Help, the European Commission is mandating technology standards again!

According the International Herald Tribune, “the European Commission seeks to make DVB-H the single standard for the transmission of video to cell phones.  According to a person close to the deliberations, the commission will vote to publish the DVB-H standard in the European Commission’s official register. That move would have the effect of strongly encouraging EU member countries to choose DVB-H. Should this not elicit a compromise, [telecommunications commissioner Viviane] Reding and the commission are poised over the next year to pass a directive that would bind countries to use DVB-H.” Michael Kornfeld, one of the researchers who developed DVB-H, was surprised by the Commission’s stance, saying that “he thought that the markets, not regulators, would decide whether DVB-H or [competing standard] DMB prevailed.”

Inc.com writes that, according to a new study, “[w]hile business is increasingly conducted on a global scale, the majority of U.S. venture capitalists are not investing in foreign companies.  The Global Venture Capital Survey — a review of the investment habits of more than 500 venture capitalist and private equity firms around the world, sponsored by Deloitte and Touche and the National Venture Capital Association — found that 46 percent of U.S. VCs currently invest in foreign companies. In addition, 66 percent of those with foreign investments have less than 5 percent of their capital invested abroad.”

Internetnews.com asks if Facebook is “worth its platform hype?”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “[l]ooking to resolve a messy immigration tangle, the U.S. government is close to announcing that it will accept at least some applications for work-based green cards that were filed by thousands of skilled workers in early July at the government’s invitation and then abruptly rejected.” The announcement comes after Microsoft “sent a clear signal to the government of the high-tech industry’s dissatisfaction with the visa situation” by announcing, on July 5, that it plans soon to open a software-development center in Vancouver, Canada, with a view to "recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

According to a different Wall Street Journal article, “NBC, CBS, ABC Family and MTV are among several networks experimenting with the marketing possibilities of Twitter, a nascent social-networking service that sends messages in super-short bursts.  […]  Twitter has attracted the notice of media concerns as a potential new marketing forum. TV personalities, for instance, can use Twitter to send short notes to fans of their shows who’ve signed up to receive their updates.”