Pew Home Broadband Adoption report released

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/10-Home-Broadband-Adoption-2009.aspx

The new Pew Internet report on home broadband adoption was released this week. Here's a few highlights:

• Competition matters ( $12.60 per month savings with 4 or more providers)
• 84% of home broadband users see their fast connection as “somewhat important” or “very important”
• More homes are online - 63% of adult Americans as of April 2009, up from 55% in May, 2008 (but 85% of adults have cell phone service)
• It doesn't appear that they counted cell phone services in their tally i.e. iPhone, although they did count 'Aircards'

As always, a fascinating read.

Aspiring to HARAKI-one: $100Mbps for US$50

http://www.kddi.com/english/auone-net/connection_services/ftth/hikari-one.html

Yes, you really can get 100 Mbps symmetric broadband connections in Japan for ~US $50 per month. If they can do it, so can we.

"Based on KDDI's reliable optical fiber network and advanced Content Delivery Network (CDN), in addition to a high-speed and high-capacity Internet connection service with a maximum downstream speed of 100 Mbps, "HIKARI-one" is an integrated broadband service that uses a single optical fiber providing a telephone service with quality, reliability and functions equivalent to those of NTT's subscription service, multichannel digital broadcasting full of exciting content, and Video On Demand (VOD) service. You can pick and choose the services you want."

Open Source Digital Textbooks Coming to California Schools

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/open-source-digital-textbooks-coming-to-california-schools.ars

I guess going broke does have some upside.

ArsTechnica reports that the California guv announced that the state intends to develop open source digital textbooks for math and science. This is a nice way to overcome the 6 year approval cycle for paper textbooks. The article has more detail and a link to the announcement of the initiative.

"Once the program is in full swing, a school district with 10,000 high school students could end up with savings in the area of $2 million a year. For now, however, the certification of digital texts will focus on various areas of math and science: Geometry, Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Earth Sciences."

Phone, Internet interventions can improve prognosis for cardiac disease, researchers say

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/hscout/2009/06/17/hscout628115.html

In today's world where time is an issue, telehealth interventions are proven to work effectively.

Forbes reports on a study by Australian researchers who "reviewed published randomized trials evaluating the use of phone- or Internet-based interventions in cardiac rehabilitation programs. Two of the interventions were Internet-based; all others were by telephone."

"The researchers found that patients who took part in these telehealth interventions had a 30 percent lower death rate than patients without the interventions. The telehealth patients also had lower total cholesterol levels, lower levels of systolic blood pressure and lower rates of smoking."

FIrstMile.US Comments to FCC's NOI "A National Broadband Plan for Our Future"

http://www.firstmile.us/pubs/FCCComments/index.php

These FirstMile.US comments were intended to be a start at framing a discussion that provides an avenue to fix things, separate carriage from content, and let the market provide people with the Internet they want.

We have an opportunity to start changing the language and creating the visual picture in people's minds of who's whoming who. In order to do that, we need to start at the beginning.

The FirstMile.US response is an attempt to bring us all back to the beginning of an understanding of how to look at the big picture. Until the powers that be start looking at the big picture in a stratified way, we have no hope that we can begin to even tackle some of the harder problems. We do not want this to be just-another-exercise-in-futility.

Clean slate thinking is needed. Thinking about the pipe separate from the applications and devices is needed.

So, we begin at the beginning.

Still in WIIFM mode on cloud computing?

http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/index.html

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has done us all a favor. They posted a working definition of cloud computing that serves as a foundation for its upcoming publication on the topic. Computer scientists at NIST developed this draft definition in collaboration with industry and government.

And, it's pretty good. If you were looking for a decent definition or to get a better grasp on what-the-cloud-will-mean-to-you, check it out.

WIIFM - what's in it for me

RT from @MikeNelson