More than 110 years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake we still live with the risk of another giant California temblor. And while we’ve made great strides in construction, building retrofitting and fire safety, the next life-saving innovations are going to come from the technology sector, writes CALinnovates executive director Mike Montgomery.
It’s been a long, and often painful, climb up the tech learning curve for regulators, but more and more state regulators are embracing the pro-innovation ideals of Silicon Valley rather than the staid ways of the past. And increasingly, our regulators are using — and seemingly demonstrating an understanding of — the technology they’re tasked with overseeing. That’s a critical step forward in establishing the framework in which innovators can operate.
FCC action on a variety of fronts — including spectrum auctions and the transition to next-generation networks — is vitally important, and the agency will need to focus less on talk and more on concrete results under its next Chairman.
Only in America does one of the brightest privacy, cybersecurity, and regulatory specialists in the world need to be a Chemical Oceanographer just to navigate the regulatory waters.
Silicon Valley gets the majority of California’s tech ink, but according to an encouraging new report from the Progressive Policy Institute, the tech sector is benefiting the entire state as a whole.
As a strong proponent of preserving the Internet as a platform for communication and commerce kept free from burdensome regulation, I geeked out when I knew I would be spending time with the guy I perceived as leading the charge against our virtuous, sacred Internet.
The technology community learned some valuable lessons after the bubble burst. The pop heard ‘round the world happened for numerous reasons, but the bottom line is a fairly simple: Too many players were seduced by the hype and didn’t pay enough attention to long-range planning and the bottom line.
By now most people in the tech ecosystem have heard the news that Julius Genachowski is stepping down from his role as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Under Genachowski’s leadership, the FCC has been a proponent of unleashing additional wireless spectrum to fuel our insatiable consumption of data. He has advocated for the creation of competition in the marketplace. The Chairman has been an outspoken voice in the struggle against international regulation of the Internet, and he championed the belief in the power of broadband and the vision of delivering access to American households.
There is no question that Internet Protocol (IP) enabled devices have revolutionized our lives. Whether it’s the family using the Hipmunk agony index to weigh a low fare against the frustration of a long layover at O’Hare or the nomad hipster using one finger to find vacation crash pad on Airbnb, imaginative users and app developers have enabled greater convenience and fostered community in ways we never imagined.
Yesterday, I joined the rideshare revolution. Today I’m writing about it. I downloaded this app on my iPhone and took three short car trips yesterday courtesy of SideCar, a San Francisco-based ridesharing company that connects people who need a ride with drivers already on the road. Simply put, it’s a reinvention of carpooling through smartphone technology.
I am pleased that Governor Jerry Brown has signed a multitude of forward-thinking tech bills into law. In particular, SB 1161 is an important law that will provide regulatory certainty in California for Internet-based services. California has once again reassured high-tech innovators, investors and consumers that our state remains globally competitive by promoting investment, innovation, and continued economic growth in our critically important high-tech sector.
Wireless Internet-based services are transforming the auto world, empowering us to access relevant information, stream entertainment, and travel safer.
Silicon Valley is the king of Internet innovation. But that doesn’t mean the valley can ignore sovereign powers — particularly when their actions could threaten its lifeblood: global Internet freedom.
It usually takes fresh thinking to bring about positive changes in government, and sometimes it takes fresh faces. We had a great example of that in Silicon Valley last week as Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai, the two new Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), visited with a coalition of technology business leaders to discuss ways to foster innovation and economic growth in tech industries, particularly telecommunications.
Isn’t life quite a bit easier with apps on your phone and fast Internet connections? Broadband-high-speed Internet-has become a crucial tool for rural and urban residents alike.
Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom met with us to talk about his experience with and vision for California’s tech community. The City of Santa Monica, while known mostly for its beaches, is also home to a thriving tech community. Mayor Bloom has embraced the biz-tech community and, as a candidate for the State Assembly*, is outspoken about the role tech will play in our state’s future.
After three years and a concerted effort to push through incentive auction legislation, Congress has finally accepted that practically everyone and their grandparents have gone mobile and there’s no turning back. If you want your apps to keep working, appreciate calls that don’t drop, enjoy speedy data transfers and online videos that don’t endlessly buffer, you are one of many millions of Americans who should be thrilled about the action taken by Congress to make more spectrum available.
At an event sponsored by the Knight Foundation and hosted by Andreessen-Horowitz and CALinnovates, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski discusses the "Apps for Communities" awards which highlight the results of a Hackathon to create apps that use public data to provide useful services for communities. Nearly 100 attendees were on hand for the event in addition to local and national news outlets.
Where else in the world can Egyptian pyramids, the Statue of Liberty and Elvi (is that plural for multiple Elvises?) be upstaged by&hellipanything? The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, of course. If you weren’t able to make it to the show this year, worry not. CALinnovates was on hand to get the scoop for its members.
