As we mentioned the other day, e-books can present a problem for people on the underside of the digital divide. The e-book reader is only one part of the equation; another part is affordable Internet access—and while broadband access isn’t required for downloading something the size of an e-book, it certainly makes it easier in general. Today Comcast announced the launch of a new program meant to address the one-third of the US population without broadband access. The Internet Essentials program is aimed at low-income families with children who qualify for free lunch under the federal National School Lunch...

Three stories are occupying my techie RSS feeds these days, and they are all alarming ones. Readers, I urge you to keep abreast of the news on these and stay tuned for any on-line activism that may arise. There are some pivotal issues being decided upon in the next year or so. What are my top stories? 1) The Borders/Red Group Closures Oh sure, I hear you saying. You read ebooks now. Why should you care? Here's why: because the world is full of non-Americans, and the bugbear of geographical restrictions means these people may be more screwed than you think. When...

Bill Stiteler at our sister blog Appletell has posted a piece looking at the possibility of Apple adding Facetime to the next generation of iPod Touch (as I did here). He does mention a couple of points that I didn’t consider. One is that turning the iPod Touch into a wifi VoIP phone would allow Apple to offer phone service of a sort without having to put up with the complaints about AT&T’s service or the external cell phone antenna. Another is the possibility that the iPod Touch will only have the front-facing FaceTime camera...

Noted journalist Dan Gillmor has an interesting editorial on Salon.com suggesting that in order to “save” journalism, the government should focus on building out the American broadband network. Gillmor starts by discussing the government subsidies to newspaper mailing that Congress granted back in 1792. These subsidies were crucial to the development of the American press, as they allowed sending papers very cheaply to anyone in the country. Now, Gillmor notes, the FTC is circulating proposals on how to aid journalism—but as we mentioned before, most of these proposals are less about saving journalism than they are about...

Here’s something interesting about the FCC National Broadband Plan, which I’ve mentioned here a couple of times in recent days: it has quite a few provisions that are only orthogonally related to broadband, and a number of them have to do with copyright. For example, the Plan suggests adoption of a new voluntary permissive copyright license, administered by the government, to permit educational digital use—even including a mock-up of a new copyright symbol to be used with the program (see left). While a number of educational uses are already permitted under fair use, fair use is...

Plastic Logic has announced it is delaying the Que for several more months. As CNet points out, with the advent of the iPad this may be a product whose time has already come and gone. It is hard to see paying $649 for a black-and-white-only reader, no matter how big it is, given that the iPad starts at $499. Speaking of the iPad, from order numbers it was estimated that it sold 50,000 units in just the first two hours of its presale period yesterday. Not a big surprise that people are anxious to get their hands on it. Meanwhile, Gizmodo...

Reuters and ZDNet  report that, at a Digital Inclusion Summit aimed at addressing the 1/3 of American households that lack broadband service, the FCC has announced it may make wireless spectrum available for an “affordable” national broadband network. Details were sparse, so I can only speculate about such things as how the system would work, what areas would be covered, and how much it would cost. But having lived in rural Missouri for some time, including several months relatively recently recovering from a broken leg, I can say it would certainly mean a great deal to have this...