Posts tagged President
How To Watch President Obama’s 2013 State Of The Union Address Online
Feb 12th
Unless you’re Tim Cook, you probably don’t have a front row seat lined up for President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday night. That’s okay though, because the ever-more-interactive speech is best experienced online, where it will be accompanied by more context and conversation than in any other medium.
When it comes to tuning in online, this won’t be anything like the Summer Olympics. There will be plenty of free livestreaming options across a variety of devices, as well as any number of social chats, on-camera analyses and interactive features from media outlets, journalists and the White House itself.
Livestreaming The State Of The Union Address
The White House will not only be live-streaming President Obama’s speech Tuesday night, but it will be displaying relevant charts and data in sync with whatever the President happens to be talking about. The White House’s “enhanced livestream” begins at 9pm Eastern Time (6pm Pacific Time) and will be followed by a live panel discussion with policy experts. All of this will be available on the White House’s website, as well as its official iOS and Android apps.
If the White House stream freezes up right as your SOTU drinking game is just getting rowdy, you can always jump over to C-SPAN.com, which will be streaming the speech as well. On C-SPAN, you can also compare Obama’s fourth State of the Union with archived addresses from the past. The C-SPAN folks have written transcripts dating back to Franklin Delano Roosevelet and archived videos as far back as Ronald Reagan’s fourth State of the Union address in 1984. For even more historical analysis, check out Al Jazeera’s interactive tool comparing Obama’s past State of the Union speeches.
And if all of those options aren’t enough, CNN, Wall Street Journal, YouTube and HuffPost Live will also be live streaming the speech.
The State Of The Union Is… Interactive
These days, it’s pretty much a given that any big news or entertainment event is the “most interactive” instance of that event that’s ever happened. That’s what progress is all about.
The State of the Union is no exception, and not just because people are increasingly connected and more prone to live-tweet TV events in general. The famously tech-savvy Obama administration has been proactive about baking interactive elements into the speech and encouraging online participation.
On Twitter, the White House has officially endorsed the #SOTU hashtag and is encouraging users to use #WHChat to submit questions to on-air policy experts after Obama’s speech. The administration will also be actively maintaining conversations with citizens on Facebook and Google+.
Meanwhile, Republicans will be live-critiquing Obama’s speech on the official GOP website and encouraging rank-and-file conservatives to do the same over various social channels.
Media outlets are running their own interactive features during the speech as well. Huffpost Live, for example, will be doing its usual thing, live-streaming the speech and post-speech reactions while inviting viewers to join on-air discussions and live chats.
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How Technology Might Have Fared Under A President Romney
Nov 7th
Some scientists like to argue that we are part of a multiverse, a collection of parallel realities that reflect the different choices we may have made instead of the ones we did make. This story explores the technological implications of one such world — a world where Gov. Mitt Romney won the presidential election. For our take on what President Obama is likely to do about technology, see How Technology Will Fare In President Obama’s Second Term
President-elect Romney has pretty much kept to his party’s platform when it comes to technology issues, and in some cases has even agreed with the intent of several of the current administration’s policies, although his implementation may be different.
Broadband Access: For instance, like the Obama administration, the Romney White House is expected to keep pushing for universal broadband access, especially to rural communities. It is expected that President Romney will continue with this goal, but rather than using Federal funds to help boost last-mile efforts to connect rural citizens to broadband Internet access, Romney points to the Republican platform’s promise to encourage public and private partnerships to get the job done.
Intellectual Property: Given President-Elect Romney’s very public stance against intellectual property theft originating from foreign nations, particularly China, Romney’s position on the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is of sharp interest to technology watchers. Public statements from Romney have indicated that he was against SOPA as originally written, citing that it went too far in its efforts to protect copyright, but he’s still expected to push for a less-controversial bill that will still fight intellectual property theft, particularly from foreign players.
Net Neutrality: One area where Romney will take a sharp turn away from the previous administration is the issue of net neutrality, which Romney very much opposes. Romney has repeatedly stated that getting rid of net neutrality and overhaulingthe FCC will be among his first actions upon stepping into the Oval Office. The Republican platform sums up the new administration’s view of the FCC rather forcefully:
“Today’s technology and telecommunications industries are overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, established in 1934 and given the jurisdiction over telecommunications formerly assigned to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which had been created in 1887 to regulate the railroads. This is not a good fit,” the platform states. “The current Administration has been frozen in the past. It has conducted no auction of spectrum, has offered no incentives for investment, and, through the FCC’s net neutrality rule, is trying to micromanage telecom as if it were a railroad network.”
Cybersecurity: Another area where Romney and his predecessor agree is the need to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity policies. According to the Romney campaign’s whitepaper, “In the first 100 days of his administration, Romney will order full interagency reviews to develop and deliver to his desk a unified strategy to bolster America’s cyber-security.” And with Romney expected to increase defense spending across the board, it is likely that the Pentagon will have a bigger cybersecurity budget with which to work.
Like many conservatives, President Romney will probably take a more hands-off approach to technology business practices, interceding when larger corporate interests are threatened by real or perceived threats. Romney’s biggest technology plan, though, is to try and pick up the pace of the overall economic recovery, which can only be a good thing for the tech sector.
Image courtesy of Maria Dryfhout / Shutterstock.
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Barack Obama: President of the Tech Era
Nov 7th
YouTube videos of Hurricane Sandy. Instagram pictures of lines at the polls. Heated debates on Facebook. Photos tweeted by the President. Is there any doubt that communication technology is here to stay as a mainstream part of American life? Josh Constine said it so well. “The 2012 election was a whole different ballgame thanks to [...]
The post Barack Obama: President of the Tech Era appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
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How Technology Might Have Fared Under “President Romney”
Nov 7th
Scientists like to argue that we are part of a multiverse, a collection of parallel realities that reflect the different choices we may have made instead of the ones we did make. This story explores the technological implications of one such world – a world where Gov. Mitt Romney actually won the presidential election. For our take on what President Obama is likely to do about technology, see How Technology Will Fare In President Obama’s Second Term
President-Elect Romney has pretty much kept to his party’s platform when it comes to technology issues, and in some cases has even agreed with the intent of several of the current administration’s policies, although his implementation may be different.
Broadband Access: For instance, like the Obama administration, the Romney White House is expected to keep pushing for universal broadband access, especially to rural communities. It is expected that President Romney will continue with this goal, but rather than using Federal funds to help boost last-mile efforts to connect rural citizens to broadband Internet access, Romney points to the Republican platform’s promise to encourage public and private partnerships to get the job done.
Intellectual Property: Given President-Elect Romney’s very public stance against intellectual property theft originating from foreign nations, particularly China, Romney’s position on the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is of sharp interest to technology watchers. Public statements from Romney have indicated that he was against SOPA as originally written, citing that it went too far in its efforts to protect copyright, but he’s still expected to push for a less-controversial bill that will still fight intellectual property theft, particularly from foreign players.
Net Neutrality: One area where Romney will take a sharp turn away from the previous administration is the issue of net neutrality, which Romney very much opposes. Romney has repeatedly stated that getting rid of net neutrality and overhaulingthe FCC will be among his first actions upon stepping into the Oval Office. The Republican platform sums up the new administration’s view of the FCC rather forcefully:
“Today’s technology and telecommunications industries are overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, established in 1934 and given the jurisdiction over telecommunications formerly assigned to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which had been created in 1887 to regulate the railroads. This is not a good fit,” the platform states. “The current Administration has been frozen in the past. It has conducted no auction of spectrum, has offered no incentives for investment, and, through the FCC’s net neutrality rule, is trying to micromanage telecom as if it were a railroad network.”
Cybersecurity: Another area where Romney and his predecessor agree is the need to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity policies. According to the Romney campaign’s whitepaper, “In the first 100 days of his administration, Romney will order full interagency reviews to develop and deliver to his desk a unified strategy to bolster America’s cyber-security.” And with Romney expected to increase defense spending across the board, it is likely that the Pentagon will have a bigger cybersecurity budget with which to work.
Like many conservatives, President Romney will probably take a more hands-off approach to technology business practices, interceding when larger corporate interests are threatened by real or perceived threats. Romney’s biggest technology plan, though, is to try and pick up the pace of the overall economic recovery, which can only be a good thing for the tech sector.
Image courtesy of Maria Dryfhout / Shutterstock.
View full post on ReadWrite
How Technology Will Fare In President Obama’s Second Term
Nov 7th
The long 18-month U.S. presidential election is finally over, and after the dust has settled, President Barack Obama has been elected to serve a second term in the highest office in the land.
The President will have a lot on his plate: dealing with the so-called fiscal cliff; keeping economic growth on track; working with the ever-complicated world outside U.S. borders; and tackling the problems surrounding the U.S. education system for starters.
But ReadWrite wants to know just what President Obama will do about the technology sector once he is sworn in again on January 20, 2013. In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Obama reiterated the importance of technology… of being “A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation. With all the new jobs and new businesses that follow.” Beginning with this brief mention and based on his past actions and statements, we can make some reasonable guesses at what a second Obama administration may do for technology and telecommunications.
Based largely on what he did during his first term in office, here’s what to expect Obama to do about technology, beyond hanging on to his beloved BlackBerry.
Broadband: As a marquee issue when he ran for his first term, President Obama promised to “get true broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives” under the National Broadband Plan.
According to industry estimates, anywhere from 90-95% of U.S. communities now have access to broadband-speed Internet access. By the National Broadband Plan’s own Year 1 Progress Report, 87% of the agenda has been completed to date. It’s a good bet that President Obama will continue the implementation of this plan.
Many of the remaining unconnected communities are less-populated rural areas that pose the typical “last mile” problem of requiring brand-new infrastructure to connect to existing hubs. The incentives for private Internet providers to extend their networks have not been great, but an executive order issued in Feb. 2012 may funnel some government assistance to the telecommunication companies to close the rural gap.
Health Information Technology: As part of a series of executive actions taken early in 2012 to bypass a recalcitrant Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor started a program to connect community colleges and technical colleges that support rural communities with the resources they need to support the training of Health Information Technology professionals working in rural hospitals and clinics. The idea was to boost the creation of HIT jobs, but if broadband connectivity comes as part of the resources to these rural communities, it could help the surrounding communities further shrink that last mile gap.
SOPA: The Obama administration has also played a role opposing the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bi-partisan bill that attempted to give a lot of power to copyright holders and media companies to block the distribution of copy written materials – without pesky things like due process. The Obama administration, responding to an online petition against SOPA, indicated that it would not sign any legislation into law that would impose censorship or potentially harm business. But the administration, like many politicians, still holds the view that intellectual property theft, particularly from foreign players, is a real danger to the U.S. economy and should be stopped. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to assume that some compromise SOPA-like legislation may still be passed and signed into law.
Net Neutrality: Obama is also a confirmed supporter of net neutrality, a big issue for telecommunications companies that would rather not have the FCC regulate how they handle traffic and charge for it. Obama has been a net neutrality backer since his first presidential campaign, and will likely continue this policy moving forward, even as Verizon has sued the government to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality rules.
Cyber Security: The Obama White House has been fairly active in terms of bolstering the nation’s response to cyber attacks in their first term. Recent signals from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have indicated that the Pentagon is about to release new rules of engagement for cybersecurity; rules that may include a more offensive stance. It is very likely that such efforts will continue in Obama’s second term.
Best Practices: Some of President Obama’s policies on technology are part of his plans to improve existing systems and processes. The administration is currently on track to invest $10 billion annually from 2010 to 2015 into electronic health records as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (usually known as the Stimulus package). But the administration also vowed to shift the Veterans Administration benefits system from paper to electronic form, a process that’s still on-going and suffering from delays.
Education: Obama’s campaign has also dropped hints that major education reform is one of the administration’s second-term priorities. If such reforms are proposed, technological solutions should be a part of the overall package, giving the tech sector a new focus on education issues.
On the broader scale, of course, none of these initiatives will be big enough to do much to boost innovation and growth of technology in general. The key to boosting the tech sector really lies in the health of the overall economic recovery. Continued sluggish growth or a slip back into recession will hold back tech spending and investment. Faster growth will boost those things.
Remember that like most issues facing the U.S., it’s not going to be all about the President. Control of Congress remains spit, and hyper-partisanship will play a big factor in what intitiatives do or don’t happen over the next four years. Without a highly unlikely epiphany of bipartisanship, don’t expect sweeping changes on technology issues any time soon.
(Curious as to how things might have been different? See How Technology Might Have Fared Under “President Romney.”)
Photo courtesy of mistydawnphoto / Shutterstock.
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How Tech Protects The President: Audio Analysis
Oct 16th
New audio technology can pinpoint the location and precise time of a gunshot — even the type of gun that fired it — up to 2,000 yards away.
Shotspotter is that technology, and the third and final installment in this series on the technology protecting the President.
SST Inc., the Mountain View, Calif., company behind the product, installed its sensors on buildings around the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. No incidents were reported, but that just may mean the system is working. Proponents of the product claim that it wards off as much crime as it detects.
Here’s how it works: Shotspotter antennae and sensors activate when the sound of a gunshot is detected. They triangulate the noise, measuring its intensity, to find the source, and then alert police. The system can even determine what kind of gun was used and the precise time it was fired. Wow.
More than 70 departments use the system already. In most cases, officers say that just having the system quickly curbs criminals from even committing a gun crime, because of the high rate of detection.
Basically it makes crooks think twice before taking a shot. While it’s hard to track these stats nationwide, some numbers we did find seem to support the system’s effectiveness. In Rochester, N.Y., gunfire was reduced 43% after Shotspotter went live; and in Minneapolis, that city saw a 30% decrease in gun shots reported within the first 30 days of introducing Shotspotter.
These systems are at work in more than 60 U.S. cities and cost between $40,000 and $60,000 per square mile to set up and run.
Photo by The Knowles Gallery
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Tech That Protects The President: Image Analysis
Oct 15th
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see,” Edgar Allan Poe wrote in his 1845 masterpiece “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Almost 170 years later, imaging software with artificial intelligence capabilities is making it easier to believe all of what a camera sees. (Part 2 of a 3-part series on technology employed by White House security forces.)
AISight is a program created by Houston-based BRS Labs, which uses behavioral recognition techniques to observe, learn and respond to video input. Once the software is implemented, it spends its time training and defining baseline behavior and patterns of people and places, understanding what’s common and uncommon in a field of view and a period of time, down to days of the week and hours of the day. Once it has defined normal, it goes to work recording 5- to 10-second clips and looking for uncommon behavior, such as someone standing outside of an ATM at 4 a.m. on a Sunday, as opposed to normal stop-and-go ATM traffic throughout the week. When it sees abnormal behavior, sends out an alert.
See also: Tech That Protects The President, Part 1: Data Mining
The technology was used during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, in August, and has been implemented in several other cities throughout the U.S. In Tampa, the system was installed months before the event actually happened so AISight could learn about local patterns of behavior. Of course, when the event happened, far more people showed up, but the system was prepared to recognize baseline patterns and deviations from them.
“Our software learns,” explained David Gerulski, vice president of marketing for BRS. ”It’s got AI intelligence and it learns like a human does.”
The system captured notable events in Tampa, Gerulski acknowledged, but he would not reveal the details. AISight was analyzing the output of cameras positioned throughout Tampa. And it sent more false alarms than alerts to actual incidents at the convention. But with thousands of people present and new permutations at work there, that’s not too surprising, Gerulski said: Better safe than sorry.
Real-Time Response
One of the technology’s biggest benefits that it enables law-enforcement forces to respond in real time, Gerluski says. Without AISight or similar technology, security officials find out about an incident only after the fact, and usually after a tired pair of eyes scans hours of tape.
Basically the software “expands the eyes looking at all those cameras,” Gerluski says, changing the surveillance model without altering the infrastructure. “You could have 1,000 screens, no human could look at all the camera views. When something odd happens at the view, we can pop that out.” Human attention is no longer needed to constantly monitor cameras and can be deployed elsewhere. Officers in the field can receive mobile alerts and video clips while an event is in progress.
AISight, which relies on patented behavioral analytics, can be implemented on top of existing camera systems. No new hardware need be installed. However, this kind of capability doesn’t come cheap. The system costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, into the millions depending on the number of cameras the software is watching.
BRS wouldn’t confirm or deny whether its software is currently being used by the White House.
For more details about AISight’s behavioral recognition system, take a look at this video:
Part 2: Image Analysis
Photos by myfoxmemphis and Daniel Oines
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Tech That Protects The President, Part 1: Data Mining
Oct 12th
President Obama’s appearance at the Democratic National Convention in September took place amid a rat’s nest of perils. But the local Charlotte, North Carolina, police weren’t entirely on their own. They were aided by a sophisticated data mining system that helped them identify threats and react to them quickly. (Part 1 of a 3-part series about the technology behind presidential security.)
The Charlotte-Mecklenberg police used a software from lxReveal to monitor the Internet for associations between Obama, the DNC, and potential treats. The company’s program, known as uReveal, combs news articles, status updates, blog posts, discussion forum comments. But it doesn’t simply search for keywords. It works on concepts defined by the user and uses natural language processing to analyze plain English based on meaning and context, taking into account slang and sentiment. If it detects something amiss, the system sends real-time alerts.
“We are able to read and alert almost as fast as [information] comes on the Web, as opposed to other systems where it takes hours,” said Bickford, vice president of operations of IxReveal.
In the past, this kind of task would have required large numbers of people searching and then reading huge volumes of information and manually highlighting relevant references. ”Normally you have to take information like an email and shove it in to a database,” Bickford explained. “Someone has to physically read it or do a keyword search.
uReveal, on the other hand, lets machines do the reading, tracking, and analysis. “If you apply our patented technology and natural language processing capability, you can actually monitor that information for specific keywords and phrases based on meaning and context,” he says. The software can differentiate between a Volkswagen bug, a computer bug and an insect bug, Bickford explained – or, more to the point, between a reference to fire from a gun barrel and on to fire in a fireplace.
Bickford says the days of people slaving over sifting through piles of data, or ETL (extract, transform and load) data processing capabilities are over. “It’s just not supportable.”
Finding Patterns & Discovering Clusters
Once the system understands what people are saying, it performs behavioral analytics to detect patterns in interactions among people and identify clusters of people who follow particular patterns. “You look at how the community is changing,” Bickford explained, “like flash mobs forming.”
The system doesn’t profile individuals based on demographics or personal identifiers. “We dont need name, race, or gender to link info togetrhter, which is what used to be done. The analysis is based on meaning and context.”
Managing A Proliferation Of Data
The U.S. president isn’t the only one who benefits from uReveal. More than thirty police departments and multiple government agencies use it to track behavior, detect fraud, and monitor regulatory compliance. In the private sector, major clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the service monitors threats to both the Gates’ and their foundation.
And Bickford has a broader range of organizations in his sights. Systems like uReveal are essential to the task of gathering intelligence – not just law enforcement but business intelligence – in an age of proliferating data. “Organizations, whether government of business, will deal with [increasing amounts of] information in the future,” Bickford pointed out. “We’re trying to make analystics and intelligence a commodity, so everyone can get what they want. Our tech has taken a huge step in that direction.”
The software costs as little as $5,000 for a small sheriff department and as much as half a million dollars for a government agency.
Check out the video below to learn more about how uReveal works.
Next: image analysis.
Photo by Steve Jurvetson
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SEO president “people that don’t play games have no business in this business” – PC Gamer Magazine
Sep 19th
 PC Gamer Magazine |
SEO president “people that don't play games have no business in this business”
PC Gamer Magazine SEO president “people that don't play games have no business in this business”. Tweet · Comments 5 · Tom Senior at 05:08pm September 19 2012. Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley has been talking to Edge about his gaming habits. |
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I Am A President — Obamamania Shuts Down Reddit
Aug 29th
In another social-media first, President Barack Obama took to Reddit today to become the first sitting head of state to moderate the site’s “AMA,” or, ask me anything, series.
The chat lasted an hour, and got so much attention that it shut the site down during his post.
Redditers pitched softballs and hard alike, but the fact that the leader of the Free World participated in the site’s chat confirms mainstream success and reach for Reddit. It also showed the President’s understanding of of social media’s importance in reaching young voters.
President Obama touched on the economy, the military in Afghanistan and how hard it is for young people to find jobs. He kept it light, too, saying that his favorite basketball player is Michael Jordan, and that he’s “a Bulls guy.”
President Obama previously received praise for joining Twitter and hosting the first Twitter Town Hall, on July 6.
With this move, the obvious (nonpartisan) question remains: Will Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romeny be next to take to Reddit? Political battle lines run across social media. Can it be much of a stretch to start seeing regular Reddit threads, Twitter chats and Facebook posts from politicians?
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