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	<title>AllThingsD &#187; President Barack Obama</title>
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		  <title>All Things Digital</title>
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		<title>Viral Video: Hollywood Loves Obama Again</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20120319/viral-video-hollywood-loves-obama-again/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20120319/viral-video-hollywood-loves-obama-again/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 19 Mar 2012 08:09:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kara Swisher</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://allthingsd.com/?p=187604</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to the era of the "docu-ganda"!]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120319/viral-video-hollywood-loves-obama-again/the-road-weve-traveled/" rel="attachment wp-att-187608"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/03/The-Road-Weve-Traveled-380x207.jpg" alt="" title="The-Road-Weve-Traveled" width="380" height="207" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-187608" /></a></p>
<p>This has got to be the mother of all political ads &#8212; directed by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim, narrated by Tom Hanks, and lasting 17 minutes &#8212; all part of the campaign of President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>Plus, &#8220;The Road We&#8217;ve Traveled&#8221; video was posted right to YouTube upon its release.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how it will be received, and if it will work. The Washington Post is calling it a &#8220;docu-ganda,&#8221; noting that it cost $345,000.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p><iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2POembdArVo?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
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		<title>The Day the Web Went Dark</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20120118/the-day-the-web-went-dark/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20120118/the-day-the-web-went-dark/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:40:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Arik Hesseldahl</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Enterprise]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://allthingsd.com/?p=164655</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Web-wide protest against a controversial pair of bills before the U.S. Congress began this morning.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120118/the-day-the-web-went-dark/sopa_blackout/" rel="attachment wp-att-164654"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2012/01/sopa_blackout.png" alt="" title="sopa_blackout" width="380" height="285" class="alignright size-full wp-image-164654" /></a>&#8220;Imagine a world without free knowledge.&#8221;</p>
<p>That&#8217;s the phrase that has been greeting visitors to the English-language sections of Wikipedia since midnight Eastern Time. Other sites, like <a href="http://boingboing.net/">BoingBoing</a>, began their protest just minutes ago as I&#8217;m writing this at 8 am ET. BoingBoing displayed a &#8220;503: Service Unavailable&#8221; message against a black background, saying it was &#8220;because the U.S. Senate is considering legislation that would certainly kill us forever.&#8221;</p>
<p>They were just two examples of the coordinated Web-wide protest taking place against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and a companion bill, PIPA. Numerous other major sites were also taking part, according to <a href="http://sopastrike.com/">SOPAStrike.com</a>, a site boosting the protest. Mozilla and WordPress.org were taking part by blacking out their sites and directing visitors to take-action pages. The Internet Archive was to go dark for 12 hours today, beginning at 6 am PT. Google covered most of its colorful logo in a black banner and placed a link to a take-action page on its home page.</p>
<p>Many Internet companies are railing against the bills because, they argue, the provisions included amount to censorship and don&#8217;t properly protect sites accused unfairly of enabling piracy. In a post on its <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/dont-censor-web.html">company blog</a>, Google chief legal officer David Drummond wrote that the bills &#8220;provide incentives for American companies to shut down, block access to and stop servicing U.S. and foreign websites that copyright and trademark owners allege are illegal without any due process or ability of a wrongfully targeted website to seek restitution.&#8221; Under SOPA and PIPA, sites like Google could find themselves in legal hot water just for linking to pirated content in search results. &#8220;We know from experience that these powers are on the wish list of oppressive regimes throughout the world,&#8221; Drummond wrote.</p>
<p>Supporters of the two bills argue that the laws are necessary to clamp down on sites that operate outside the U.S., enabling the circulation of pirated films, TV shows and other copyrighted content.</p>
<p>Chris Dodd, the former senator who is now President of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a <a href="http://blog.mpaa.org/BlogOS/post/2012/01/17/Senator-Dodd-On-Troubling-Developments-of-Blackout-Day-.aspx">blog post</a> that the protests on the Web are &#8220;stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.&#8221;</p>
<p>The White House had <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20120114/dont-worry-internet-i-got-your-back-on-that-sopa-thing/">announced over the weekend</a> that President Obama doesn&#8217;t support either SOPA or PIPA in their current forms.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> A few folks have pointed out to me that  Wikipedia is still technically available via smart phones and mobile devices. Also if you disable Javascript in your computer&#8217;s browser it circumvents the blackout. There&#8217;s more on that in<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more"> this FAQ</a> on Wikipedia&#8217;s blackout and also in this <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_SOPA_blackout/Technical_FAQ%20">technical FAQ</a>.</p>
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		<title>Fujitsu Beefs Up Its Best Supercomputer</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20111102/fujitsu-beefs-up-its-best-supercomputer/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20111102/fujitsu-beefs-up-its-best-supercomputer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:53:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Arik Hesseldahl</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://allthingsd.com/?p=139643</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Japanese computer that this summer was the most powerful in the world just got a little more powerful, but not so much as to catch the brawniest American machine. At least not yet.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/11/k_computer.png" alt="" title="k_computer" width="380" height="285" class="alignright size-full wp-image-139724" />It&#8217;s November, and in the rarefied world of supercomputing, it means that a new edition of the twice-a-year <a href="http://top500.org/lists">Top 500 list</a> of the world&#8217;s most powerful publicly-known computers is due out any day now. That also means that the people who assemble the world&#8217;s most powerful bean counters are bragging about them and jockeying for placement on the list.</p>
<p>Today it was Fujitsu&#8217;s turn. The Japanese computing giant teamed up with RIKEN, the quasi-public Japanese research institution, to announce that they had built a machine they call the K Computer, which can perform 10.51 petaflops, or 10.51 quadrillion floating point operations per second. </p>
<p>And while all that may sound very impressive, it&#8217;s not quite as muscular as the <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20111011/nvidia-chips-to-power-worlds-most-powerful-supercomputer/">Titan machine</a> being assembled in the U.S. at the Oak Ridge National Labs, which can &#8212; or will &#8212;  perform 20 petaflops.</p>
<p>The machine (pictured) is made up of 864 racks with 88,128 interconnected CPU chips, all of them based on the SPARC architecture for which Sun Microsystems, and therefore Oracle, are best known, though Fujitsu has long been a SPARC licensee. The new K Computer is basically an improvement and extension to the same K computer that took the top spot on the last Top 500 list in June, supplanting in the process a Chinese machine that had taken the crown last November. </p>
<p>Never mind that it contained all U.S.-made chips, the Chinese feat caused the <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110208/ibm-brings-supercomputing-muscle-to-us-lab/">leader of the free world to kvetch</a> about the apparent sorry state of U.S. supercomputing, thus prompting, perhaps indirectly, the Titan machine at Oak Ridge.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not as though China hasn&#8217;t been heard from on the supercomputing front recently. Last week its Sunway BlueLight MPP raised eyebrows not for its performance &#8212; a relatively pokey 795 teraflops &#8212; but rather for the fact that it&#8217;s built using all <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20111029/china-supercomputer-uses-homegrown-chips/">Chinese-made components</a>.</p>
<p>So what will it be used for? Weather simulations, research into drugs and solar cells, and simulating earthquakes and tsunamis.</p>
<p>Here are the more formal descriptions from the announcement:</p>
<blockquote class="memo"><p>&#8211;Analyzing the behavior of nanomaterials through simulations and contributing to the early development of such next-generation semiconductor materials, particularly nanowires and carbon nanotubes, that are expected to lead to future fast-response, low-power devices.</p>
<p>&#8211;Predicting which compounds, from among a massive number of drug candidate molecules, will prevent illnesses by binding with active regions on the proteins that cause illnesses, as a way to reduce drug development times and costs (pharmaceutical applications).</p>
<p>&#8211;Simulating the actions of atoms and electrons in dye-sensitized solar cells to contribute to the development of solar cells with higher energy-conversion efficiency.</p>
<p>&#8211;Simulating seismic wave propagation, strong motion, and tsunamis to predict the effects they will have on human-made structures; predicting the extent of earthquake-impact zones for disaster prevention purposes; and contributing to the design of quake-resistant structures.</p>
<p>&#8211;Conducting high-resolution (400-m) simulations of atmospheric circulation models to provide detailed predictions of weather phenomena that elucidate localized effects, such as cloudbursts.</p></blockquote>
<p>So what&#8217;s a petaflop anyway? A FLOP is a floating point operation. Its a type of mathematical function that involves decimal points. Adding 5.6 and 11.21 is a floating point operation and is therefore slightly more complicated from a computing standpoint than adding 11 and 5. But in computing, even day-to-day computing, it&#8217;s massively more complicated than all that. </p>
<p>A top-of-the-line NVidia GeForce GTX 590 graphics card, which specializes in floating point operations, can run about 2,400 gigaflops. Since a gigaflop is a billion flops, I guess that technically puts the GeForce GTX 590 into the teraflop, or trillion-flop range.</p>
<p>Petaflops are then in the quadrillion-flop territory, which as I noted before makes them fun because they&#8217;re among those rare numbers that are larger than the U.S. national debt. So 10.51 quadrillion flops gets written like so: 10,510,000,000,000,000. Didn&#8217;t I say this was fun?</p>
<p>All this is leading up to a <a href="http://sc11.supercomputing.org/">big supercomputing conference</a> starting in 10 days in Seattle. So expect lots more supercomputing news in the coming days!</p>
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		<title>President Obama's LinkedIn Town Hall: The Other Silicon Valley Jobs Event</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:09:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Kara Swisher</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://allthingsd.com/?p=124797</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Here's an idea to get more jobs for the citizens of the U.S.of A.: Fantastic high-speed wireless access!]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/photo-12/" rel="attachment wp-att-124923"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/photo1.jpg" alt="" title="photo" width="320" height="240" class="alignright size-full wp-image-124923" /></a></p>
<p>Arriving at Silicon Valley&#8217;s Computer History Museum, in the heart of the tech industry, with the leader of the free world talking jobs and digital, you might expect <em>fantastic</em> wireless access. </p>
<p>You might, but not so much if you are a &#8220;local&#8221; reporter and can&#8217;t jack into the extra-secret-special wireless link the national White House press corps apparently has reserved for itself. (They also get a lovely noshing buffet, whilst we tech reporters have been instructed not to touch the pineapple and scones or else!)</p>
<p>Famished for coffee and carbs, we&#8217;re left with glomming onto the museum&#8217;s slowish wireless service &#8212; there are lotsa geeks here today jamming up the lines &#8212; and every now and then getting some juice from Google. The search giant blankets the Mountain View, Calif. area near its HQ with free Wi-Fi, but it fades in and out.</p>
<p>I am now reconsidering the antitrust investigations that the Obama administration is conducting against Google, as long as its signal is good enough to check Twitter.</p>
<p>So this liveblog of President Barack Obama&#8217;s LinkedIn Town Hall &#8212; which will center on jobs and is titled, &#8220;Putting America Back to Work&#8221; &#8212; could be glacial with not much news, much like what I am expecting from the event itself.</p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/no_parking_wireless/" rel="attachment wp-att-124827"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/no_parking_wireless.png" alt="" title="no_parking_wireless" width="380" height="285" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-124827" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;d certainly <em>like</em> to work, as long as the wireless does! (Plus, limited power outlets in the room, so it&#8217;s every reporter for herself!) </p>
<p>But bygones, while we await the Prez!</p>
<p><strong>10:18 am</strong>: One thing that made me flee Washington, D.C., when I worked for the Washington Post, was all the rigmarole that surrounded the appearance of and access to politicians.</p>
<p>I get it, the security and all, and am all for it on a general safety level. But, no matter how you slice it, it hinders any kind of movement or genuine interaction, like being stuck at a really dull opera. All the world&#8217;s a stage and we are all merely waiting in traffic.</p>
<p>In contrast, and one of the joys of Silicon Valley, is that anyone can get up right up into the grill of the various billionaire potentates littering the landscape, engage in a debate and get a possibly real answer.</p>
<p>Thus, I am hoping for a lot here from LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who is going to moderate the hour-long session with the President.</p>
<p>By the way, while he is busy running the business-focused social networking site, Weiner is looking good in a fancy suit, almost as if he could be Secretary of the Internet. I&#8217;d vote for him.</p>
<p><strong>10:28 am</strong>: Some painless but hip music is playing now, as we <em>wait, wait, wait</em> for Obama, who is set to begin in 30 minutes. </p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/imgres-61/" rel="attachment wp-att-125138"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/imgres10.png" alt="" title="imgres" width="261" height="193" class="alignright size-full wp-image-125138" /></a><br />
I wonder if the President is ever early. Wouldn&#8217;t <em>that</em> freak the peeps out?</p>
<p>(Obviously, I am bored, so I shall now go monitor Twitter to catch up on the latest in the new bad-marriage-or-not cat fight between Brad Pitt and his ex, Jennifer Aniston &#8212; as if we need <em>him</em> to tell us Angelina Jolie is more interesting. Frankly, Angie&#8217;s midday snack is more interesting than Jen.)</p>
<p>There is now what appears to be a Secret Service dude next to me, giving me a hairy eyeball. If I am jailed over my wireless protest, please give generously to my defense fund.</p>
<p>Free the Internet! Free the Internet!</p>
<p><strong>10:35 am</strong>: Finally, the production guy is up giving out the rules. Turn off the cellphones, no making noise.</p>
<p>The head Secret Service guy then takes the stage. No getting out of your seat. No sudden movements. And <em>no</em> crossing the blue line in the front row.</p>
<p>&#8220;All joking aside,&#8221; he says, he <em>will</em> take you down. He also notes that if the President moves toward you to shake your hand, &#8220;do not move toward him.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/imgres-62/" rel="attachment wp-att-125142"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/imgres11.png" alt="" title="imgres" width="201" height="251" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125142" /></a></p>
<p>I love Secret Service agents &#8212; especially when played by Clint Eastwood &#8212; and wish I had one to give a few people in tech a little smackadoo on my behalf. And not only if they moved toward me!</p>
<p><strong>10:47 am</strong>: This little frisson of excitement is followed by more waiting, as the final seats are filled up in the room, which is an unusually (and welcome) multi-racial and gender-balanced crowd for Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>Various White House aides skitter back and forth like nervous ground squirrels &#8212; I would imagine their life is one big effort to avoid any gaffe &#8212; so the Prez must be near.</p>
<p>I am actually looking forward to seeing him, as I never have in person and am looking forward to seeing the famous Obama charm and techie cred.</p>
<p>Indeed, he is probably the most fast-forward tech president there has ever been. That said, buffeted by more serious issues facing the nation, his administration has delivered on few &#8212; by which I mean <em>none</em> &#8212; of its promises around the digitization of the U.S.</p>
<p>Our high-speed broadband, for example, is still woefully slow, inordinately expensive and not easily available nationwide.</p>
<p>And I will not even go into the need for increased focus on math and science education or the importance of our broken visa policies. </p>
<p>But the topic today is jobs, which is an arena where Silicon Valley and tech shines in the U.S., even as manufacturing of it has mostly moved overseas. How tech can help improve in the creation of jobs will be issue No. 1 here.</p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/linkedin-logo/" rel="attachment wp-att-125191"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/linkedin-logo-285x285.png" alt="" title="linkedin-logo" width="285" height="285" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-125191" /></a></p>
<p><strong>10:55 am</strong>: Total silence with five minutes to go. I need the President around to quiet my kids.</p>
<p>Now, LinkedIn Chairman and VC Reid Hoffman comes in, so the event is probably about to begin. </p>
<p>And, indeed, Weiner emerges to cheers, to give a little speech on &#8220;changing the way we work &#8230; and connecting talent to opportunity.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>11:01 am</strong>: Then, the session starts right on time with President Obama. </p>
<p>He begins with a rote speech on jobs, which is nonetheless the most important issue he faces going into next year&#8217;s election. </p>
<p><strong>11:14 am</strong>: Ah, wireless glitch! Back!</p>
<p>President Obama is inexplicably in the middle of a Medicare question, which gives him an opportunity to talk about the need for the rich to pay more taxes. </p>
<p>And pass his American Jobs Act, of course.</p>
<p><strong>11:17 am</strong>: More on proposing legislation for retraining workers, such as the questioner&#8217;s mom. </p>
<p>Now to a group of email questions. The first is about when small businesses are going to get a break from onerous regulations and taxes.</p>
<p>President Obama says since he has been in office, he has cut taxes 16 times for those who create a business.</p>
<p>But he is not going to apologize for some regulations, such as those for the financial industry over the mortgage crisis.</p>
<p>&#8220;There are some regulations that have outlived their usefulness,&#8221; he says, but others not so much.</p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/helpwanted/" rel="attachment wp-att-125198"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/HelpWanted.png" alt="" title="HelpWanted" width="338" height="264" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125198" /></a></p>
<p><strong>11:24 am</strong>: The next question is from a Chicago IT employee. Except she is not employed.</p>
<p>She is asking a question about keeping her skills up and what programs are needed.</p>
<p>&#8220;The best thing we can do for you is that the unemployment rate goes down,&#8221; said President Obama, but also adds that making it easy to go to school while waiting on a job is also important.</p>
<p>&#8220;Just looking at you, I can tell you are going to do great,&#8221; he tells her in an awkward effort at reassurance.</p>
<p>Thanks, Barack, but she needs a job!</p>
<p><strong>11:28 am</strong>: A veteran is asking a question about transitioning out of the military. </p>
<p>Obama launches into a story of a medical technician who faced all kinds of experiences, but had to start over again with new classes when out of the military. He suggests some level of credentialing based on experience.</p>
<p><strong>11:33 am</strong>: Obama gets to pick out someone from the crowd and manages to pick out a dude who is a former Googler &#8212; although he only says that he works down the street &#8212; and is out of work by choice.</p>
<p>He asks: &#8220;Will you please raise my taxes?</p>
<p>A plant? I wish!</p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/20110719_doug_edwards_imfeelinglucky_18/" rel="attachment wp-att-125199"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/20110719_doug_edwards_imfeelinglucky_18.png" alt="" title="20110719_doug_edwards_imfeelinglucky_18" width="175" height="175" class="alignright size-full wp-image-125199" /></a></p>
<p>President Obama asks the name of the start-up. &#8220;A search engine,&#8221; says the ex-Googler-in-disguise, who is Doug Edwards, an early marketing exec there who actually wrote a book on being an ex-Googler.</p>
<p>&#8220;That worked out well for you,&#8221; kids President Obama.</p>
<p>Everyone likes a rich-guy joke!</p>
<p>He is soon onto the idea that we&#8217;re all dang lucky and declares he does not want it to turn the debate over taxes into a rich-poor war.</p>
<p>Bottom line, he notes that we have to raise taxes on the very wealthy. Frankly, if we raised taxes on a bunch of folks in this room, it would help a lot.</p>
<p><strong>11:42 am</strong>: A teach-training question, especially math and science teachers. </p>
<p>President Obama is all for it.</p>
<p>He is meaning well here, but all he seems to offer is a lot of bromides about the importance of education and errant related anecdotes.</p>
<p>Like one from IBM, where the company hires the kids in the program at the end.</p>
<p>President Obama wants students to see a direct connection between learning and jobs. </p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/imgres-63/" rel="attachment wp-att-125204"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/imgres12.png" alt="" title="imgres" width="225" height="225" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-125204" /></a></p>
<p>Then, he kind of says it again. Gosh, he can talk. How does the well-fed and wirelessly connected White House press corp take it? Lotsa donuts, I would imagine.</p>
<p>President Obama also wants us to turn off the electronics and video games for kids, too, thereby instantly losing the votes of my two sons!</p>
<p>Another laid-off guy is up at the mic. He had 22 years in IT management and is disheartened. </p>
<p>He wants a statement of encouragement from the CEO of America.</p>
<p>President Obama assures him that his track record of success gives him a leg up, but that the problem is the economy and the global meltdown, too.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s systemic, apparently.</p>
<p>&#8220;The problem is not you, the problem is the economy as a whole,&#8221; says President Obama.</p>
<p>That was the last question. Weiner, who has been sitting quietly (I know it was hard, Jeff, but good job), thanks the President and tells him that this is a big issue.</p>
<p>President does his thanks, too, for being able to speak, although not really that much was actually said.</p>
<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110926/liveblogging-president-obamas-linkedin-town-hall-best-wireless-access-for-the-special-reporters/the-economy-sucks-coin-purse/" rel="attachment wp-att-125206"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/09/The-Economy-Sucks-Coin-Purse-344x285.png" alt="" title="The-Economy-Sucks-Coin-Purse" width="344" height="285" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-125206" /></a></p>
<p>And then a genuine moment, finally, of clarity.</p>
<p>&#8220;Look, we&#8217;re going through a very tough time, but we have gone through tougher times before,&#8221; he says. &#8220;But the trajectory we are going on is one that is more open, more linked &#8230;&#8221;</p>
<p>He talks about the need for being ready to take advantage of that opportunity.</p>
<p>&#8220;Things have gotten so ideologically driven, putting party above country,&#8221; he adds, that nothing is getting done. That&#8217;s why the people, the voters, have to demand leadership from their elected officials.</p>
<p>Or, presumably, fire them and let them try to find another job, too. </p>
<p>It might turn out to be the best idea yet, if these pols don&#8217;t agree on something and quick.</p>
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		<title>Harry Reid's Plan to Save America From Default Using Wireless Spectrum</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20110729/harry-reids-plan-to-save-america-from-default-using-wireless-spectrum/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20110729/harry-reids-plan-to-save-america-from-default-using-wireless-spectrum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:45:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Arik Hesseldahl</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://allthingsd.com/?p=104176</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A key piece of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's debt-reduction plan calls for raising billions of dollars from wireless spectrum auctions.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110729/harry-reids-plan-to-save-america-from-default-using-wireless-spectrum/harryreidiphone/" rel="attachment wp-att-104245"><img src="http://allthingsd.com/files/2011/07/harryreidiphone-380x270.png" alt="" title="harryreidiphone" width="380" height="270" class="alignright size-Featured wp-image-104245" /></a>With a vote on a debt reduction plan favored by Speaker of the House John Boehner <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904800304576474072808358338.html">apparently in doubt</a>, the attention of lawmakers grappling to meet an Aug. 2 deadline to avoid a default on the national debt has turned to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.</p>
<p>Reid&#8217;s plan, which is expected to come to the Senate floor <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/wires/live_wire/live_wire.html?ref=fpa#">for a vote today,</a> would raise $24.5 billion over 10 years, of which $13.1 billion would be available for deficit reduction, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.</p>
<p>So how does $13 billion help solve a <em>$14.3 trillion</em> problem? It helps fills some of the gaps by making the bill more palatable to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. As one wireless industry lobbyist put it, spectrum auctions are in large part seen as politically neutral territory because they&#8217;re not tax increases that Republicans would oppose, and they&#8217;re not spending cuts, which so irritate Democrats.</p>
<p>The Reid plan is a variation of one put forth by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Commerce Committee which oversees wireless spectrum issues. Rockefeller&#8217;s plan would have raised $6.5 billion. Both plans essentially call for setting aside a big block of wireless spectrum, known as the D Block, for public safety. It would give the FCC authority to auction off TV spectrum currently held by TV broadcasters, and pay for financial incentives to entice them to voluntarily give that spectrum up. Broadcasters are generally <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110215/proposed-spectrum-auction-could-net-36-billion-study-finds/">not inclined to give it up</a>, however.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s also a spending component to the plan. The D Block spectrum set aside for public safety agencies would be used to create a national wireless broadband network that emergency officials could use during an emergency. This is an idea that&#8217;s been rolling around Washington since the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks">9/11 terrorist attacks</a>.</p>
<p>Rockefeller&#8217;s plan calls for $12 billion to begin construction of the network, plus a few billion for research and development into additional uses for the network. Reid&#8217;s bill drops the R&#038;D funding and cuts the construction funds to $7 billion. It&#8217;s not enough to build the network, but more of a down payment, meaning there&#8217;s a good chance that lawmakers will have to find some money to finish the job in a few years.</p>
<p>Reid&#8217;s bill would also direct the Federal Communications Commission auction of airwaves &#8212; currently held by government agencies like the U.S. Department of Defense &#8212; that aren&#8217;t being actively used. In addition, it would encourage TV broadcasters to voluntarily give up some of their unused spectrum for auction by offering them part of the proceeds.</p>
<p>What would all that spectrum be used for? The expectation is that wireless carriers like Verizon Wireless and AT&#038;T would bid on it in order to expand their wireless broadband networks, and thus give smartphone users more bandwidth to slake their apparently insatiable digital thirst.</p>
<p>Just because spectrum auction revenue is neither a tax increase nor a spending cut doesn&#8217;t mean there&#8217;s no opposition. Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and 2008 GOP presidential nominee, blasted the plan and called it a &#8220;cop-out&#8221; from the Senate floor. Meanwhile, Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60079.html">told Politico earlier this week</a> that the debt bill is the wrong place to debate wireless spectrum.</p>
<p>It wouldn&#8217;t be the first time that wireless spectrum has figured in the budget-balancing and deficit-reduction process. Revenue generated from spectrum auctions helped then-President Bill Clinton balance the budget in 1993 and 1997, and President George W. Bush used them to help reduce the federal budget deficit in 2005.<br />
<em><br />
(Image from Harry Reid&#8217;s <a href="http://www.harryreid.com/ee/index.php/news/release/reid_campaign_unveils_iphone_app_to_keep_voters_connected_with_breakin">campaign site</a>.)<br />
</em></p>
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		<title>Egypt.com: Is It Time to Invest in Egyptian Start-ups?</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20110125/egypt-com-is-it-time-to-invest-in-egyptian-start-ups/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20110125/egypt-com-is-it-time-to-invest-in-egyptian-start-ups/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:35:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Seth Goldstein and Christopher M. Schroeder</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=35574</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The current upheaval in Egypt reflects pent-up frustration with the regime across a wide swath of society. Among the discontent is a growing class of educated, tech-savvy entrepreneurs hoping for greater stability to attract and reassure foreign investors.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>&#8220;We will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Barack Obama, June 4, 2009, Cairo, Egypt</p>
<p>In past 8 days at least 12 #Egyptians set themselves on fire out of desperation: unemployment, poverty, corruption. #Jan25 #Egyptprotest<br />
<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/monaeltahawy/status/29734902026993664">@monaeltahawy</a>, January 25, 2010, Cairo, Egypt</p>
<p>I will keep on saying this. Youth Entrepreneurship is key in creating a long lasting impact in the Arab world! #Jan25 #Lebanon #Sidibouzid<br />
<a href="http://twitter.com/habibh/status/29942331725586432">@habibh</a>, January 25, 2010, Beirut, Lebanon</p>
<p>As we left Cairo ten days ago to travel home to the U.S. after taking part in the first delegation of the State Department&#8217;s <a href="http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/2011/154892.htm">Global Entrepreneurship Program</a>, we saw Egyptians huddled around TVs in the airport watching video of the Tunisian uprising on Al Jazeera. We had no idea then that a single “<a href="http://nyti.ms/eu3TfE">slap to a man’s pride</a>” in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia could lead days later to <a href="http://bit.ly/fzqcXM">fierce protests in Cairo and the defacement of posters of Mubarak</a>. While there is a good chance that the protests will settle down in the coming days in the face of a growing military presence, it&#8217;s clear that Egypt is at a tipping point&#8211;politically, socially and economically.</p>
<p>The pent-up frustration that Egyptians feel about the current regime is felt in different ways across the population. Our focus in Egypt was on a growing class of educated, tech-savvy entrepreneurs. While the frustration they feel may not be as intense as that of a fruit vendor subsisting on two dollars a day, there are a number of economic and cultural impediments that have historically limited their chances for success. Based on what we found, the promises of Egypt’s start-up scene lie in stark contrast to the desperation of its poor. The next few weeks and months will tell us a lot as to whether there is enough stability in the country to make external investors comfortable with its prospects.</p>
<p>Amr Ramadan is the kind of entrepreneur investors look for: he started his company <a href="http://www.vimov.com">Vimov</a> with only $1,060 and begins his investor pitch by openly admitting the failure of his first product. His next product was a simulator for iPad developers that sold thousands of downloads at $32 each. His third product was the most popular paid weather app on the iPad, with over 350,000 users paying $.99 each.  The next product in his pipeline, an ingenious take on personalized news, sounds even more promising. In Silicon Valley he would have a few hundred thousand dollars of angel money in the bank, and a couple of Series A term sheets from VCs in his pocket. But Amr is not in California, or even the United States. He is in Alexandria, Egypt, and he&#8217;s just one of a new class of young, educated and Internet-enabled entrepreneurs in the region.</p>
<p>We watched this narrative unfold firsthand in Egypt, which was selected as the pilot country of the<a href="http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/othr/2011/154892.htm">U.S. State Department Global Entrepreneurship Program</a>. The GEP is the government&#8217;s effort to promote and spur entrepreneurship around the world, led by passionate advocate (and successful entrepreneur) Steven Koltai. We met with a series of senior government officials, including Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who are committed to building a startup-friendly business environment. The Egyptian government recognizes that a nucleus of successful entrepreneurs is critical to catalyzing a sustainable middle class. While no single company is going to cure unemployment or increase the poverty line, an inspiring story of upward mobility could be an important populist spark.</p>
<p>Over the course of four days, we reviewed 32 presentations&#8211;culled from over 100 applications&#8211;from a variety of Web, mobile and hardware startups.  Our delegation included the former CEO of CarMax; an investment banker, an MIT management scientist and a Silicon Valley VC. After two rounds of interviews, we awarded $20,000 to two companies: semantic search engine <a href="http://www.kngine.com">kngine</a> and hardware accelerator <a href="http://www.silminds.com">SilMinds</a>.</p>
<p>Haytham AbdElFadeel, the creator of kngine, is a 20-something hacker. His older brother works for him managing servers, while his father works from home as a day trader. “Search engine” are two of the most halting words known to investors. As a prominent VC emailed us, &#8220;a direct assault on Google doesn&#8217;t strike me as the right approach,&#8221; but Haytham doesn&#8217;t know any better than to pursue his passion for creating a better Google. He is using the prize money to purchase more servers, since the two desktop computers at his home are limiting his ability to index more of the web.</p>
<p>Dr. Hossam Fahmy is the co-founder and CTO of SilMinds, which has created the only decimal hardware financial accelerator card available in the market. He is a Stanford PhD, a professor at Cairo University, and he helped formulate the IEEE standard for floating point arithmetic. By shifting number processing from general software to specialized hardware, SilMind’s card increases server performance for certain financial service applications as much as 5X.</p>
<p>As an emerging market, Egypt doesn’t suffer from the irrational behavior seeping into the U.S. Internet market (unproven ad technologies raising $30mm, local discount services selling $20 gift cards for $10, etc). Instead, the start-up community in Egypt reminds us of the U.S. Internet market circa 1995, when it was tough to raise capital and when there was less glamour in being a technology entrepreneur; as opposed to the U.S. where Facebook raised $1b at a $50b valuation and &#8220;The Social Network&#8221; is poised to win an Oscar.</p>
<p>Some investors, sensing that the U.S. Internet equity is “priced to perfection,” are turning their sights towards emerging markets like Egypt. Usually, they look for foreign applications of successful domestic business models, like who is the &#8220;Facebook of Africa” or the &#8220;Groupon of Indonesia”? Many entrepreneurs (including freshly minted MBA grads returning to their native lands) are quick to adopt this strategy. About half of the start-ups that we saw in Cairo were localized versions of successful U.S. models.</p>
<p>The impressionability of these emerging market startups raises important questions. Although there may be a clear opportunity for the “Zynga of the Middle East” to get acquired in the near term by its namesake, one cannot build a sustainable business based on somebody else’s vision. Will those entrepreneurs who define themselves based on our business models look back at us, years from now, as startup imperialists? If so, will they shut us out from participating in their own economic transformations, just as they begin to scale? One need not look any further than China or Russia for cautionary tales of markets closing down to foreign investors at the most inopportune times.</p>
<p>There are a variety of reasons why Egypt could fail in its attempt to become a start-up mecca: poverty, political instability, poor education, lack of rule of law, difficulty to raise capital and cultural norms that do not embrace risk. For example, it takes two days to form a new company in Egypt, but takes two years to dissolve one, which is problematic because without bankruptcy reform, it is impossible for entrepreneurs to “fail fast” and move on to their next venture.</p>
<p>Despite these risks, there are a number of advantages that Egypt has in its favor: innovation is real, valuations are reasonable, engineering talent is available, real estate is cheap, and the government is motivated to help foster entrepreneurial success stories as a means of inspiring its disaffected youth. Egypt represents a market of more than 80mm people, and is the gateway to the broader MENA market of 320mm people (larger than US, Brazil or Russia). The region’s growth rates of mobile penetration and Internet usage are among the highest in the world.</p>
<p>In recent months, a few venture funds have started to finance these early stage opportunities: Arif Naqvi, founder of Abraaj Capital, the largest private equity firm in the region, recently announced multi-hundred million dollar funds dedicated to early and mid-cap technology companies in the Middle East; Ahmed Alfi, after two decades of successful investing in the United States, returned home to Cairo to form Sawari Ventures, complete with a SoMa style incubator housed in a classic 1940s building on the Nile.</p>
<p>Is it time to invest in Egyptian startups, or will the current political and social instability inhibit exits and investment returns? Who knows if companies like kngine and SilMinds will ever exhibit the same power in Egypt that Google and Intel exhibit in the US&#8211;what matters now is that there are Egyptian entrepreneurs with the drive and skill sets necessary to compete in global technology markets. With the Egyptian government’s support, and the organic growth of the population and its technology adoption, we believe that a framework is now in place for Egypt and the broader MENA region to emerge as an important market for early stage investment.</p>
<p><em>Seth Goldstein <a href="http://www.twitter.com/seth">@seth</a> is a San Francisco based angel investor and start-up entrepreneur. Christopher M. Schroeder is a Washington, D.C.- and New York-based angel investor and CEO of the online health start-up <a href="http://www.healthcentral.com">healthcentral.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>White House Launches Health-Care Response Site &quot;Reality Check&quot;</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090811/white-house-launches-health-care-response-site-reality-check/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090811/white-house-launches-health-care-response-site-reality-check/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:20:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Marisa Taylor</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=14265</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[President Barack Obama again took to the Web to spread his message, launching a new section of the White House’s site Monday to counteract some of the criticism of his plans for a national health-care system.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>President Barack Obama again took to the Web to spread his message, launching a new section of the White House’s site Monday to counteract some of the criticism of his plans for a national health-care system.</p>
<p>“If you’ve tuned into the news in the past few days, it’s clear that the debate about health-insurance reform has heated up as senators and representatives return to their home states and districts,” writes Macon Phillips, the White House director of new media, on the president’s blog.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/11/white-house-launches-health-care-response-site-reality-check/">Read the rest of this post on the original site</a></p>
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		<title>Surprise! Congress Helps the Britney Bailout Move Ahead.</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090513/surpise-congress-helps-the-britney-bailout-move-ahead/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090513/surpise-congress-helps-the-britney-bailout-move-ahead/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2009 22:09:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Kafka</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=7343</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I'm still skeptical that "The Performance Rights Act," which would require radio stations to pay musicians--or at least, music labels--whenever they play one of their recordings, will ever get through Congress. Not because it's a bad idea, mind you, but because the music business seems like an unlikely candidate for Washington aid. The bill, however, did take one big step forward today.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-5102" title="britney" src="http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2009/03/britney-278x300.jpg" alt="britney" width="250" height="269" />Shows you what I know. In March, I predicted that something called <a href="http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090310/will-britney-get-a-bailout/">&#8220;The Performance Rights Act,&#8221;</a> which would require radio stations to pay musicians&#8211;or at least, music labels&#8211;whenever they play one of their recordings, would never get through Congress.</p>
<p>Not because the notion is necessarily a terrible idea, mind you. But because musicians and music labels seemed unlikely to be beneficiaries of Washington aid.</p>
<p>Today, however, the music business got one step closer to getting the bill passed: The House Judiciary Committee approved the legislation in a 21-9 vote. There&#8217;s a long way to go: If I remember my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ">Schoolhouse Rock</a> correctly, the bill has to get through a Senate committee, then the full House, the full Senate and then President Barack Obama&#8217;s desk before it becomes law.</p>
<p>The National Association of Broadcasters, which hits my inbox almost daily with a press release decrying the act and promising its ultimate failure, assures me that &#8220;nearly half the House of Representatives already opposes RIAA efforts to feather the nest of foreign record labels.&#8221; And that kind of invective may help them quash this thing.</p>
<p>But let me reiterate: I still think the best way to kill this, if you were so inclined, would be to start calling it the &#8220;Britney Bailout.&#8221;</p>
<p>Per my previous story, here&#8217;s the campaign I would run if I was the NAB: &#8220;Slap up an ad that shows Britney Spears driving with her kid on her lap or staggering around an MTV stage or cavorting with K-Fed, and run a simple tag line: “Britney wants more money. Tell Congress not to give her any.” But again, what do I know?</p>
<p>Oooh. Here&#8217;s that Schoolhouse Rock classic:</p>
<div class="centered"><object width="300" height="242" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/mEJL2Uuv-oQ&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mEJL2Uuv-oQ&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /></object></div>
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		<title>Sun&#039;s Big Blue Light Special</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090402/suns-big-blue-light-special/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090402/suns-big-blue-light-special/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:26:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Paczkowski</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15935</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[ See post to watch video ]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div class="video-wsj"><object width="640" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="flashvars" value="videoGUID=A7CD605B-3509-49DF-9877-DE3AF2A52994&playerid=4001&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://m.wsj.net/video-players/&autoStart=false" base="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/"name="microflashPlayer"></param><embed src="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoGUID={A7CD605B-3509-49DF-9877-DE3AF2A52994}&playerid=4001&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://m.wsj.net/video-players/&autoStart=false" base="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/" name="microflashPlayer" width="640" height="360" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed><br />[ See post to watch video ]</div></object></p>
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		<title>Sun's Big Blue Light Special</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090402/suns-big-blue-light-special-2/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090402/suns-big-blue-light-special-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:26:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>John Paczkowski</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=15935</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[[ See post to watch video ]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div class="video-wsj"><object width="640" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="flashvars" value="videoGUID=A7CD605B-3509-49DF-9877-DE3AF2A52994&playerid=4001&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://m.wsj.net/video-players/&autoStart=false" base="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/"name="microflashPlayer"></param><embed src="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoGUID={A7CD605B-3509-49DF-9877-DE3AF2A52994}&playerid=4001&plyMediaEnabled=1&configURL=http://m.wsj.net/video-players/&autoStart=false" base="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/" name="microflashPlayer" width="640" height="360" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed><br />[ See post to watch video ]</div></object></p>
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		<title>Hulu Eyes Global Expansion</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090325/hulu-eyes-global-expansion/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090325/hulu-eyes-global-expansion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:07:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Elizabeth Holmes</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=9818</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hulu is stepping up its global initiatives to compete for audience and advertising dollars overseas.

On Monday, the video-streaming site added Johannes Larcher to its executive ranks as senior vice president of international. Mr. Larcher must work with each content provider to negotiate international rights for each video. Hulu has more than 130 content providers and 1,100 TV programs and movies, and its library continues to grow.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hulu is stepping up its global initiatives to compete for audience and advertising dollars overseas.</p>
<p>On Monday, the video-streaming site added Johannes Larcher to its executive ranks as senior vice president of international. Mr. Larcher must work with each content provider to negotiate international rights for each video. Hulu has more than 130 content providers and 1,100 TV programs and movies, and its library continues to grow.</p>
<p>Certain snippets of content are already available outside the U.S. Tuesday evening’s news conference with President Barack Obama, for example, will be streamed internationally.</p>
<p>Hulu is a partnership between General Electric’s (GE) NBC Universal and News Corp. (NWS), owner of Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>In international activities, Hulu trails behind Joost, an independent start-up competing in the premium online content space. Joost has a localized site for the U.K. and is viewable around the world, though content availability varies from country to country.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/25/hulu-eyes-global-expansion/">Read the rest of this post</a></p>
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		<title>Cheney’s Kindle and Other Politico/Gadget Pairings</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090318/cheney%e2%80%99s-kindle-and-other-politicogadget-pairings/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090318/cheney%e2%80%99s-kindle-and-other-politicogadget-pairings/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:53:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Marisa Taylor</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=9588</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Who knew Dick Cheney was an e-book reader?

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the former vice president said that he owns an Amazon Kindle and used it to read James McPherson’s “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.” He said he also uses a BlackBerry, made by Research In Motion, to keep up with the news now that he’s no longer in office.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Who knew Dick Cheney was an e-book reader?</p>
<p>In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the former vice president said that he owns an Amazon (AMZN) Kindle and used it to read James McPherson’s “Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.” He said he also uses a BlackBerry, made by Research In Motion (RIMM), to keep up with the news now that he’s no longer in office.</p>
<p>Mr. Cheney follows in the footsteps of an increasingly wired crew of politicians. President Barack Obama fought to hang on to his BlackBerry before his inauguration, stoking speculation that he might have received a National Security Agency-approved device. Congressmen might as well declare themselves dinosaurs if they don’t create their own YouTube channels and Twitter constantly.<br />
<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/18/cheneys-kindle-and-other-politicogadget-pairings/"><br />
Read the rest of this post</a></p>
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		<title>Rural Broadband’s Struggles</title>
		<link>http://allthingsd.com/20090304/rural-broadband%e2%80%99s-struggles/</link>
		<comments>http://allthingsd.com/20090304/rural-broadband%e2%80%99s-struggles/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:45:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Amol Sharma</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=9094</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Critics have attacked municipal Internet projects, calling them taxpayer-sapping money-losers and ventures better served by the private sector.

But if President Barack Obama is serious about wiring rural America with high-speed Web access, these efforts, like the central Vermont one we profiled today, will play a key role.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Critics have attacked municipal Internet projects, calling them taxpayer-sapping money-losers and ventures better served by the private sector.</p>
<p>But if President Barack Obama is serious about wiring rural America with high-speed Web access, these efforts, like the central Vermont one we <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123612370867623587.html">profiled today</a>, will play a key role.</p>
<p>The reason: Commercial operators don’t want to lay cable and erect cell towers in the hinterland.</p>
<p>The $7.2 billion the economic stimulus package provides for broadband funding will give a needed boost to cities that are struggling to float bonds to investors to raise money. Communities that get federal help will have the “headroom to do a project that investors view as risky,” said Jim Baller, a Washington attorney and leading municipal broadband advocate.</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/04/rural-broadbands-struggles/">Read the rest of this post</a></p>
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