Internet & Society

FCC Launches Blogband

August 19, 2009 By Steve Borsch

broadbandgov At Minnov8, we recognize that the most fundamentally important driver and catalyst of internet and web innovation is broadband. With big pipes and significant carrying capacity, entrepreneurs and innovators like you find ways to capitalize on it and people use the internet more when they enjoy high speed and ubiquitous access. With that innovation comes breakthroughs that we’re eager to cover on this blog.

The National Broadband Plan is one of the most important initiatives that the FCC has ever undertaken. To foster public dialogue about the National Broadband Plan, we’re tapping the power of the Internet to launch a new FCC blog, called Blogband. What better time to start blogging than now? With just 183 days before our deadline to send the National Broadband Plan to Congress, we need as many people involved as possible.

Like our unprecedented two-dozen public workshops and the upcoming fall public hearings, Blogband is part of the FCC’s commitment to an open and participatory process. Blogband will keep people up-to-date about the work the FCC is doing and the progress we’re making. But we want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas, and discussions generated on this blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan.

As this blog demonstrates, the Internet is changing and expanding the way Americans communicate, providing them with unparalleled access to information. Our goal is to create a National Broadband Plan that charts a path toward bringing the benefits of robust broadband to all Americans. So visit Blogband often to keep up with the latest news and – more importantly – get involved.

Though they’re unlikely to win any branding awards for the snappy name “Blogband” (sounds like bunch of high schoolers who launched their garage band to sing about blogging), the FCC has launched that blog in order to foster public dialogue about the National Broadband Plan (PDF), an initiative with just over 180 days before the FCC’s deadline to send that plan to Congress.

“Like our unprecedented two-dozen public workshops and the upcoming fall public hearings, Blogband is part of the FCC’s commitment to an open and participatory process. Blogband will keep people up-to-date about the work the FCC is doing and the progress we’re making. But we want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas, and discussions generated on this blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan.”

So if you care about broadband (and issues like net neutrality), then snagging this RSS feed and putting it in your news reader or just following the blog would be a good idea.

FCC Launches Broadband Site

July 7, 2009 By Steve Borsch

fccsite The Federal Communications Commission has launched Broadband.gov, a website that’s focused on all of the data and initiatives being gathered as the Federal government marches toward a National Broadband Plan 225 days from now (via BlandinOnBroadband).

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) was signed into law on February 17, 2009. The Broadband Initiatives funded in the Act are intended to accelerate broadband deployment across the United States. The Recovery Act authorizes the FCC to create the National Broadband Plan, that “shall seek to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability and shall establish benchmarks for meeting that goal.” This website contains information on the FCC National Broadband Plan. Please visit www.fcc.gov for more information about other FCC efforts, or browse the “Initiatives” section of this web site to learn what exciting efforts other agencies are pursuing to support the goals of the Recovery Act.

Check it out. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that there is a serious effort underway with this important infrastructure that is, in my opinion, more important going forward than the interstate highway system.

Could MSP Be the Social Media Capital of the World?

June 29, 2009 By Graeme Thickins

Or at least the social media breakfast capital of the world? It felt like it Friday, as a mob of people began gathering bright and early, with the smell of bacon and eggs wafting above the expansive lawn at Deluxe Corporation’s headquarters in Shoreview, MN. The scene was the 16th consecutive monthly meeting of an organization called Social Media Breakfast-Twin Cities, or “SMBmsp” for short. Complete with a “Jumbotron” on wheels for the presenters’s slides, the event was unofficially dubbed “Social Media Palooza” by the sponsor, and beach balls were even bouncing from row to row before the morning was over.

The event was originally slated to be held indoors at Deluxe, but free tickets for the 125-person capacity room sold out on the group’s online sign-up site within two hours. So, organizer Rick Mahn and sponsor PartnerUp (a Deluxe company) scrambled to accommodate demand. They quickly decided to open up the event by holding it outside, and then promptly sold out all 250 tickets.

Just what is a “Social Media Breakfast”? As explained on the group’s web site (a social networking site, of course!): “It’s where folks get together to talk about using social media and social networking tools in their business or careers. It’s about networking, it’s about learning, and mostly it’s about people.”

The SMB concept has taken off nationally, now with 25 chapters. But in early 2008 the Twin Cities group was one of the first to get started — the third, actually, after Boston and New York City, according to Bryon Person, the founder of Social Media Breakfast. Person spoke at the local “SMPmsp 15” event at Concordia College in St. Paul on May 16. (Person is based in Austin, TX and is a blogger, podcaster, speaker, and social media evangelist for LiveWorld. He is @BryanPerson on Twitter.) Person also said the Twin Cities SMB group has held the most meetings of all the chapters, and consistently has the biggest attendance. Thus, one could conclude that Friday’s outdoor event was the biggest SMB breakest ever held nationally, since attendance was about twice that of the largest previous SMBmsp event. … [Read More…]

OK. Internet Video for You…But With CONTROL

June 24, 2009 By Steve Borsch

no-video-for-you1 It happened today. Time Warner and Comcast had a press conference to announce that they’ve teamed up to protect their cable TV franchises by controlling what is delivered over the internet connections they deliver to your home, effectively keeping out any pesky competitors or disruptors.

“Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) announced today that it has partnered with Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA, CMCSK) to develop broad principles for the TV Everywhere model to guide the distribution of its television content online. The agreement between the companies will make it possible for Comcast customers to access programming from Turner Broadcasting’s award-winning entertainment networks free online and on demand. In addition, Comcast announced it will begin a national technical trial of its “On Demand Online” service in July carrying programming from Time Warner’s Turner networks TNT and TBS.“

For our take on this issue, read “Sorry. No Internet Video for You.” In a nutshell, the cable companies are making all sorts of moves (e.g., bandwidth caps; caching infrastructure at the cable head-end; so-called “authentication” schemes) in order to control internet video distribution over their cable internet connections. If you don’t think this will harm any competing providers or innovators — whether major network initiatives like Hulu or upstarts like Revision3 — then you’re not paying attention.

The only possible option to counter the dominant, monopolistic footprint Comcast and Time Warner enjoy and to keep the internet conduit from becoming a toll-road benefitting a few — and that those few are clearly capitalizing upon in a way sure to fail (think “authentication” won’t be hacked in a nanosecond?) — appears to be the Federal Communications Commission and Congress.

U.S. Home Broadband Adoption Hits 63%

June 22, 2009 By Steve Borsch

pew Readers of Minnov8 are skewed toward those highly interested or involved in internet and web-centric technology and services. As such, the latest findings of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project will be of significant interest.

These findings illustrate a departure from the stagnation in home high-speed adoption rates that had prevailed from December, 2007 through December, 2008. During that period, Project surveys found that home broadband penetration remained in a narrow range between 54% and 57%.

The greatest growth in broadband adoption in the past year has taken place among population subgroups which have below average usage rates. Among them:

Senior citizens: Broadband usage among adults ages 65 or older grew from 19% in May, 2008 to 30% in April, 2009.
Low-income Americans: Two groups of low-income Americans saw strong broadband growth from 2008 to 2009.
- Respondents living in households whose annual household income is $20,000 or less, saw broadband adoption grow from 25% in 2008 to 35% in 2009.
- Respondents living in households whose annual incomes are between $20,000 and $30,000 annually experienced a growth in broadband penetration from 42% to 53%.

Overall, respondents reporting that they live in homes with annual household incomes below $30,000 experienced a 34% growth in home broadband adoption from 2008 to 2009.

High-school graduates: Among adults whose highest level of educational attainment is a high school degree, broadband adoption grew from 40% in 2008 to 52% in 2009.
Older baby boomers: Among adults ages 50-64, broadband usage increased from 50% in 2008 to 61% in 2009.
Rural Americans: Adults living in rural America had home high-speed usage grow from 38% in 2008 to 46% in 2009.

The Pew Internet Project’s April 2009 survey interviewed 2,253 Americans, with 561 interviewed on their cell phones.

As I read the report, it was clear that this acceleration in broadband adoption is, in my view, being driven by a number of variables: economic downturn causing a seeking of alternatives, efficiency and cost savings; friends, family and colleagues online (many using social media) creating compelling reasons for others to connect; and a continuing growth of online services in news, information, entertainment and more.

All that said, the important thing to Minnesota innovators is that people are increasingly online at home and participating, and that’s important to all of us in the internet and web innovation space!

We Can Tell You, or We Can Tell the World

June 15, 2009 By Steve Borsch

“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

–Bill Joy, co-founder, Sun Microsystems

If you’re in business or lead an organization, you’re undoubtedly aware of the always on, always connected culture of participation online. The growing number of people participating in social networks, with social media and generating their own content in the form of blogs, videos and even scrapbooks, is fundamentally shifting how we are connecting with one another, getting our news and alerts, are being influenced by people we trust as we seek before we buy, and increasingly is how we’re making our voices heard when we like, or don’t like, something a company or organization is delivering to us.

Rather than stumble along with rudimentary methods of engaging customers, prospects, employees and other constituents, many organizations are turning toward commercial software vendors who have created a completely new class of hosted software offerings in a category called, “idea and suggestion management.”

If you’ve read Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky, Wikinomics by Don Tapscott, or even the seminal book on the topic, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, than you’re staying abreast of the acceleration in companies discovering ways in which they can embrace their customer base and ecosystem for fun and profit (but mostly the profit).

In a growing number of conversations I’m having with business leaders, virtually all of them are either engaged in some form of outreach to their customers, prospects, partners and employees or they have initiatives in place geared toward learning how their organization can effectively engage people in new and online ways. With enough input from unleashed online participations coupled with smart decision-making within organizational leadership ranks — especially in product management or strategy creation areas — the ability for a company to build and deliver the right products and services goes up dramatically.

One oft-cited example of harnessing the collective intelligence of ones customer base is the Chicago-based t-shirt company, Threadless. The way their business model works is simple: the community of 850,000 people participating online at Threadless “vote” on their favorite t-shirt design (submitted by designers within the community at a rate of around 600 designs per week) and those are the t-shirts that are printed and sold. Threadless is essentially “offloading” their design to the community and enabling the community to be their defacto product managers, deciding on what they (the market) wants. … [Read More…]

FCC & Broadband: Tell ’em What You Think

June 9, 2009 By Steve Borsch

boy_internet

If you’re a Minnov8 reader, your lifeblood is probably internet-centric. Heck…if you have a PULSE you’re probably an internet user and would care deeply if any internet service provider was allowed to be in control over what you can-and-cannot-do over your internet connection.

Well, don’t just sit there….

Friend of technology, the internet, Minnesota and Minnov8, Mike O’Connor, is on the Minnesota Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force representing the metropolitan area user base and had this on his blog today and I urge you to take action:

Just got this note from Dennis Fazio. I think it’s perfect so I’m just passing it along to you. Time to speak out peepul!

Mike, You might want to encourage everyone to enter their comments to the FCC. A large number of citizen comments can help to counter the “everything’s just fine” mantra from the big telecom carriers. Here’s the Ars Technica article with a nice background summary:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/reformers-isps-clash-on-national-broadband-plan.ars

The Notice of Inquiry is here for those who want to read through it:

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-09-31A1.pdf

But really all you need to do is submit your comments about what you think the future of broadband networks should be by going here:

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi

It’s easy and quick You can upload a file, or more simply, type or paste a comment into the field provided.

You will need the proceeding number for field #1 and that would be: 09-51

A large number of knowledgeable citizen comments on the necessity of changing public policy to recognize broadband packet data networks as an essential public utility requiring active government investment, intervention and regulation might have some good effect.

Just so you know that I’m not asking you to do anything I wouldn’t do, peek at the letter I just submitted via the FCC website using Dennis’ link and the 09-51 code: … [Read More…]

You Want Us to Pay Attention? Cut to the Chase.

May 18, 2009 By Steve Borsch

preso-styles Increasingly we’re all swimming in a river of news, information and communications, and the flow is moving faster all the time. Not only are more of us accessing content online instead of paying attention to a handful of traditional media offerings, more of us are shifting our attention to such services as Twitter and what’s becoming known as the real time web, called that since frequently these services are the first place alerts, news stories and even trendy topics are emerging.

This real time web is becoming more important, but it’s further diluting the attention we can pay to any one piece of news, information or communication. One reason it’s importance is increasing is that more of us can access the real time web with our computers, of course, but especially with our mobile devices which we carry about wherever we go.

Because of this ability to connect with online services regardless of where we are, more of us are always on and always connected and our attention is split between an ever growing array of places online. We’re able to pay attention to this news, information and communication flow in the grocery store, while waiting in our car at a stoplight, while our kids are huddled with the coach during a momentary lull in their soccer game, or when we’re watching a TV show or political debate and “discussing” it with those whom we’re connected with through these sorts of services like Twitter.

Our dispersed attention isn’t just a problem for each of us trying to keep our heads above water in that rapidly flowing river of stuff, it’s also a huge problem if you are an entrepreneur, marketer, salesperson, small business owner, or even a teacher or cub scout leader trying to communicate the essence of your message and get people to pay attention to you and to it whether that message is delivered in person or online.

Thankfully there are some new models emerging that are beginning to point the way toward how we must communicate in a world with a scarcity of attention and is enabling more of us to understand how to cut to the chase and get the essence of our points across…. [Read More…]

« Previous Page