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Every island in Maine is struggling to keep their schools vibrant and open. In the last 100 years, Maine went from supporting 300 year-round island communities to 15, according to Snyder.

The filmmaker splits her time between Washington, D.C. and the island. If it were up to her, she would be on Isle au Haut year-round, but her job requires her to sit in meetings with people to talk about her documentary projects. Despite this, Wurzburg said she can work remotely and does as often as possible.

The high-speed Internet that her island home is connected to helps a lot.

The New Hampshire school is one of a handful of universities looking at ways to encourage active living, health and wellness in rural places. Researchers say the work is important because people living in rural communities are at greater risk for obesity, and past research focused on cities and suburbs has often produced conclusions that are a poor fit for rural towns.

“To get kids more physically active, one of the options seems to be getting more kids participating in after-school programs, but the busing situation is such that the bus goes home at 3 o’clock, and if you want to stay later you have to get a ride,” he said. “If you’re from a low-income family, you may not be able to get a ride. Chances are, your parents are already working two jobs, and they just can’t help you out.”

researchers at Plymouth State worked with residents of three rural towns to create a Google-style “active living” map, with captions of certain features — a favorite bike route, for example — provided by residents.

it turns out that some powerful Republicans in some agricultural states have supporters who have been poaching into the spectrum LightSquared owns and intends to use for a new nationwide broadband network.

the LightSquared initiative is a game changer. It builds on the satellite network already familiar to boaters and first responders to create a national wireless network with no dead zones -- if you have access to the American sky, you have access to your phone and the Internet.

While LightSquared now says it has fixed most of the GPS interference problems, including issues with "high precision" GPS devices , the GPS industry said "no way," and -- finding that perhaps the FCC was not buying the story -- spent millions to expand the debate into Congress and anywhere else it could find, like the Department of Defense.