Broadband Penetration in the US

I just read this posting in VentureBeat about the FCC's $7.2 billion investment in broadband infrastructure coming from the stimulus package. The investment is focused on developing the rural and underserved areas of the US. What I found most interesting was how far behind the US is in terms of broadband penetration around the world. We are 20th! Here's the excerpt:

To understand the vital nature of these hearings, it’s important to first understand how widespread the lack of broadband access is in the U.S. It might come as a surprise, but the U.S. is at at No. 20 in the world for per-capita broadband penetration. A study by Point Topicsays that only 26.4% of people in the country have regular broadband access. To give you some context, another report issued by the Brookings Institute and MIT determined that for every percent increase in per-capita penetration, 300,000 more jobs are created. This is an opportunity that can’t go overlooked right now.
Incidentally, the U.S. ranks only at 15th in broadband speed. The median download speed here is 2.3 megabytes per second. Compare that to 63 megabytes per second in Japan, 49 in South Korea, 17 in France and 7.6 in Canada. This too, needs to change, but first things first.

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Biofuels May Hinder Anitglobal-Warming Efforts

Read an interesting article a couple weeks back in the WSJ on how biofuels may actually increase carbon emissions in the medium to long-term. Apprently the shifts in land-use necessary to support the production of bio-materials like soybeans, corn, or palm could in fact release more carbon emissions. The time it takes to get carbon-neutral on some of these projects is pretty crazy - 319 years for soybean biodiesel from Brazil (assuming you're clearing rainforest), 93 years for corn ethanol from the U.S. (assuming you're clearing grasslands), 86 years for palm biodiesel from Indonesia (assuming you're clearing rainforest). I suppose biofuels really aren't meant to reduce carbon emissions, but just crazy that they potentially exacerbate the problem so much.

Nine Prescriptions for Building the Duke Entrepreneurial Community

I think Duke can have one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the world. Are we there yet? Well, not yet. But there's a tremendous amount of momentum that I saw build in just the past two years while I was getting my MBA at Duke. While leading Duke's 10th annual business plan competition, the Duke Start-Up Challenge (DSC) , last year, I witnessed a near doubling of participation on campus in just a single year. The interest on the ground was clearly there and building rapidly. But now that I'm an alum, I'm looking back and wondering ... how do we rev-up the Duke entrepreneurial community even more? I read a great article by Daniel Isenberg, a professor of management at Babson, called " How to Start an Entrepreneurial Revolution " in the June edition of the Harvard Business Review. Isenberg outlines nine prescriptions for governments that want to create entrepreneurship ecosystems in their countries. Although he was focused on governments an...

$1 Billion House

What would a $1 Billion house be like? Believe it or not, the world will soon find out. Who would need such a home? Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, is building a 570-foot-tall home in downtown Mumbai. An excerpt from the WSJ article: Whatever the price, it will be monstrous. Called "Residence Antilia," the home will have 27 floors, including six floors for parking (Mr. Ambani needs somewhere to put his 168 cars), as well as another floor for car maintenance. It will have a theater floor (with hanging gardens), a health-club floor, a floor for guest apartments, four floors for the family living quarters and some other floors for odds and ends, like airspace and "safe rooms." The roof is slated to have three helipads (his, hers and the children's), which the government has yet to approve. And the home is expected to have a staff of 600 people. Wow.

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