One of the topics I’ve touched on recently that’s garnered the most interest has been the prospect of a Chief Technology Officer sitting in the cabinet of the President of the United States. It’s something that’s been promised as a certainty to us should we deign to elect Senator Barack Obama our next president, but exactly who and what we’ll be getting out of the bargain is still pretty nebulous.

It’s even received extra attention yesterday with the release and added emphasis on Barack Obama’s technology policy. Amongst the various topics we’ve talked about here at Mashable, other featured pieces to the technology plank of Obama’s platform include doubling basic research funding, making research and development tax rebates permanent, immigration reform and increased governmental transparency.

Interestingly, most of these promises are supported by both candidates. Republicans are traditionally for any tax cuts they can get their hands on, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been calling for increased governmental transparency (which interestingly was met by criticisms from Obama surrogates saying the junior senator’s existing measures were good enough).

The key issues where the candidates differ are on how anti-trust laws are enforced and crafted and on the issue of nationalized broadband. All of these issues are somehow wrapped in the cloak of a national Chief Technology Officer (CTO). We talked about this issue in overview a couple of weeks ago here at Mashable, but I thought I’d take a deeper look at the issue on the eve of the election, since I haven’t seen a plain-English dissection of this issue anywhere this season.

First, the final word on the idea of a national CTO.

As someone who’s been given the title of CTO a couple times in my career history, I can tell you that even in technology-centric companies, the meaning changes to suit the purposes of whomever gives it, and the anecdote I’ve mentioned every time the topic has come up here regarding Microsoft’s first CTO never fails to re-inforce that point.

Many readers and commenters have some very idyllic ideas as to what the CTO should do or is intended to do. The most common theory is that the national CTO will be a fundraising cheerleader for government lead technology initiatives which need attention, as Mashable reader Joe Hall said last time around.

I understand the concept of a fundraising cheerleader. My point is that we don’t need to raise funds for a nationalized broadband infrastructure. Last time we did something like that was the Universal Service Fund. We raised $50 billion through those efforts and nothing measurable was accomplished, because ultimately it’s up to the telcos to accomplish, and they’ve proven they can’t be trusted to follow through.

One of the other theories is that the CTO is simply a position for a cabinet level advisor for the president. The individual will presumably be more technology savvy than the president, and thus be much more qualified to provide valid directions for the executive branch to take in their technology decisions.

In and of itself, this isn’t an objectionable idea, except for the fact that it’s a completely redundant position to create. Shortly after the 9/11 catastrophe, President Bush created an advisory council called PCAST, which consists of venture capitalists, captains of industry, and university thought leaders. Creating even more executive level bureaucracy is not necessarily going to help things.

Of course, if you look at the position the way I originally envisioned it when it was suggested, the case against the position becomes almost overwhelming:

So we’re starting out with a nebulous position, and we’re putting it in charge of interpreting the nations’ technology issues, and hoping that the government won’t abuse the advice to expand their own power and use it to drum up votes.

Do you think we’ll see the end of exploitation of Craigslist as a political punching bag anytime theirs a prostitution bust with a CTO?  Do you think we’ll see an end to Attorney Generals using pedophilia online as a way to scare the public and major corporations into playing ball?

No, of course not, they’ll just have more advanced terminology to play with.  Semantic web technology will be used to scare the electorate into outlawing the technology so we won’t have a Will Smith I, Robot situation on our hands. Better understanding of how trojans and worms are spread will only encourage congress to pass a law requiring mandatory keyloggers on every citizen’s computer.

If they get really altruistic and industrious, they might just get interested in protecting our privacy.  Of course, to them that’ll mean that every blogger will be required to obtain a license to operate a webserver so they can regulate how data is collected - data handling procedures that will tell you how you treat personal data entered in comments, cookies left by your ads, and disclosure of your sources.

Of course, of the key technology positions Obama’s advocated, whether it be under the cloak of the idea of a national CTO or on it’s own has been nationalized broadband. This, too, has been a recurring topic here at Mashable.

Nationalized Broadband and the Lessons from East Asia

One of the interesting comparisons that keeps getting brought up is the rapid growth of the telecoms in South Korea and Japan during the 1990s, and what role their respective governments played in that growth. It tends to be brought up in the comments here at Mashable as an argument for both sides - some folks will say that the runaway growth is due to the governments’ hands-off approach, while others will say that it’s a direct result of governmental intervention and direction of the growth of the telecom sector.

The truth is somewhere in between.  It’s hard to find many resources that directly touch on this bit of technological history that don’t have partisan influence in their authoring, but I was able to find a research paper from Berkeley University that had a veritable treasure trove of details that provided historical perspective dating back to the 1800s. Anyone with a few hours to kill ought to check it out, but those of us interested in the parts pertinent to what we should do in America to get our broadband up to international snuff (so to speak), might be more interested in these factoids I gleaned from the paper:

In the one year between 1999 and 2001, the number of DSL subscriptions in Korea rose from 97 thousand to 2.7 million

In that same year, cable modem subscriptions increased from 17 thousand to 1.5 million.

The rates of growth that were experienced in Japan as well as South Korea were due to governmental de-regulation.

In Japan, the telecom was handled and regulated by the same division of government responsible for postal regulations (sound familiar?). Once that restriction was eliminated, the roadblocks were cleared for rapid growth.

In South Korea, similar governmental roadblocks were cleared, mostly having to due with censorship.

In both cases, demand and centralized population centers were the biggest driving factors behind adoption.

Only after rapid growth and clear dominance by a few private broadband providers had been established did the government step back in and exert a heavier hand in how the markets were regulated.

Which is better: bad tech policy or no tech policy?

What does that mean in terms of what we should do for America?  Well, the idea that we should regulate our way to better competition and more innovation continues to be an idea that doesn’t bear scrutiny. As we talked about last time around, all attempts in the past by the government to subsidize or regulate a way to wider telecom infrastructure adoption have ended in miserable failure in America or abroad.

On the other hand, we have a vastly different landscape in our broadband industry here than in the late 90s over in East Asia. We have what is essentially a governmental sanctioned duopoly. In most major US markets, the choice is between the phone company and the cable company. The top-tier plans are starting to reach speed parity with the announcement by Comcast to offer 50 mbs DOCSIS Internet access.

Instead of attributing these positive moves in the US to market competition (which admittedly did play some part), it’s probably more accurate to ask why this hasn’t happened much sooner, since the average home connection in East Asia has been priced what an AOL dialup account costs while reaching speeds only now being achieved.

The answer lies in that the USA has has such a cozy relationship with the telcos and cable companies, providing subsidy and endorsement of their business model that the incentive for them to grow and innovate simply doesn’t exist.

Rather than focusing on anti-trust and and subsidies, as Barack Obama intends to do, what would be better would be focusing on creating an environment where corporate taxes were lowered, and other tax incentives were emphasized for start-ups who focus on better information infrastructure.  Senator McCain’s tax plan is moderately favorable towards this theory, though it is likely simply a coincidence convenient to this argument rather than a well thought out technology policy.

When it comes to the basics, both presidential candidates are generally on the right track, and are generally in agreement as well.  I’ve outlined above where they differ, though, and I think history has shown that Barack Obama’s desired policy directions would be more detrimental to innovation and growth for the tech sector.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:10Questions.com: User-Submitted Video Questions for Presidential CandidatesOn YouTube, YouChoose ObamaOnline Journalism Isn’t an Oxymoron

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: Smynx

20 word description: Find new ideas for having fun, and arrange to try them with friends and people near you.

CEO’s Pitch: Smynx is a website for people who need more variety in their lives. Get inspiration for active, worthwhile, or just unusual new ideas to try and things to do. You can also arrange to try them, either privately between friends, or publicly with new people, making friends in the process. And if you have a good idea, add your own!

In keeping with the idea of having more fun in your life, you can rate ideas by interestingness, comment and tag them, and even add your own little sketches!

Mashable’s Take: If you have friends in driving distance and the lot of you can’t think of anything to do, Smynx may be just the thing for you. This site lets you post and search for activity ideas you can do with your friends. Some of them you can even do by yourself, such as watch all the episodes of a season (or 3) of your favorite television series in one night, but the purpose of Smynx is to help you find activities on a local level.

Any ideas that are public and are in your neck of the woods will appear as recommendations for things you may want to do yourself. Any ideas that you’d like to try out through the site involve some basic event-planning tools that let you pick a time and date, and post the event on Smynx’s site.

This event-planning process could be greatly expanded to include import and export options so you can post the event on your Facebook events profile, import friends from email or various social networks, or sync up local events with your iCal. This would also be a prime area for any additional event-planning resources or further details surrounding a particular idea, which could be used for marketing or advertising purposes or for recommendations for products that are related to the idea being tried out. For instance, in planning my dog party, I could receive recommendations on pet treats and party favors for the willing pet owners.

In posting or viewing others’ ideas, you can rate them, or even add a sketch (think the graffiti app), which is fun and helpful for search and filtering purposes, but uploading your own image or even performing a Web search for importing a Flickr image may have a broader appeal to users as opposed to the sketch option. While ideas are currently broken down into categories like “social” and “active” I think Smynx has the potential to dig deeper into various niche groups, such as dating ideas, children’s parties ideas, or even housewarmings or weddings.

Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

Source:Mashable!

Companies from all over the globe are making their way to the Web to try their hand at online advertising.  And according to the latest comScore report, American Apparel leads the pack, delivering 483 million display ad views in April, reaching 49 million Internet users an average of 9.9 times during the month.

And while it easily outpaced the second place firm, UnderArmour, I can’t help but wonder if American Apparel should run for the hills and hope against hope that things can turn around.

For all the money it spent on advertising online, the company’s profit slumped to just over $1 million in the last quarter, $11 million less than the previous quarter.  Granted, those quarters didn’t include the advertising the company spent during April, but American Apparel has consistently had an online presence in advertising and seemingly, to no avail.

Some will say that the economy may be causing the downturn in American Apparel’s revenue, but I think it may go far beyond that.  Let’s face it – if you’re spending that much money online in an attempt to bring more people to your site and buy clothing, wouldn’t you hope that it actually bears some real progress?

But the story doesn’t quite end there.  According to comScore, most of these ads were displayed on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and others.  Does this say something about advertising on social networks?

Social networking users are notoriously fickle and usually interact with the services for as long as their “cool” or until they’ve grown out of them.  And although there is little evidence to prove the point, I’m wondering if social networking users also couldn’t care less about advertising and vendors would do better to spend money on more traditional sites where viability of advertising is easier to measure.

At this point, this is all conjecture and American Apparel’s poor performance may be the result of other factors that have nothing to do with social networks.  But it begs an important question: Should companies be advertising on social networks to target young adults?

I’m starting to think they shouldn’t.

Should companies be advertising on social networks to target young adults? ( surveys)

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:American Airlines Sues Google for Selling AdWordsStagr - Killer Custom T-Shirt ServiceReminder: Design a T-Shirt and Win an iPhoneAmerican Greetings Nabs PhotoWorks for $26.5MCBS and Dogster.com Partner for Summer TV SeriesTakkle Launches America’s Best Branded GroupGlam Media Steals Executive Talent from MySpace

Source:Mashable!

This is a guest post written by Mark Dykeman. Mark broadcasts from his brain about communications, social media, and technology several times per week at Broadcasting Brain. He enjoys participating in several social media sites, including Twitter, FriendFeed, and StumbleUpon.

Oil and broadband Internet access are the twin fuels of both brick and mortar businesses and Internet based businesses. When oil prices are low, economies can zoom at light speed. When prices are high, many businesses can barely put one foot in front of another. A look at the history of oil might serve to help us understand the importance of ubiquitous, low cost Internet access, which is currently growing at a snail’s pace in North America.

Cheap oil was one of the drivers of recent global economic booms. Cheap oil helps keep transportation, electricity generation, and manufacturing costs low - all three types of work normally require huge quantities of refined petroleum products. When the price of oil rises, ballooning as it has since the 9/11 tragedy in New York City, it tends to cause the global economy to slow down because of the compounding effects of widespread oil usage.

Cheap oil was a hallmark of recent economic boom periods, permitting stable, continued economic development. Today, more expensive oil (not withstanding any recent price fluctuations) is leading to price increases in many sectors of the global economy, slowing growth by making it more expensive to travel, manufacture goods, heat our homes, and so on. While businesses that specialize in extracting, refining, and distributing petroleum products are reaping record revenues and profits, increasing demand coupled with supply challenges has resulted in increased costs for virtually all other sectors of the global economy.

Cheap broadband Internet access has worked the same as cheap oil, powering the expansion of e-commerce, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. At one time people were limited to dial up access for either Internet or other private online services (e.g. the original America Online, CompuServe, the Well, etc.) As telecos and other technology companies gradually built a high speed communications infrastructure –- first in major centers across the world and then expanding to wider areas of coverage -– applications gradually began appearing that could take advantage of increasing communications bandwidth. Images, audio, and video applications grew tremendously as broadband Internet access became available.

These days, can you imagine using services like Amazon.com, eBay, YouTube, Facebook, or Flickr at speeds of 14,400 baud? Can you imagine podcasting or videoblogging ever happening without some form of high speed Internet connection? Would digital photography have ever become as popular as it did if you had to wait 5 - 10 minutes to upload or download a single photo?

Fortunately for many of us, broadband Internet access is affordable, giving us access to these kinds of services. Likewise, many newer e-business models would not be feasible without affordable broadband Internet access.

Unfortunately, that high speed Internet is still not universally available across the world, nor do we have 100% coverage in developed countries like Canada and the US. Even New York City, one of the largest developed cities in the world, has less than 50% broadband Internet access in its homes, according the city’s Broadband Advisory Committee report of July 30, 2008. According to a New York Times article on the report, “the use of broadband in New York lagged behind Boston, San Francisco and Atlanta, but was more common than in Miami, Chicago and Los Angeles. Broadband connections were also notably more expensive in New York than in Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and London.”

A July 2008 Pew Research Center study on home broadband adoption in the United States provided some interesting insights. Although broadband Internet connections are continuing to increase across the US, broadband adoption is stalling amongst lower income Americans. Moreover, while 54% of Americans have broadband Internet access, that number isn’t growing much - cost (and availability) is definitely a factor.

Average broadband Internet costs are decreasing slightly across North America, but not enough to make some users switch from dial-up Internet connections. Worse still, the Pew study reveals that dial up Internet costs are increasing, making an inferior service even less desirable. Considering the growing advantages, if not needs, for E-Mail, search engines, online databases like Wikipedia.org, financial services, and government information/services that are available via the Web, lack of affordable Internet access widens the divide between the “haves” and the “have nots.”

Mashable’s Steven Hodson recently wrote about US Internet access being marginalized through caps on broadband usage and potential tiered usage pricing. If these initiatives go through, they will have the same effect as rising oil prices. Many Web 2.0 services and e-commerce services are like the vacations, air travel, gas guzzling cars, and other luxury items of the “bricks and mortar” economy. As oil prices have risen, the global economy has responded through slowing economic growth. Lack of affordable access to services will constrain revenue and profit growth for companies both online and offline.

We are currently seeing the economic impact of rising oil prices. While there are multiple factors in play with oil prices, including finite oil supplies and environmental concerns, many would agree that current prices provide hardships to many people. Unless broadband capability increases over time, it may become a scarce resource subject to the laws of supply and demand. If demand comes to outstrip supply like we see with oil, broadband Internet access could become more expensive. Furthermore, the compounding effects of broadband cost increases from producer to consumer might lead to sluggish growth.

Despite the costs involved, the advantages of inexpensive broadband Internet access are potentially much greater. Suppliers should work to ensure that this increasingly important service, the oil of the online economy, increases its penetration into the global economy at affordable prices. Broadband Internet access is becoming an important driver of economic welfare, just like cheap oil.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Comcast Not Net NeutralIndian ISP Airtel Taps Google To Provide Apps Via New Web PortalBSkyB Creating YouTube Rival Using YouTube’s TechnologyGoogle SketchUp Now Free, User-Generated Content Goes 3D!MySpace Emmy AwardsIs US Internet Access Being Marginalized?Motorola Splits in Two

As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve been using a pretty rare platform for our video podcast series Mashable Conversation.  The platform is called Episodic, and it’s amongst the best I’ve tried (and I’ve tried quite a few).  I don’t often fawn over a company, so I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment. They’ve got one of the most responsive customer service teams I’ve ever worked with, with the aim to really make the usage of the system as transparent as possible for the producers.

Given that I preach very often about the features and services that video platforms should be providing for their customers, when I’m auditioning services for my own use (or in this case, the company’s usage), I send the unfortunate company representative through a long list of hoops they must jump through.  Noam Lovinsky was the unfortunate soul assigned to explaining the platform’s capabilities to me.

They Have What I Need

My requirements were that the platform must: generate an iTunes compatible podcast RSS feed, must have an embedded player that has viral elements (remote embedding, and such), have detailed analytics, have dynamic advertisement insertion capabilities, and must be able to generate an iPod compatible MP4 file.

There are a few platforms out there that we’ve tried that get about 90% of this done, but Episodic’s was the first that got 100%, and then some.  Their transcoding options support a variety of standardized formats, and allow you to upload your program in multiple segments so you can change out elements of the show without going back and re-rendering the entire back-catalog (for instance, you’ve probably noticed that we’ve changed out the intro to something a bit more aesthetically pleasing this week).

The ability to dynamically assemble an episode also allows for a whole new level of analytics to get accustomed to. I can run side by side comparisons, for instance, on the two versions of the introduction to the show (interestingly, the one with the higher quality seems to perform about 1% poorer in terms of drop-offs).

The advertising options in the system are particularly advanced, as well. It supports pre-rolls, mid-rolls, post-rolls, and overlays across all of your content.

As an added bonus, the system also integrates with another favorite video service of mine: TubeMogul.  After your files have been transcoded on the service, you’re able to with a click upload them directly to your TubeMogul account (which then of course blasts them out to YouTube, Metacafe, Yahoo Video, and the wide assortment of other embedded video hosting websites out there).

Act Now, and You Also Get…

With all that, what else could they pile onto the deal to sweeten the pot?  Well, pulling the service out of invitation only mode would be great (I can’t tell you how many requests I’ve had recently from fellow producers interested in giving Episodic a spin, lately).  They’re doing a little bit of that today - it’s not exactly open registration, but they’re launching a new service that uses some of the transcoding technology they’ve developed.

Do you have an existing video feed?  Would you like it to have an iPhone compatible website generated around that content so that iPhone users can check it out?

Simply fill out the form and set up your transcoding account.  And while you’re there, you can also apply to be a part of the limited beta on the platform we use here at Mashable.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Mashable Conversations: Viewer Feedback!Microhoo: What’s Really Happening (and Do We Care?) [video]A Meta Discussion on Our Irksome Video Experience [video]Want Free Gas? Watch This. (video)Whrrl and the Attraction to Location Based Social Networks (video)Twitter, Identi.ca and July 4thSister Hazel’s Ryan Newell Visits Mashable Conversations [video]

Source:Mashable!

Every day we hear about how the Web is going to change the movie industry, the music industry and even software usage along with its related data storage. We hear how the web is becoming that ubiquitous utility service that we will all be using at some point whether it be from a desktop, a laptop or our mobile phones. Of course though what isn’t being said that in order to have this ubiquitous access it has to be an access that we can afford as well as access that is capable of handling the heavy load of all this data transfer without any interruptions.

In the majority of the world this is something that is happening with some speed. Whether you are in Europe or any number of forward thinking countries of the Far East broadband speed is growing by leaps and bounds with costs of accessing those pipes well within reach of the average person on the street. In the United States however almost the exact opposite is happening. Whether it is Comcast getting caught traffic shaping or the fact that Time Warner will be putting caps on the broadband usage or in the most recent news that AT&T is looking at instituting tiered based pricing on usage the fact is that Americans are losing out on the same technological advantages the rest of the world is enjoying.

The fact that this is all happening during a time when there is real push to deliver video over the web, offer music downloading as a retail alternative, and the push the use cloud computing services should be of no real surprise I guess. After all, the players in this internet service provider game are companies that are well known for their preference of making as much money as possible while giving as little service as possible to the customer. The problem is though is that with every little increase regardless of whether it is being hidden behind caps and spin terms like “fair access for all” it is getting more and more expensive for people who want; or even in many cases need, the access to true broadband speeds.

Even though the companies involved like to spin as it being the fairest way to make sure that everyone has equal access to the Internet while at the same time they threaten that unfettered access is going to lead to service bottlenecks they have done nothing improve the systems. Already the US is being overshadowed by foreign countries who have invested heavily in all forms of broadband and whose populations enjoy services we only seem to be able to dream about. In the process the US is sliding further down the list of countries with broadband access but these provider companies like Time Warner, Comcast or AT&T continue to roll in the billions of dollars.

It doesn’t matter about all the talk of how fast broadband is in the US; or any country for that matter. If the people can’t afford what really is nothing but the most basic of access, you can have all the video for download that you want or have as many programs running in the cloud as you want - it won’t get used. The fact is that real access will all be out of the reach of the average user and broadband as it is meant to be will just be just another luxury we can’t afford.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Comcast Not Net NeutralIndian ISP Airtel Taps Google To Provide Apps Via New Web PortalBSkyB Creating YouTube Rival Using YouTube’s TechnologyMySpace Emmy AwardsMotorola Splits in TwoAutobahn Accelerator for Faster Connections to MySpace TVNet Neutrality Coming to Congress

Yes, in red, that’s Richard Stallman, free-software advocate and lover of dance, serving up Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat,” a little ditty that celebrates “supermanning dat ho.” Odd, since Stallman’s dislike of rap music is well-documented.

Source:Valleywag

newVideoPlayer(”Cracked_Internet_Party.flv”, 475, 376,”");
OK, so Ask.com is no longer Ask Jeeves, and you’ve never heard of Cracked.com. And really, the Internet isn’t that much like a bad college house party at all. But still, parts of the humorous short “The Internet Party,” from which we briefly excerpt above, ring true. Like the perky, plucky “Google,” who’s played by a much less pretty but equally nerdy version of Marissa Mayer.

Source:Valleywag

The recording and motion-picture industries have hounded broadband providers to police their pipes for file-sharing pirates. These advocacy groups want service providers to monitor and stop the illegal trafficking of files. AT&T has a filtering plan that Slate calls “baffling”; it would scan all emails and downloads for illicit content. But Time Warner Cable has found a much simpler way to deter film and music pirates — make them pay for bandwidth.

The cable provider is preparing to test a new billing scheme in Beaumont, Texas that would charge customers based on actual Internet usage instead of a flat monthly fee. This means BitTorrent downloaders would pay a premium for all those packets they seed across the net. Pirated content is far less appealing when it isn’t free.

Today O2, which provides DSL services in Germany, is offering free music (Napster) to […]