News Center

FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel on the Innovation Economy

Posted on by CALinnovates

There are few people better equipped to talk about innovation and technology than FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. She is a frequent visitor to Silicon Valley, which helps inform her understanding of the Valley’s point of view.

So it was a real honor for CALinnovates to sit down with Commissioner Rosenworcel and discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the innovation economy. From the complexity of spectrum policy to what Washington DC needs to learn from Silicon Valley, Rosenworcel is an important voice for the tech community.

Gary Shapiro: War on Innovation?

Posted on by CALinnovates

There are few people more bullish about the innovation economy than Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association. Indeed, Shapiro is so enthusiastic about the sharing economy that he compares them with American revolutionaries in their commitment to improving the status-quo.

And the regulators who want to stifle sharing networks like Uber and Airbnb, Shapiro says, are akin to the 18th century British government who sought to control their North American colony. It’s a typically forthright position from the always entertaining Shapiro whose take on innovation is itself innovative.

A Mobile Health Innovation That Could Help Stop Ebola

Posted on by Mike Montgomery

Developing countries don’t have the high-tech equipment needed to quickly diagnose the disease, but they do have millions of cellphones. One UCLA professor has a way to turn those phones into diagnostic centers.

There are 6.8 billion cellphone subscriptions in the world. Even when you consider that some people have more than one subscription, that means that an incredibly high percentage of the world’s 7 billion people now have a mobile phone.

Although most of us use our phones for things like texting, taking photos and playing games (in addition to the occasional phone call), there’s a movement out there to harness the power of that giant community of cellphone users to help people living in the poorest countries on Earth.

Dr. Aydogan Ozcan is a member of that movement. The UCLA engineering professor is turning mobile phones into diagnostic centers that can be used thousands of miles away from labs with expensive hospital equipment.

Ozcan has created software and hardware that turn cellphones into microscopes and diagnostic machines. With the addition of a 3D-printed microscope, a field worker in Africa can quickly scan the blood of an HIV patient to see how the virus is reacting to medicine. Workers can take water samples to test for E. coli in a stream or well, and epidemiologists can connect data points to quickly see where diseases are spreading.

Read more on The Huffington Post

Open Data Beyond the Big City

Posted on by Mike Montgomery

by Mark Headd

Technical Evangelist, Accela Software

[If] one of the virtues of our approach to democracy in this country is that we have lots of governments below the federal level to act as “laboratories of democracy” then we’re missing an opportunity here. If we can get more small cities to embrace open data, we can encourage more experimentation. We can evaluate the kinds of data that these cities release and what people do with it. We can learn more about what works — and what doesn’t.

Read more in PBS MediaShift

How the Ferguson Protests Convinced Me We Don’t Need Cell Phone Kill Switches

Posted on by Mike Montgomery

California Governor Jerry Brown just signed a bill that requires all smartphones sold in California to come with mandatory “kill switches.” A few weeks ago, I thought the bill was a seemingly harmless piece of legislation that might decrease the number of smartphones stolen every year. I even wrote a blog post in support of the bill. I’ve since changed my mind.

The events in Ferguson, Mo. that followed the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown made me rethink my view.

Read the rest of the story HERE

Allow Municipalities the Chance to Build Broadband Networks

Posted on by Mike Montgomery

After all, who better to know what a community needs than a local government? If elected officials recognize a need for better broadband access in their state, shouldn’t voters have the final say as to who gets to build and maintain its broadband networks?

Every corner of the country deserves access to high-speed Internet.

Read more on The Huffington Post

 

Why tech will back S.F. minimum-wage hike

Posted on by CALinnovates

by Mike Montgomery

Will the Bay Area’s tech royalty back a big boost to the minimum wage in San Francisco? They should. And they will — once they see the numbers.

Let me explain. Until recently, the region’s tech stars have been able to portray themselves as the antithesis of the Wall Street folks, New Yorkers who tricked widows and orphans into taking out mortgages they couldn’t afford. Those were the greedy guys. And the bitter dysfunction in Washington, D.C.? That’s a town run by partisan ideologues.

San Francisco, meanwhile, is packed with entrepreneurs and engineers — problem-solving do-gooders who definitely pay attention to the numbers.

Read more in The San Francisco Examiner