Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) on Friday announced she would sponsor her chamber's effort to penalize countries that fail to crack down on local cyber criminals.
The legislation -- introduced in the upper chamber last week by Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) -- would charge federal officials with the responsibility of working with "countries of cyber concern" to develop security plans of action.
Ultimately, those states that failed to set and meet cybersecurity benchmarks would risk cuts to their U.S. export dollars, foreign-direct investment funds and trade assistance grants, according to the bill.
The effort arrives months after series of high-profile cyberattacks targeted countless U.S. businesses, including Google.
“Cybersecurity is a key tool in our national security infrastructure,” Clarke said in a statement last week. “Cyberspace has no borders or boundaries."
"The international community must go after cyber criminals wherever they may be, or our American businesses and consumers will continue to suffer," she added.
The United States "stands to surrender its global lead" in nanotechnology research, unless federal officials and lawmakers do more to encourage investment, a report delivered to President Barack Obama found.
Currently, the United States is at the front of the pack, bolstered by an 18 percent increase in public and private investments in nanotechnology between 2003 and 2008, according to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which released the report last week.
But countries like China and South Korea, as well as the European Union, are now posting strong gains in the nanotechnology field, researchers found. While the United States still holds more nanotechnology patents than any other country, China outpaced American researchers last year in its number of patent applications, according to the report.
Consequently, PCAST warns that the United States' lead in the industry remains "threatened," and it recommends federal officials take quick, decisive action to spur growth in the field.
Well, according to a video Udall and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) made to help attract a new, ultra-high speed internet test project to a New Mexico town, that's the case.
Over 600 local governments have made overtures to Google to put its new "Fiber" service in their community. The deadline to submit an application is Friday, and some have gotten quite creative.
The lawmakers made a video to win the project for Farmington, N.M. in response to Sen. Al Franken's (D-Minn.) effort to win the service for Duluth, Minn.
In the video, Udall and Lujan are video chatting. To show how slow the internet is in Farmington, the messages are deliberately garbled in a way to get a rise out of viewers.
"Al Franken was funny, though. His old sketches are good and so are his jokes," asks Udall.
"Al Franken...is old...and so are his jokes," Lujan hears.
"Uh, Tom? My internet connection is kind of slow out here in Farmington, what was that?" the freshman congressman replies.
"Oh, I'm unsure revenge has to be our strategy. What choices are out there?" Udall later says.
Google will soon begin reviewing the more than 600 applications that local governments have sent the search company since it announced it plans to launch Google Fiber -- its ultra high-speed Internet test project.
The deadline to submit information to Google is still hours away. But a company executive on Friday said Google would begin narrowing down those applications "over the coming months," eventually "conducting site visits, meeting with local officials and consulting with third party organizations."
Google's ultimate goal is to announce its "target community or communities" for the broadband testbed "by the end of the year."
"Of course, we're not going to be able to build in every interested community — our plan is to reach a total of at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people with this experiment," the company noted on its blog. "Wherever we decide to build, we hope to learn lessons that will help improve Internet access everywhere."
Cities and locales began vying for Google's attention almost immediately after company executives announced its Fiber project last month.
Google primarily sees its proposed testbed network as a way to encourage universal broadband adoption, increase competition and improve connection speeds. But local communities regard the project as a possible jobs boon, hoping that tech innovation in their backyards can better their economies and attract new businesses. Read more...
Smartphones, including the BlackBerry, Droid and iPhone, could overtake more common "feature" phones in popularity and penetration as early as 2011, according to a new Nielsen analysis.
Already, about 21 percent of wireless subscribers use smartphones to connect with their friends, send co-workers e-mail and browse the Web while on the go, according to the survey. However, that's nearly double the smartphone industry's penetration rate at the end of 2008, Nielsen points out.
Consequently, Nielsen researchers on Friday noted that current trends peg the third quarter of 2011 as the likely time when smartphones surpass feature phones as the most commonly used mobile device in the United States.
For the most part, Nielsen attributes the shift to a "groundswell" of new smartphone devices, an "explosion" in new applications for them and a significant decrease in the prices of those phones and carriers' data plans.
Smartphone users in the past six months have also seemed more loyal to both their mobile phone products and their carriers, according to the survey.
Consequently, Nielsen researchers on Friday noted that current trends peg the third quarter of 2011 as the likely time when smartphones surpass feature phones as the most commonly used mobile device in the United States. 
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