U.S. Broadband Still Lagging: 2009 Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States

A bit ironic that the latest – third annual – report from the Communication Workers of America Union is a whopping 20 megabites (could take an hour to download via a dialup connection). I’ve embedded the full PDF at the bottom of this post.

U.S. connection speeds have not improved significantly in the past year, according to the Union’s press release. The results of nearly 413,000 real-time Internet connection speed tests (conducted using widgets exactly like the one below) show that the United States continues to lag behind other countries for average upload and download speeds.


The average download speed of U.S. Internet connections is 5.1 megabits per second, significantly below the averages of countries like South Korea (20.1 mbps), Japan (16 mbps) and Sweden (12.7 mbps).

See my other blog posts on this issue here.

What speed are you getting? Is upload speed anywhere near download speed?



2009 Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States

Amazon to Acquire Zappos

Internet giant Amazon.com will acquire Zappos.com in a deal worth more than $800 million, according to an official announcement today. Amazon Buys Zappos for $850 millionAfter growing into an e-commerce behemoth with a legendary customer service record, it comes as little surprise that Zappos was acquired by the likes of Amazon. There really is no better match when it comes to e-commerce, product, service, and technology.

This deal confirms the groudbreaking success that Zappos achieved through widely publicized corporate policies, happy employees, and impeccable customer service which often includes free next day shipping, and always a 365-days-a-year free-return-shipping guarantee. Amazon clearly gains from Zappos ability to literally obsess over customers, be inventive, and think long term (while growing year over year since being founded in June 1999.

Zappos will receive $807 million worth of Amazon stock and $40 million in cash as part of the deal. The purchase price could value as much as $920 million, assuming the deal is for 10 million shares (shares of AMZN opened today at $88.54), according to Sarah Lacy at Techcrunch.

The news comes on the eve of Amazon’s Q2 earnings call and on the heels of heated rumors of an Amazon / Netflix deal.

Huge story here. Watch the video below from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, read the blog post by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and read the official Лаптоп Магазин р лаптопpress release. And let’s discuss!

VIDEO: Citizen Journalism & Social Media Panel at Mahalo 7/13/09

I was honored to be on a panel this Monday with David Sarno (LA Times), Chris Tolles (Topix) and Christina Gagnier (Politech) discussing Citizen Journalism. Thanks to Geoff Brown and Social media Club LA for hooking it up and Alexia Tsotsis (LA Weekly) for moderating!

Full recap at the SCMLA site here.

Thanks to Tyler and Mahalo for hosting and finally thanks to Efren and Techzulu for shooting this video:

Why Call it ‘Breaking’ or ‘Developing’ When it’s Not?

Call me easily perturbed by 24-hour news media shock lingo, but CNN and CNN.com can’t seem to post a story without having an alarming red bar over or under it, indicating either developing or breaking story.

Case in point, when Tiger Woods misses the cut at the British Open it is NOT a developing story. It IS a story and it may warrant being highlighted but there’s no reason to tease readers with the “developing” tag. It happened.

See CNN.com‘s current feature at left (as of 1:55pm PT, 7/17/09), along with my recommendation at right.

 

tiger woods misses cut at british open

 

Posted via web from Andy Sternberg’s posterous