report

FCC report: Net has helped suffocate local news

Thanks to digital technologies, we have more media sources than ever to get our news from, but when it comes to covering town halls, school boards, courts, and other local news, they mostly suck.

That's the takeaway message (though definitely not in those words) in a behemoth of a report (PDF) released Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission.

The 460-plus page report, titled "The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age," is two years in the making and was led by Beliefnet co-founder and former U.S. News and World Report National Editor Steve Waldman.

If forced to sum up the entire report in a single tweet, it would probably be "The Internet has revolutionized how we gather and consume information, but meanwhile local news has been damn near suffocated." Or, as Waldman and company put it on page 262:

There were about 13,400 fewer newspaper newsroom jobs in 2010 than there were in 2006, dropping from 55,000 positions to about 41,600. Over the years, newsmagazines, local commercial radio, and local TV have reduced their newsgathering staffs, as well. At the same time, Internet sites, cable news, and public radio have created new journalism jobs.

So, the Net picked up the slack for the shrinking old media then, right? Not so, says the report. It goes on to estimate that there are roughly 5,000 less reporters covering local "accountability" beats today than there were in 2000, and even back then there weren't nearly enough to cover everything. All told, the report estimates that the number of local beat reporters would need to be more than doubled to do the job right, at a total cost of about $1.6 billion--or $265 million if we just wanted to get back to 2000 levels.… Read more

LTE devices sell fast in U.S.; 3G prepares to explode in Asia

Just about anyone who uses wireless networks for data is hungry for more speed, a new report from ABI Research suggests. In the first quarter of this year, Verizon Wireless alone activated half a million LTE-enabled devices; in Japan, NTT DoCoMo added 25,000 LTE subscriptions, according to the report.

LTE networks are often marketed as "4G" networks, but the term can be misleading because LTE (short for "Long Term Evolution") and all other currently available networks do not fully comply with 4G requirements--they're often more accurately referred to as a pre-4G technology.

Verizon has been selling the LTE service since January and claims data download speeds of between 5 and 12 megabits per second and upload speeds of 2-5Mbps--or roughly 10 times faster than its 3G offerings. AT&T is testing an LTE network in suburban Dallas that it says is capable of nearly 30Mbps.

But regardless of dithering over the nomenclature of 4G and how well the real-world networks deliver on the promise of their underlying technology, more subscribers are signing up for LTE, bottom line.… Read more

Report: 25 percent of U.S. hackers are FBI informants

The FBI has a legion of reformed hackers working to stop cybercriminals, a new report claims.

According to the Guardian, 25 percent of all the hackers in the U.S. are actually informants for the federal government. The reason for that, the U.K. publication reports, citing Eric Corley, the publisher of hacker quarterly 2600, is that hackers have become quite easy to break when they're faced with threats of long prison sentences for their alleged crimes. In fact, Corley told the Guardian that hackers "are rather susceptible to intimidation." So rather than face those long stretches … Read more

Cell phone radiation: A self-defense guide (FAQ)

Editors' note: This is the third of a three-part series on issues related to cell phone radiation. Revisit Tuesday's story on the inconclusive state of research on cell phone radiation, and Thursday's story about the trouble with federal safety standards, or click here for a roundup of related coverage.

When my sister--a mother of four--was shopping for a new cell phone last summer, she wanted to know: what's the safest cell phone in terms of radiation?

At first, I simply directed her to CNET's Quick Guide: Cell phone radiation levels, which shows the specific absorption rate, … Read more

Better than a shoebox

If your card collection survived your mother's cleaning campaigns, there's a good chance it could be valuable, now or in the future. Sports Card Collector can help you catalog and organize your treasures. Duck Software's database engine is optimized for collectors, with quick access via name or category, customizable fields, and easy data entry.

Sports Card Collector's interface is plain but businesslike and easy to understand and use. It's divided into two halves. The left half has a window listing entries sorted by player name or card brand with a series of customizable category tabs … Read more

This Day in Tech: Obama appoints Twitter CEO, plus Google foes

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Friday, May 27.

Obama appointing Twitter CEO to advisory group Twitter chief Dick Costolo will join the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. Microsoft's Scott Charney and McAfee's David DeWalt will be appointed too. More

Microsoft to showcase new tablet OS next week? Software giant reportedly plans to take the wraps off a new operating system next week, perhaps running on hardware using Nvidia's ARM-based Tegra processor. More

Zuckerberg: Privacy anxiety is fleeting New features may initially give … Read more

Study: Android Market sees lower top app turnover

A new study of various mobile application stores during the month of April conducted by research company Distimo found that the top apps chart on Google's Android Market had considerably less turnover than the one on Apple's App Store for the iPhone, which leads to less downloads overall.

In terms of numbers, that works out to 94 unique applications in the App Store for the iPhone's top 10 free and paid categories during the month of April, with just 26 in the Android Market during the same time period. For the top 300 apps in the iPhone'… Read more

New car labels offer QR codes but no grades

Consumers should have an easier time comparing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks once new consumer labels unveiled today go into effect.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson unveiled the new set of labels this morning at a live press conference hosted on the Web.

Prior to this, car labels hadn't been updated for 30 years.

Each new label differs slightly depending on the car's drive train or fuel source. (Click for a PDF of all labels.) Labels in the set include those for gas, flex-fuel gas-ethanol blends, … Read more

Most people OK buying goods via mobile devices

A significant number of people are comfortable shopping and paying for items through their mobile devices, according to a new report from mobile media firm JiWire.

JiWire's latest Mobile Audience Insights Report (PDF) found that 79 percent of 5,000 people surveyed are OK paying online via their cell phones or tablets.

Though most of those polled are still making relatively small purchases (less than $100), 50 percent said they're comfortable spending more than $100 using a cell phone, while almost 20 percent said they're OK buying things worth more than $500.

Beyond paying for items, more consumers are also researching products via their mobile devices. JiWire found that 71 percent of those polled had researched future purchases on their phone or tablet before buying the item. Among those, 31 percent later bought the item in a store, 40 percent bought it online through a PC, and 20 percent bought it directly from their mobile device.… Read more

Word count plus

FineCount from Tilti Systems is a free tool that provides highly accurate document analysis and statistics; it's sort of like word count on steroids. It analyzes a document and counts the number of words, numbers, characters, repetitions, spaces, redundant spaces, lines, sentences, pages, and file paths. It can export statistics, calculate rates, and create reports. It can analyze Microsoft Word documents, text files, PDFs, HTML documents, and other file types. It's suitable for freelance writers, translators, editors, and others who provide document services.

FineCount is free for noncommercial users, but you must obtain a free registration to keep … Read more