For LightSquared, a High Bar

To make good on its planned $14 billion investment in a national high-speed wireless network, start-up LightSquared Inc. must prove to the government that its network is perfect, or nearly so, in avoiding interference with global-positioning devices.

President Obama’s LinkedIn Town Hall: The Other Silicon Valley Jobs Event

Here’s an idea to get more jobs for the citizens of the U.S.of A.: Fantastic high-speed wireless access!
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Netflix Takes Aim at the Cable Guys, With a Promise to Start Firing Tomorrow

Netflix, which is fighting with the cable guys and telcos over streaming video costs, says it will publish a ranking of the best broadband performers. Or in other words: Netflix says it will tell some broadband customers that they ought to get a new provider.

Mossberg’s Best and Worst Products of 2010

Walt shares the best and worst products he reviewed in 2010 on WSJ Digits.
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IBM Offers Faster Chips, Thanks to the Memory

Chip makers use many techniques to make their products do more while using less energy. IBM is preparing to share more of its tricks, particularly an unusual type of built-in memory it had previously limited to Big Blue’s own computers.

Video: BoomTown Gets a Taste of Umi and Chomps into Cisco Execs Too!

Yesterday, BoomTown dragged my weary bag of bones to downtown San Francisco for the unboxing of a new consumer telepresence product from Cisco called Umi. The networking giant is making yet another big foray into the competitive space for, well, space in the living room. At the event, Cisco dubbed Umi as sweet as chocolate. Is it?

Like BoomTown Said: Cisco Announces "Umi" Consumer Telepresence

In a post last week, BoomTown wrote that Cisco would introduce a consumer telepresence product. It did today at San Francisco at a press event. It is called, inexplicably, ?mi telepresence. I’ll be honest, it sounds like sushi I refuse to eat. In any case, Cisco’s entry into the crowded consumer video-chat arena will be $599 with $24.99 monthly fee and can be used with a high-definition television.

Nokia Noshes Novarra

Nokia’s snapped up another small company: Novarra, a developer of high-speed mobile Web browsers. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close during the June quarter, were not disclosed.
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National Broadband Plan Guru Blair Levin Speaks! (Plus the Press Release and Exec Summary)

While trolling around Washington, D.C., this week, BoomTown dropped in on Blair Levin, the executive director of the National Broadband Plan, the opus just released by the Federal Communications Commission. Aimed primarily at boosting the proliferation of high-speed access across the United States, the plan has been shepherded by the telecommunications analyst and former FCC staffer.

BoomTown in D.C. to Say Happy 25th Birthday to .Com and Wary Hello to Broadband Plan

Last night, I jetted east to Washington, D.C., for an unusual confluence of events: The 25th anniversary of the .com Internet domain name and the Federal Communications Commission’s release of the National Broadband Plan. Both are set for tomorrow in the nation’s capital and both concern the impact of the Web on the United States in the past and the future. And after a quarter-century, let’s hope the federal government finally starts to take the Internet seriously.