats voted Nov. 20 to replace 82-year-old Rep. John Dingell—a powerful voice for Detroit automakers for more than 50 years—with outspoken energy and environmental advocate Rep. Henry Waxman of California as chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. In the Senate, Democrats are installing Sen. Jay Rockefeller, with health care reform and rural broadband access at the top of his agenda, as chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology."

Henry Waxman, Green Energy and Technology Win First Fight of the New Congress

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Speculation on Waxman's Telecom Influence

"Waxman was elected chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and is expected to emphasize government accountability and pursue a "transparency agenda." A report soon to be issued on the FCC's decision-making process under current FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is expected to highlight Waxman's penchant for accountability.While Waxman has a "spotty record" of attending high-tech oriented hearings, he supports network neutrality and is expected to work with the incoming administration to craft legislation in that area."

Speculation on Waxman's telecom influence - FierceTelecom

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Idea Lab - Becoming Screen Literate - NYTimes.com

"These ever-present screens have created an audience for very short moving pictures, as brief as three minutes, while cheap digital creation tools have empowered a new generation of filmmakers, who are rapidly filling up those screens. We are headed toward screen ubiquity."

Idea Lab - Becoming Screen Literate - NYTimes.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Why Obama Should Keep His BlackBerry - WSJ.com

"This reality of the information age might be particularly stark for the president, but it's no less true for all of us. Conversation used to be ephemeral. Whether face-to-face or by phone, we could be reasonably sure that what we said disappeared as soon as we said it. Organized crime bosses worried about phone taps and room bugs, but that was the exception. Privacy was just assumed."

Why Obama Should Keep His BlackBerry - WSJ.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Broadband subs hit 400 million, 'Net bending under the weight - FierceTelecom

"The Broadband Forum and research partner Point-Topic announced that there are now more than 400 million global broadband subscribers. That's a long way from the first measurement taken in 1998, when global broadband subscribers numbered barely more than than 57,000. Fiber-based broadband services now account for about 45 million subscribers, according to Point-Topic."

Broadband subs hit 400 million, 'Net bending under the weight - FierceTelecom

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Know It All - The Industry - Telecom in Tough Times: The Big Will Get Bigger

"Following the shock of the last bubble popping, he says, these companies were conservative in managing their balance sheets, so their free cash flow is high and they are not strapped for credit. "Network expansion plans could be delayed in some cases, but they remain on track."The scarcity of credit, though, is squeezing vendors, who rely heavily on R&D, and who face price-conscious customers and demands that they share risks and costs on big projects."

Know It All - The Industry - Telecom in Tough Times: The Big Will Get Bigger

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Debt Man Walking

"For decades, the United States has relied on a tortuous financial arrangement that knits together its economy with those of China and Japan. This informal system has allowed Asian countries to run huge export surpluses with the United States, while allowing the United States to run huge budget deficits without having to raise interest rates or taxes, and to run huge trade deficits without abruptly depreciating its currency. I couldn't find a single instance of Obama discussing this issue, but it has been an obsession of bankers, international economists, and high officials like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. They think this informal system contributed to today's financial crisis. Worse, they fear that its breakdown could turn the looming downturn into something resembling the global depression of the 1930s."

Debt Man Walking

Blogged with the Flock Browser

A Search Engine With an Eye for Videos - WSJ.com

"When it works, VideoSurf is one of those technologies that make you wonder why someone didn't think of it sooner. The site aggregates content from about 60 sources, including YouTube, CNN Video, Hulu, ESPN and Comedy Central, and a sorting tool weeds out unwanted results like the irksome slideshows that are labeled as videos. VideoSurf can find videos on all kinds of subjects, but it really shines when it finds well-known people."

A Search Engine With an Eye for Videos - WSJ.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The New Washington Tech Agenda

"Since technology is the key to virtually all of President-elect Barack Obama's plans for sweeping changes in the direction of the country and the way Washington does business with its citizens, it is not surprising Obama brings a decidedly different technology agenda to the White House than President Bush did eight years ago.Bush praised technology as a key driver of the economy and worked to remove government barriers such as laws, rules and regulations to let the free market make its decisions on winners and losers. Obama, though, embraces technology as the path to innovation and the future and plans to invest heavily in technology as the key to reviving the economy."

The New Washington Tech Agenda

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Lawmaker Plans Bill on Web Neutrality

Sen. "Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, believes a law is essential to prevent telephone and cable companies from discriminating against Internet content, even though regulators have taken actions to enforce free Web principles, a top Dorgan aide said on Thursday."We feel that legislation is definitely necessary," said Frannie Wellings, telecom counsel to Dorgan, speaking at a University of Nebraska law school event on changes in telecom law after the election of Democrat Barack Obama."

Lawmaker Plans Bill on Web Neutrality

Blogged with the Flock Browser

NAB Show - Digital Media Industry Event for Audio, Video, Film & Communications Professionals

NAB Show - Digital Media Industry Event for Audio, Video, Film & Communications Professionals

Blogged with the Flock Browser

A New Inconvenient Truth

"Nobel prize winner Al Gore shifted from his longstanding focus on regulating carbon pollution to advocating direct government investments in clean energy as the best way to deal with climate change. Gore is the country's most prominent spokesperson on climate change and a shift in his thinking in reaction to new economic and political circumstances is highly significant."

A New Inconvenient Truth

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Op-Ed Contributor - What’s Good for G.M. Is Good for the Army - NYTimes.com

General Clark on the importance of the automobile manufacturers.

Op-Ed Contributor - What’s Good for G.M. Is Good for the Army - NYTimes.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Know It All - - Local Area Networks: How the Obama Campaign Works on the Ground

Know It All - - Local Area Networks: How the Obama Campaign Works on the Ground

Blogged with the Flock Browser

10 Weeks of Financial Turmoil - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

10 Weeks of Financial Turmoil - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Patriot Tax: We Need a Price Floor for Gasoline

In 2001, the Congress passed the Orwellian-sounding Patriot Act, a Faustian bargain, requiring Americans giving up privacy rights in exchange for increased security. It's time to put an ironic twist on that euphemism by passing a Patriot tax, a gas tax to help transform the transportation grid into a petrol-free zone.

The benefit of a Democratic win in November 2008 will be a more serious discussion of the use of taxes. Granted no one likes taxes but, as Republicans like to say, when you tax something, you get less of it. And we need less burning of fossil fuels.

Consequently, we need to tax gasoline. I think we need to implement an additional $1 dollar per gallon tax in 2010 and increase it a dollar a year until 2020.

This would be considered a regressive tax but we could rebate people at the end of the year. Say $200 a year for people making over $100,000 and $250 for those making less than $100,000 and $300 for those making less than $50,000. This would reduce the amount of oil people burn while also providing an economic stimulus.

Most importantly, a predictable, dependable price floor will lay the foundation for the renewable energy industries and technologies that will reduce the US trade deficit and help save the planet.

Capitalism Needs a Purpose

I visited President Clinton's office in Harlem yesterday to talk about some potential digital projects. Unfortunately he was not there as we were working with some of his people, but on the way home I was thinking about an interview he did recently with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo in the same office for her Wall Street Journal Report. While the ex-President is brilliant on a number of topics, his instincts on the economy are probably the most notable. During his administration, the US experienced a phenomenal economic expansion and no doubt his instincts were refined by the incredible success of the e-commerce revolution due to the commercialization of the Internet. When asked if former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan was to blame for the current credit crisis because the Fed left interest rates so low, he had this to say.

The real problem was that good money at low prices didn't have a lot of options apart from housing, or other real estate. Because there was not enough other growth. I believe that if we had started a serious energy policy six years ago, we might still be in this fix, but it wouldn't have been nearly as bad. Cause we would have had whole other range of other things for people to invest money in, areas for people to work in, and less incentive for people to move this money in every more clever ways, just through the same old hole in real estate.

Clinton's government witnessed and benefited from the IT/dot.com revolution. More important he saw the decisive role an activist administration played in propelling the movement. Not through massive government intervention but by hyping the technologies and setting up the conditions for competition in this new industry and letting the investment flow in. Capitalism needs a purpose. It needs direction and cheerleading. Prime the pump then let the market churn out the details.

Obama and the East-West Center

I went to an East-West Center (EWC) Alumni dinner the other night and was pleasantly surprised to learn that Barack Obama's parents were "grantees" there during the early 1960s. I attended the EWC in Honolulu first as a Research Intern and co-authored a book, Computerization and Development in Southeast Asia (1987) and I stayed on as a grantee to get a Masters degree. They also funded the first two years of my PhD before I moved to New Zealand to teach at Victoria University and where I finished writing my dissertation.

But enough about me. I have been able to piece together a bit more about Barack Obama's parents and the role the East-West Center played in their lives. His mother, Ann Dunham, arrived in Hawaii with her parents from Seattle in 1960 and began to attend the University of Hawaii. She soon married Barack Hussein Obama Sr. and gave birth to Barack Jr. on August 4, 1961. Both parents were sponsored by the East-West Center, which was newly created at the time to help foster better relations between the US and Asia. The EWC requires its grantees to take a foreign language (I took Japanese and Indonesian) and they met in a Russian language class. In 1963, the elder Obama took a scholarship for graduate study at Harvard University and eventually returned to his native Kenya. Ann married another East-West Center grantee, Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia, who was studying for a MA degree in geography.

Obama never studied or spent much time at the East-West Center, but his parents were very much part of the dynamic international East-West Center community. His mother and Kenyan-born father spent considerable time mixing with other international students at the Center’s famous cafeteria that looks out over a beautiful Japanese garden. Moreover his Kansas-born mother and stepfather from Indonesia were each selected to participate in the East-West Center’s highly competitive graduate Scholarship Program." 1

The East-West Center is funded almost entirely by the US Congress and has been run since its beginning by the US Information Agency (USIA) which also ran the Voice of America (VoA). Reports of it being a "left-wing" institution are greatly exaggerated, although like the VoA, it tried to develop good relations with other countries in Asia-Pacific, many of which had been left-of-center or at least partial to "development" thinking where government has a crucial role in a nation's economic, educational, and social growth.

In 1967, the new family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, during the tense years of the early Suharto regime. So intense that his mother who worked for the US Embassy, brought him back to Hawaii in 1971. After several years, she decided to move back to Indonesia. Barack asked to live with his grandparents and stay in Hawaii. His grandfather had been very attentive to the father-less boy and his grandmother was a rising star and eventual Vice-President at the Bank of Hawaii, one of Hawaii's two largest banks. Obama's mother returned to Indonesia where she continued her work in rural development that would take her to many countries in the area: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal and Thailand.2


For myself, I also met my wife during my days as a EWC grantee and I would be pleased if our daughter continued the tradition and ran for US President one day.

Sources

1) http://www.pacificmagazine.net/page/features/polynesias-first-us-president/
2) http://www.midweek.com/content/story/midweek_coverstory/08_year_of_obama/P2/

Cerf on National Technology Policy

I've been researching the possibilities of a "czar" coordinating the broadband/electrical grid in the future and ran across this interesting interview with the "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf.
Towards a National Technology Policy

"I'd like to see visible evidence of the reconstitution of bodies providing technical input to policy makers. A small example would be the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, PITAC, that President Clinton put in place. I'm a little biased because I served on the committee, but what I observed in the course of my time on that committee is that it had a very strong drawing power, convening power to bring together people from various parts of the government who were particularly concerned about information technology and its further development.

And the consequences of the committee deliberations had what I thought was direct effect not only in policy decision in the executive branch, for example in the research area, but also helped influence thinking at the legislative level. The committee went out of its way to brief members of Congress and staff about issues that had come under the purview of that committee. I think more of that is really valuable, not just at the national level but at the state level, and maybe even at the local level, when you're talking about infrastructure development, broadband access to Internet, things of that kind, you want some locally sensible decision making that's driven in part by technology and economics."

CIOI: If a technology czar of some sort is the result of the DC process, would that still be better than what we have now?

Cerf: Maybe a compromise is that there is an office of Science and Technology policy for the executive office of the President. That's where PITAC was situated, there's also the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, PCAST. These are existing mechanisms, or previously-existing mechanisms that could be reconstituted. Drawing on the technical community at different levels of government is what I'm looking for here. If you try to centralize it, you don't get decision making at the level of detail that is needed in all the various instances where you want to have technical input. Local conditions are going to involve different kinds of solutions.

My concern about centralizing things is that you don't get very good solutions. If you want to draw attention to the importance of technology in policy making at the national level, perhaps you do need to have a cabinet level person - but what is the purview of that person? I would compare it to the evangelist position I have at Google. I don't make decisions, I don't believe it's appropriate, but I can lobby like crazy in every venue where people will listen, to apply principles like net neutrality, for example, in the course of deciding policy. It's encouraging people to draw on valuable and distributed resources of information that strikes me as the most important outcome of this kind of thinking.

CIOI: Obama has talked about a national Chief Technology Officer. Is what we need really more of a national Chief Information Officer?

Cerf: Maybe, although it's fair to say that there's more to technology than information. So it depends a great deal on what Senator Obama has in mind in terms of scope for such a position. For example, DARPA acts a kind of central resource for research for the military, including to the military departments' own research branches. So in a funny way, from the defense point of view, that is the central technology arm of the organization. But it engages in a very broad way across the country, finding some of the best people in the United States and in some cases outside of the United States to help resolve really tough technical issues.

So if there were such a position, whether a CIO position or a CTO as the Obama campaign refers to it, having that position in the cabinet begs the question, what does that party actually do? Does that party have a budget? Are there things that the organization that forms under this position have authority for? The worst thing in the world is to have a position where all you can do is say no, because if you say yes you can't afford to pay for anything. That's the source of some frustration for a number of people in the private sector who serve as Chief Technolgy Officers, if they don't budget and staff it's very hard to make something happen.

Drill, Drill, Drill it into our Heads

Probably nobody has had as much influence on projecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin into veep consideration than the anchor of MSNBC's Kudlow and Company who interviewed the former Miss Congeniality on several occasions. Larry Kudlow's show is one of my favorites although I rarely agree with him politically. One of Kudlow's mantra's is "Drill, Drill, Drill" - meaning give the oil companies everything they want, especially drilling rights in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Gov. Palin fits right into this thinking, serving a constituency that gets fat checks from oil royalties and other perks as well as a husband who works for BP (formerly British Petroleum). (Hmm, as a New Yorker, I wonder if I should get royalties from Wall Street?)

Gov. Palin was picked recently by Senator John "The Google" McCain as his running mate on the GOP Presidential ticket. McCain has been slowly selling his soul to the oil special interests, completing the transaction last June. Note this quote from the Washington Post:

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

Washington, of course, was taken over by the political "oil sludge" in 2001. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and Department of Commerce Secretary Don Evans, and of course, in the shadows, Enron's "Kenny Boy" Lay were all beholden to fossil fuel interests. The combination led to a $1 trillion+ war in the Middle East and oil prices that peaked near $150 a gallon in the summer of 2008 as unregulated speculators took advantage of the Fed's 2% interest rates to bet on America's vacation plans and overall addiction to the hydrocarbon saturated liquid. The political ideology associated with this oil cabal has been highly resistant to recognizing the "externalities" (costs born by third parties) associated with fossil fuel usage, particularly its role in polluting the atmosphere and creating global warming.

As I've written before, whether through incompetence or design (to give the benefit of the doubt) Bush created a discussion on energy that Gore's proselytizing probably could not achieve. As gas rose to $4 a gallon, oil expanded beyond the global warming conversation to an economic issue as cost-push inflation made commuting and other forms of travel more expensive and energy costs pushed prices up among a wide range of products dependent on cheap fuel or hydrocarbon components (ie tires, plastics, etc.)

The time is right to begin to institute widescale change. The time is right for an Intellectrical Revolution based on the newest technologies in microprocessing, telecommunications and non-carbon based energy sources.

But now McCain is becoming the new voice of this dying industry and he is quickly picking up the "drill, drill, drill" mantra. With Palin providing the echo and a Republican Party desperate for an economic theme, we can expect the message to be drilled into our heads this Fall. Slowly lulling us back into "Fossil Fools".

Live From Denver

Well in HD anyway.

Senator Edward Kennedy looked great speaking at the Democratic Convention in Denver tonight. I could hardly tell he has been suffering from brain cancer. He has made mistakes in his life, but they are far, far outweighed by his accomplishments. Unlike Bush who has tried to return a class system to the US, Kennedy has stood for equal opportunity and advancement towards a society where class, race, gender and sexual preferences are not barriers to a rich and fulfilling life.

Obama's Political Roots

Bodysurfing in Hawaii

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and went to its prestigious Punahou High School, spending a few years of his childhood in Indonesia. I lived across the street from his high school, although a few years after he graduated. I don't know Obama, at least not much more than anyone watching the news these days, but I do have some insights into the environment he lived in while in Hawaii.

One of the things to recognize was that Obama lived in Hawaii while a Japanese-American governor came to power. While in high school, he would have seen Gov. George Ariyoshi emerge as the first US governor of Asian descent, an extraordinary event at the time that was widely celebrated in Hawaii.

Why Political Economy?

Political Economy examines the interplay between powerful economic actors and market forces. It looks at government, NGOs, news organizations, religions, unions, oligopolistic corporations, and even individuals that possess either great wealth, political power, charismatic personalities and/or celebrity status.

Economics is based on a beautiful yet fleeting abstraction: that dynamics of nature drive the forces of supply and demand to produce an equilibrium price that will satisfy everyone involved. The state of natural perfection, often called the "market" will constantly adjust and readjust via the price system to achieve the "one price" that will "clear the market" of all products and send all customers happily on their way home.

Political Economy does not deny market forces, but recognizes that the real world consists of actors that have little interest in being subject to market forces. Every business strives to transcend market forces and establish a dominant presence with the power to set its own prices. Governments work to even out the business cycle with intentional policies to either stimulate or (rarely) slow down the economy. Central Banks like the Federal Reserve use their power over the money supply to influence the economy.