Pennings Pennings

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - March 2011

2011-06-25T09:08:00.001-04:00

Developing Apps for Apple’s Mobile Devices

While Android mobile devices like my Droid X are certainly gaining in popularity, Apple products still lead the pack in terms of popularity, if not user satisfaction, for mobile products. The key to Apple’s new mobility devices is the iOS operating system originally developed for the iPhone, but now the standard for an [...]

Social Media: Some Thoughts on Curriculum

Social media are sets of Internet and mobile platforms and tools that facilitate meaningful exchanges and value creation between individuals and with groups and organizations in both the commercial and public spheres. While the earliest tools included blogs, bookmark sharing, forums, podcasts, tagging and wikis; new applications available through platforms like Facebook, hulu, Second Life, [...]
The Breakup of AT&T and the Move to Wireless Duopoly, Part II: The Grand Alliance

The mobile technology industry has been going through a rapid transition, highlighted recently by AT&T’s announcement that it would buyT-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom for US$39 billion to create the largest cellular company in the US. I dug into my notes to explore the formation of this industry which was largely ignored by the AT&T despite [...]

The Breakup of AT&T and the Move to Wireless Duopoly, Part I: Transformation

The potential AT&T merger with T-Mobile announced over the weekend raises questions about the legacy of the former telecom monopoly and the unending role of government regulation in the industry. The deal which requires AT&T to pay $39 billion in stocks and cash to create the largest mobile provider in the US, has the backing [...]

Google’s Competitive Advantages – Fixed Costs

We’ve been reading The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, and Ava Seave in my Digital Media Management II class at NYU. The book challenges some of the key assumptions regarding the management of media companies including the importance of brands, talent [...]

The University of Hawaii and the History of Non-Linear Editing

When I was working on my PhD at the University of Hawaii (UH), we became the first academic institution in the world to obtain an Avid non-linear digital editing (NLE) suite in early 1990. Thanks to the vision and determination of Stan Harms and Dan Wedemeyer, professors in the Communication Department (now School [...]
Tragedy in Japan

With the devastation that has occurred in the Sendai area recently, my Fulbright Fellowship to go to Japan for a year is up in the air. Of course that is minor compared to the hardships and heartaches of so many affected by the earthquake/tsunami/radiation events that have unfolded in last week. I’m going to try [...]

Social Media Entering Phoenix Stage?

I thought this guy was interesting when I saw him on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He argues passionately that social media is in a stage much like at the end of the dot.com era where we didn’t really know how to get the returns on our investments in the Internet. He says we won’t really see [...]

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - February 2011

2011-05-10T00:19:00.001-04:00

My Top Social Media Books

In general I’m unhappy with the focus and range of books on social media. Still, some interesting works are worth mentioning. I don’t really have them in a particular order as I haven’t really developed a useful taxonomy. Also I don’t have extensive comments as I link them to their Amazon pages where you can [...]

Media Content as a “Public Good”

Media products are sometimes referred to as “public goods” because these products are not significantly “used up” in the process of consumption and each additional user incurs little additional (marginal) cost. Unlike traditional products like a hamburger that is bit into, chewed, swallowed, and digested, media content is not destroyed while consumed. Although [...]

Obama “Hustling” E-Commerce Exports

President Obama recently spoke to the US Chamber of Commerce about the importance his administration was putting on exports and trade agreements, an event that coincided with the release of an important document on global e-commerce. We know what it will take for America to win the future. We need to out-innovate, we [...]

Social Network Seminar – Translating Virtual Engagement into Political Reality

CrossRoads Spring 2011: Social Networks – translating virtual engagement into political reality Friday, February 18, 6-8:30pm NYU Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South, room 405 Speaker: Andrew Noyes, Public Policy Communications Manager, Facebook, (Washington D.C.) Interviewed by: Dr. Anthony Pennings, NYU-McGhee-DCoM Andrew Noyes joined Facebook in 2009 after covering Capitol Hill, the White House, federal [...]

Multimedia and Multiple Intelligences

When I was teaching at Victoria University in New Zealand I was invited to give a keynote address for a distance learning conference at Massey University. I chose to draw on Howard Gardner‘s theories of multiple intelligence and connect them to multimedia. I always thought that the Harvard psychology professor had developed a [...]

Wanted: Top Skills in Information System Management

The market for information tech and systems management skills is starting to look good again, despite a continued trend to look offshore. The following are some of the ISM skills in demand and what talented professional are making. ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming) ABAP, pronounced as ‘ah-bop’, is a high level application-specific fourth-generation [...]

From Sputnik Moment to the Reagan Revolution

President Obama has mentioned the Sputnik satellite several times in speeches over the last few years to refer to the contemporary challenges facing the US such as climate change, oil depletion and the decline of the American economy. Most recently in the 2011 State of the Union address, he spoke of the Soviet [...]

China bids Baidu to Google

While the big search engine news is the row between Google and Microsoft’s Bing, China’s Baidu continues to become a search behemoth with financial successes exceeding expectations and a dominating market share in Chinese language search. Sanctioned by the People’s Republic of China, Baidu’s name comes from a poem written during the Song Dynasty over [...]

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - January 2011

2011-05-09T08:48:00.001-04:00

Comcast and General Electric Complete NBC Universal Deal

Comcast has now completed it’s acquisition of NBC Universal. Marguerite Reardon reports that the new company will retain the NBC Universal name but Comcast now owns 51 percent while General Electric will retain 49 percent. The deal comes after The US Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission recently allowed the joint venture to [...]

Communications and Media Policy in the 112th Congress

The Republican victory in House of Representatives suggests new dynamics for communications policy in the 112th Congress although the majority of Democrats in the Senate, however slim, will make it unlikely that any radical changes will occur in the upcoming year. In the Congress, “communications” covers a wide range of media and telecommunications issues including [...]

Shutting Down a Nation’s Internet: The Case of Egypt

Late in the evening of January 27, 2011, US trackers watched the global access to Egypt’s cyberspace shut down. Starting with incumbent Telecom Egypt’s TE Data; Raya Telecom and other ISPs (Internet Service Providers) around the country began to hit the proverbial “kill switch”. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and emails failed to traverse the country’s cyberspace [...]

The Dual Product Media Model

Digitalization has had a dramatic impact on media industries, causing them to reevaluate their business models and also creating the conditions for new types of media companies to emerge. Media content has always had unique economic properties and the challenge now is to figure out how the dynamics of digitalization and the Internet will change [...]

Transatlantic Telegraphy

While Western Union was consolidating its power over the widespread US market, others dreamed of using the telegraph to connect with other continents. The dream of electronically connecting North American with Europe was held strongest by Cyrus West Field, a Massachusetts entrepreneur. Born sickly in 1819, Field developed a fierce temperament and drove himself intensely. [...]

Telegraphy: The Space-Time Governmentality, Part II

This continues the argument started in Part I What Hath God Wrought? It is generally acknowledged that Samuel Morse did not invent the telegraph, but the painter and NYU professor can nevertheless be credited with its rapid development and commercialization. Morse first became enamored with the idea of transmitting “intelligence” by electricity on a transatlantic [...]

Telegraphy: The Space-Time Governmentality

By reducing what previously took weeks, to a minute, it (the telegraph) forced the acceleration of methods of obtaining, processing, and codifying information, thus laying the foundation of what decades later was to be called “data processing.” – Moreno Fraginals [1] As argued in Tom Standage’s The Victorian Internet, the development of widescale telegraphy was [...]

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - December 2010

2011-05-07T10:02:00.001-04:00

Two Great Debates on Net Neutrality: Cerf-Farber and Lessig-Gilder

With the FCC releasing its latest rulings on Net Neutrality just before Christmas I thought I would go back to two very good debates about it. The first one at the Center for American Progress on Monday, July 17, 2006 featured Vinton G. Cerf, the creator of TCP and David Farber from the University of [...]

Neuromancing the Code: When IT Changed

During the 1980s, a different short of conversation about computers and data networking emerged. I was an undergraduate at the time doing an internship about Asian computerization at the East-West Center and I remember the personal computer with its IBM clones and the Apple Macintosh held most of the public’s tech attention with their associated [...]

A Digital Story about Economics and Health

Busy with grading today but I liked the combination of story-telling and data visualization in this video. Hans Rosling is a doctor from Sweden who has done a lot of work on paralytic diseases in developing countries. Share Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems [...]

Susan Crawford on US Broadband Policy, Net Neutrality and the Comcast-NBCU merger

This was a good talk on US telecom policy related to today’s net neutrality rulings. Here is the video of Susan Crawford’s talk at New York University on November 29, 2010. Professor Crawford was recently the Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.

Best IT/Media Policy Books of 2010

It’s 2010 and do we really know the impact technology is having in our lives? Sometimes I wonder if social media, as important as it is, is shielding us from the other important influences IT is having in our lives from the financial crisis we are recovering from, the way we conduct war and espionage, [...]

Informating the Subject: Reflecting on Zuboff’s Future of Power and Work

Shosana Zuboff’s In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988) was one of the more interesting inquiries into the processes of computerization and electronic communications to emerge out of the 1980s. While suffering from a number of deficiencies which will be discussed later, it nonetheless represented a serious and [...]

Advertising, E-Commerce and the Power of Search

At the core of global e-commerce’s extraordinary potential is the power of search engines and the new advertising strategies they enable. Search engine based advertising has continued to increase rapidly and drive e-commerce with it. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. totalled nearly $6.5 billion during the third [...]

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - November 2010

2011-05-06T13:39:00.004-04:00

Digital Destruction

I was talking with a woman the other day whose husband is losing her job because “films don’t use film anymore”. Yes, I responded, another case of digital destruction. She was intrigued with the term so we discussed it a bit more. I take no credit in coming up with name but the conversation did [...]

Former Special Assistant to President Obama Talks about Telecom Policy at NYU

Susan Crawford, a former Special Assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy gave a lecture today about the state of telecommunications policy in the United States. Currently she is a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York City and a Visiting Research Collaborator at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. As [...]

How “STAR WARS” and the Japanese Artificial Intelligence (AI) Threat Led to the Internet, Part II

This is the second part of my argument about how the Internet changed from a military network to a widescale global network of interconnected networks. It is abstracted from my manuscript on How IT Came to Rule the World and continues the examination of statecraft and its role on the development and impact of computerization [...]

Towards a Bachelor of Science in Global E-commerce

A few years ago I was asked to develop a proposal for a BS in Global E-Commerce that I had suggested. It has yet to be implemented like the BS in Digital Communications and Media I created for NYU in 2002 but I always thought it had potential. Preamble The “Bachelor of Science in Global [...]

Dominant and Emerging Models of Global E-Commerce

The term “e-commerce” provokes connotations of computer users “surfing” the web and using their credit cards to make online purchases. While this has been the popular conception and will continue to drive strong e-commerce sales for the retail sector, other technologies and business models will also be important. E-commerce is as dynamic as the technologies [...]

Digital Television and the Challenges for International Public Policy

Found this paper recently that I gave to the Pacific Telecommunications Council in 1997. In my conclusion I state that “IPTV may fall on the scrapheap of history, like ISDN, but it’s apparent both the telco and the television industry will continue to go through substantive changes. Two apparent changes are its increasing globalization and [...]

How “STAR WARS” and the Japanese Artificial Intelligence (AI) Threat Led to the Internet

This is abstracted from my manuscript on How IT Came to Rule the World and continues the examination of statecraft and its role on the development and impact of computerization and netcentric power. The Internet was born out of two American paranoias: fear of Communist aggression and the fear of losing the US lead in [...]

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - October 2010

2011-05-06T13:36:00.002-04:00

Why I’m a Tsaiko: Sports and Social Media

I don’t have a lot of time for sports these days but I do stay true to my alma mater, the University of Hawaii (UH) despite the fact I live in New York City. Forget professional sports. I may catch a Jets or Giants game now and then while I’m working on my computer. Yankees? [...]

Gathering for iAMDA’s Mobile Art Conference NYC 2010

Dozens of artists from all over the world had been collaborating and sharing their creations on Facebook, Flickr and other social media in anticipation of the event organized by David Scott Leibowitz and others. This group, that included fine artists, illustrators, and photographers, came together on the weekend ending October 24th, 2010 to explore, share and celebrate the creative capabilities of these new devices.

East-West Center Scholarships

These scholarships are available for NYU students. The deadline is Nov 1. Barak Obama’s mother and step-father from Indonesia met as degree fellows at the EWC and his sister, who got her PhD from NYU, works there now. It will also host the APEC meeting in 2011.

World Statistics Day 10/20/10

“On this first World Statistics Day I encourage the international community to work with the United Nations to enable all countries to meet their statistical needs.” – BAN KI-MOON Secretary-General of the United Nations Message on World Statistics Day, 20-10-20 Our book Computerization and Development in Southeast Asia, while not specifically about statistics, pointed to [...]

Factors Establishing the Feasibility of Global E-Commerce

The advent of global e-commerce emerged out of a unique combination of economic, political, and technological circumstances during the 1990s. The following is a partial list of influential events that led to its development. 1) The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Communist USSR bloc meant the world was no longer significantly divided by [...]

Google: Monetizing the Automatrix

Google recently announced its work on a driverless car to mixed reviews. While apparently a technical success, with only one mishap in 140,000 miles of testing, others felt that Google was losing its focus. I think this latter view underestimates the Google strategy – to monetize the road. As we move towards the “Automatrix”, the [...]

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.11: The Information Standard and Other Sovereignties

President Nixon’s decision to close the gold window in 1971 signaled a dramatic shift in the US international financial policy and the future of the world political economy. The move largely meant the the end of the containment of international finance set up at the end of World War II. No longer was the US [...]

How IT Came to Rule the World: TRANSFORMATION OF THE INTERNET

In a few short years between the Internet’s 25th anniversary in 1994 until the end of millennium, a remarkable transformation took shape. During these six years, the Internet transformed from a very novel but quaint system for sending ASCII email messages, transferring files, and linking home pages into a global system of electronic interchange for [...]

Review of Blogs from apennings.com - September 2010

2011-05-04T04:15:00.001-04:00

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.8: Apple, Silicon Valley and the Counter-Cultural Impulse

While Woz earned his title as the “Mozart of digital design” through his design of the Apple II, Jobs helped conceive the computer as a democratizing tool with the motto-“One person–one computer”. The microcomputer was sold as a tool that would balance the unequal relationship between institutions and the individual. It would empower the individual and allow their inner artist to emerge. The Apple II Computer went on to become the darling of the counter-cultural crowd and would remain a symbol of resistance against the corporate forces of IBM and later the predatory practices of Microsoft.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.7: The Origins of Microsoft

As kids, Bill Gates and Paul Allen dreamed of having their own Fortune 500 company. The two became friends (and sometimes adversaries) when the both attended the prestigious Lakeside School in Seattle in the early 1970s.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.6: The PC and the Floppy Disk

The development of the floppy disk was a crucial factor determining the success of the personal computer.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.5: Intel and the PC

After twenty years of government backing, the microprocessing industry was about to crawl out on its own. And it was the microcomputer that would give the semiconductor industry the legs to become viable in the commercial arena.
The Smith Effect II: From Political Arithmetik to “State-istics” to IT

This is the second in a four part exploration of Adam Smith and how his ideas laid the foundation for information technology (IT). Drawing on Michael J. Shapiro‘s Reading “Adam Smith” (2002), I argue that this reconceptualization contributed to 1) an understanding of “market forces” and the importance of labor; and 2) the development of the a wide field of measurements that transformed “political arithmetik” into “state-istics”, the science of numbers in service of governing the nation-state. In particular, the philosophical and empirical work on developing the census, its rationale, and its techniques, led directly to the creation of information machines and computers.

Review of Blogs from apennings.com August 2010

2011-05-03T07:15:00.001-04:00

The Smith Effect I: Markets, Governments, and IT
The “Smith Effect” resulted in new ways to analyze the social field and the overlap between economic, social and political spheres. Adam Smith was an important critical theorist in his rejection of mercantile thought and his writings were a forerunner of modern political economy. Two major bodies of economic analysis would emerge from Smith’s writings. One was the classical liberal tradition that combined Smith’s anti-mercantile stance with an increasing emphasis on empirical and quantitative calculation. The other body of analysis was the Marxist tradition that drew its investigation from Smith’s concern for the worker and the processes of valuing commodity forms and accumulating capital.

Management and the Abstraction of Knowledge into Information Technologies
Managers facilitated the movement of bodily effort and skill into the machines and industrial techniques and then expanded into the intellectual areas of the owner/executive.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 1.9: Xerox PARC
The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was sent up by Xerox in 1970 to establish leadership in the “architecture of information”, a sufficiently vague but enticing term coined by Xerox CEO Peter McColough. Drawing on Xerox’s great wealth, PARC harvested the fruits of ARPA’s continuous funding by hiring one of their former directors and by recruiting some of computer science’s top researchers. At PARC, Xerox developed the Alto and the Star, personalized computers with a GUI interface, mouse, and even Ethernet data networking. These PARC innovations inspired companies like Apple, Cisco and 3Com to develop new technologies like the Macintosh and data routers.

Is Cyberpunk Making a Comeback?
Admittedly that sounds quite weak given the “virtual” reality of recent games like Halo or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 not to Second Life or or the military simulations used these days, but it helped sparked imaginations at the time and changed the culture of telecommunications from one dominated by telephone company engineers and Washington DC lawyers to the promise of the web and creative imaginations tech-savvy multimedia designers and entrepreneurs of the 1990s and the zeroes.

Review of Blogs from apennings.com July 2010

2011-05-02T20:36:00.000-04:00

Flash: Multimedia Embraces HTML 5

Steve Jobs in an open letter last April criticized the legacy media platform for being power hungry, non-proprietary, lacking in security, unfriendly to mobile applications, non-touch, and just wrong for the future of multimedia applications

Revisiting “Multimedia”

The term “multimedia” has struggled over the years to keep its relevance but continues to be one of the major monikers of technological change in the media area.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.4: Global Money and Spreadsheet Capitalism

Spreadsheet technology was foundational for digital monetarism because it provided a calculative tool that became universally available and provided immediate feedback via the accessibility of the personal computer.

The Meaning Makers: Google

Television’s global advertising revenues of $151 billion is expected to grow significantly. That figure represents a major growth potential for Google. As TV becomes part of the link economy, every click represents an intention, an interest, a bit of meaning that is stored in Google’s huge data bases.

Back from Hawaii

I mention this because I think there is an interesting economic linkage between grandmother-mother-President that bares some scrutiny. I have no idea if they had contentious or controversial discussions. But I do wonder if the President’s mother’s emphasis on entrepreneurship had been influenced by her own mother’s experience as a banker.

Review of Blogs from apennings.com June 2010

2011-05-01T21:15:00.001-04:00

The Meaning-Makers: WPP
This is my second post for The Meaning-Makers series. The first discussed advertising behemoth, Omnicom, one of the top four global holding companies in the advertising, PR, and media buying field along with the Interpublic Group and the Publicis Groupe. This industry continues to be dominated by 4 major holding companies and the case can be made that have significant power over the production of meaning in our world.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.3: Data Packets for Dollars
Using the new X.25 series of packet-switching protocols embraced by the ITU, banks developed extensive international networks and clearinghouse systems to offer information services for the movement of credit information and money and to settle accounts. The supranational fund of electronic eurodollars that emerged out of the OPEC surpluses of the 1970s’ oil crises an provided an important step to the global Internet as the packet-switched technology was implemented in banking networks to coordinate the resultant flows of international currency exchange and debt.

How IT Came to Rule the World, 2.2: Eurodollars, Petrodollars
How did this world of global digital monetarism emerge? How did fluid capital transcend the containment policies and boundaries erected in the period up to 1970s to develop in the 1980s and beyond into a global financial environment where computerized algorithmic trading have created complex high transactional volume markets for an array of currency derivatives, stock index futures, CDOs and other computer based financial instruments?

The Move to “Smart TV”
OK, so the term “Smart TV” is an oxymoron. Still, something is afoot here with Google, and to a lesser extent Apple (not to be underestimated) getting into the mix for the creation of a post-network television environment. I’m teaching a New Technologies in Advertising and Public Relations course this summer at NYU and we got a gift on the first day of class when Google announced a cooperative agreement with Sony Television, Intel, and Logitech to produce a new viewing (and advertising) experience called Google TV.

iPhone vs Android?
We’ve been hearing a lot about competition between Apple and Google over the Smartphone. These statistics add some perspective, although they don’t add the trend lines. One trend line of course is that mobile penetration is still increasing. Another is that Android, Google’s new operating system for smart phones such as Motorola’s Droid and HTC’s [...]

The Meaning Makers: Omnicom
Who produces the meaning in our media-saturated society? I don’t have an easy answer to this question but I’m starting a new series called the Meaning Makers, that explores the companies, people and practices engaged in the production of our culture(s) desires, and mentalities.

Meanings that Mean Something
One of the things they did was to try to identify commonalities in the types of meaning people value by interviewing people from different cultures and countries.

Developing Applications for Apple’s Mobile Devices

2011-03-25T19:39:00.000-04:00

http://apennings.com/multimedia/developing-apps-for-apples-iphone-and-ipad/

The iOS is notable for its user interface. Apple made history by commercializing the graphical user interface developed by Xerox Parc for the Apple Macintosh and continues to push development in this area with the haptic or touch user interface. Apple likes to call this the ‘Human User Interface” and they outline several Human Interface Principles that potential developers should take to heart.

Social Media Curriculum

2011-03-24T06:28:00.001-04:00

http://apennings.com/social_media/social-media-some-thoughts-on-curriculum/

Social media has been part of our curriculum for the last several years. I redesigned the foundation courses for the BS in Digital Communications and Media in 2005 and included two courses that cover social media, the Digital Media Management I and II series taught by Igor Shoifot of Fotki.com (now living near Silicon Valley and teaching for UC Berkeley) and Collaboration Technologies that has been taught online by Kristen Sosulski. Last year I developed some ideas for a MS in Social Media and more recently a 2 credit course that would provide an introduction to the promises and perils of social media. The MS didn’t quite fit into the mix here yet but the small course, which seemed almost more difficult to conceptualize, might work out. In any case I thought I would share some ideas I had for developing a curriculum framework for teaching about social media.

Google's Investments in Data Centers Provide a Competitive Advantage

2011-03-21T14:24:00.000-04:00

Google’s Competitive Advantages – Fixed Costs
http://apennings.com/media-strategies/googles-competitive-advantages-fixed-costs/

This post examines how Google's massive investments in data centers and fiber optic networks makes it difficult for any other company to effectively compete against Google. Except perhaps Microsoft.

Googlejuice

2010-09-29T12:28:00.000-04:00

All my blogs are now at pennings.com I'm keeping this site for the Googlejuice.

How IT Came to Rule the World

2010-09-04T11:08:00.001-04:00

The series can be read in more detail at

http://apennings.com/category/how-it-came-to-rule-the-world/

How IT Came to Rule the World: Four Methodological Concerns

2010-08-04T12:19:00.002-04:00

This is the fifth post in the mini-series How IT Came to Rule the World ©

Four methodological concerns that shaped this project are worth noting.

The first has to do with technology and its transformative relationship with society and institutions, in particular, the reciprocal effects between technology and power. The term “technostructuralist”, coined by Majid Tehranian, in his Technologies of Power (1989) is useful in that it referred to how information technology needed to be viewed within the context of institutions and power in general. Tehranian often compared this stance to a techno-neutralist position – the position that technologies are essentially neutral and their consequences are a result of human agency.

The second concern is the importance of using political economy to frame the general discussion. This includes classic issues like the price system, labor and corporations as well as the significance of peer production and gift economies. Economists like Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Fredrick von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Jeffery Sachs are also important as their ideas have been consequential in shaping the modern world.

The third is the relationship between information technologies and the production of meaning. Technologies are part of a set of practices that frame information and meaning. The spreadsheet, for example, combines the power of lists and tables with other calculative abilities that “in-form” meaning and organize sets of knowledge that run organizations and structure lives.

Lastly, an inquiry into the state of democracy in the age of IT dominance is important. Can IT contribute to a social structure that allows and empowers people to participate in the conditions of their lives?

How IT Came to Rule the World: Three Regimes

2010-08-04T01:14:00.003-04:00

This is the fourth post in the mini-series on How IT Came to Rule the World ©

This project is organized to analyze and articulate three historical regimes that shaped the computer and telecommunications systems leading to the Internet and a proliferation of IT and digital media. Regimes are historically unique configurations of commercial, military and political power that carve out particular paths of social organization and technological development. To help articulate their dynamics, I have named them: containment capitalism, digital monetarism and global e-commerce and security. At times intentionally and at times inadvertently, each of these regimes contributed significantly to the development of IT, the Internet, and its World Wide Web of e-commerce and social media.

Over time, these regimes shaped an informational and technological environment that was sequentially dedicated to:

1) a military real-time hemispheric radar defense system to protect against a nuclear attack;

2) an international regime of capital decontrols, electronic money and financial news flows, and;

3) an electronic environment for social networking, surveillance, and global business to business (B2B), business to government (B2G), business to consumer (B2C), and consumer to consumer (C2C) transactions.

These three regimes at times overlapped, often conflicted, and frequently worked in conjunction with one another. However, the overall result was an unsteady yet unwavering trajectory towards a realization of computer codified information and calculative ability as well as the transformation of the telegraph and telephone system into a device for communicating digital information. It was a path with no sure outcome, no clear sense of its heading, but one that was disciplined by political and economic forces into slowly emerging national, then global, webs of digitalistic communications.

How IT Came to Rule the World: Disciplining IT

2010-07-28T14:00:00.001-04:00

This is the third post in the mini-series on How IT Came to Rule the World ©

While the focus here is primarily on the US and its role in developing data communications and computer technologies; IT has increasingly become global in its innovation, marketing, and production. The strength of the US “military-industrial complex,” the predominance of its currency and financial markets (as well as its capital markets that over funded its e-commerce capability and created the credit crisis of 2008), and the strategic role of its policy makers all contributed to the development of digital information technologies and a “disciplining” of the modern Internet. Consequently, these technologies are also involved in shaping modern American society, establishing new rules and protocols for daily life, and in the application and practice of power at the political level. Information and communications technologies have also been “permissive technologies” facilitating the movement of capital overseas, the management of off-shore production and research facilities, and the networks of global e-commerce and social media.

How IT Came to Rule the World: Regimes

2010-07-23T18:34:00.004-04:00

This post was the second of my mini-series on How IT Came to Rule the World originally published at apennings.com ©

The answer to the question of how information technology (IT) emerged is a complex one. A number of forces can be seen to have infused and shaped its development. The thesis in this project is that modern information technology developed out of the trajectory of US statecraft and its involvement in several political economy regimes which emerged successively and sometimes concurrently in the post-World War II period up and through the turn of the second millennium.

A regime refers to a system of political economy, including the reigning governmental and military power but also the dominant modes of distributing capital and producing goods and services. A regime is a structural alignment between political institutions, corporate and market forces, and the dynamics of human agency – the energy and talent of people working creatively and in collaboration within these structures.

Through relatively consecutive yet overlapping regimes, the system of computerization and telecommunications moved from military and space development, to commercialization, particularly for electronic finance, to the World Wide Web’s e-commerce and social media environment. As social media continues its phenomenal growth, it is on one hand a vehicle for personal empowerment and productivity; and on the other hand, part of an apparatus of surveillance and discipline.

How IT Came to Rule the World: Churchill and McLuhan

2010-07-23T18:25:00.003-04:00

This post restarts my mini-series on How IT Came to Rule the World originally published at apennings.com ©

0.1 One of Marshall McLuhan’s most celebrated intellectual “probes” was his paraphrase of Winston Churchill’s infamous “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Churchill was addressing Parliament some two years after a devastating air raid by the Nazis that destroyed the House of Commons.[i] McLuhan reworded Churchill’s concern in the 1960s with a more topical “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” Writing in a time when the electronic media was exploding in the American consciousness, McLuhan undertook a commitment to understand the role of media, particularly electronic media in modern society and his probe serves here as a point of departure for understanding the emergence of information technologies and simultaneously interrogating their impact as a force increasingly “ruling” the modern world, both in terms of cultural, economic, and political power as well as the preponderance of protocols and procedures ordering our digital world.

[i] “On the night of May 10, 1941, with one of the last bombs of the last serious raid, our House of Commons was destroyed by the violence of the enemy, and we have now to consider whether we should build it up again, and how, and when.” He continued with the above quote arguing for the Chamber’s restoration, citing its “form, convenience, and dignity.”

The Television Will be Revolutionized

2010-06-26T00:28:00.001-04:00

So really, what is TV in our day? How tied is it into our culture? Or better, how tied is our culture to TV? Does it define our social agenda? The discussions we have with friends? family? strangers? Do social networks now give us a "virtual watercooler" to talk up TV? How much is our daily mentality "cable assisted" as Bruce Sterling suggested?

Lotz argues that as our TV changes, our culture changes. Reaffirming the link between the two.

Google TV Ads Automation

2010-06-25T09:39:00.000-04:00

Here are some videos on Google's advertising systems for online, audio, and TV. What strikes me is the automated aspects of developing campaigns: determining locations, channels, and individual shows.

http://www.youtube.com/googletvads#p/a/050A8DA1D91236E7/0/0WPLwNNi_4Y

The Television Will be Revolutionized

2010-06-20T23:02:00.004-04:00

I'm currently reading Amanda Lotz's
The Television Will be Revolutionized right now as part of a class I'm teaching at NYU on New Technologies in Advertising and PR. Its a nice blend of political economy and humanities looking closely at the industry practices and the historical transitions as TV went through various transformations from its network heyday, through the changes brought on by cable television, the VCR, and the remote control, to what she suggests could be a "post-network era".

The Shift to Internet Advertising: Using New Media to Respond to the Decline of Mass Media

2010-05-30T13:41:00.000-04:00

The Shift to Internet Advertising: Using New Media to Respond to the Decline of Mass Media

A progressive agenda to rival the new deal - New York Times - Starbulletin.com

2010-05-22T22:53:00.001-04:00

A progressive agenda to rival the new deal - New York Times - Starbulletin.com

It's hard to grasp the larger picture of the times when you are living in the midst of them. The Reagan revolution helped commercialize the fruits of the Cold War but gave the spoils to the already rich, setting off the age of inequality that culminated in the "Lost Decade" of regulatory incompetence, financial squandering, misguided adventurism, and the willful neglect of the needed transformation to a post-petroleum age. We can only hope that current president will right America's path and make the necessary preparations for a change to energy independence and a new age of economic fruitfulness.

E-Commerce Sales Jump 14% in Q1

2010-05-20T11:43:00.000-04:00

E-Commerce Sales Jump 14% in Q1

Interesting article on the growth of retail e-commerce sales in the U.S. which is has grown to $36.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010, according to estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Navigating the Turbulent Waters of International E-Commerce

2010-05-18T10:59:00.001-04:00

International e-commerce is poised for explosive growth in the months and years ahead. Demand for U.S. products overseas is booming due to vast selection, high-quality specialty goods and unbelievable values. The Internet is bringing all of this value, selection and convenience directly to consumers all over the world.

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New Technologies for Advertising and PR

2010-05-13T11:50:00.000-04:00

Teaching a new course this summer at NYU called New Technologies for Advertising and Public Relations.

New technologies are empowering customers, fragmenting media, and collecting massive amounts of data on consumer behaviors. People are spending less time with traditional venues such as newspapers, radio, and television and devoting more attention to digital media that are mobile, online, and televisual - such as high definition television, streaming movies, and digital gaming experiences. Classified ads and the 30 second spot are two advertising forms on the endangered list. Social Media has emerged as an overall communication framework which has challenged both the advertising and public relations model of one-way communication mediated through an agency. User participation through dialogue and content creation/sharing/syndication are producing a new set of expectations in the marketing mix. Media metrics have also developed an “informating” quality that tracks the connections and transactions of the link economy and compiles virtual profiles and identities.

This course examines state-of-the-art technologies instrumental in successful advertising and public relations. It reviews advertising and public relations through an economics and media analysis framework that establishes the value of advertising and examines the codes and meaning-creating practices used in effective advertising and public engagement strategies. The course will cover emerging technologies in design, interaction, and message creation. It will also examine techniques involved in computer imaging, digital videography, lighting effects, sound editing, and printing that enhance the media experience and make messages more effective.. Students will develop in-depth knowledge in an area of their choice that involves the latest techniques associated with new technologies such as online search, mobile smartphones, social media, or high definition digital television.

Do you have a digital media strategy?

2010-05-12T01:01:00.001-04:00

Preparing for Digital Media Management II this Fall.

Do you have a digital media strategy?

View more presentations from Design Bracket.

Deloitte: Top Trends for Media Industry in 2010

2010-05-08T18:31:00.001-04:00

The text is small but this is an interesting report.

Deloitte: Top Trends for Media Industry in 2010

View more documents from Al Haqq Network.

Old Or New? The Future Of Media?

2010-05-07T02:04:00.001-04:00

Check out this Presentation:

Old Or New? The Future Of Media?

View more presentations from Altogether Digital.

Mobile Abilities Map

2010-05-07T01:58:00.001-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Mobile Abilities Map

View more presentations from Helge Tennø.

Mobile advertising overview - by Asif Ali, CTO, Mobile-worx at Momo Chennai

2010-05-07T01:49:00.001-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Mobile advertising overview - by Asif Ali, CTO, Mobile-worx at Momo Chennai

View more presentations from Asif Ali.

Learning The World Of Pay Per Click Advertising

2010-05-07T01:00:00.001-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Learning The World Of Pay Per Click Advertising

View more presentations from Sage Island.

Online Advertising

2010-05-07T00:30:00.001-04:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Online Advertising

View more presentations from Swati Swayamprava.

Rob Pegoraro - FCC's plan for broadband Internet access falls short - washingtonpost.com

2010-03-23T23:15:00.001-04:00

The FCC hopes to speed up and expand broadband access, which are both big problems: 35 percent of adult Americans lack high-speed Internet access at home, and those who do connect at slower speeds than residents of other countries. A 2009 study by the International Telecommunications Union ranked the United States 17th in adopting information and communication technologies.

Rob Pegoraro - FCC's plan for broadband Internet access falls short - washingtonpost.com

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Dose of Venom for Candidates Turns Ads Viral - NYTimes.com

2010-03-23T23:08:00.001-04:00

Remember Max Headroom?

Anyone who knows Ms. Whitman’s face — or the tangy lilt in her voice — would easily recognize her in this political attack advertisement. But the ad does not actually feature Ms. Whitman at all, but rather a technically impressive avatar of the candidate, talking trash about herself.

Dose of Venom for Candidates Turns Ads Viral - NYTimes.com

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Federal News Radio 1500 AM: OMB's Kundra stakes out new e-gov approach

2010-03-18T10:43:00.001-04:00

Kundra also believes that in the five-to-seven years since many of these e-government programs were first contemplated technology has changed dramatically and that is what needs to be updated.

Federal News Radio 1500 AM: OMB's Kundra stakes out new e-gov approach

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Technical Problems

2009-10-14T12:33:00.001-04:00

Due to technical problems with Google, I am currently not posting to this blog.

Health Care

2009-08-02T14:33:00.002-04:00

Like many people, I'm trying to figure out this healthcare thing. What I want to see is a reduction in overall costs even at the expense of some total government expenditure. In other words, a little more government spending to save overall health costs is well worth it With Medicare and the Veterans Administration we have the best healthcare in the world. Can't can't we share it with our kids, our unemployed, our homeless, and our small businesses. I would like to see our healthcare not be a competitive disadvantage for our companies. I would like to see our healthcare not drive our middle class into bankruptcy. I would like to see our healthcare shared among all Americans.

If our lawmakers can figure that out, more power to them.

Testing, testing my voice

2009-08-02T14:25:00.002-04:00

I'm back. With new speech recognition software to really speak my mind. I had previously switched to primarily citing other articles of interest. But I've had a lot of trouble with blogspot since I added a second blog. Until I figure it out I thought I would try this new software. It's not that I don't like typing out my hands only have so many more words left in them while my mouth seems unlimited.

So on this hot and rainy Sunday afternoon I thought I would revive this blog. It's only been two weeks since my last post but I miss it in the opportunity that blogging offers. So we'll see how it goes.

U.S. Scientists See H1-B Visas as Major Issue Against Progress, Says Survey

2009-07-14T13:18:00.001-04:00

The nation's scientists see H1-B visa issues as a major barrier to scientific achievement, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Some 56 percent surveyed felt that issues with the visa process for foreign students and scientists represented a massive impediment, second only to the 87 percent who saw lack of funding as a “very serious” or “serious” problem.

U.S. Scientists See H1-B Visas as Major Issue Against Progress, Says Survey

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E-Commerce News: Law: Obama Administration Plows Ahead With Controversial E-Verify Program

2009-07-13T13:39:00.001-04:00

E-Verify is a free Web-based system operated by DHS in partnership with the Social Security Administration.It lets employers compare information from I-9 forms against federal government databases to verify employees' eligibility for employment in the United States.The Bush administration met with considerable opposition when it tried to extend E-Verify to federal contractors and subcontractors.The Obama administration is now moving forward with a requirement that will take effect on September 8 and apply to federal solicitations and contract awards. It will also cover businesses that receive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds.

E-Commerce News: Law: Obama Administration Plows Ahead With Controversial E-Verify Program

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Bush’s Secret NSA Spying May Have Tainted Prosecutions, Report Warns | Threat Level | Wired.com

2009-07-10T23:29:00.001-04:00

“This report leaves no doubt that the warrantless wiretapping program was blatantly illegal and an unconstitutional assertion of executive power,” Feingold said. “I once again call on the Obama administration and its Justice Department to withdraw the flawed legal memoranda that justified the program and that remain in effect today.”

Bush’s Secret NSA Spying May Have Tainted Prosecutions, Report Warns | Threat Level | Wired.com

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Report: Bush surveillance program was massive - Yahoo! News

2009-07-10T23:25:00.001-04:00

The report says too few relevant officials knew of the size and depth of the program, let alone signed off on it. They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos undergirding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the "mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile."

Report: Bush surveillance program was massive - Yahoo! News

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Sen. Kohl Demands Investigation of Wireless Carriers - washingtonpost.com

2009-07-07T10:41:00.001-04:00

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, sent letters yesterday to the federal agencies overseeing communications and antitrust, calling for an investigation and for action on several regulatory proposals that could give smaller carriers and software firms a better shot at competing.

Sen. Kohl Demands Investigation of Wireless Carriers - washingtonpost.com

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NASA predicted Rift Valley fever outbreak

2009-07-06T14:10:00.001-04:00

National Aeronautics and Space Administration researchers, including Assaf Anyamba, a remote sensing scientist with the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, used a blend of NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measurements of sea surface temperatures, precipitation and vegetation cover to predict when and where an outbreak would occur.

NASA predicted Rift Valley fever outbreak

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Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet

2009-06-29T20:13:00.001-04:00

Originally Google had considered acquiring Facebook—a prospect that held no interest for Facebook's executives—but an investment was another enticing option, aligning the Internet's two most important companies. Facebook was more than a fast-growing social network. It was, potentially, an enormous source of personal data. Internet users behaved differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They used their real names, connected with their real friends, linked to their real email addresses, and shared their real thoughts, tastes, and news. Google, on the other hand, knew relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity.

Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet

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ThinkTech | ThinkTech blog, ThinkTech Hawaii | honoluluadvertiser.com | Honolulu, Hawaii

2009-06-27T11:40:00.001-04:00

One, HB1405, would require Internet vendors to collect the Hawaii gross excise tax (GET) on purchases from Hawaii. 1405 would treat “advertising associates” in Hawaii as the “substantial nexus” required by Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court case.The other, SB1678, would call for Hawaii to join 23 other states in adopting a cooperative “streamlined” (euphemism) national Internet sales and use tax. 1678 could not be effective until Congress passes a law to authorize this bill under the Commerce Clause.

ThinkTech | ThinkTech blog, ThinkTech Hawaii | honoluluadvertiser.com | Honolulu, Hawaii

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Gates Establishes Cyber-Defense Command - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-24T10:42:00.001-04:00

In a memo to senior military leaders, Gates said he will recommend that President Obama designate that the new command be led by the director of the National Security Agency, the world's largest electronic intelligence-gathering agency. The current NSA director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, is expected to be awarded a fourth star and to lead the cyber-command.

Gates Establishes Cyber-Defense Command - washingtonpost.com

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How Apple, AT&T Are Closing the Mobile Web | Epicenter | Wired.com

2009-06-23T14:56:00.001-04:00

Free Press, a group that advocates the idea of an open internet — that is, one in which consumers have the right to browse the web and run internet applications without restrictions — is the latest of several organizations to call out Apple for its inconsistencies. Free Press alleges that Apple crippled SlingPlayer, a TV-streaming application for iPhone, so that it would only work on a Wi-Fi connection; the initial version worked with a 3G cellular network connection as well as Wi-Fi. The SlingPlayer restriction is inconsistent with Apple’s approval of the Major League Baseball application, which provides live-streaming of sports events on both Wi-Fi and 3G connections, the group said.

How Apple, AT&T Are Closing the Mobile Web | Epicenter | Wired.com

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Investment Executive : U.S. exchanges expand presence in carbon market

2009-06-19T08:47:00.001-04:00

The NYSE Euronext said that BlueNext, its majority-owned environmental trading exchange, is partnering with the China-Beijing Environmental Exchange, to set up an international carbon-trading related information platform. The two firms signed a deal that includes: a cross-marketing partnership; and, a comprehensive data sharing agreement that will promote investment- and buyer information of Clean Development Mechanism projects in China.

Investment Executive : U.S. exchanges expand presence in carbon market

CME has rival in new NY clearing house | Crain's Chicago Business

2009-06-19T08:45:00.001-04:00

The new clearing house, New York Portfolio Clearing, will combine the NYSE Euronext's U.S. futures exchange and DTCC 's Fixed Income Clearing Corp. to offer risk management, clearing and settlement efficiencies for U.S. fixed income securities and derivatives.

CME has rival in new NY clearing house | Crain's Chicago Business

Facebook Taps Privacy Hawk as Lobbyist - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-19T08:14:00.001-04:00

As a prominent privacy advocate, Timothy Sparapani, former senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that Internet companies have too much control over consumers' data. The self-described "privacy zealot" didn't join Facebook until seven months ago because he was uneasy about revealing personal information on the site.

Facebook Taps Privacy Hawk as Lobbyist - washingtonpost.com

CME has rival in new NY clearing house | Crain's Chicago Business

2009-06-18T20:09:00.001-04:00

The new clearing house, New York Portfolio Clearing, will combine the NYSE Euronext's U.S. futures exchange and DTCC 's Fixed Income Clearing Corp. to offer risk management, clearing and settlement efficiencies for U.S. fixed income securities and derivatives.The deal could eat into CME Group's dominance of the interest-rate futures clearing business in the U.S. Currently, CME accounts for more than 95% of that market.

CME has rival in new NY clearing house | Crain's Chicago Business

Experts: Gov't Needs to Spend More on Cyber R&D - Business Center - PC World

2009-06-18T16:19:00.001-04:00

The U.S. government has a 2009 R&D budget of about $143 billion, and only about $300 million will go to cybersecurity research, said Liesyl Franz, vice president of information security and global public policy at TechAmerica, a trade group. Funding for cybersecurity R&D and for training security professionals "requires immediate and sustained attention," she told the House of Representatives Research and Science Education Subcommittee Wednesday.

Experts: Gov't Needs to Spend More on Cyber R&D - Business Center - PC World

Social Networks Spread Defiance Online - NYTimes.com

2009-06-18T08:30:00.001-04:00

Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential election on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications.

Social Networks Spread Defiance Online - NYTimes.com

Ezra Klein - Financial Reform for the Rest of Us

2009-06-18T08:28:00.001-04:00

But that's what the administration is proposing to do. In particular, the inclusion of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency with the ability to regulate the sort of financial products that ordinary individuals come into contact with -- credit cards, mortgages, etc -- is a positive sign. An FDA for consumer finance, some are calling it.

Ezra Klein - Financial Reform for the Rest of Us

INO.com News - Officials: US set to win in WTO dispute with China

2009-06-18T08:26:00.001-04:00

Two officials said the ruling would uphold a number of key U.S. arguments that China was violating international trade rules by forcing some American audiovisual goods to be distributed through Chinese state-owned companies.It will also find against Beijing for restrictive requirements on foreign makers of products from magazines to video games that do not extend to Chinese competitors, the officials said Tuesday.

INO.com News - Officials: US set to win in WTO dispute with China

Obama Blueprint Deepens Federal Role in Markets - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-18T08:23:00.001-04:00

The White House makes its case for this approach in an 85-page white paper that describes the roots of the crisis. Gaps in regulation allowed companies to make loans many borrowers could not afford. Funding came from new kinds of investments that were poorly understood by regulators. Big firms paid employees massive bonuses, while setting aside little money to absorb potential losses.

Obama Blueprint Deepens Federal Role in Markets - washingtonpost.com

OpenNet Initiative Releases Report on Filtering in Asia | Berkman Center

2009-06-18T08:16:00.001-04:00

ONI releases this report on the heals of the Chinese government's directive that Green Dam filtering software must be installed in all computers sold in the country. ONI issued an evaluation of the software last week, concluding that

OpenNet Initiative Releases Report on Filtering in Asia | Berkman Center

Credit Card Issuers Settle Accounts for Lower Balances - NYTimes.com

2009-06-18T05:28:00.001-04:00

As they confront unprecedented numbers of troubled customers, credit card companies are increasingly doing something they have historically scorned: settling delinquent accounts for substantially less than the amount owed.

Credit Card Issuers Settle Accounts for Lower Balances - NYTimes.com

Geithner Gives Update on the Financial Rescue - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

2009-06-18T05:09:00.001-04:00

“When the president came in, we had a financial system that was very damaged,” Mr. Geithner said at a conference on the economy hosted by Time Warner. “If you look at where we are today, we really made substantial progress.”

Geithner Gives Update on the Financial Rescue - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

Twitter Gets Credibility Boost, but Can It Monetize? - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

2009-06-18T05:08:00.001-04:00

Iran’s election has been a boon for the company. Global media outlets including the BBC and CNN are broadcasting tweets about the protests. Twitter has proved such a useful source of information about the upheaval that the United States government asked the company to postpone a scheduled maintenance so it could stay online, Breakingviews notes.

Twitter Gets Credibility Boost, but Can It Monetize? - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

Obama Enlisted a Wide Consensus on Finance Rules - NYTimes.com

2009-06-18T00:36:00.001-04:00

In doing so, the plan seeks to give Washington the tools to police the shadow system of finance that has grown up outside the government’s purview, and to make it easier for regulators to head off problems at large, troubled institutions or take control of them if they fail.

Obama Enlisted a Wide Consensus on Finance Rules - NYTimes.com

The New Straits Times Online: RazakSAT to be launched on July14

2009-06-17T21:55:00.001-04:00

RazakSAT will be launched from Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of Marshall Islands witnessed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak of Malaysia from the Putrajaya International Convention Centre, he said.

Ongkili said the satelitte which will orbit above the Equator would not only provide benefits in meteorology and remote sensing but bring in income as other countries could use it for a fee.

The New Straits Times Online: RazakSAT to be launched on July14

Sandvine CEO: "Unmanaged Is Not Neutral"

2009-06-17T21:48:00.001-04:00

During a panel discussion on net neutrality yesterday at the Toronto Congress Centre, Sandvine's chief executive officer, Dave Caputo, explained why an unmanaged Internet is not neutral. The net neutrality panel also included Mike Lee, chief strategy officer, Rogers Communications and Skype's Christopher Libertelli, senior director, government and regulator affairs of the Americas.

During the panel discussion Mr. Caputo described five truths that explain why reasonable network management is critical for today's evolved Internet: * Network congestion happens;

* Each application places different demands on the Internet;
* Subscribers' usage is not equal;
* Capacity increases alone do not solve network congestion; and
* Service providers need to protect the quality of experience for all subscribers and applications.

Sandvine CEO: "Unmanaged Is Not Neutral"

Obama spells out major financial rules overhaul - Yahoo! News

2009-06-17T16:48:00.001-04:00

The Obama plan would give new powers to the Federal Reserve to oversee the entire financial system and would also create a new consumer protection agency to guard against credit and other abuses that played a big role in the current crisis.Unveiling his proposal before an East Room audience, Obama blamed the financial crisis on "a culture of irresponsibility" and outdated financial rules that were created in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s but had been "overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy."The Obama plan would give the Federal Reserve new powers to oversee the entire financial system, hoping that the central bank will be able deal with the kinds of problems that were allowed to build to such an extent that they ended up overwhelming the system last year, resulting in the collapse of some of America's largest financial institutions.

Obama spells out major financial rules overhaul - Yahoo! News

Obama wants new financial agency for consumers - Yahoo! Finance

2009-06-17T02:25:00.001-04:00

The draft document calls for removing restrictions on the Fed's ability to examine or impose restrictions on large financial holding companies and their subsidiaries. But Obama's proposal would require the Fed, which can independently use emergency powers to bail out failing banks, to first obtain Treasury approval before extending credit to institutions in "unusual and exigent circumstances."

Obama wants new financial agency for consumers - Yahoo! Finance

Google Fusion Tables Eases Data Management in the Cloud

2009-06-16T12:30:00.001-04:00

The technology allows users to filter and aggregate the data, as well as visualize it on Google Maps and other visualizations from the Google Visualization API. In addition, users can discuss the data with ‘collaborators’ - those they share it with - by using a chat feature. If a collaborator with edit permission changes data during the discussion, viewers will see the change as part of the discussion trail.

Google Fusion Tables Eases Data Management in the Cloud

Report: Game Consoles the Prime Device for Web TV :: Communications Technology

2009-06-16T02:24:00.001-04:00

While still at the early adoption stages, the impact of bringing Web video to the TV is expected to bring both opportunity and threats to a range of companies in the electronics and TV markets. By 2013, the revenue from Web-to-TV streaming services is forecast to grow to $2.9 billion.

Report: Game Consoles the Prime Device for Web TV :: Communications Technology

Google Says It's Actually Quite Small - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-16T00:56:00.001-04:00

As might be expected, Google's presentation highlights the company's many good works and "don't be evil" corporate philosophy. But there's another element at front and center of the presentation: According to Warner and Kovacevich, their company holds only a 2.66 percent share of its total market.

Google Says It's Actually Quite Small - washingtonpost.com

James Champy: IT innovation in a time of economic crisis

2009-06-15T23:25:00.001-04:00

IT innovation is more important than ever in a time of economic crisis. But how can CIOs continue to do more with less and at the same time be pioneers in the field of IT innovation?

James Champy: IT innovation in a time of economic crisis

Op-Ed Columnist - The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers - NYTimes.com

2009-06-15T23:23:00.001-04:00

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it’s not change you can believe in.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Obama Haters’ Silent Enablers - NYTimes.com

Cable group switches position: Net neutrality's OK | Digital Media - CNET News

2009-06-15T23:09:00.001-04:00

The Net neutrality position is, in a nutshell, that no matter who you get your Internet access through you should have access to the same Internet as everyone else.But the large corporations have started using their influence to sell features to the large ISPs at prices that smaller ISPs can't match. Besides the Net neutrality issues, this is troubling.

Cable group switches position: Net neutrality's OK | Digital Media - CNET News

The Architecture Issue - Remaking Paris for the 21st Century - NYTimes.com

2009-06-15T15:46:00.001-04:00

One of the first things Sarkozy did after he moved into the Elysée Palace was to convene a meeting of prominent architects and ask them to come up with a new blueprint for Paris. “Of course,” he said, “projects should be realistic, but for me true realism is the kind that consists in being very ambitious.” His job was to clean up the city’s working-class suburbs, and at the same time build a greener Paris, the first city to conform to the environmental goals laid out in the Kyoto treaty.

The results, a year later, may be the beginning of one of the boldest urban planning operations in French history. A formidable list of architects — including Richard Rogers, Jean Nouvel, Djamel Klouche and Roland Castro — put forward proposals that address a range of urban problems: from housing the poor to fixing outdated transportation systems to renewing the immigrant suburbs. Some have suggested practical solutions — new train stations and parks — while others have been more provocative, like Castro, who proposed moving the presidential palace to the outskirts.

The Architecture Issue - Remaking Paris for the 21st Century - NYTimes.com

Virgin Media and Universal launch music service - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-15T15:10:00.001-04:00

The service, described by the companies as a world first, will allow Virgin Media's broadband customers in Britain to stream and download as many songs and albums as they like from Universal's catalog for a fee.

Virgin Media and Universal launch music service - washingtonpost.com

To The Mattresses

2009-06-15T14:31:00.001-04:00

As long as the global economy was crumbling, business held back and even welcomed the infusion of hundreds of billions of government dollars to prop up the system. Business leaders, like everyone else, were frightened to death. They welcomed Big Government's exertions to keep the banks alive and gin up consumer purchasing power.

To The Mattresses

Buyer Beware

2009-06-15T14:30:00.001-04:00

But now that the debate over health care has moved from abstractions to legislative specifics, the story is starting to sound familiar. A prime example: recent statements by the National Manufacturers Association, which represents large industrial companies. Most reform proposals would require businesses to contribute toward the cost of their employees' health insurance, either by providing coverage or paying into a fund for the uninsured. An NAM official told a USA Today reporter the group wanted the employer mandate "out of there." Other business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, seem equally skeptical.

Buyer Beware

UPDATE 1-Ban CDS as instruments of destruction - Soros | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

2009-06-15T14:28:00.001-04:00

"CDS are instruments of destruction which ought to be outlawed," Soros told a meeting of the Institute of International Finance, many of whose member banks and financial institutions are active participants in the huge CDS market.Going short on bonds by purchasing a CDS contract carried limited risk but almost unlimited profit potential. By contrast, selling CDSs offered limited profit and practically unlimited risk, Soros said.

UPDATE 1-Ban CDS as instruments of destruction - Soros | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

Op-Ed Columnist - The Big Hate - NYTimes.com

2009-06-15T14:20:00.001-04:00

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Op-Ed Columnist - The Big Hate - NYTimes.com

Employees May Be Taxed for Texting If IRS Updates Work Cellphone Rules - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-15T13:13:00.001-04:00

Under several proposals put forth this week, the IRS would more strictly enforce an existing law that classifies company-issued cellphones as a taxable benefit -- an idea decried by employers and wireless companies who argue that mobile phones are now essential tools in the workplace that shouldn't be considered income.The debate stems from a 1989 law that requires workers who use company cellphones for personal calls to count the value of those calls as income and pay federal income taxes for the minutes used. Employees are supposed to keep detailed records of their calls. Now that sending e-mails on mobile devices is more prevalent, data charges could also be subject to scrutiny.

Employees May Be Taxed for Texting If IRS Updates Work Cellphone Rules - washingtonpost.com

Google Says It's Actually Quite Small - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-13T11:41:00.001-04:00

Three times in the past month, government agencies have targeted Google for antitrust reviews. An outstanding private lawsuit alleges that Google tried to kill a business-to-business search engine with predatory pricing. And during the waning months of the Bush administration, soon-to-be Obama antitrust chief Christine Varney declared that Google "has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising." Last month she asserted that the Bush administration had been too lax in combating monopolistic behavior and that the Obama Justice Department would no longer "stand on the sidelines."

Google Says It's Actually Quite Small - washingtonpost.com

Cyberwar - Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan - Series - NYTimes.com

2009-06-13T10:00:00.001-04:00

President Obama has said that the new cyberdefense strategy he unveiled last month will provide protections for personal privacy and civil liberties. But senior Pentagon and military officials say that Mr. Obama’s assurances may be challenging to guarantee in practice, particularly in trying to monitor the thousands of daily attacks on security systems in the United States that have set off a race to develop better cyberweapons.Much of the new military command’s work is expected to be carried out by the National Security Agency, whose role in intercepting the domestic end of international calls and e-mail messages after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, under secret orders issued by the Bush administration, has already generated intense controversy.

Cyberwar - Privacy May Be a Victim in Cyberdefense Plan - Series - NYTimes.com

Understanding spreadsheet risks - 11 Jun 2009

2009-06-13T03:30:00.001-04:00

Spreadsheets (especially following the introduction of additional data capacity and processing efficiency in MS Excel 2007) are powerful analysis tools that, in many cases, are capable of delivering the same functionality as formally developed applications. Spreadsheets are often a viable and sensible alternative to IT-owned applications that are subject to lengthy software development cycles. As a result, they are a ubiquitous business tool.

Understanding spreadsheet risks - 11 Jun 2009

U.S. Should Still Pursue SEC-CFTC Combination, NYSE CEO Says - Bloomberg.com

2009-06-12T01:19:00.001-04:00

The Obama administration may unveil a plan this month to overhaul U.S. financial regulation. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may be reluctant to push lawmakers to overcome resistance to combine the two agencies, people briefed on discussions said earlier this month.

U.S. Should Still Pursue SEC-CFTC Combination, NYSE CEO Says - Bloomberg.com

When Implementing Search Engine Optimization Becomes A Problem - Going Back To The Basics

2009-06-12T00:31:00.001-04:00

Search Engine Optimization is the basic of Internet Marketing to help give your site the online coverage it needs to make your page accessible to everyone on the World Wide Web. There are plenty of tips and tricks available in books or on the Internet to help you implement this on your page; but there might come a time that you'll hit a wall and your implementation is not doing you any good.

Daily News - When Implementing Search Engine Optimization Becomes A Problem - Going Back To The Basics

Cable group turns net neutrality around over ISP access fees - Ars Technica

2009-06-11T23:48:00.001-04:00

Here's an issue that will probably keep the telecom lawyers growling at each other for just a decade or so. The American Cable Association has asked the Federal Communications Commission to stop Internet video content providers from charging ISPs wholesale access fees to their sites "at discriminatory rates, terms and conditions." The ACA filed their request as feedback in the agency's proceeding on its National Broadband Plan. The trade group represents about 900 small and medium sized cable/ISP operators, many serving rural areas.

Cable group turns net neutrality around over ISP access fees - Ars Technica

Honoluluadvertiser - China defends net filtering software amid outcry

2009-06-11T10:47:00.001-04:00

Put on the defensive, state broadcaster CCTV announced on its noon news program Thursday that a "vast number of parents and experts" had endorsed the "Green Dam-Youth Escort" filtering software that must be packaged with all computers sold in China from July 1.

Honoluluadvertiser - China defends net filtering software amid outcry

Midsized firm taps cloud-based B2B integration for punchout e-commerce

2009-06-10T04:43:00.001-04:00

Starting soon, customers who order through Mayer's online catalog will get punchout or roundtrip service -- that is, the ability to fill up a shopping cart, have the items translated automatically into a requisition order, then routed through their internal approval processes and -- once approved -- turned into purchase orders that pop up in Mayer Electric's ERP system. No double entry, crows Carden. Total data integrity. All of it handled in the cloud by an outside provider.

Midsized firm taps cloud-based B2B integration for punchout e-commerce

White House Cites Progress on Economy Under Plan - NYTimes.com

2009-06-09T17:35:00.001-04:00

So Mr. Obama began a new effort on Monday to show that his stimulus plan was yielding concrete benefits, saying that his administration expects to save or create 600,000 more jobs this summer, as the federal government spends billions to expand care at health centers, spruce up national parks, hire teachers and improve military facilities.

White House Cites Progress on Economy Under Plan - NYTimes.com

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Continental Divide - Economy Shows Cracks in European Union - Series - NYTimes.com

2009-06-09T17:34:00.001-04:00

The crisis has presented the European Union with its greatest challenge, but even many committed Europeanists believe that the alliance is failing the test. European leaders, their focus on domestic politics, disagree sharply about what to do to combat the slump. They have feuded over how much to stimulate the economy. They argue about whether the European Central Bank should worry more about the deep recession or future inflation. And they have rushed to protect jobs in their home markets at the expense of those in other member countries.

Continental Divide - Economy Shows Cracks in European Union - Series - NYTimes.com

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Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold | Threat Level | Wired.com

2009-06-09T17:08:00.001-04:00

The United States dropped its reliance on gold in 1971, but Jackson doubted the wisdom of this move. “Many a paper currency has spun out of orbit in a calamitous trajectory,” he once wrote. “There has never been an instance of gold or silver being discarded as worthless.”

It was time, Jackson mused, for a radical rethink of money. Had he been born in another era, he could scarcely have acted on his beliefs. But the nascent internet changed everything. The international, 24-hour churn of e-commerce cried out for a monetary system that transcended borders and time zones. So in early 1996, Jackson began programming a back-end system for a new electronic currency, practicing medicine by day, and coding by night.

He hired a software engineer to create the user interface, and four months later launched E-Gold.

As Jackson envisioned it, E-Gold was a private, international currency that would circulate independent of government controls, and stand impervious to the market’s highs and lows. Brimming with evangelical enthusiasm, Jackson proclaimed it a cure for the modern monetary system’s ills and described it at one point as “an epochal change in human destiny” and “probably the greatest benefit to humanity that’s ever been thought of.”

Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold | Threat Level | Wired.com

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What Does it Mean to be Internet? - Fred Goldstein, ionary Consulting

2009-06-09T16:55:00.001-04:00

It’s a simple question and it can be read two ways. One way is to ask just what constitutes the Internet, or makes something a part of the Internet. The other way is to ask whether and why it matters. Those are important policy questions in today’s world, where “Internet” is still a magic word, beloved of many policy makers but still widely feared.

What Does it Mean to be Internet?

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Hawaiian Telcom files reorganization plan - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

2009-06-08T14:12:00.001-04:00

“The filing of the plan and disclosure statement is an important achievement in our restructuring efforts,” said Eric K. Yeaman, Hawaiian Telcom’s president and CEO, in a statement. “The plan provides for a significantly deleveraged capital structure, and the terms of the new debt give us greater financial flexibility to execute our business plan and invest in new products, better positioning the company for future success.”

Hawaiian Telcom files reorganization plan - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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Russia To Push For Gold Standard

2009-06-08T11:18:00.001-04:00

You have the US and the UK, with their insolvent banking systems, hoping that world leaders will adopt a massive, global spending scheme to jolt GDP back.

On the other side you have Continental Europe, which is showing surprising restraint, arguing (quite logically) that more borrowing isn't the answer to a debt crisis.

And then you have China and Russia, with totally different interests talkinga bout new global currencies to replace the dollar.And Russia, for one, wants the world to get back to gold.

Russia To Push For Gold Standard

What Is Facebook Actually Worth? - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

2009-06-08T11:12:00.001-04:00

That’s not to completely dismiss the headline figure, it says. Under terms announced Tuesday, the Russian Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies is plugging $200 million into the company for about a 2 percent stake. By that arithmetic, Facebook would indeed be worth $10 billion.For a company that, by its own admission, won’t generate positive cash flow until sometime next year, that’s an impressive figure to bandy about. True, Facebook’s last capital-raising 18 months ago, which brought Microsoft and the Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing in as investors, put a $15 billion price tag on the company. But considering the trajectory of financial markets since then, the valuation attached to Digital Sky’s trade actually looks even more robust, Breakingviews says.

What Is Facebook Actually Worth? - DealBook Blog - NYTimes.com

Your Antenna's Big Day - washingtonpost.com

2009-06-08T10:56:00.001-04:00

Here's what's going on: Broadcasters are permanently turning off the analog signals they've been using for more than six decades and moving to all-digital programming. Why? Digital signals travel more efficiently, allowing broadcasters to air more channels with a higher-quality picture. The old analog airwaves will be repurposed for wireless communications networks for public safety officials. And companies such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless have bought the rights to use those airwaves to roll out new cellphone services for consumers.

Your Antenna's Big Day - washingtonpost.com

The Future of Money: DIY Currencies: Wired

2009-06-06T15:28:00.002-04:00

Futurist Douglas Rushkoff, famous for correctly predicting the rise of social media, is trying to convince Craigslist's Craig Newmark to create "craigbucks." He thinks it's the obvious next step in the evolution of money. "People could buy and sell things exclusively on Craigslist using craigbucks," Rushkoff enthuses. "Sure they'll want to keep their Visas and their MasterCards, but they'll want a specialized, alternative form of cash too."

Dual Perspectives Article

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The Future of Social Media: Is a Tweet the New Size of a Thought?

2009-06-06T15:26:00.001-04:00

The quandary is this: Most of the uses Twitter has been adapted to were already well-served by existing online tools — blogs, email, instant-messaging — and it's not entirely obvious how the subcompact message lengths and other constraints of microblogging represent an improvement. Identifying Twitter's comparative advantage, in other words — the compelling, real-world need that it alone among social media best fulfills — is hard. So hard that a recent blog post by legendary web-tech guru (and avid twitterer) Dave Winer all but conceded Twitter's core appeal might remain forever shrouded in the ineffable. "There's something there," wrote Winer. "The challenge is to figure out what it is."

Dual Perspectives Article

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