Thanks for your continued readership.

I blogged last week about AT&T's double standard for streaming video on the iPhone, via the company's wireless network. In the U.S., AT&T is the iPhone's exclusive wireless carrier, and it appears that AT&T is expanding the treatment of streaming video apps that it approves for its iPhone customers and those that it doesn't.

Satellite TV company DirecTV has released an iPhone application called Supercast Mobile for the purpose of streaming the company's NFL Sunday Ticket games via AT&T's mobile network. Unlike SlingMedia's SlingPlayer application for the iPhone, which would allow users to stream National Football League games from a cable provider's lineup, DirecTV's Supercast mobile has been granted access to stream NFL game video via AT&T's wireless network. If you're a SlingPlayer user, AT&T has disabled your ability to stream video on their network (though you're okay to stream video if you're lucky enough to be connected to a wi-fi network).

Previously, AT&T had decided to allow Major League Baseball's At Bat application to stream video on its network while prohibiting SlingPlayer. Now, AT&T is favoring a streaming video application from a satellite company that AT&T has an economic relationship with -- they resell their service, while prohibiting cable customers from streaming their cable channels via similar protocols. In the past few weeks, AT&T has changed their mobile network's terms of service to selectively target SlingPlayer and have claimed that their network doesn't have the capacity to support streaming of cable and satellite programming. That line about the mobile network not being able to stream satellite programming was an AT&T spokesman's response to the issue last week. I suspect it may change again in light of the fact that a satellite company is promoting the ability to stream satellite programming on AT&T's wireless network via the iPhone.

While I've defended the need for network operators to reasonably manage their networks, AT&T's double standard on this issue is losing the appearance of following any reasonable standard of protecting their customers' ability to have reasonable access to their network, and has become one of favoring applications from companies that AT&T has a business relationship with over those that it doesn't.

It didn't take long for another content provider to join Time Warner in providing streaming content for Comcast's On Demand Online, part of the TV Everywhere platform. Starz Entertainment, among others, has joined Comcast's trial of 5,000 customers experimenting with Comcast's online video streaming portal, On Demand Online. While On Demand Online allows current Comcast customers in the trial group to watch the content via their web browser, the TV Everywhere platform promises to allow users to view the content via their mobile devices in the future.

According to Comcast, much of the Starz content will be available online as soon as it is available via the traditional On Demand service. Currently the content is only available in standard definition, but a high definition upgrade is in the works for the service.

A key part of the technology that Comcast is employing is to offer its customers a viewing option that allows current cable customers to authenticate themselves to the site which will provide them with access to online video at no extra cost.

Another way to get feature-length, HD movies was announced yesterday.  Add Sony to the list of television manufacturers that are adding support for subscription-based online video streaming services to its high definition televisions. Yesterday, Sony announced a partnership with Netflix to bring streaming movies and television shows to Sony's BRAVIA television line. Netflix's video library will be available on new BRAVIA televisions that are Internet video capable and older models that have Sony's Internet link module attached. NewTeeVee reports that Sony also has a deal for viewers to access Amazon's online video service via their televisions.

But, even though Microsoft's XBox 360 has built-in ability to connect to Netflix's library via a Netflix subscription and an XBox Live subscription, Sony has yet to announce a similar capability for its PlayStation 3 game console.

Though Neflix offers a library of over 100,000 DVD titles through the mail, their online library is comparatively much smaller. Only around 12,000 selections are available via Netflix's streaming option.  I have Netflix on a Roku box at home and it works great with my standard broadband connection, including the HD titles.

Content delivery network Akamai is preparing to release its latest quarterly report on the Internet which will show that in the last six months the global Internet has grown by 5 percent, measured by the number of unique IP addresses. From this point last year, the global Internet has grown over 27 percent. In the U.S., the number of unique IP address has grown 20 percent since the second quarter of 2008. In China, over the same period, unique IPs grew by 37 percent.

In terms of speed, Akamai notes that in the first quarter of 2009, just over 20 percent of all Internet users globally were connected via a broadband connection with a speed of 5 Mbps or greater. In the U.S., the number of broadband connections above 5 Mbps is 26 percent of all Internet users, ranking this country 12th in broadband speeds internationally. With nearly 40% of all broadband connections still being provided by slower DSL technology, it should come as no surprise that the US is not higher up in the rankings.  Sitting atop that list is Japan, where 57 percent of all Internet users connect with a broadband speed of 5 Mbps or better.

In terms of the U.S., Delaware has the largest percentage of high-speed broadband users, with 62 percent of all that state's Internet users connecting on a 5 Mbps or faster connection. Akamai even measures the percentage of connections above 25 Mbps, and in the U.S, Utah has the highest percentage of users connected at faster than 25 Mbps with 4.5 percent of Internet users in that state connected at those very high speeds.

There's a new live, daily show on the cable sports network ESPN called SportsNation, which aims to engage the millions of sports fans watching the network via Twitter, Facebook and other online outlets. During the network's SportsCenter show, ESPN frequently features the opinions of "SportsNation" via online polls that have been previously posed on SportsCenter, encouraging viewers to go to ESPN's web site and cast their vote. The new show takes those online polls to the next level, elevating that interaction to its own platform. The show debuted Monday on ESPN2.

The SportsNation web site indicates that the show plans to be "the most interactive show on TV." According to NewTeeVee, the show's opening segment features questions for viewers that encourage them to vote in online polling and results are shown on-air. Another segment features fan phone calls to the show, and yet another segment encourages viewers to tweet in responses to the hosts via Twitter. Sending the show's hosts online video of your favorite sporting event is encouraged, and the chosen few are broadcast on SportsNation.

With the increasing convergence of the online world with television, SportsNation looks to leverage the popularity of the ESPN network with sports fans' desire to express their take on the athletes and teams in the news.

You've got to hand it to ESPN for taking the new media opportunities to new heights.  Good job guys!

This past weekend, hackers began a coordinated series of distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on several U.S. and South Korean web sites via a botnet. In the U.S., the sites that were attacked included several federal agencies and press sites, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Secret Service, the Transportation Department, and The Washington Post among others. The attack managed to slow to a crawl or shut down many of those web sites, and is thought to be a coordinated attack originating in North Korea.

Today, a new wave attacks, again suspected to be coming from North Korea, hit sites that included the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Defense web sites. Other government and banking sites in South Korea were also hit by a barrage of web traffic that slowed or shut down web sites in that country. It is unclear whether these attacks have been stemmed.

According to a defense expert in this article, North Korea has a specialized military unit with 1,000 computer hackers that is specifically dedicated to cyber attacks like this one. Earlier this year, President Obama announced the creation of a national director for the country's cybersecurity. With coordinated cyber attacks coming from North Korea aimed at critical U.S. online infrastructure, it's more important than ever that the new cybersecurity czar begin work immediately at protecting this infrastructure from attack.

Former FCC commissioner and current nominee for USDA Rural Utilities Service administrator Jonathan Adelstein appeared before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee yesterday for his confirmation hearing. During that hearing, Adelstein stated his belief that the key to improving America's standing in international broadband rankings of speed and adoption is the increased deployment of high-speed broadband to rural America.

Adelstein told the committee:

"I believe one of our key national priorities should be to aggressively promote the expansion of broadband deployment and adoption. Some have argued that the reason we've fallen so far in the international rankings is that we are more rural than those ahead of us. If that is correct, we must cite it not as a despairing excuse but as a clarion call to re-double our efforts to promote rural broadband."

With the economic stimulus bill, passed by Congress earlier this year, the agency that Adelstein has been nominated to lead, the Rural Utilities Service, has $2.5 billion in grant and loan funds available for construction of broadband infrastructure in rural areas. In a Wall Street Journal article, Adelstein is quoted as telling the committee that the agency "can't afford to waste a dime of taxpayer money" in distributing the grant dollars to deploy broadband in rural communities.

As an FCC commissioner, I always found Adelstein among the most thoughtful and capable with whom I'd met over the years.  We didn't agree on every issue but he was a fair person and a good listener.  He also wasn't an ideologue, always willing to carefully consider the facts presented to him by a full range of stakeholders, from business leaders whose customers would be affected by the Commission's decisions to consumer advocates who argued on behalf of their constituencies. 

Seems to me that the RUS is in very good hands.

Are you a Windows user? How about Linux or Mac OS? Starting in the second half of next year, search giant Google plans to add an additional operating system choice for computer users. Yesterday, via the company's blog, Google announced an undertaking to develop its own netbook OS that will combine Google's Chrome browser and a Linux kernel. And even though some netbook manufacturers are installing Google's Android mobile OS onto slimmed-down portable computers, this new project is set to be a completely new OS, separate and apart from Android.

Technology pundits are already portraying this move as pitting Google directly against Microsoft's Windows 7 OS, which is set for a formal release this year. Though details are still sparse, many expect that Google will release the OS for free, just as it has for many products including Chrome and Android. A free OS might be a draw for users of lower-end, less expensive netbooks, since it will be one less feature that they have to pay for.

But, developing an operating system is not an easy task. Developing hardware drivers for the thousands of different computer peripherals that users might want to connect to their Google OS netbook will be a challenge, and many popular software titles are not yet available in a Linux version.

With Microsoft challenging Google's hegemony in the search business with its newly released Bing search engine, it appears Google has decided to go after Microsoft's core business as well, its Windows operating system.

These two high-tech behemoths appear to be intent to go after each other's business for every product they offer.  Should be interesting to watch.  I'd bet that neither will really, truly take serious market share from the other in their core competencies. 

Let the sumo wrestling begin!

Even though the digital television transition came and went last month with few issues, a few broadcast stations and the federal government are still dealing with some of the ramifications of the transition. Around two dozen TV stations around the country are reporting a loss of viewership since the transition due to the fact that their new digital signal cannot be received by some over-the-air viewers' antennas in some locations.

As it turns out, the stations switched their digital broadcasts from the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band to the Very High Frequency (VHF) band on the DTV deadline of June 12th. Many smaller indoor antennas, even those sold as "digital" antennas in the period leading up to the digital transition, cannot receive the stations' digital broadcasts on the VHF band.

In an effort to remedy the situation, the FCC has sent engineers to do signal testing in some of the affected markets, and the Commission is allowing some stations to boost their signal power to allow more over-the-air viewers to watch the new digital signals. According to the FCC, as of this week, around 20 percent of callers into their DTV hotline are calling in regard to this issue.

Disney announced not long ago that it had forged a deal with Hulu, the popular long-form video streaming portal, to allow Hulu to distribute Disney and ABC content on the site. NewTeeVee reports that Hulu has posted the first ABC content on its site - episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Right now, that's the only ABC or Disney content on Hulu, and only five episodes of the show are available for viewing. Hulu indicates that in the coming weeks, additional ABC shows will make their appearances on the site, including Desperate Housewives, Scrubs and Ugly Betty, among others.

Disney's deal with Hulu allowed it to join NBC and FOX in distribution on Hulu. CBS owns the TV.com portal, and posts its content for viewing on that site. All content on Hulu is free for end-users to view, and is ad supported.

Last month, Comcast and Time Warner (the content company) announced a test of their TV Everywhere product, which would allow similar streaming of Time Warner video content from a web portal, free for Comcast's cable television customers.

Last Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), released a set of milestones that it plans to accomplish before next year's deadline for its national broadband plan. In the economic stimulus bill that Congress passed earlier this year, it designated the FCC as the agency responsible for creating a national plan for broadband deployment and adoption and requested that the plan be delivered to Congress by February 17, 2010.

Under the leadership of new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, the agency has announced several key dates for the broadband plan. On July 21, the period for public comments on the broadband plan closes. If you wish to submit your thoughts to the policy makers responsible for developing the plan, you can submit them through the FCC's web site here.

Starting this month, the process for awarding the broadband stimulus funds in the economic stimulus bill will begin, with the first checks being delivered around November 7. As this article notes, the awarding of several billion dollars for broadband infrastructure deployment will make writing a national broadband plan a bit of a moving target, but the Commission is expected to weigh in on the plan by December, after several months of public meetings on the plan. After the plan if finalized, expect it to be delivered to Congress by the February 17 deadline.

After the report is released, it will be up to the nation's policy makers to take note of the recommendations that the FCC makes with regard to our broadband infrastructure, deciding which policy measures will best increase Americans' access to and adoption of broadband.

While it's not clear yet exactly how it happened, it appears that hackers have absconded with over $400,000 from the county government's bank account in Bullitt County, Kentucky. According to this story from the Louisville Courier-Journal, hackers managed to infiltrate the email account of a county employee, and used the information within that account to impersonate the county employee to initiate several transfers of county funds out of the county's bank account.

The county was notified by its bank that a set of transactions was set to occur last month, which tipped them off that someone was using the account in an unauthorized fashion. Using that information, the county and the bank were able to determine that some money had already been stolen. Since some of the stolen funds were transferred to other banks in the U.S., some of the money has been recovered and returned to the county. This article indicates that prospects are dim for finding all the stolen cash.

Though this article doesn't indicate how the hackers gained access to the county's bank account, phishing scams are a popular method for hackers to steal funds out of bank accounts. These scams involve hackers sending an email that purports to be from a legitimate bank, and links within the email to resolve to a site that appears to be legitimate. But the site is hosted by the hacker, and if any user name or password information is entered into the site, it will be used by hackers to siphon funds out of the legitimate bank account. Microsoft has a good guide to identifying and protecting yourself from phishing fraud emails.

If you're the wife of the head of British spy agency MI6, it might be time to learn how to use Facebook's privacy features. In news from that country, it has been revealed that Lady Shelley Sawers, the wife of Sir John Sawers, who is the newest head of MI6, has posted personal information on her unprotected Facebook page. On the page, Sawers revealed the location of the family's apartment in London and posted several pictures from the family's latest vacation. The postings were available to any member of Facebook's London network - allowing several million Facebook users to view the information.

Though Lady Sawers Facebook page is no longer available to the general public, it's a good lesson to all Facebook users that the site's privacy features are useful in making sure you're only revealing the information you want to reveal about yourself to strangers. I consider myself fairly knowledgable when it comes to online technology, especially for a 50-something-year-old.  Setting up the Facebook privacy options is no picnic, believe me.  Recently, Facebook announced that it is upgrading several of its privacy features to make the more user-friendly. The details of that announcement is available here. For more information about enabling Facebook's privacy settings, check out this article.

Yesterday, the notorious BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay announced that it was being sold to a Swedish software company for $7.8 million. Global Gaming Factory X in partnership Swedish P2P technology provider Peerialism are purchasing the site in an attempt to make it a legitimate media distribution hub, paying royalties to content producers and respecting copyright holders' work.

The Pirate Bay's founders and operators were found guilty of copyright infringement in a joint civil and criminal trial in Sweden earlier this year. The defendants were ordered to prison for a year and ordered to pay $3.8 million to copyright holders, whose works they had infringed.  According to news reports, rather than apply the proceeds of the site's sale to the verdict (and potentially other civil copyright infringement suits), the site's operators will transfer the profits to a non-profit foundation geared toward promotion of online piracy awareness.

This appears to be a win, albeit temporary, for content creators. The Pirate Bay will shut down its torrent tracking features for illegally copied content. The spokesman for the venture that is purchasing the site has indicated that some third-party will attempt to fill the gap for P2P'ers, but that gap-filling measure has yet to be announced. It's estimated that around half of illegally traded P2P content is tracked by The Pirate Bay, so any shutdown might have a real effect on P2P'ers ability to find the pirated content they're searching for.

Already, P2P enthusiasts are bemoaning this state of affairs, rising to the level of a denial of service attack being launched against the site yesterday and the site's founders posting a warning to the new owners on The Pirate Bay blog that any attempts to shut down illegal file trading will result in the sites users abandoning it.

After the copyright infringement verdict against the site's operators, the ensuing result was just a matter of time. There's no economic model that can support the widespread piracy of copyrighted content that the site's operators espoused. As the chief executive of Global Gaming Factory X, Hans Pandeya, put it: “The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary. Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it.”

There's an ongoing conversation about the heavy use of bandwidth.  The question is how to create an economic model that supports both consumers who want to use a lot of bandwidth vs. how to create a heavy-usage business model that supports service providers' ability to get a return on their continued investment.  After last week's announcement by Comcast and Time Warner (the content company -- TW CEO Jeff Bewkes pictured here), some users questioned how much consumption is too much consumption when viewing video online.  Todd Spangler at Multichannel News has run the numbers, and online video enthusiasts should breathe a sigh of relief.

Spangler used existing high-quality streaming video episodes at ABC.com to calculate the consumption from an hour of online video.  His conclusion was that it came to roughly the equivalent of 500 megabytes of consumption. Assuming TV Everywhere video weighs in at about the same size, it would take 200 hours of video streaming viewing to consume 100 GB. That's between 6.5 and 7 hours of streaming video viewing, every single day of the month. It seems to me that that's a lot of usage and an amount that would be consumed by very few broadband users. 

This subject goes back to the heart of the usage debate that we've discussed in the past.  I have argued (and endured the subsequent scorn of the opponents of caps) that there was probably a set of limits that would be fair to everyone.  Very heavy users would pay a little more, light users would pay a little less and ISP's would be economically incented to invest in more and more capacity in their networks to support growing usage.

Don't get me wrong.  That's not to say that one package fits all.  Heavy users could have the option to choose a plan that gives them a huge or even unlimited package of bandwidth while light users could opt for a lesser plan that reduces their base monthly rate from today's flat rate billing plan.  Not a new concept -- think cell phones but with much higher consumption levels.

For the time being, Comcast has said that they are not implementing consumption-based billing.  Instead, it simply has set a limit of 250 GB per month on all users.  That's a huge amount of consumption and according to Spangler, it's somewhere around 20 days of watching video, morning, noon and night. I'd say that's certainly more than enough to keep most users entertained, while leaving plenty of room within the cap for other Internet activities.

Comcast has stated that only a tiny fraction of its customers ever surpass the 250 GB download cap, which it instituted to allow a level of reasonable management of its network.  They do this to ensure that all customers have an enjoyable online experience. And even in the age of streaming long-form video, it appears that Comcast's cap allows an enormous amount of online video viewing.

I've written recently about AT&T's double standard when it comes to allowing video streaming applications on the iPhone. AT&T is the sole provider for the iPhone in the U.S., and while it allows users to stream Major League Baseball games on the iPhone via the AT&T wireless network, it prohibits users from using the SlingCatcher application to stream video content from their cable provider to the iPhone via the wireless network.

Yesterday, after several blogs asked the company about the policy, AT&T decided to issue an explanation for the double standard. According to AT&T's statement, their wireless network just can't meet their customers' expectations when it comes to streaming video:

AT&T said the MLB app streams video from MLB's website, while SlingPlayer streams from the TV set-top box Slingbox. AT&T also said the company is only trying to ensure all users on its network get the best possible service.

"We're certainly not crippling any apps," an AT&T spokesman said. "This is an issue of fairness.... While we would like to support all video services across our network, the reality is that wireless networks simply lack the capacity to support customers streaming hours of cable, satellite or IPTV video programming to individual users."

Even though there's no technical difference between the MLB streaming video and SlingPlayer's streaming video, AT&T claims that, since it's network can't handle streaming video, it has the right to choose between one video application and another. And this explanation apparently only covers the iPhone, since BlackBerry and Windows Mobile device users on AT&T's network can still stream SlingPlayer content on those devices.

Many of you may remember that I have written extensively about the need of a network manager to manage their network.  Cable operators have been (and continue to be confronted) with similar issues.  There are several methods that cable operators accomplish keeping our networks running smoothly but none of them include discriminating between two applications with similar protocols -- in this case, video streaming.  That puts AT&T in the position of choosing winners and losers.

AT&T recently announced an iPhone application that integrates the iPhone with its own multichannel video product, U-Verse. I wonder if AT&T's decision to block SlingPlayer video, which allows cable customers to watch their cable channels remotely, has anything to do with AT&T's U-Verse service.

Comcast customers will soon have the option of taking their broadband connection with them when they leave their home after yesterday's announcement that the nation's largest cable provider is launching a mobile broadband service called High-Speed 2Go. Comcast's mobile broadband service rides on Clearwire's 4G WiMAX network and Sprint's 3G network, providing customers with broadband speeds up to 4 Mbps in WiMAX coverage and speeds up to 1.4 Mbps in 3G coverage.

While the service will only be available in a limited number of cities upon launch, Comcast and Clearwire plan to offer the service in several more metropolitan areas by the end of this year. In an effort to encourage customers to take their current broadband connections mobile, Comcast is offering the service in a bundle with existing cable broadband service for an additional $30. Clearwire's terms of service apply for mobile broadband usage, and the company currently offers its own service in 200 MB, 2 GB and unlimited monthly download tiers. Comcast has not yet indicated which tier that High-Speed 2Go will operate under.

According to this article, Clearwire has plans on the drawing board to offer mobile voice in addition to its current mobile data offerings at some point in 2010, and the company could partner with cable operators like Comcast to offer handsets and mobile phone service.

A court challenge to cable operator Cablevision's plans for a remote, networked DVR ended in Cablevision's favor yesterday. I've written previously about Cablevision's networked DVR, which it has indicated that it plans to indroduce this summer. The court challenge to the remote storage DVR was brought by a group of content creators that alleged that the device infringed upon their copyrights. Yesterday, after a series of court rulings in Cablevision's favor, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the content producers' appeal, thus affirming the ability of Cablevision to offer the new technology to customers.

Rather than have a DVR housed within a set-top box containing a hard drive to record your shows, the networked DVR is part of a centralized storage system that is physically located at the cable company headend. The functionality remains much the same - customers can record their favorite shows, set recording times, playback the recordings, fast forward, pause, etc.

One advantage for customers with the remote storage DVR is the ability to record and playback from any television within the home connected to digital cable, rather than only the one television connected to the DVR.  Another is a lower price tag on consumer premise equipment, a savings operators would be able to pass along to consumers.  And frankly, the set-top DVR occasionally can have technical problems that require operators to change them out.  When we do so, customers lose the recordings that were stored in the malfunctioning box.  That won't happen when programs are restored in a network environment.

So, now the remote storage DVR will become available to Cablevision's customers and the idea is likely to be considered by other cable operators now that the legal challenge has been won.  We at Insight will watch the launch closely to evaluate the technology and consumer reaction.  With some cable operators planning to offer programming choices to customers via an online portal, the possibilities to integrate remote storage DVR with online viewing are truly exciting. I'm sure cable engineers are already thinking about how to allow customers to view their networked DVR's recordings via an online portal.

Discovery Channel's Mythbusters star Adam Savage has become the latest victim of AT&T's exorbitant data roaming charges, running up an $11,000 bill for mobile data use in Canada. On Friday, Savage let the world know about his billing predicament via Twitter.

Turns out that AT&T is attempting to collect for 9 gigabytes of data downloaded via an AT&T mobile data card during a trip that Savage took to Canada, thus incurring roaming charges for data usage. Savage contends he didn't download anywhere near 9 GB of data during the trip. AT&T turned off Savage's account after the bill hit $11,000.

It seems that every couple of months a new horror story regarding AT&T mobile data usage charges emerges. I can't believe that the policies that lead to these types of charges are so important to the bottom line that AT&T doesn't see fit to change them -- especially after they have to expend such energy repairing their public relations whenever one of these makes headlines. 

The post at Broadband Reports links to a number of the five figure bills that AT&T has sent customers that had the misfortune of downloading a significant amount of data via the mobile network. And while the article credits AT&T for suspending Savage's account before his bill become "truly extraterrestrial," I would challenge anyone that thinks an $11,000 mobile phone bill already is anything but extraterrestrial.

Until AT&T gets some controls on its mobile data billing practices, it's surf at your wallet's risk if you're an AT&T customer.

The day of the networked home entertainment center is already upon us, as many videophiles are already connecting their HDTVs to media center PCs or Internet connected set top boxes. But existing technologies like wi-fi and powerline networking really don't do HD signals justice for those that want to move those signals around the house from a source to a television. EngadgetHD has reviewed a consumer product from Netgear that uses a CableLabs standard called MoCA (Multimedia over Coax) that allows users to use bandwidth on the coaxial cables in their homes to move HD content around the home. And for that matter, the MoCA standard can also be used for simply creating a home network with super-fast speeds - try speeds up to 270 Mbps that can be achieved without interfering with your cable service, according to Netgear.

This article reviews a hypothetical connection to an network-enabled LG Blu-ray player that allows streaming of HD content from a PC. If you didn't want to move the PC into the room with your television and Blu-ray player, you simply connect one of these MoCA adapters to your PC via an Ethernet cable and connect the adapter to a coax jack. Make the same connections with another adapter to the Blu-ray player, and you have a network on the cable within your home. Engadget indicates that their experience with the adapters was plug-and-play and the setup and configuration were a cinch.

Until new wireless standard speeds catch up, MoCA is a reliable transmission method for moving HD content around the home. Plus, it doesn't have the signal degradation problems that some proprietary HD wireless solutions inevitably exhibit on occasion.

Last Thursday afternoon, in the wake of Michael Jackson's death, millions of Americans started up their web browsers to get the latest information about the pop star's untimely death. Based on reports from content server Akamai, Internet traffic between 6pm and 7pm Eastern time on Thursday increased by 11 percent. Many people were able to get more current information about Jackson via Twitter, Facebook friends and online news sites than they were able to find -- even with non-stop coverage -- on cable news channels. But with so many logging on for their information, many sites slowed to a crawl.

And Google started treating searches about Jackson as a bot attack, due to their large number in so short a period of time.

CNET has a good article featuring a debate between two of their top reporters about the Internet's reliability when it comes to serving up a significant breaking news event to everyone that's looking for information online. Was the slowdown of news sites a significant impediment to finding news about Jackson for you? Or was the more current, more detailed information worth the wait? And what might happen if another news event spiked traffic even more than the 11 percent reported by Akamai? Would the Internet's ability to disseminate information simple melt down?

The spike also highlights the public's desire for immediate information, even at the potential expense of accuracy.  Conventional news organizations like cable news networks and newspapers hold news, as a matter of policy, until reports can be confirmed.  No such safety levers are present on alternative information sources like Twitter and Facebook.

These are great questions to ponder as we head toward a day when a majority of Americans get their news from online sources, rather than a daily newspaper.

Baker and Clyburn will go through the approval process, in a hearing by the Commerce Committee, yet to be scheduled.  Baker is the former acting head of National Telecommunications and Information Administration where she is credited for stepping in and repairing the botched-up Federal coupon program that had run out of money during the digital transition.  Clyburn is a South Carolina Public Service Commissioner.

Nielsen released a follow-up survey on preparedness for the digital television transition, and it appears that just over 2 million American homes still haven't made the preparations for DTV as of a week after the transition. So it appears that there actually are some homes in America where television simply is not viewed.

As of the June 12th DTV deadline, 2.5 million households were unprepared for the transition. That represents homes without at least one television connected to cable, without at least one television with a digital tuner or at least one television connected to a digital converter box. In the week after the transition, around 400,000 homes became prepared for DTV, but 2.1 million homes were still watching static on over the air broadcasts. That represents nearly 2 percent of all U.S. homes with televisions.

Nielsen will likely have new numbers at the beginning of next month that will show more of these homes finally making the change over to DTV. Until then, if you're wondering where your channels went earlier this month, please give us a call, we would be glad to help you get your channels back.