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The Post faces the same problems as other daily newspapers, whose revenues have sunk as the Web and the tough economy have sapped advertising. But in some ways, its situation is even more daunting. Unlike most other papers with national aspirations, The Post serves a purely local print market, one that for decades had limited competition, and it has depended on local advertisers and subscribers who have since fled to the Web. Though company managers say privately that The Post is modestly profitable, its newspaper division, which also includes a group of community papers and The Herald of Everett, Wash., reported an operating loss of nearly $26 million through the first three quarters of last year.

British households download about 17 gigabytes of data on average every month over their home broadband connections, suggests a report.

A report calling for more government transparency and citizen participation through the use of technology made 32 recommendations to make Quebec an open administration. Here are selected highlights.

MONTREAL - The Quebec government has pledged to increase transparency and turn citizens into decision makers by using the latest online tools and embracing a new culture of openness. In Wednesday's release of a long-awaited report into how to bring open governance to Quebec - billed as "historic" by advocates of open governance - the government said that by next month, it will launch a web portal that will make public data easily accessible. Another website, to be created later, will gather public opinion on how the government is run.

onnected Nation recently announced an upgrade to their mapping application that's being used in S. Carolina. There's another story, though. One state resident saw on the map that his home had AT&T DSL service. But when Joe Roget called the company, "They said they had no idea what I was talking about and that whatever map data I was looking at was totally wrong," Roget reports to Stop the Cap! "The operator was frank with me, saying it was highly unlikely I would ever receive DSL from AT&T and the company was really not expanding DSL access any longer."

C ities are real-time systems,  but rarely run as such.  Governance models remain  in the 20th century, while citizens  increasingly have access to 21st  century tools predicated on the  increasingly ubiquitous availability of internet, smartphones  and tablets, social media and  so on. A city's operational and  planning decisions are generally  based on snapshots and averages  rather than the ongoing monitoring, insightful visualisations,  and constant feedback loops that  contemporary information and  communications technologies  (ICT) enable. While there are  fundamental differences between  running a city and, say, running  Amazon.com, they are perhaps  fewer than has been assumed. this report outlines many of the  opportunities for cities afforded by these  contemporary technologies, indicating  how the 'smart city' approach might  fundamentally transform the way that cities  are governed, operated, interacted with and  experienced, particularly with the focus on  reducing greenhouse gas emissions and  becoming sustainable in the broadest sense,  including in economic terms, with new jobs  generated in 'green technologies' and ictrelated activities. 

Industry watchers have been talking for a long while now about how the venture capital industry is broken, highlighted by poor returns that in many cases don't even exceed that of the major stock indices. Now, thanks to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation - which has invested in nearly 100 venture capital firms across the country over the past 20 years - we're getting an inside look into the problems rattling the industry. The picture is not pretty.

Taken all together, this report could present a material problem for venture funds looking to raise. With this much information now public, the idea of venture capital as something almost magical, that generates fat returns and makes everyone associated with it rich in the process, appears more myth than truth. Kauffman concludes with what it calls a 'nettlesome problem:' "The average VC fund fails to return investor capital after fees." Ouch.

In our drones report, we discuss the coming onslaught of domestic drones and the weak state of the privacy laws that should protect us, and we outline our recommendations for protections that Congress and local governments should put in place.

The Department of Education released a draft report about big data and education today. It's called "Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics," a title that's unlikely to win any converts to the notion of a data-curious* view of learning. Part of what's going to get stuck in the craw is that phrase "data mining," I reckon. Despite all the potential and all the buzz about (big) data, data-mining remains something with a fairly negative connotation. Advertisers. Political campaigns. Big government. All sifting through your personal data, trying to uncover the things that nobody knows about, trying to get you to buy or sell or vote. Add to that now the knowledge that every click we make online -- every YouTube view and Facebook like and Google query -- is eminently trackable, it's enough to make all those unsolicited phone calls and junk mail seem quite benign, not to mention old-fashioned.

The Internet of Things can empower bottom-up community building, and it's already here, Guido Stevens reports in this article: The Internet of Things can be used to create a surveillance society, but also to empower bottom-up community building. Smart Cities is a catchy concept used by big IT vendors like IBM, to market their technology vision. A smart city is what happens when the city you live in (a dumb city?) is upgraded with a specific new infrastructure: The Internet Of Things.

The Government first set out its policy on the use of open source in 2004. This was restated in both 2009 and 2010. The Government ICT Strategy states that "Where appropriate, Government will procure open source solutions."  To support this, Action 3 of the Strategy says that "To create a level playing field for the use of innovative ICT solutions, the Government will publish a toolkit for procurers on best practice for evaluating the use of open source solutions." The following set of documents make up that toolkit: All About Open Source - including FAQs  ICT Advice Note - Procurement of Open Source  Procurement Policy Note on Open Source  OSS Options  CESG Guidance on Open Source - for Government users only Publically accessible summary of the security guidance Total Cost of Ownership  Total cost of ownership of open source software: a report for the UK Cabinet Office supported by OpenForum Europe PPN Open Source The purpose of this toolkit is to ensure that there is a level playing field for open source and proprietary software and that some of the myths associated with open source are dispelled. 

Most top-tier network service providers have reported their Q1 2012 results, and we've seen the same trends continue from previous quarters: Legacy voice services from traditional providers continue to decline in favor of wireless substitution and replacement by digital (VoIP) services. Cable companies continue to see a net gain for digital voice, although the growth rate continues to be in the slow single digits; much of this net growth is driven by small businesses converting to VoIP.

The report, part of the Future of the Internet/Imagining the Internet series, surveyed "1,021 experts and analysts from the tech world, universities, government agencies, corporations, and other stakeholders" on how close we are to a "smart" world, one which uses energy-efficient "smart structures," integrated appliances and automobiles and "smart grids" that enable a more efficient delivery of electricity and water.

In 2011, the US government rolled out its "International Strategy for Cyberspace," which reminded us that "interconnected networks link nations more closely, so an attack on one nation's networks may have impact far beyond its borders." An in-depth report today from the New York Times confirms the truth of that statement as it finally lays bare the history and development of the Stuxnet virus-and how it accidentally escaped from the Iranian nuclear facility that was its target.

Healthcare IT 2012 Priorities Survey: Government Mandates Dominate With healthcare reform, the HITECH Act's Meaningful Use effort and ICD-10 conversion on IT executives' minds, many of the health IT priorities in 2012 are similar to those in 2011, according to the 2012 InformationWeek Healthcare IT Priorities survey. In fact, the percentage of respondents who said they are very or somewhat confident in meeting the deadline for Stage 1 is exactly the same as 2011. Still, there are differences: Many healthcare providers already have in place technologies that meet Meaningful Use 

Gartner's new Hype Cycle report shows that many small, unimpressive technologies can be combined to bring about futuristic realities. Here's a look.

"Higher education is rapidly changing--you don't have to even be paying much attention to see that. Universities have started streaming lectures en masse, schools like Harvard and MIT are teaming up to create content tailored for the web, startups like UniversityNow are creating reasonably priced online universities, and startups like Udacity offer online-only classes from renowned professors. None of this existed 10 years ago, and the field isn't done changing yet. A new report from Pew Internet looks at what higher education will look like in 2020, based on survey responses from over 1,000 "Internet experts, researchers, observers and users.""

"Data collected from telco companies and network operators shows that smartphone penetration has broken the 50 percent barrier in the United States, with these devices now outnumbering their feature phone brethren for the first time. According to a report compiled by market consultancy Chaten Sharma, smartphones overtook feature phones during Q2 of this year - a push largely driven by Android and iOS-enabled devices."