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News of the movement for June 19, 2012 |
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Connected Company Muscled State Agency Out of Internet Contract Connected Nation, the company that won the contract to map the gaps in broadband Internet use in Florida, got state lawmakers to remove the agency in charge and to expand its own role. Connected Nation Faces Heat in Florida Connected Nation, supposedly designed as as a broadband-mapping firm that helps improve broadband coverage, has been criticized as a lobbying extension of the major phone companies, tasked with funneling subsidies toward incumbent companies and away from their competitors (or municipal government operations). The group is now facing heated criticism in Florida for using lobbying muscle and cash to crush any other firms that might have done a better job mapping broadband in the state. U.S. Leads World in Government Removal Requests to Google The United States government leads the world in content-removal requests to Google, as measured by specific items, according to the company's latest transparency data report for the second half of 2011. Google Calls Increasing Requests to Remove Political Content 'Alarming' Political commentary remains a prime target as governments increase the number of requests for Google to remove material from the reach of Internet users. The Internet giant released its fifth semi-annual transparency report, which provides insights into requests by countries around the world to "take down" content from search results or Google-owned sites like YouTube. With more than half of all U.S. mobile phone buyers picking smartphones, we're all relying heavily on wireless Internet. Seven major U.S. wireless carriers are all promising some form of "4G" now or in the near future, but not all 4G is the same. So for the third year in a row, we sent drivers out to see the state of the 4G nation and bring home 240,000 lines of data to figure out which network is the fastest near you. Die, Contracts! Prepaid Mobile Phone Use Surges We all want more service on more devices. But we also want to save more money while doing it, and that may mean moving toward prepaid services.
The Future of News: Mobile, Video, Data -- and Crowdsourced The Knight Foundation announced the winners of the first round of its Knight News Challenge -- a contest aimed at funding the next generation of news entrepreneurs. This round was aimed at startups that are taking advantage of existing networks such as Ustream and Twitter, and the winners who are sharing the $1.37 million in prize money are trying to develop video, mobile and crowdsourced solutions to the problem of filtering the vast ocean of news that washes over us every day. Media Stereotypes of Asian Americans Mask Reality of Community's Struggles The mainstream media usually portray Asian Americans -- from New York Knicks basketball star Jeremy Lin to Mark Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan -- as wealthy, well-educated and foreign. The dominant cultural narrative routinely ignores working- and middle-class Asian Americans, people of various nationalities who struggle with the same socioeconomic conditions as do other Americans. Coverage of Scandal Dents Credibility of Pakistani TV News Not long ago, judges and journalists were clearly on the same team in Pakistan, reveling in a shared crusade to expose the corrupt, hold the powerful to account and reshape the dynamics of a fragile democracy. Now, following a cascade of explosive scandals, they are at each other's throats.
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