Irony

A story appeared in Slate the other day about the telecom industry's campaign of misinformation about the state of broadband access in the U.S. The key paragraph of the story, describing the millions of dollars that go to lobbyists to spread misinformation, appears over an ad from "Americaspower.org" for Clean Coal.

The FCC Speed Test

The FCC is teaching out directly to the citizenry for data about the state of broadband in America. If you go to Broadband.gov, a new site created by the FCC, you can have them test your Internet connection speed and add it to their database.

They will also ask you for your home address, and that is the good part, because I already know how fast the crappy DSL is around Santa Cruz. The whole point of this is that I want the FCC to know too.

California Will Propser from Clean Tech

Boy, I hope this is true.

Start Financial Reform with Cap and Trade

One of the main criticisms of using a cap and trade system to fight global warming is that allowing markets in carbon permits and (especially!) in carbon offsets, opens the door to financial manipulations such as we just saw with the real estate derivatives markets. We probably won't get a full blown bubble in carbon offsets, but we will get a lot of wasted money and energy channelled into useless derivatives when we need that money and energy for building a renewable energy economy.

So let's start financial reform with the cap and trade bill. Keep the auctions and aftermarkets as simple and regulated as possible. And in a best case scenario there are no carbon offsets.

Obama and Clinton

Robert Reich has a good post today, after the State of the Union, comparing Obama's administration to Clinton's. I am reluctantly starting to agree that there is a comparison to be made. Obama seems deadset determined to recapitulate the Clinton administration.

Start your administration expecting an easy victory on health care. Of course it will be easy because it's necessary, the people want it, and it just makes so much sense. Then, when you get your behind whupped on your first major initiative, immediately retreat to the right. And in moving to the right you promote the legislative defeat you've just suffered into an actual surrender, handing the conservatives a triumph which their actual power does not justify.

What a depressing day.

Being Part of the Team

At the urging of Al Gore's Repower America people, I just wrote a letter to my local newspaper against Senator Lisa Murkowski's amendment to weaken the Clean Air Act. I have to say that I was impressed with Repower's newspaper writing tool.

One of the things that impressed me was their approach to the letter's content.

Nexus One and Market Share

I just read a newspaper article saying that the Nexus One sales have been disappointing so far, with only 20,000 sold in the first week. This figure is compared to the 1.6 million iPhone 3GSes sold in June.

I'll admit to a bias against Apple, but even allowing for that I don't think the comparison is fair. Apple's new phone was going to an established market with a loyal customer base. Google is trying to sell into a market that Apple dominates and has largely saturated already. From that perspective, sales of 20K are very respectable, especially when you compare the coverage that the iPhone enjoys from AT&T versus what the Nexus One has from TMobile.

Depending on how serious Google is about Nexus One, they can overcome their late start. That is demonstrated in the history of just about Microsoft product. Still, even if Google has launched Nexus One purely as a strategic threat to force concessions from Apple, the sales figures show that they have a ways to go before this threat is credible. They've launched Nexus One, but now they need to do something more to demonstrate that they're serious.