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Ohio ahead in tech race
August 17, 2010
OneCommunity
USA: Ohio: Region ahead of tech race; keep up pace (ifG.cc; Crains Cleveland Business 8/16/10)
[Scot Rourke] Northeast Ohio has tremendous resources and a terrific opportunity to reinvent itself as a leader in the 21st-century knowledge economy. To compete in an economy powered by high-speed Internet, known as broadband, we have to migrate our systems away from the notion that physical assets and blue-collar skill sets will fuel our competitiveness. We need to align our resources around the skills that lend to the manufacture and distribution of very different products — information and knowledge. It is these new skills, and the ability of business and government to adapt and innovate with the latest technology tools, that will drive job creation.
Digital Divide
IBM and Simmtronics launch $190 Ubuntu netbook (Ars Technica 8/15/10)
IBM has announced the launch of a new Atom-based netbook from Simmtronics that will ship with Lotus collaboration software and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The device, which is largely aimed at small businesses in emerging markets, will sell for $190. It is currently available in South Africa and will be expanding to other regions in the future.
Read full article; Watch video
No broadband? No problem (Connected Planet 8/16/10)
There might be other viable alternative explanations for broadband's slowing growth. Is broadband Internet penetration supposed to be 100%? Federal regulators seem to think so, and many people who probably have no problem getting broadband would probably agree. Maybe there is a prevailing sense of guilt among the haves for not being a have-not.
Reports find technical divide among foreign- and U.S.-born Latinos (Washington Post)
Young Latinos born in the United States are far more likely to use text messages, social networking sites and other digital methods to communicate with their friends than their foreign-born parents or peers, according to two reports released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Broadband Stimulus / National Broadband
Contrary To Popular Belief, "Managed Services" Aren't The Devil (App-Rising 8/14/10)
(Commentary) On Wednesday I wrote about the Google-Verizon net neutrality kerfuffle relative to the outcries about its exception of wireless broadband from most open Internet regulations. Today I want to address the other major sticking point among net neutrality supporters, namely the idea that network operators be allowed to offer prioritized levels of service on their networks.
Bill seeks to make electronics accessible to blind, deaf (Washington Post 8/15/10)
Blind and deaf consumers, who have fought to make home phones and television more accessible, say they are being left behind on the Web and many mobile devices. Touch-based smartphone screens confound blind people who rely on buttons and raised type. Web video means little to the deaf without captioning.
The FCC and the bandwidth wars (Washington Post 8/15/10)
As a general rule, whenever you hear special-interest groups using near-hysterical language to warn that some proposal will destroy jobs, snuff out innovation and end free-market capitalism as we know it, you can generally assume that progress is being made. So it is with the controversies swirling around Internet regulation.
Municipal Broadband
Presentation and Panel Discussion about Community Broadband (MuniNetworks 8/14/10)
Craig Settles kicks off this event with a 45 minute presentation discussing what community networks should do to succeed financially and how they can go beyond simply making broadband access available to more people. Bryan Sivak, Chief Technology Officer of the District of Columbia; Joanne Hovis, President-Elect of NATOA and President of Columbia Telecommunications Corporation; and Gary Carter, Analyst at City of Santa Monica Information Systems Department responded Craig Settles' presentation. One of the key points is something we harp on here: if community broadband networks run in the black according to standard private sector accounting procedures, that is great. But it is a poor measure of how successful a community network is. Community networks create a variety of positive benefits that are not included in that metric and those benefits must be considered when evaluating such a network.
Healthcare
Health IT a Team Effort between Government, Industry, Says Blumenthal (NextGov 8/16/10)
Written by Camille Tuutti Health IT, Latest News Aug 16, 2010 Public and private sectors have to join forces and work together on facilitating the adoption of health IT, making it a “team effort,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, national coordinator for health IT.
Survey: Patients Report Inability to Access Own Medical Records as Top Concern (PR Newswire 8/15/10)
Practice Fusion survey reveals patient demand for timely access to personal medical data, highlights potential for participatory medicine and personal health records in coming years.
Agencies advance use of health IT (Federal Times 8/16/10)
To get diverse groups of medical providers to share data and ensure that the patient gets the best care is a difficult task, full of paperwork and phone calls. The Obama administration is trying to change all that with the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), an ambitious project that aims to get federal agencies to use common standards to record and store health records electronically. What's more, the administration is investing billions to encourage private providers to do the same.
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