BlackBerry Bold; Stimulus Money for Broadband; and the News Media's Imminent Demise
In my reading and search for noteworthy events in the IT world, I have come across several interesting, but not necessarily connected articles. I thought I would list out a few of these to keep my readers apprised of these current events and what is or may be happening in the not too distant future. I’ll give you a very brief synopsis and provide the link to each article if you feel the need to dig further into the story. My selections (not in any particular order of importance) are as follows:
BlackBerry Bold Keyboard Is Hot
Judy Mottl reports that all sales of the BlackBerry Bold in Japan have been halted. It seems after the first week that NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s mobile carrier, received more than several complaints that the keyboards were hot. At present it is not a battery issue, just hot keyboards. Mottl puts an interesting twist in the article by listing out some component prices for the BlackBerry Bold. The highest priced component is the processor at $34.34 while the keyboard is listed at $1.85. For more on this see BlackBerry Bold too hot to handle in Japan.
Stimulus Money for Broadband
Kenneth Corbin reports that $7.2 billion of the total $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress has been allocated for broadband deployment. The National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) will be meeting with ISP’s soon all looking for some of the approximate$4.5 billion the NTIA has to spend. The remaining $2.5 billion will be administered by the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) for broadband in the more sparsely populated areas. Corbin seems to buy into the Obama Administrations claim for transparency on the spending of these funds. His article is entitled Feds pressing forward with broadband stimulus plans.
The Demise of TV News
If you are as frustrated as me with the TV News, then Mike Elgan’s article Why Social Media is Killing (Bad) TV News is a must read. Elgan’s opinion piece is a no nonsense approach to the obvious bias and search for ratings and career boosting antics of the anchors. Elgan holds nothing back as he illustrates his point using CNN's Wolf Blitzer “doing his clumsy ‘Situation Room’ shtick”. Elgan is infuriated at the rehashing of the 4 top stories (as the editors see it) and suggests reporting on the top 20 stories. He presents a list of 5 things to do for TV News to become more timely and relevant while taking a swipe at the “over-paid personalities” delivering their own slanted opinions on what they have decided are the top 4 news items of the day. I disagree with one of his points though. In his third point he wants to do away with all opinion show personalities. He states the following, “Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Jim Cafferty, Keith Olbermann, Rachael Maddow and their ilk — show them the door.” I think we already have a system set-up for that. It is called ratings. As long as each opinion show personality makes it clear to the viewers that the show is an opinion show and not a “Hard News” show, I say let the viewers decide. Just in case you are not sure where Elgan’s true feelings lie after reading his 5 points, he concludes his article as follows:
“Of course, I don't expect the TV new media to do any of these things. The medium is the message, and the number-one objective of any organization is to blindly pursue the interests of the organization itself. TV networks need their advertising dollars, and believe that the only way to make money is to be phony, non-responsive propaganda machines that barely cover the news and spend half their time on self-promotion.
Fine. Just don't expect me to watch. I'll be getting the real news on Twitter.”
