Silicon Valley Watcher has an interesting list of “10 reasons why this is a good time to invest in innovation.”
The New York Times writes that “[t]he time-tested way for governments to create jobs in a hurry is to pour money into old-fashioned public works projects like roads and bridges. President Obama’s economic recovery plan will do that, but it also has some ambitious 21st century twists. The $825 billion stimulus plan presented this month by House Democrats called for $37 billion in spending in three high-tech areas: $20 billion to computerize medical records, $11 billion to create smarter electrical grids and $6 billion to expand high-speed Internet access in rural and underserved communities.”
Internetnews.com reveals that “[t]he Internet has just served its billionth customer. In December, the total global Internet audience surpassed one billion users, according to Internet traffic measurement firm comScore. In a new report, the research firm said that the Asia-Pacific region continues to claim the lion's share, accounting for 41 percent of Internet users worldwide — about 416 million. Europe came in second with about 283 million Internet users, accounting for 28 percent of the wired population. With 185 million users, North America came in third at 18.4 percent, comScore said. Latin America accounted for 7 percent of total users with 75 million, and the combined Middle East and Africa region together attained 5 percent share, or 49 million. ‘Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet,’ Magid Abraham, comScore's CEO, said in a statement. ‘The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that.’”
The Register reports that “[j]unk mail levels are back to 80-90 per cent of their volumes prior to the takedown of infamous junk mail-friendly ISP McColo in November 2008 last year.
According to the International Herald Tribune, “[a]n Israeli entrepreneur with decades of experience in international education plans to start the first global, tuition-free Internet university, a nonprofit venture he has named the University of the People. ‘The idea is to take social networking and apply it to academia,’ said Shai Reshef, an entrepreneur and founder of several previous Internet-based educational businesses. ‘The open source courseware is there, from universities that have put their courses online, available to the public, free. We know that online peer-to-peer teaching works. Putting it all together, we can make a free university for students all over the world, anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection.’”