May 2008 Archives

It's an election year, and that means that in a few months, thousands will be looking for jobs, either in or out of government, depending on the fate of their side. 

I had the opportunity to meet someone who is trying to help out the venerable institution of resume writing by opening it up to the wisdom of crowds and professionals alike. Razumes calls itself a "social resume writing" service but I see much more potential for "crowdsourcing" (I hate that term, btw) of other things.

Why? My current employer has a wonderful policy that nothing goes out without being looked at by at least two, sometimes three other people. Perspective and distance allow objective critiques. More on these guys later, but probably not in this space.

The other is MetaNotes. Think of it as a huge sticky-note board for your browser. I had the opportunity to converse with their CEO at SxSW last March and I've been loving their product more and more. I use it as a virtual whiteboard so I can organize and prioritize my ideas and work schedule.

There's one thing I can't give up, however. Outlook. All my love to Google, but until you integrate messaging, calendaring and tasks into one screen, with push and sync on a device with a keyboard, you've lost me. I'm excited for Android, but I want to see exchange server integration.

Microsoft, if they were smart, would spin off Outlook/Exchange/Entourage/Messenger into a new connectivity company. The technology is good. Put more effort into the front end, maybe a surface email client. That's the job. Fix email. Exchange is good. I say this as a Linux loving Mac Fanboy. I Love. Exchange.

Now make it better.

Apologies for the absence. Content should resume shortly, including pictures from the NCTA Battle of the Bands, a book discussion on the rise of the Netroots, and stuff about Newt Gingrich.

Any ideas?

Playing around with Seesmic during Twitter's downtime today, I couldn't help but feel much more superficial recording, and re-recording videos trying to get them just right, just like I do every day with writing.

Here's a question. The Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960 is a pivotal moment in the history of TV as well as politics. Remember, people who listened on radio thought Nixon won, but TV viewers judged JFK the winner.

As videoblogging enters the mainstream, is the social media sphere going to become as superficial as TV is? Is the quality of the debate going to decline?

The beauty of what blogs have done for media and our national conversations is they've allowed ideas to take precedence over production and presentation. I fear that the emergence of video may hurt that marketplace of ideas.

Thoughts?

Lately the meme on Twitter has been paying for the service. The problem is, Twitter doesn't stay up often enough to justify paying for it. Now, people are suggesting we pay for basic functionality. 

Ever see a Billionaire play Purple Haze?

Polk award winner Joshua Michael Marshall talks about the future of journalism in this HuffPost story.

Photo highlights here.

After a massive FAIL from Orbitz (which I'll talk about later), I've finally arrived at the NCTA Cable Show in New Orleans. Funny enough, the last time I was here was with my parents when my father attended the exact same convention here many years ago. 

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, but I think this is one of the few times that CAS has been used for good rather than as a last appeal for doped up track stars. The NYT covered this recently, and now they bring us the latest chapter:

        The watershed ruling made the runner, Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to successfully challenge the notion that his carbon-fiber prosthetics gave him an unfair advantage and assured his right to race against able-bodied athletes in the Olympics, should he qualify. Previously barred from competing in such races by track and field's world governing body, Pistorius will continue to stoke the debate over the competitive issues created by evolving technology in sports.

I'm glad that the Court of Arbitration for Sport came down on the side of the athlete, not the bureaucracy. For once.

I'm off tomorrow to the National Cable and Telecommunications convention in New Orleans. While I should have some coverage of the policy tracks and other events, the fun part is the new toy. I've been playing with Qik live video and should have brief interviews and clips from the NCTA show floor in addition to the usual panels and talks and photos.

Check here for coverage while Alex herds it all together on the front page and in the Media Center.

Only two days after the case was "ripped from the headlines" and prosecuted by Sam Waterston and friends, an indictment was handed down in the Megan Meier case.

LOS ANGELES -- A Missouri woman was indicted Thursday for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide.

Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis, who allegedly helped create a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn't exist to convince Megan Meier she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, was charged with conspiracy and fraudulently gaining access to someone else's computer.

Let's hope the prosecutors do a better job than the fake ones did Tuesday night.

I'm still mostly computer-less until at tomorrow at earliest, but Sean Garrett at 463 pointed me towards his most excellent rant on...well...everything I think is true about the Washington-Silicon Valley idea gap.

Money quote:

But, I can't help but think that one of the biggest trends of the last decade of tech policy is how the rich have gotten wiser and the poor, less informed. That is, the big and/or smart companies have made a land rush to DC to hire the best staff; secure lobbyists and establish control over the existing trade groups. This has had the effect of transferring much of the tech policy conversation and work to DC. Now, this may seem like a no-brainer and the right thing to do (which it perhaps is), but it wasn't so long ago that there were many more public forums in Silicon Valley that revolved around policy issues...

...The net impact of all this is that the CEO of the emerging start-up that may or may not be the next Facebook rarely reads about key policy issues that may impact her business and almost certainly never sees her peers engaged on them. If confronted, the CEO would probably say that she assumed that the Googles, Ciscos and Microsofts of the world were taking care of a particular issue. And, while that may be the correct answer, is it the right answer?

Sean wants to know who is going to take a leading role in reestablishing a vital and necessary link and educating the "little guys." He suggests someone like Michael Arrington, but despite his law chops I don't think he's the right man for the job. What we need is someone who understands Washington and technology from an inside perspective on both. I try and speak to both sides, and certainly have the experience in both camps, but a real pro could make a big difference.

On the other hand, next month I'll be walking around DC with Robert Scoble and showing him (and his Valley audience) what's what and who's who. We should have some good conversations and maybe restart what Sean and I both agree is so desperately needed.

To be continued.

...at least on my end, has been that I have been without a functioning computer for the past 48 hours.

Because I followed the manufacturer's instructions.

I normally use a MacBook Pro, my third Apple laptop, purchased to replace a PowerBook G4, which replaced another PowerBook G4, which replaced a Linux desktop.

The MBP was purchased on January 9th. Five months to the day, I installed a firmware update that the Software Update application would not stop telling me to install. When I rebooted...it didn't reboot. No chime, nothing. When I called support, they had me burn a "Firmware Restoration CD" on my old Powerbook, which thankfully works fine with an external keyboard and monitor. Nothing.

I'll be trying to get my data off the machine, because Apple will deny the problem was caused by their update, attribute it to a bad logic board, and do a warranty replacement, which will take too long during a time when I need a laptop. So, I'll probably be going back to Linux.

Thanks, Apple.

...is pretty creepy. The "Guardian Angel," described here in this Patent application, claims to be able to pretty much run your life.

The Washington Post (which has outsourced some of its' tech news to TechCrunch as of this week) reports that the days of law school grads landing the $150,000 jobs drafting contracts at megafirms may be in jeopardy due to outsourcing, just as tech folks saw their jobs move to India years ago.

GURGAON, India -- When Aashish Sharma graduated from law school two years ago, his father had visions of seeing him argue in an Indian court and eventually become an honorable judge.

Instead, Sharma, 25, now sits all day in front of a computer in a plush, air-conditioned suburban office doing litigation research and drafting legal contracts for U.S. companies and law firms. He is part of a booming, new outsourcing industry in India that employs thousands of English-speaking lawyers such as him to do legal work at a small fraction of the cost of hiring American lawyers.

Imagine that. The explosion of litigation costs and the massive volume of electronic information involved in today's court cases, has overwhelmed the market for affordable attorneys and paralegals, according to the Post. Instead, that electronic information can be shifted around the world and done overnight so when the $800/hour partner comes in the next morning, the task of analyzing, cataloging and researching is done for a pittance compared to what it would cost to pay experienced American paralegals to work overnight. 

"Ninety percent of a lawyer's work is legal research and drafting, and all this can now be offshored to India," said Russell Smith, who worked in a Manhattan law firm called SmithDehn before moving to India to set up an outsourcing company in 2006. "A large portion of our fees in the U.S. is because of office rent. It is often a big decision to hire one attorney in the U.S. In India, we can hire 10 at a time and train them all at once."

Smith's Indian company, SDD Global Solutions, handled much of the legal work for the film "Borat." Other clients include the Washington-based firm Appleton & Associates and U.S. movie studios and television networks.

"My people in India can do everything from here, except sign the opinion letter and appear in an American court," he said.

Smith's Indian office recently researched and drafted the motion papers for the dismissal of a libel case against the producers of HBO's "Da Ali G Show." Smith said that if it had not been for the cheaper option of outsourcing, the producers would have settled.

Imagine the consequences for the American legal system if every party had the resources to prepare for trial rather than weigh the costs of arguing their case successfully, and then the likelihood of recovering fees against the cost of a settlement.

Some folks might be shocked by this report that says Blogs have passed traditional Newspapers and Magazines in popularity on Google Trends.

What's shocking? There are those who say that Video Killed the Radio Star but the shocking reality is that many of the old "Radio Stars" were able to make the transition to Television based on their talent alone. 
Look at the graph. While magazines have dropped precipitously, newspapers and blogs haven't so much crossed paths as converged. 
Either way, what's the big deal? What's the story? Most of the major papers have been updating their websites around the clock anyway. What we call "blogs" are just content management systems containing written and embedded content, which can be either good or awful. I'm not talking about all the vanity ones and livejournals out there, I'm talking about the ones that break stories, or provide things that aren't available anywhere else. 
Example: Joshua Michael Marshall's Talking Points Memo won a Polk Award this year, for excellence in Journalism (specifically his reporting on the U.S. Attorney scandal).  
Journalism and reporting aren't static. The business is about getting the story, getting it right, and getting it first, no matter what. The "stars" aren't going to get killed, they'll just perform on a different stage. Jack Benny was a star in Vaudeville, Radio, Film, and Television. 
Entertainment and News aren't so different. The "stars" have the same thing in common: Content, Content, Content. 
Whether you call it a newspaper or a blog doesn't matter. Whether it gets you what you need to know, when you need to know it, does. 
So what's the big deal?
 

In an attempt to do something cool, I purchased a Nokia N95 from TigerDirect earlier today. They've been good to be in the past and have great deals.

...but it's a start.

This wouldn't be Capitol Valley without an occasional Facebook post.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer. "The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Not to rain on anyone's parade here, but Facebook had a fantastic way of verifying identities. Before opening the site to the general public, one signed on with an address from a verified network, to which your identify could be traced. 

MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue for sexual predators, who often lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person. It also has spawned cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to other users, sometimes classmates and others they know.

Are these actual facts? Is that news, or opinion? Any new communications system can be considered a "new venue" once it reaches critical mass, and cyberbullying dates back to AOL's glory days. Perhaps CNN could have at least backed up these bold assertions with a call to the Pew Internet and American Life Project which has done several excellent studies on those subjects.

By now I think that everyone knows that Grand Theft Auto IV is officially the most successful video game (in it's first week) in the history of the universe.  Really.

 

Here are some figures, from a CNN.com article by GameTap

It's official. Grand Theft Auto IV is a video game blockbuster, with gamers around the world buying up more than 6 million copies of the gritty, urban action title in its first week of sales.

...

Sales of the game generated more than half a billion dollars, the publisher, Take-Two Interactive, said.

 

That's 2% of the entire country.  Grand Theft Auto, as a series, has been the focal point of every anti-video game organization and nut-ball who wants to get them banned.  People like the lovely Jack Thompson wanted to take legal action to prevent sales of the game to minors.  It's obvious that Jackie boy has too much time on his hands, because there are two major things that make such a suit unneccessary: the voluntary rating system and parental responsibility.

More after the jump...

 

Did I call that or what? CTIA - The Wireless Association has filed comments before the FCC

Thank you, Reuters for the info -

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp is considering spinning off or selling its Nextel unit, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, quoting people familiar with the situation.

Well, this would certainly be the easiest way for Sprint to abandon its iDEN network.  It makes sense to sell of the Nextel part of Sprint Nextel as a quick(er) and (relatively) easy way to solve the concerns of trying to merge two incompatible networks.  They could potentially give current iDEN users the option of getting into a CDMA device on the cheap or moving over to the new provider.  Of course, that's if the new owner actually maintains the network for consumers.  If one potential buyer gets his way (which is of course if Sprint decides to sell) the network could become a new haven for public safety organizations.

The report said Cyren Call, a company founded by Nextel founder Morgan O'Brien, is trying to assemble a consortium of investors to acquire Nextel.

Cyren's mission is to provide better communication for the nation's First Responders so that they can better react and communicate.

Bottom line?  My lay opinion is that selling off Nextel would give Sprint much-needed cash as well as the ability to focus solely on improving the CDMA network and building out WiMax without the distraction of trying to figure out how to integrate the iDEN users as well.

Strangely absent from any buyout rumors is SouthernLINC.  SouthernLINC Wireless is a regional iDEN carrier.  In fact, their handsets are identical to Nextel's iDEN handsets.  It would make sense for Sprint to offer them a sweetheart deal to take iDEN off their hands.  Selling to SouthernLINC would be great for customers on both sides:  Nextel customers would notice almost zero change except for the name on their bill and SouthernLINC would leap onto the national stage and become, almost overnight, a major player.  If they could extend their reputation for reliability (they were back up and running only 72 hours post-Katrina) onto the national stage...Verizon's claim to fame would be in serious jeopardy.

Ok, so yesterday I posted the witness list for today's Net Neutrality/Broadband hearing. I could have woken up at 5am to beat the line standers and get a seat with the lobbyists who pay people to stand in line for them in the halls of the Rayburn building, but I didn't. I could be listening on the Audio Webcast. I tuned in for about 10 minutes, and haven't been impressed yet. I've got other projects, other things to work on, so I'm listening but my attention has not been caught. Why? Have you ever turned on your favorite TV show expecting a new episode and instead getting a rerun, or worse yet, a 3 hour extended version of American Idol? You know what you'll be seeing and hearing. No surprises, nothing to discuss with your friends. Just the same, this hearing, despite a few new faces, was a rerun in a series over the past year or so, including a few at the FCC. 

It's not TV...it's Jonny's Par-Tay hosted by my friend Jonny Goldstein.My fellow guest is an interesting guy who writes about the East Coast startup scene, and I can't wait to meet him. I'm going to talk about "tech policy" whatever that means. I'm just here to entertain, I swear. You guys can join in on uStream too. I'll post more details tomorrow, but we go live at 9PM Eastern Time this Wednesday.

Cox Communications is one cable company that is wasting no time and embracing wireless. Cox's wireless subsidiary, Cox Wireless, spent around $304 million and snatched up 14 Block A and eight Block B licenses as part of the recently concluded 700 spectrum auctions. Now, there is word that the company has given the contract to build the network to Chinese equipment maker, Huawei. UBS Research in a note to its clients notes that, Huawei is going to supply CDMA gear for a wireless network.

If not, they're sure putting up a good fight. IP Democracy has a great post about Google's petition, filed with the FCC to effectively deny Verizon's bid.

Verizon has taken the public position that it may exclude its handsets from the open access condition. Verizon believes it may force customers who want to access the open platform using a device not purchased from Verizon to go through "Door No. 1," while allowing customers who obtain their device from Verizon access through "Door No. 2." As Google previously made clear, Verizon's position would completely reverse the meaning of the rule such that the open access condition would apply to none of Verizon's customers, and thereby render the condition a nullity. Because this "two-door" position espoused by Verizon is contrary to the plain meaning of the rule, as well as the Commission's public interest findings and policy objectives set forth in the 700 MHz Second R&O, it must be rejected.

Fairly straightforward. Verizon can't allow "special access" for  applications by their own customers while denying it to others. How clear could the plain meaning of the auction rules be? I thought it was pretty clear what the Commission wanted: an open platform.

 700 MHz Second R&O, at ¶206 ("Specifically, a C Block licensee may not block, degrade, or interfere with the ability of end users to download and utilize applications of their choosing on the licensee'sCBlocknetwork,subject to reasonable network management."). 

Reasonable Network Management? Hmm. Where have we heard that term before? Seeing as Comcast-Vuze is settled and the Commission yet had a chance to define Reasonable Network Management (despite their recent hearings), does anyone else see the importance of them using the exact same phrase that they use in the Internet Policy Statement?

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and his Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet will be holding a hearing tomorrow on H.R. 5353, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008. The bill would direct the FCC to figure out exactly how many households get real Broadband service, as well as establish very basic Net Neutrality protections.

Steve Peterman, Executive Producer, Hannah Montana (against)
Mitch Bainwol, CEO, RIAA (against)
Kyle McSlarrow, CEO, NCTA (against)
Ben Scott, Director, Free Press (for)
Walter McCormick, CEO, USTA (against)
Christopher Yoo, CDT (against, academically)
Michelle Coombs, Christian Coalition (for)
Scott Savitz, Shoebuy.com (for)

Here's the headline from the Wall Street Journal

Deutsche Telekom AG is weighing a bid to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp. that could catapult the German telecommunications giant's wireless arm, T-Mobile USA, to the No. 1 position in the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter.

The downside would be the enormous cluster-fudge of networks.  They'd have GSM, iDEN, CDMA and almost Wi-MAX.

We saw what happened when two companies "merged" (they called it a "merger of equals" but it was more of a buyout) that were running different networks.  We're talking Sprint and Nextel, duh.  There was no real plan for consolidation.  Constant changes of direction haven't helped.  Sprint used to be number 2 in what was the Big 5 (the lineup used to be AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Nextel and T-Mobile) and Sprint's stock was in the low $20 range and generally on the rise.  Since the merger both sides of Sprint/Nextel have seen literally millions of subscribers and billions of dollars evaporate.

What I'm getting at is that DT/T-mobile seems to have its head on straight.  Other than the change from VoiceSteam to T-Mobile (which was done in the relative infancy of their US debut) they've never suffered an identity crisis (Like AT&T Cingular AT&T) and never had to transition from one network to another (like AT&T from TDMA to GSM or Nextel from TDMA to iDEN or Sprint from GSM to CDMA).  Unless they have a very clear roadmap for what they're going to do with their customers in regards to network there are going to be massive problems with a buyout of Sprint.  I would have to imagine that it would be something along the lines of moving their GSM customers to CDMA (most of their GSM handsets have a CDMA almost-twin).  Next would be either rolling out a nationwide Wi-MAX network for Wi-MAX airacrds and CDMA handsets that connect to Wi-MAX for data or potentially work in a dropping of Wi-MAX entirely and rely on EVDO for its data needs.  Because of the incentives usually offered to switch to the "favored" network, it would seem cheaper to abandon GSM.  However, GSM is more globally accepted and is a cheaper overall network.  I hope that if they merge they stick with CDMA because frankly, I've never been impressed with the call quality I've had when talking to someone with T-Mobile and never been anything but impressed with the call quality I've had with Sprint. 
Also, they'd need to work dropping iDEN into that plan too.

Except for the part where Sprint is saying Wi-MAX and VZE is saying LTE for 4th gen data a Verizon buyout of Sprint would make so much more sense, especially because Wi-MAX is still in a test deployment.

I'll admit, as I usually will, that I don't have any kind of degree in anything.  What I do have is experience.  I experienced the Sprint/Nextel merger first-hand and know how poorly it was handled.  It took them 3 years to decide that they should use the near-billion dollar city-sized campus in Kansas as their HQ (which also allows them to pay relocated employees less in accordance with their policy for reducing pay when transferring to an area with a lower cost of living) instead of the campus in Reston, VA (which is still only partially vacated).  They're just now, also three years later, rolling out handsets that will allow iDEN customers to completely move over to CDMA as opposed to the hybrid units that reduce iDEN traffic but don't really address the need to get rid of the entire network.  Any plan that came out didn't seem like it was that well planned and was then changed before it had a chance to take hold.  I have to assume that if I can see the huge potential for ginormous fail that the brains behind Deutsche Telekom must have as well.

If the buy happens (and it's a really, really, really big "if") it needs to be done with more planning, commitment and follow-through than would be needed in the acquisition of a competitor using the same type of network.  With Sprint's stock $30 away from the top 2 (AT&T and VZW) and DT's better, but not amazing in the upper teens, a poorly handled Sprint acquisition could very well put the new company in dire straights very quickly.  Were that to happen we could very easily see the Big 4 very quickly become the Big 2. 

After many weeks of waiting, the secret I needed to catch my prey finally arrived. The shiny plastic tokens represented the last hurdle before I was able to begin the quest that I will document for you, our loyal readership. Occasionally I will be able to provide photographic and video dispatches, but for my own safety, it will be necessary to limit myself to the written word in order to protect my location. 

...except that it would have been an antitrust nightmare. So is GOOG-YHOO, for that matter. The search market is pretty much a duopoly already. Until someone else innovates, get used to it.

Here's their audio broadcasted story, dated today.

So here's the roundup, Saturday style, once again.
As usual, here are the stock prices of the Big 4 at last trade on Friday, May 2nd.  Change is vs last trade on the previous Friday.

AT&T - $40.13 + $1.55
Verizon - $39.59 + $2.55
Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) - $18.11 + $0.21
Sprint - $7.89 - $0.02

VZW and AT&T are still in a dead heat for first in terms of stock price.  Sprint actually climbed into the low $8 range but news that it's June 26th deadline to vacate a big chunk of spectrum (details below) may cause it to leave up to 20 million iDEN users high and dry took it back into the 7's.

As usual, quotes thanks to Yahoo! Finance.

• On Friday a Federal Appeals court shot down Sprint.  There is a chunk of bandwidth that Sprint is currently using for its iDEN operations that is supposed to be vacated for use by emergency services.  Sprint is no where near being ready to vacate that spectrum and has no where to move the network traffic that will be left in limbo.  In theory, Sprint was going to take over the spectrum that is currently being used by those emergency services organizations.  The thing is, they aren't ready either.  Sprint is the one with the June 26th deadline and they could be left scratching their heads, wondering what the heck they're going to do when potentially millions of their iDEN subscribers have no network.
  According to a Wireless Week article from last November, around 20 million iDEN subscribers could be out of luck.  iDEN is the network technology used in Nextel phones and for the walkie talkie functionality in Sprint Nextel's hybrid phones.
  

Details at Yahoo!, by the Associated Press.

The rest of the roundup after the jump...

Fake Steve Jobs tells it like it is: Facebook is not worth $15 Billion.

This chart says it all. A new study discovers that the vast majority of Facebook apps are an utter waste of time. But oh yeah -- Facebook is worth $9 billion, or $15 billion. And Slide is worth half a billion because it makes that super important FunWall application. Um, right.

here's the chart, courtesy of C|Net's Caroline McCarthy:

Newt Gingrich's American Solutions blog has an article on the Employee Free Choice Act which would overhaul the current process that workers use to choose whether or not to unionize.

Right now, the National Labor Relations Board handles unionization elections, which take place under a secret ballot. The Employee Free Choice Act, a political hot button this Congress, would change to a "card signing" system where instead of a formal vote, if enough workers simply sign cards saying "I want a union," than *poof* there is a Union.

This reminds me of the complaints about the Caucus system, where supporters of one candidate complain of intimidation and some outright believe that it is against the principle of a secret ballot.

First I'll give my opinion, then offer a suggestion to both that could even help make General Elections more open and transparent, while keeping the secret ballot.

As if FCC Chairman Kevin Martin troubles weren't enough as is, yesterday they Chairmen of both the full Energy and Commerce Committee and the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet sent a letter inquiring as to the status of the XM-Sirius merger.

Read it and weep.

How about those June hearings?

I'm not sure why this hasn't gotten more play, but former FCC engineer Michael Marcus pointed out this shocking article in RCR Wireless News which calls attention to a staff report prepared for House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) which strongly suggests that the Committee hold hearings on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's management practices, citing an investigation that began last year and strongly suggests that Martin's management style has hurt the Commission

"We have conducted more than 30 interviews with current and former [FCC] employees as well as industry representatives and private citizens. The bottom line is that the [FCC] process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin," stated an April 28 staff memo to Dingell and oversight and investigations subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.).

Between the DTV transition, the recent spectrum auctions and the White Spaces controversy, along with his strange fascination with prioritizing indecency fines, network management, and the Commission's turtle-slow merger review process which is still delaying XM-Sirius, what could happen next?

Yes, they arrived. Finally. This weekend, a trip to Best Buy to use them, and a full report.

It's the jocks versus the geeks, only this time the playing field is the FCC, not the high school cafeteria. 

We are deeply troubled by the very serious disruption and harm that portable device 

interference will cause to sport broadcast programming, whether pre-recorded or live, and the 

conduct of  the games themselves.  Sports programming relies extensively on wireless microphones and related audio equipment in its production and distribution. 

...The ESPN Monday Night Football ("MNF") broadcast alone requires 145 wireless frequencies for microphones, talkback and communications.  Under current conditions, one TV channel is simply not enough bandwidth to sustain the MNF broadcaster's needs. ..

It's May Day, and to celebrate (and make up for our almost month-long silence) we're podcasting at 9:00 PM Pacific Time on BlogTalkRadio.