I remember moving to the U.S. in 1993 exactly because it appeared to be a country certain the glass was half full. Fast forward, 17 years later, things seemed to have changed along the way – it is as if a growing lack of self confidence started replacing this country’s long-held trust in the power of risk-taking and go-getter success.

Where am I going with this you ask?

No, I won’t discuss the state of national health care here. Nor is this the place to ponder over where exactly US education stands, or whether immigration reform is getting a fair shake.

But the telco guy in me can’t help but notice — even broadband is getting the evil eye these days.
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“What we are seeing in the U.S. today in terms of smartphone penetration, 3G data, nobody else is seeing in the rest of the planet,” said Ralph de la Vega of AT&T during a conference call the other day.

“The amount of growth and data that we are seeing in wireless data is unprecedented,” he added.

As the long-standing negative buzz on AT&T’s network has peaked over the past few weeks (due in part to a recent Consumer Reports article and an aggressive advertising campaign from Verizon), AT&T has shifted from the somewhat defiant and dismissive stance taken earlier this year (when such reports were characterized as “anecdotal feedback” and “sweeping generalizations”) to a more plaintive tone - as demonstrated above.

Whether or not it’s good long-term policy for any company to publicly complain about how difficult it is for them to provide the service they’re being paid to provide is open for discussion - particularly when that company’s current windfall success is almost entirely dependent upon a soon-to-expire exclusive partnership with another company (i.e. Apple).

In any event, while the technical challenges AT&T faces may be very real, I would be more receptive to the recent “data networks are hard” excuses coming out of the company if it were able to a better job of getting even voice coverage up to par in the NYC area - above is a screen shot from my iPhone, taken from my home office.  My apartment (the blue dot) is located within 2 miles of downtown Manhattan - not exactly the middle of nowhere.  Yet, I get almost zero bars - and an unusable voice connection.

In AT&T’s defense, the company has recently launched an iPhone app to allow users to send the company location-specific reports of poor service (of course, in cases of no coverage you’d have to put the iPhone on an available wireless network for the app to function).

So that’s what I’ve done - I’ve installed the app, sent in my report, and am waiting  to see if my voice (let alone data) service improves.

In the meantime, while at my desk at home, it would appear I own an expensive  iTouch.

The keynote event at the Future of Television East conference here in New York a few weeks ago was a conversation with Paula Kerger, President & CEO of PBS.  During the discussion, the subject of the iPhone NPR app came up as a model of  what digital distribution of PBS content could someday look like.

Although the tremendously successful  BBC iPlayer might have been a more apt example, I was happy nonetheless to hear one of my favorite iPhone apps getting some recognition.

Of course, the ability of internet radio to provide access to any station regardless of the geographical limitations of its over-the-air broadcast range were touted -  Kerger, as it happens, enjoys listening to Maine public radio (where she has a summer home) while traveling.  However, what was left unsaid about the NPR iPhone app was what I feel is its most notable feature:  the “Programs” section, a comprehensive implementation of all available on-demand streams organized by program rather than station.  Not only that, but news shows such as “All Things Considered” are broken down by individual segments, so one can actually browse within the show (of course, for a more passive experience you can still play all segments sequentially via a playlist).

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Turns out, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend catching up on my subscription to The Online Reporter.

As I am going through weeks and weeks of back-issues of the popular Internet and CE digest, I catch myself repeatedly noticing the growing number of consumer software start-ups with particularly short and vowel-rich companies names.

Think Google, Hulu, Lala, Vudu, and Veoh. Oh, and then there’s Rollyo, Slooh, and Bebo, of course. And that’s only the beginning.

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No! Not Wayne’s World. Nor The World According to Garp. Instead, your and my world. And this time according to either Thomas L. Friedman, Professor Eli Noam, or Facebook - depending on how you choose to see it.

If you ask long-time New York Times op-ed writer Thomas Friedman, the world is flat, implying that digital communications increasingly ensures everyone everywhere has access to the same growing pool of World Wide Web-provided information. This levels the playing field for all of us, he says, to impact the plethora of socio- and economic-political issues — no matter where and who we are on this globe.

This sounds promising, I thought, if it wasn’t for an off-the-cuff conversation I had with Columbia Business School Professor Eli Noam, about a year past Friedman’s book published.

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Last week, I watched a great technology-related segment on The Daily Show.  The subject was flash trading - the algorithm-based automated trading of securities executed by high-performance computers on high-performance networks at certain exchanges - done at an extremely fast pace.

It’s not something those involved want to make too much noise about, but countless such trades are being fired off by machines continually throughout the trading day - and it’s on the rise.  Often, these are trades you or I might be interested in making - but flash trades execute just a few crucial milliseconds before ours would, often adversely affecting the prices we get in (or out) at.  Reported by a cow suit-wearing Samantha Bee (’cash cow’, get it?), last week’s segment on flash trading was The Daily Show at it’s finest: intelligent coverage of an otherwise under-reported issue, all wrapped in a layer of funny.

It got me thinking about technology …and gaming the system.

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ICANN might be the most important non-profit organization you’ve never heard of.  Based in nondescript office building just off Lincoln Boulevard in the Marina del Rey section of Los Angeles, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is charged with (among other things) mapping human-readable domain names to internet IP addresses   Although technically a sovereign organization, historically ICANN has been under the control of the Dept. of Commerce of the United States, the country that invented the plumbing for - and tacitly claims ownership of - the internet.

Until now.

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I’m now at week 3 of my 7 week contract project here in Berlin.   I’ve gotten used to my German keyboard layout, I’ve learned not to go for irony when making jokes, and with the help (and patience) of some friends here, I’m even building up my Deutsche vocabulary, however slowly (I’ve decided to ignore the various grammatical cases and noun genders – and the resulting 16 different situations affecting how one says the word ‘the’ - for now).

Anyway, over the past few weeks I’ve had ample opportunity to pick up on some of the differences differences between how Germans and Americans approach technology, both in and outside of the workplace…

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Not that I want to harp much longer on my apparent screaming media fascination but hey, the past week has provided ample sound bites to back up my tongue-in-cheek theory.

You remember? South Carolina Republican House rep Joe Wilson hackles the US president during a major public speech, tennis-great Serena Williams looses it on the court, and rapper-extraordinaire Kanye West opts to rudely interrupt a major video awards show snatching the micro in the middle of a peer’s acceptance speech.

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Come to think of it, here’s a couple additional thoughts on my previous screaming media missive.

Both a recent Variety and Utne Reader article got me thinking again about this post-Walter Conkrite, post-Don Hewitt era of 24-hour noise channels.

In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way, I believe my screaming media concept is indeed a deserving (albeit absolutely made up) label, as “yell TV” continues to spread far beyond its original cable roots.

First off there’s satellite TV of course, plus, increasingly, telecom-powered “broadband” IPTV. Other ways TV programming is being delivered to you and me these days includes an ever-growing number of mobile video services, media receivers, gaming consoles and Internet-connected TVs.

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