رئیس شورای راهبری طرح جویشگر بومی با بیان اینکه تنها راه اقتصادی کردن طرح جویشگر بومی، تشکیل خوشه اقتصادی خدمات و محتوای بومی فضای مجازی است از اولین اقدام برای تجاری سازی این پروژه خبر داد.
به گزارش فاوانیوز به نقل از مهر، خسرو سلجوقی در پنجاه و پنجمین جلسه شورای راهبری طرح جویشگر بومی که در محل پژوهشگاه ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات (مرکز تحقیقات مخابرات ایران) برگزار شد، با تشریح نتایج مثبت اولین جلسه خوشه اقتصادی خدمات و محتوای بومی در فضای مجازی گفت: تنها راه اقتصادی کردن طرح جویشگر بومی، تشکیل خوشه اقتصادی و کنار کشیدن دولت است. اولین جلسه توسعه خوشه محتوا و خدمات جویش بومی هفته گذشته در محل سازمان فناوری اطلاعات با حضور جمعی از بازیگران فعال بخش خصوصی، دانشگاهها و موسسهات پژوهشی و نهادهای حاکمیت و بخش عمومی برگزار شد. در این جلسه، با ارائه مقدمه ای در خصوص خوشه های فناوری اطلاعات و ضرورت وجودی آنها برای توسعه جویشگر و محتوای بومی، نقطه نظرات و چالشهای مطرح در خصوص همراهی بخش خصوصی در این مجموعه برای ایجاد فرصتهای مشترک توسعه تجاری و گسترش نوآوری، رقابت و همکاری در زیست بوم محتوا و خدمات جویشگر، مورد بحث و تبادل نظر قرار گرفت. سلجوقی توضیح داد: وزارت ارتباطات به‌موازات شورای راهبری طرح جویشگر بومی، حکمی برای علیرضا طالب پور از اساتید دانشگاه شهید بهشتی و خبرگان بخش تولید محتوای کشور، برای تجاری‌سازی جویشگر بومی داده است که شورای راهبری همکاری لازم را برای به ثمر رسیدن نتیجه مدنظر، انجام خواهد داد. علیرضا یاری مجری طرح جویشگر بومی نیز در این جلسه، روند پیگیری مصوبات این شورای راهبری و مشکلاتی که در دیرکرد برخی اقدامات این طرح وجود دارند را توضیح داد. در ادامه این جلسه، برنامه عملیاتی مرورگر بومی توسط آرش معبودی پژوهشگر پژوهشگاه ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات تشریح شد و پس از بحث و بررسی در شورا، مقرر شد از ساخت مرورگر بومی جدیدی حمایت نشود و در راستای توسعه بازار و درخواست نیازهای بازار در قالب فعالیت‌های انجمنی با کمک انجمن کامپیوتر، دانشگاه امیرکبیر و سایر پژوهشگران این حوزه، این فعالیت دنبال و در نهایت زیرساخت‌های توسعه مرورگرهای بومی مبتنی بر نیاز بازار کشور فراهم شود.
وزیر ارتباطات ایران و وزیر صنعت و تجارت بین الملل مالزی برای افزایش حجم مبادلات دو کشور، سند همکاری، در حوزه های ICT ، نفت، بانکی، دارویی و گردشگری، امضا کردند.
به گزارش فاوانیوز به نقل از مرکز روابط عمومی و اطلاع رسانی وزارت ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات ، دکتر محمود واعظی در پایان کمیسیون مشترک همکاری های اقتصادی ایران و مالزی ، ظهر امروز چهارشنبه ۱۷ خرداد، با مصطفی محمد وزیر صنعت و تجارت بین الملل مالزی دیدار کرد. وی در آیین امضای تفاهم نامه همکاری میان ایران و مالزی گفت : با سفر سال گذشته رییس جمهور ایران به مالزی، همکاری های تجاری دو کشور ۴۰ درصد افزایش داشته است و با برگزاری کمیسیون های مشترک میان دو کشور، برنامه ریزی خوبی برای آینده روابط دو کشور انجام می شود. این مقام مسوول با اشاره به مذاکرات انجام شده در زمینه تجارت ترجیحی میان دو کشور، اظهارکرد : همچنین برای فعالیت شرکت های پتروناس و البخاری مالزی در ۴ میدان نفتی تفاهماتی انجام شد و با امضای سند همکاری میان بانک مرکزی ایران و مالزی روابط بانکی دو کشور توسعه پیدا می کند. وزیر ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات به بازدید هیات مالزیایی از کارخانه داروسازی ضد سرطان اشاره کرد و تصریح داشت : تفاهم نامه ای برای تولید داروهای ضد سرطان به امضا رسید که این کارخانه با مشارکت ۷۰ درصدی ایران و ۳۰ درصدی مالزی تا ۴ ماه آینده محصولات خود را تولید می کند. وی همکاری های گمرکی را یکی دیگر از زمینه های روابط دوکشور ایران و مالزی بیان کرد و اظهار داشت :ICT ، فرآورده های غذایی حلال ، حمل و نقل ، هواپیمایی و تجهیزات پزشکی حوزه های دیگری هستند که می توانیم در این زمینه ها با کشور مالزی همکاری داشته باشیم. دکتر واعظی افزایش همکاری هادر واردات روغن پالم را یکی دیگر از توافقات انجام شده بیان کرد و گفت: در این زمینه از ۲ ماه گذشته دفتر نمایندگی در تهران راه اندازی شده است که در این سند برای گسترش همکاری ها در زمینه روغن پالم نیز تاکید شد. رییس ایرانی کمیسیون مشترک ایران و مالزی با اشاره به گردشگری به عنوان یکی دیگر از زمینه های همکاری بین دو کشور ، تاکید کرد : دین و فرهنگ مشترک ایران و مالزی می تواند زمینه خوبی برای تقویت صنعت توریسم بین دو کشور باشد . وی به حجم ۷۰۰ میلیون دلاری مبادلات تجاری دو طرف در حال حاضر اشاره کرد و تصریح داشت : ظرفیت همکاری ایران و مالزی می تواند به چندین برابر این حجم افزایش داشته باشد و برای تشویق شرکت های دولتی و خصوصی هر دو کشور باید برنامه ریزی شود و وزارت خارجه و سفارتخانه های دو کشور ، اجرایی شدن بندهای این سند را پیگیری کنند.
رئیس شورای راهبری جویشگر بومی گفت: موضوع ایجاد خوشه‌های اقتصادی در بخش‌های مختلف برای یکپارچگی و همگرایی شرکت‌های کوچک و رقیب به هیأت دولت ارسال شده و به عنوان پیشتاز در بخش ICT خوشه خدمات و محتوای جویشگر بومی کلید خورده است.
به گزارش فاوانیوز به نقل از فارس، خسرو سلجوقی رئیس شورای راهبری جویشگر بومی (موتور جستجو) با اشاره به اهداف نخستین جلسه ایجاد خوشه توسعه محتوای بومی و ضرورت وجود خوشه های اقتصادی، اظهار داشت: موضوع خوشه مدتهاست برای یکپارچگی و همگرایی شرکت‌های کوچک و رقیب در دنیا مطرح است که از آن به عنوان خوشه‌های اقتصادی و صنعتی یاد می‌شود. وی با بیان اینکه هزینه تحقیق و توسعه، بازاریابی و بازارسازی گزاف است و شرکت‌های کوچک این هزینه را ندارند، ادامه داد: خوشه‌ها شرکت‌های کوچکی هستند که یک هلدینگ را ایجاد می‌کنند. برخلاف هلدینگ‌ها که یک شرکت مادر با تعدادی زیرمجموعه وجود دارد که فرزند متولد می‌کنند در خوشه‌های اقتصادی چندین فرزند یک هلدینگ ایجاد می‌کنند و مدیریت خوشه نیز عامل خوشه نامیده می‌شود. سلجوقی تاکید کرد: قدرت خوشه در برند است که فرصت خوبی را برای حضور در بازار فراهم می‌کند و باعث حضور پررنگ در بازارهای خارجی و داخلی می‌شود. رئیس شورای راهبری جویشگر بومی افزود: ایجاد خوشه در حوزه‌های مختلف امکان‌پذیر است؛ برای مثال ایران در حوزه شیرینی جات تنوع و قابلیت زیادی دارد و اکنون برندهای مختلفی در این حوزه فعالیت می‌کنند که اگر در قالب یک خوشه اقتصادی فعالیت داشتند فرصت بهتری برای حضور در بازارها را کسب می‌کردند. سلجوقی تصریح کرد: این موضوع به عنوان یک پیشنهاد به هیات دولت ارسال شده که خوشه‌های اقتصادی در بخش‌های مختلف فعال شوند و به عنوان پیشتاز در حوزه ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات خوشه خدمات و محتوای بومی فعال شده که یکی از محورهای این خوشه جویشگر بومی است. وی ادامه داد: در خوشه جویشگر بومی به دنبال اقتصادی کردن محتوا هستیم همچنان که گوگل دارای ۷۰ تا ۸۰ شرکت است. سلجوقی افزود: علی‌رغم اینکه ابتدا در نظر داشتیم خوشه جویشگر بومی ایجاد کنیم اما در اولین مشورت با فعالان حوزه جویشگر بهتر دیدیم که خوشه خدمات و محتوای بومی با زیرشاخه جویشگر بومی را تعریف کنیم. سلجوقی تصریح کرد: ایجاد خوشه‌های اقتصادی نیازمند سرمایه اجتماعی بالا است که به نظر می‌رسد این سرمایه اکنون در ایران وجود دارد. وی تاکید کرد: خوشه‌های اقتصادی نباید توسط دولت ایجاد شوند بلکه بخش خصوصی باید ایجادکننده خوشه باشند و دولت تنها باید نقش همگرایی، کاتالیزور و هماهنگی این خوشه‌ها را داشته باشد.
برنامه نویسانی که برای کاربران فروشگاه آنلاین App Store برنامه های مختلفی نوشته اند از سال ۲۰۰۸ تا به حال بیش از ۷۰ میلیارد دلار درآمد به جیب زده‌اند.
به گزارش فاوانیوز به نقل از خبرگزاری فارس به نقل از کامپیوترورلد، میزان بارگذاری انواع app از فروشگاه اپ استور در سال های اخیر ۷۰ درصد رشد کرده و این نشان می دهد که امپراطوری iOS روزهای خوبی را پشت سرمی گذارد. تنوع برنامه های موجود در اپ استور نیز روز به روز در حال افزایش است و البته بازی های موبایلی و برنامه های تفریحی در صدر برنامه های محبوب قرار دارند، اما برنامه های آموزشی، تعلیمی و … نیز در حال پیشرفت هستند. بر اساس اعلام اپل برنامه های مربوط به بهداشت و سلامت و تناسب اندام نیز در یک سال اخیر از رشد ۷۰ درصدی برخوردار بوده اند. اما سریع ترین رشد مربوط به برنامه های مربوط به ویرایش و تدوین عکس و ویدئو با رشد ۹۰ درصدی بوده است. اپل قصد دارد برنامه های تشویقی تازه ای را در سال جاری میلادی به منظور تشویق توسعه دهندگان به طراحی و عرضه app های جدید اجرا کند. گسترش دامنه ارائه خدمات پرداخت از طریق اپل پی از جمله برنامه های این شرکت در این زمینه است. در سال های اخیر خرید برنامه های پولی یا مبتنی بر خدمات درون پرداختی هم افزایش یافته است. اپل این رشد را در سال گذشته برابر با ۵۸ درصد اعلام کرده است.
وزیر صنعت و تجارت بین الملل مالزی، از توافق برای تشکیل ۶ گروه کاری میان دو کشور خبر داد و گفت : گروه های تجارت و صنعت ، بانکی و مالی ، انرژی و محیط زیست ، ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات، حمل و نقل، توریسم و بهداشت، برای نهایی کردن سند کمیسیون مشترک میان دو کشور تشکیل می شود.
به گزارش فاوانیوز به نقل از مرکز روابط عمومی و اطلاع رسانی وزارت ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات، مصطفی محمد وزیر صنعت و تجارت بین الملل مالزی در آیین امضای سند کمیسیون همکاری های مشترک ایران و مالزی با اشاره به اهمیت روابط دو کشور و سفر سال گذشته رییس جمهور ایران به مالزی، گفت: در سفر دکتر روحانی به مالزی ۳ زمینه اصلی تبادل هیات ها و مقامات عالی رتبه ، همکاری بانک های مرکزی دو کشور و افزایش ۲ برابری حجم تبادلات تجاری مورد توافق طرفین قرار گرفت . وی با اشاره به پتانسیل عظیم بازار ایران و عضویت مالزی در جمع کشورهای آسه آن ، تاکید کرد : در سال ۲۰۱۱ حجم مبادلات ایران و مالزی ۱٫۶ میلیارد دلار بوده است و می توان حجم مبادلات ۷۰۰ میلیون دلاری در حال حاضر را، به همان حجم مبادلات سال ۲۰۱۱ ، رساند. مصطفی محمد به مذاکرات انجام شده برای یادداشت تفاهم تجارت ترجیحی میان ایران و مالزی اشاره کرد و افزود: مذاکرات برای امضای موافقت نامه تجارت ترجیحی آغاز شده است . وی در ادامه از توافق برای تشکیل ۶ گروه کاری میان دو کشور خبر داد و گفت : گروه های تجارت و صنعت ، بانکی و مالی ، انرژی و محیط زیست، ارتباطات و فناوری اطلاعات، حمل و نقل و توریسم و بهداشت برای نهایی کردن سند کمیسیون مشترک بین دو کشور تشکیل می شود. وزیر صنعت و تجارت بین الملل مالزی ،صنعت نفت را یکی دیگر از زمینه های همکاری میان ایران و مالزی بیان کرد و افزود : شرکت های پتروناس و البخاری برای فعالیت در میدان های نفتی ایران مورد حمایت قرار دارند و در یکی از مناقصه ها شرکت مالزیایی پیشنهاد خود را برای حضور در میدان نفتی ارایه می کند. وی به حضور ۵ هزار دانشجو و ۱۵ هزار توریست به صورت سالانه در مالزی اشاره کرد و گفت : توافقاتی برای رفع مشکلات فعالیت شرکت هواپیمایی ایر آسیا انجام شده است. مصطفی محمد در زمینه صادرات روغن نخل(پالم) نیز تصریح کرد : امیدواریم افزایش صادرات روغن نخل را به ایران داشته باشیم که دفتر نمایندگی در تهران به همین منظور راه اندازی شده است . وی به شناساندن بیشتر محصولات ایرانی در بازار مالزی اشاره کرد و تاکید داشت : لازم است؛ ایران برنامه ای برای شناساندن بیشتر محصولات ایرانی، در مالزی داشته باشد.
Uber fired more than 20 people Wednesday. But that's far from the last of it.
Recode revealed Wednesday that Eric Alexander, the president of business in the Asia Pacific, had been let go, after reports emerged that he obtained medical records of a rape victim in India and shared them with several Uber executives. An Uber spokesperson confirmed the departure to Mashable but declined to comment further on the matter.
The termination wasn't due to the two separate third-party investigations that are ongoing at the ride-hailing giant in the wake of a former Uber engineer's blog post exposing sexual harassment and other toxic workplace issues.
Rather, it was the media, it seems, that led to the removal of the top executive, as New York Times reporter Mike Isaac noted.
This was known among executives at very top of the company for more than a year. and yet Alexander fired only after reporters come knocking.
— ಠ_ಠ (@MikeIsaac) June 7, 2017
That's one of the main problems with Uber. It appears that there's still a lack of moral compass at the company.
So who was Eric Alexander, and what happened? The report from Recode is damning—until you remember all the other crazy things that CEO Travis Kalanick, his righthand man Emil Michael, and others have gotten away with at the company. Uber is currently in the midst of a crisis over workplace culture after numerous reports revealed general toxicity and HR misconduct.
Recode's first sentence digests it well: "A top Uber executive obtained medical records of a woman who had been raped during a ride in India, according to multiple sources." The episode was from 2014, and only now has Alexander been terminated.
It wasn't just Alexander who obtained and knew about the digging up. Kalanick, Michael, and other executives knew about it. Kalanick and Michael even read the medical files, and the three of them began thinking that Ola, the company's largest competitor in India, was to blame.
According to Recode, Alexander's case had been among the 215 claims investigated by the law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling, but Alexander had not been among the more than 20 employees fired Tuesday. However, he was later terminated apparently after the company was contacted by media outlets.
The report has several people wondering how Kalanick is still in charge and how people at the company—13,000 in fact—still willingly work for him.
How do you fix the culture of a company when the boss is happy employing people who have dug up the medical records of rape victims?
— kadhim (＾ｰ^)ノ (@kadhimshubber) June 7, 2017
Kalanick did not have a statement, per an Uber spokesperson.
This isn't the first time a Recode report has contributed to someone's firing at Uber. Amit Singhal, formerly Uber's senior vice president of engineering, resigned in February after reports surfaced of him leaving his previous job at Google due to sexual harassment allegations.
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Joining us to provide a through-the-keyhole look into the world of sustainable investment will be Nishan Degnarian, author of Soul of the Sea. Alongwith a Mashable host, Degnarian will advise and educate on how best to invest around sustainable causes.
You don't threaten entire industries without making some enemies—or spending some time in court. That's a lesson Chet Kanojia has lived and learned.
A few years ago, Kanojia took on some of the biggest media companies in the U.S. with his streaming TV startup Aereo. Well before the recent explosion of internet-based TV bundles, Aereo became a tech phenom by streaming broadcast channels over the internet for a small monthly fee.
It had the feel of the next big thing. The company had customers, funding, and no immediate competitors. It was all going to plan—up until the Supreme Court stopped him. It's the kind of defeat that can cripple an entrepreneur.
Not Kanojia. Over tequila shots with colleagues on Aereo's final day, he was already hatching his next move.
"There's no obligation, but if you walk in we can't promise it's going to work," he told some of his remaining staffers, many of whom took him up on the offer.
Almost three years after that ruling, I'm riding an elevator with Kanojia up to a loft in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He's going to show me a piece of that technology Kanojia teased over tequila shots.
The elevator arrives, and we walk into a penthouse apartment, where a white triangle with a screen sits on a window sill.
"This is part of Starry," he said.
Starry is Kanojia's new venture, a way to provide cheap, wireless internet access to people's homes. Most people only have one choice for high-speed internet, a choke point that causes any number of issues and is central to the ongoing net neutrality debate.
This device is an internet router, but it's just the tip of a much larger, technology-sophisticated system that includes various pieces of equipment set up across a city to create super-fast, wireless access. For now, Starry Internet is only running as a beta test in the greater Boston area. The company is on track to launch in several additional cities by the end of this year.
If Starry works, it could mean big things for the internet, not just from a business perspective.
It's a big if, the kind Kanojia deals in.
"What we're doing and what other people will do it's not only critical, it's necessary," Kanojia said.
'All roads lead to India'
Kanojia, 47, is a disruptor at a time when "disruptor" is thrown around by Silicon Valley poseurs with a new food delivery app.
He immigrated from India in 1991 and has expertise in mechanical engineering, computer systems engineering, and the telecommunications industry. He gained notoriety for Aereo, which was well on its way to irrevocably changing the TV business. Prior to that, he had run Navic Networks, which developed data-collection technology for cable companies. He sold that startup to Microsoft in 2008 reportedly for $250 million.
"Engineering, it’s like magical... It’s so abstract that you either get totally intimidated, or you think, 'How does it work?'"
Like many of tech's most impactful entrepreneurs, his story started outside the United States. He was born in Bhopal, India. Bhopal is known for being the site of one of the worst industrial accidents in human history. Thousands of people died in 1984 after a nearby pesticide plant leaked toxic gas.
He gravitated to engineering from a young age. He also saw what it meant to have gatekeepers.
When he was growing up in India, young people took one national exam that determined the level of university they could attend. That single exam set children like Kanojia on one path with little ability to veer from it.
"All roads lead to India. Growing up in India there’s a hierarchy because there's so much competition, there's not a lot of opportunity," he said. "If you were an engineer or a doctor, you had a path forward. Everybody else, you had to figure it out."
That experience of fighting for a spot and then being unable to veer from it informed Kanojia's views on technology and business. You can be successful, sure, but within the system. Entrepreneurship was, for the part, absent, meaning the status quo was never challenged.
Kanojia now relishes that opportunity. Both Aereo and now Starry have been squarely aimed at bringing change to markets in which big companies held outsized power.
Starry Point placed on a rooftop in Somerville, Massachusetts.
"Unchecked corporate interests can do a lot of damage, and there are new age corporate interests that tend to be more 'Do no evil,'" Kanojia said.
"To me, technology it allows you to transform things, and that’s the coolest part about it all. It changes everything," he added.
Aereo's rise and fall
Starting in 2012, Aereo looked like a winner. Kanojia raised almost $100 million for the company, which grew quickly. He had the backing of media mogul Barry Diller.
FirstMark Capital was one of Aereo's investors. Amish Jani, managing director of the firm, had met Kanojia in early 2001 back when he was running Navic. The company had raised some early-stage capital, not that anyone could tell. Jani recalled the first meeting inside Navic's second offices, a tight-packed room, stacked with boxes and desks side by side.
"What you got the sense immediately was someone who is very intelligent about technology and products and how they can be leveraged to disrupt an industry," Jani said.
"You saw someone who was very hard-working, and you saw someone who was very gritty about it. This was right around the bubble. Other companies had fancy stuff left and right. [Navic employees] were passionately focused on a mission," he continued.
Aereo, the project he started after leaving Microsoft in 2010, worked by operating clusters of tiny antennas that streamed broadcast TV to users. It was a hack, but one that seemed to have found a legal loophole around the rules against rebroadcasting over-the-air TV.
Various courts agreed. The broadcasters sued Aereo and lost just about every time until the Supreme Court heard the case. The judges ruled 6-3 that Aereo had exploited a loophole to get around copyright law.
But Aereo wasn't a failure—to Kanojia and to investors. Jani put Aereo on the list of historical investments for his biography. Rather than an acquisition or a public listing below Aereo, it reads: U.S. Supreme Court.
"We built a lot of great momentum and Chet single-handedly accelerated the movement of TV anywhere," Jani said. "Now every person expects to see a live-stream of their favorite game on their device, no matter where they are. [Aereo] was not a failure. It was masterful execution."
"Was" being the operative word there. Aereo's execution was too masterful. A Supreme Court ruling and a few tequila shots later, Starry became the new gig.
Enter Starry
Kanojia already had a backup plan—and this one involved a loophole as well, though with far fewer legal issues.
It is very expensive to build new internet infrastructure, particularly the "last mile," which refers to the connections used by normal consumers. Most Americans have no more than one option here. Kanojia recognized this as a problem for Aereo, as it is for every other tech company that operates on the internet. For all the wide range of choices consumers have for services on the internet, it's all coming down one pipe. And that meant a gatekeeper—the kind that Kanojia doesn't particularly like.
So he, along with his business partner Joe Lipowski, who serves as Starry's chief technology officer, started thinking about how to fix that.
"If Aereo succeeded, Aereo was going to need it. If Aereo failed, we were going to need new gigs," Kanojia said.
Starry's main product is its router. It looks like Google Home and Eve from Pixar's Wall-E had a baby. Which is to say, it looks like something I wouldn't mind having on my window sill. But why would I need a router this fancy?
Well, the simple answer was it provides fast, reliable, in-home WiFi.
In the apartment, Kanojia fired up "Stranger Things" on Netflix. It's a controlled demo, but it is fast. His experience with Aereo taught him the risks that a company like Netflix faces (or at least faced when it wasn't quite as powerful as it is now) in trying to stream video.
If only a few companies control the pipes, you're going to have problems. This is the essence of the net neutrality debate.
"If you don’t have net neutrality, how does Netflix continue to make the investment it needs to make?" Kanojia said. "When it doesn’t consider the cost to the consumer, the power will be in two to three companies."
The 10-year plan (as of this moment)
Unlike Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Kanojia isn't following a 10-year plan.
"The one certainty in a 10-year plan is in three months, it'll change," Kanojia said with a smile when asked about long-term strategy.
"If there is a 10-year plan, it's find and hire the best," Lipowski said.
Kanojia said he doesn't have a hard time recruiting for his new venture.
A Starry employee working at the company's offices in Downtown Crossing.
Image: kerry flynn/mashable
That's one reason why Starry's operations are based in Boston, where nearby Harvard and MIT students are apparently eager to solve challenging problems in the engineering industries, not just build the next Facebook.
"I think a lot of us now are utterly spoiled because each project is more complex and more difficult and more impactful," Kanojia said.
Kanojia has a lot of work to do. As CEO, his time is split between calls with investors (Starry raised $30 million in a Series B last year, totaling $63 million in funding), hiring, operations, design, sales, and new tech. Like many entrepreneurs, he's rarely off.
The majority of Starry's 100 employees do not come from traditional backgrounds in the telecommunications industry. They have some people who worked in defense and other software engineers who have spent most of their past writing mobile apps.
"It's so fun to sit in this mix because they don’t speak each other’s language. It forces them to build a solid API across people," Kanojia said, using the tech jargon of API, application program interface, as a metaphor for creating human relationships.
Chet Kanojia on a phone call with investors while standing next to Starry Beam, the network node, in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Image: KERRY FLYNN/MASHABLE
Starry is still in early phrases, but it does have a product in the marketplace. An undisclosed number of Starry Stations have been installed across the country. Starry Internet is live as a beta service in Boston. The station itself is pretty, and that's part of the selling point.
The biggest question for Starry remains the core technology. It relies on something called "millimeter wave band active phased array" to provide internet access over the air. It's a technology that others have tried before but failed to make into something ready for consumers.
Kanojia and Starry say they have succeeded where others failed. The company is promising 200 megabit per second speed for $50 per month.
Next up for Starry is perfecting the technology and then, obviously, expanding to markets.
"We'll make mistakes," Virginia Lam, Starry's communications chief, said.
Land of the free home of the...buffering... brave.
U.S. mobile speeds lag behind those found in other developed countries, according to a new report from internet network Akamai.
The good news, however, is that U.S. broadband internet speeds continue to improve, up 22 percent compared to the same time last year. That growth puts the country into the top 10 fastest average speeds at 18.7 megabits per second.
Akamai published the findings in its "State of the internet" report for the first quarter of 2017.
Americans enjoyed an average of 10.7 megabits per second (Mbps). That's not terrible, necessarily, but is far slower than countries like the United Kingdom (a blazing 26 Mbps) and Germany (24.1 Mbps).
Of the 74 countries in the study, the U.S. came in 32nd, just behind Estonia but ahead of Luxembourg. On the upside, the U.S. came in first in North and South America.
The chart below shows where the U.S. stacks up against other big countries.
The U.S. is above the global average of 7.2 Mbps. The entire globe is getting faster, as that average is 15 percent faster than it was last year.
Africa remains the slowest continent when it comes to mobile speed, though mobile phone adoption has been strong.
Beyond mobile, the U.S. has strides in bringing faster internet to more Americans.
The U.S. is now for the first time in Akamai's top 10 in terms of broadband speed. Its growth over the past year was only bested by Singapore.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke at Harvard's commencement in May 2017.
Image: facebook/mark zuckerberg
By Kerry Flynn
Facebook is turning into more and more of a Town Hall.
The social network introduced three features Wednesday that are meant to help elected officials better connect with their constituents and vice-versa. The products provide a way for politicians to identify local constituents and help identify the news stories affecting their district.
It’s just the latest round of civic engagement features Facebook has added over the last few months. Facebook introduced Town Hall in March to help people discover their local politicians and contacting them privately. Another feature last month added a button to contact local representatives within Facebook posts.
These products are squarely in line with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s big mission for his company this year. No longer is Facebook’s tagline just about “connecting the world." Facebook is now about building community. Indeed, Zuckerberg’s 6,000-world “manifesto” released earlier this year centered on community, as did his speech at Harvard’s commencement in May.
“Our goal is to help people build the communities they want by making it easier for them to engage and have a voice in government – on a daily basis, not just Election Day," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement about the updates.
One of the new features is constituent badges. Facebook users can now opt-in to a tag that will identify themselves as living in an elected official's district if they interact with anything shared by that local official.
Facebook users will be prompted to turn it on if they like, comment, or share a post from their elected official, as long as they identified those officials within Town Hall. Users can also turn it on within the Town Hall page.
When this option is on, all future comments on an identified representatives' posts will show this constituent badge.
Beyond badges, Facebook is adding constituent insights, where people can more easily discover news stories that affect their district. This feature is available to constituents as well as elected officials so that these officials can see what stories are buzzing in their district.
These insights are all automated, so there are no humans curating what news stories to show.
For elected officials, this feature is available in the Page Insights section of their Facebook Page. Page administrations will see a horizontal scroll of popular stories shared in their district.
For constituents, they can see the trending stories in a Community Tab on the elected official's Facebook Page.
Facebook is also introducing district targeting, where elected officials can choose for their posts to only appear in the News Feeds of people who are likely to be their constituents. They can also run polls to this same group of people.
When it comes to connecting with local politicians, Zuckerberg is doing his fair share. His New Years Resolution is to visit every state in America, where he is also connecting with politicians IRL. For example, he met Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana and live-streamed their conversation with Facebook Live.
Zuckerberg is also hosting Facebook’s first-ever Communities Summit later this month, where hundreds of administrators of Facebook Groups are invited.
"For the past decade, Facebook has been focused on making the world more open and connected — and we're always going to keep doing that. But now it's clear we have to do more. We also need to bring people closer together and build common understanding," Zuckerberg wrote Tuesday in a Facebook post about the Communities Summit.
