The chances are increasing exponentially that the government's $350 million stimulus program to track where high-speed Internet access is, and where it isn't, will become a massive boondoggle controlled by the very people with the most at stake in creating their own reality -- the telephone and cable companies.

That...

With up to $350 million in federal stimulus funds allocated for broadband mapping, an organization called Connected Nation is racking up the frequent flying miles in an effort to capture the lion's share of the money. The question that government officials will answer over the next couple of days is...

All this talk of Internet surveillance is enough to cause intense bafflement. For the last couple of days, stories about the revolution Iran indicated that the government is able to keep track of the Internet doings of protesters by means of deep-packet inspection (DPI), a technology developed in the...

Who says there is no cosmic irony in the bland world of telecom? On the day after thousands and thousands of pages were filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on a new national broadband plan, General Motors announced its new post-bankruptcy chairman -- Ed Whitacre, the former chairman of...

It is truly remarkable that we have a president of the United States who used the word, "phishing," and didn't mean going out to the creek on the ranch and throwing a line in the water. He used it in the proper way for that spelling, referring to online scammers...

It wouldn't have been surprising if there was a semi-panicked conversation in the corporate suites of Sony. Michael Lynton, the head of Sony studios, had just been quoted as saying "I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet."

Some marketing gal or PR guy...

It's hard to imagine an American industry as privileged and protected as the newspaper. Right there in the First Amendment to the Constitution, are the words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of...

If the news industry was as adept with its technology and finance as it is with its corporate whining and pleading, we would all be a lot better off. Not content with the Associated Press (AP) and Rupert Murdoch picking fights with Google over links to stories, the Newspaper Association...

For a couple of hours yesterday (May 7), there appeared a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, someone in the U.S. Senate was serious about a broadband policy. Everyone seems to agree that we need one. President Obama campaigned on one. The idea that the Internet is a necessity...

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) may not have done his daughter, Mignon, any favors by getting her appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Mignon Clyburn has served on the South Carolina Public Service Commission since 1998. When confirmed, she would join Julius Genachowski, the Administration's stalled...

The Obama Internet and tech agenda came roaring out of the transition and Inauguration under a full head of steam. Now, it's more or less creeping along, bogged down and becalmed largely by circumstances beyond its control. It may be months before the Obama team regains its full-power tech policy...

Anyone not working for a telephone, cable or entertainment company, or one of their handmaiden acolytes, might conclude from events over the past couple of weeks in Washington that members of Congress are clueless. A Committee chairman thinks aloud that maybe the Internet shouldn't have been invented. House members beat...

A word to the wise for those who might have occasion to work with Aneesh Chopra, President Obama's newly designated Chief Technology Officer, from a colleague who has worked with him for the past three years: "Put on your roller skates. He moves at 100 miles an hour."

That's...

When he was in the Army, the current secretary of Veterans Affairs, Gen. Eric Shinseki (USA ret.), no doubt had occasion to read the riot act to subordinate officers. It's time for him to get into command mode again, and the subjects this time are his incompetent public relations staff,...

Not content with trying to destroy the concept of fair use for images in the case of Shepard Fairey's poster of President Obama, the Associated Press is now threatening a war on the words of the Internet. Faced with a rebellion from its members (the AP is a cooperative...

It's unfortunate that the issue of broadband mapping is taking up any time and energy, much less about $350 million in stimulus money. Discussion of mapping takes away from discussion of the real issue - deployment, and why large companies have to be begged to provide service to some areas...

The news from the media front was pretty dismal. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will end 146 years of printing newspapers, becoming the largest newspaper to go web only. The Hearst company couldn't find a buyer for the P-I, leaving Seattle with the Times as the only physical newspaper.

Another venerable...

The news that more time is spent on social networks than on email should be just the kind of news that telephone companies and cable companies would like to hear. For much different reasons, Google should also. After all, social networking is at the beginning of its development...

There is a lot that Amazon has done right over the years. Just the other day, the Washington Post ran a story about companies that have done well in the face of the recession. Amazon's sales are up 18 percent, profit up 9 percent. In this day and age,...

Now that the stimulus bill has been passed and signed, the news cycle has moved onto other things - bipartisanship, the economy, banks, car companies, Afghanistan, whatever failing the punditocracy lately perceives from President Obama.

Not so fast. It would be a mistake to divert attention from the stimulus now....