Happy Anniversary, Recovery Act!

They grow up so fast…it seems like only yesterday that Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In fact, it was not yesterday, but rather February 13, 2009. Which makes today the nine month anniversary! If you and your spouse had been so turned on by the stimulus that you conceived, you would be having a baby today.

What I remember most about that day on February 13 was everyone in the region running around with their hair on fire (figuratively) talking about how all the money was going to be allocated immediately and that we were going to miss out on it unless we acted fast. For better and for worse, that didn’t happen, and there are actually a number of major opportunities still open. On this happy day, here are a few to keep an eye on (or apply for!):

Broadband? More Like Slow, Rural Band!

One of the main complaints during the ARRA Barriers meeting in DC was around the Recovery Act grants for broadband, the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program . A lot of folks were really hoping that these dollars would be focused on implementing truly high speed broadband in some of our most dense and high tech areas. Instead, it’s much more about laying basic copper to “underserved areas,” particularly rural areas. And the definitions of “high speed” are more AOL than cloud computing. The good news is that

Bing – Not just your favorite type of cherry

Is anyone using Bing? I am still a giant fan of Google in general, but have been annoyed with my search results as of late, so I’m going to give Bing a try. So far it was super handy (and better than farecast or kayak) in looking at hotel room pricing in Hawaii. The search engine actually confirms whether or not you are getting  a deal based on past hotel room rates. What’s not to love there?

I’m curious as to whether or not other people are using it and what they’ve found it useful for, send your comments in! www.bing.com

Not Nearly as Good as We Think We Are

Eric has an interesting post on the stimulus bill’s programs to beef up broadband adoption in our country.  It’s also worth noting that in addition to penetration the U.S. lags behind in broadband speeds.

Probably hard to read the graph but we rank 9th. Japan is number one followed by Finland, Sweden and Korea.

Broadband is not the only technology we’re lagging in. We’re way behind in cell phone technology too.  This world we live in is not your father’s oldsmobile (speaking of another technology–cars–that we’re behind in), there’s lots of other countries doing interesting things. Let’s learn from and work with them.

Something Important Was Said on Friday!

At the most recent Prosperity Partnership Regional ARRA Coordination meeting, we had a speaker from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to talk about their Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. This is the $4.7 billion that the stimulus package laid out to help beef up broadband adoption in our country, and likely the first down payment in a larger national broadband strategy.

Anyway, the speaker used one of my favorite grad school words – leveraging – when talking about how they’re going to judge applications for broadband stimulus dollars. As in, they’re actually going to see what other ARRA dollars are being used in the vicinity and how this project connects to those. He mentioned a couple of examples: some obvious, like relationship to Health IT investments, but some really interesting, like relationship to HUD investments in low income housing projects. This is sort of a no-brainer, since low-income people fit into that “unserved/underserved” criteria that they’re talking about for BTOP, but it’s something I’d never heard before and potentially a huge driver of the collaborative coordination process that we and other regions are leading.

Obvious caveat: the regs aren’t out yet for these dollars so we’ll see how much that actually makes it into the Notice of Funds Availability. But let’s see what we can do now on the chance that it is indeed true!

That Makes Me Feel Recovered Already!

You always hear folks talking about how Washington is on its own economic cycle…usually six months later going down and six months later coming back up. And the down cycle part seemed to be relatively accurate this time around. But some people think that we’re going to actually be one of the first back out!

Predicting economic cycles is about 75% guesswork, so I’m not sure I’m going to go put all my money in Boeing and Microsoft stock this afternoon, but I think what’s interesting about these predictions are some of the underlying assumptions in them. Essentially, Moody’s Economy.com thinks we have two things going for us: a housing market that hasn’t taken as much of a hit as other places and a great tech sector (how great is it?) which they think will lead the recovery.

Er, Uh, That’s Cool

Earlier this week Microsoft showcased its new you don’t need a console, eye-popping technological add-on to the Xbox.  Dubbed Natal, the accessory uses cameras and sensors to translate your movements to the television so you don’t need a console or joystick to play video games or engage in other activities. International is my beat in these Prosperity Partnership waters so why do I dip my oars into this story? Well, three reasons.

First, we should remember a big chunk of the Xbox market is overseas. The Washington Interactive Network informs us that the domestic market for video games is expected to grow from 9 billion in 2006 to 12.5 billion in 2011 but the global market is expected to jump from 31.6 billion in 2006 and to $48.9 billion in 2011.

Second, this reminded me of flying to Germany a few months ago. The guy sitting next to me worked for Microsoft and was on his way to India. He was there on a three year assignment and told me of his how his kids stayed in touch with friends back home by playing Xbox online and talking online while they played. Our region’s high technology companies increasingly connect us across the globe.

Third, this video demonstrating the new technology is just too cool not to post whether it’s international or not.

Redmond- the Video Game Capital of the World

With the Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360 leading the Sony PS3 in holiday sales, it looks like Redmond is fast becoming the video game capital of the world.

Now if Sony would only move their video game headquarters to Washington State (preferably to King, Pierce, Snohomish or Kitsap counties) they might be able to get back in the game- oh and they should look at their pricing strategy.

Blogging from Leadershp Conference #2 – Global Health

The Conference topic this year is Global Health.  As in, how can we capitalize on the list of great things going on in our region, from Gates, to PATH, to SBRI, to of course UW and WSU?

BTW, if you don’t know it, Seattle is rapidly becoming the center of Global Health on worldwide scale.  This has all grown organically, some would say “by accident.”  But I always think when someone says that it just means that they weren’t the ones that planned it.  I say it grew up because talented people executed their vision.  And because we have UWMC and the Gates Foundation.

So, recognizing that it is hard to say what should be done when we haven’t wrapped up the preceedings yet, my vote goes to a little planning and a lot of doing. 

Interacting with Interactive media

Two things ended up on my computer screen this morning re: our growing interactive media industry. The first was an article in today’s Seattle Times about Photosynth, a new program from Microsoft that lets you combine multiple photos into a single 360 degree, 3-D rendering called a ’synth’. According to the Times article, Photosynth is:

software that arranges photo sets in their real-world, 3-D context and allows people to navigate smoothly around the canals of Venice, for example, or zoom in to read the serial numbers on the space shuttle’s heat shields.

Micorosft says you can create a synth with as few as 10 photos or up to 300. It takes about 5 minutes to create one using a moderately powerful computer; big synths take a few hours. To show how far the technology has come: the Times reports that two years ago, creating a big synth would’ve taken a cluster of computers a day and a half.

This is an excellent illustration of our region’s abilities when it comes to Interactive Media, a subset of the IT industry. It’s been said that the interactive media industry, of which video games are a large part, is bigger