twenty years of bandwidth prices and demand
Some public data on prices and demand for U.S. interstate bandwidth in use from 1990 to 2009 are now conveniently available on the web. The source data, which are also freely available, are interstate access price-cap tariff filings made publicly at the FCC. Derived datasets compile demand and prices for trunking and special access interstate [...]
Tagged: telcos
reasoning about symbolic choices
Parents usually consider carefully and at length what name to give to their new new-born children. Recent research shows that given names that increase faster in popularity also decrease faster in popularity. According to survey evidence, parents reason that names that are rapidly increasing in popularity are less likely to have enduring appeal. Hence parents [...]
Tagged: given names
COB-36: classical beauty
Nothing is more attractive than the grandeur that was Roman bureaucracy. Reading through the Roman Notitia Dignitatum will inspire any bureaucrat with longing to return to that spiritual home. In that holy land, the Master of Offices managed these organizations: the first school of shield-bearers, the second school of shield-bearers, the school of senior gentiles, [...]
Tagged: antiquity
platforms for sharing data and local innovation
Aneesh Chopra talks about how open data can enable innovation in health, education, and care for the environment.
Tagged: knowledge
media innovation doesn't change shape of ad spending distribution
Looking at the top U.S. magazine advertisers from 1913 to 1929 shows a lot of familiar brands. Proctor & Gamble, the leading magazine advertiser in 1913, was also the largest U.S. advertising spender from 1963 to 1986 and 1991 to 1996.[1] Quaker Oats, Colgate, Kodak, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Goodyear Tire, B.F. Goodrich, and General Electric, [...]
Tagged: advertising, magazines
success of selection in photography
Robert Frank’s The Americans is a monument to natural selection in photography. For nine months in 1955-56, Frank traveled across the U.S. and photographed natural (not posed, not arranged for photographing) subjects. He made about 27,000 photographs in this part of his project. Then he spent a year selecting, editing, and sequencing photographs from this [...]
Tagged: photography
momentous day in communications history
In its first sentence, an Act of June 19, 1934 established the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC): For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of [...]
historic patterns of paying for content
Compared to periodicals, newspapers have developed a business model much less propitious for profitably distributing content in a digital world. Most of newspapers’ revenue historically has come from newspaper establishments integrated with the business of printing. A much larger share of periodicals’ revenue has come from publishing establishments not integrated into printing. Accounting for frequency [...]
Tagged: advertising, magazines, newspapers