The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘democrat’

A bill introduced today in the Senate by Democrat John Kerry and Republican Richard Lugar proposes a new type of visa for immigrants who create startups and jobs in the U.S. A similar proposal is part of an immigration reform bill in the House. The Startup Visa has been controversial and will no doubt draw fire from anti-immigrant forces and xenophobes. But if we are going to be giving away visas, giving them to people who will help build the U.S. economy and create jobs is hard to argue against.

The Startup Visa Act of 2010 would create a two year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise a minimum of $250,000, with $100,000 coming from a qualified U.S. angel or venture investor. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur is able to create five or more jobs (not including their children or spouse), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenues, he or she will become a legal resident.

The bill would carve out a new “EB-6″ class of visas from the existing “EB-5″ class of visas which has a higher threshold for becoming a legal resident. So it’s not really that radical. The EB-5 requires immigrants to invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ ten people.

The Startup Visa sends the right message to prospective immigrants: create jobs, get a green card. A group of 160 venture capitalists and angel investors support the bill, including Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Fred Wilson, Dave McClure, Ron Conway, Mike Maples, Reid Hoffman, Chris Sacca, Jeff Clavier, Bijan Sabet, Josh Kopelman, and Chris Dixon. If you agree that the Startup Visa is a good idea, you can find ways to support it here and here.

Remember when the hippest way to blaze onto the campaign trail was an appearance on The Daily Show? No more.

This morning San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom announced his bid for California Governor via Twitter, instantly sending his new campaign video (embedded below) to his 270,000 followers. No doubt inspired by President Obama’s successful campaign over the last two years, Newsom is looking to social media to help connect with voters. Alongside this morning’s Tweet, Newsom also sent out a message to his 37,000 Facebook fans.

I suspect Newsom will be able to strike the same chords with an online campaign as President Obama did - he’s relatively young and a Democrat, with an online presence that’s already quite well established. Now the question is whether his opponents will be able to effectively use the same tools without ringing hollow. Among Newsom’s opponents in the race for the 2010 election is former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who only has 2,100 supporters on Facebook and a measly 850 Twitter followers.

Via Laughing Squid

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

This ought to be interesting. Apparently never having felt the wrath of a dissatisfied buyer with access to the internet, someone over at Verizon has just decided to enable users to leave public reviews on any phone in their catalog. Users can rate their handsets on a scale of 1-5 for ease of use, display, features, and battery life, then manually add their own pros, cons, and comments.

Openness is good. Helping people make educated purchases is good. But this just seems like a bad move.

If I’ve learned anything from gallivanting around the internets in search of cell phone knowledge, it’s this: the majority of people taking the time to talk about their phones hate them. Now, that’s not saying that most people hate their phones - just those willing to take 20 minutes to throw down 300 words about a handset on a forum. It’s good ol’ Silent Majority/Loud Minority - though the vast majority of consumers can be neutral or positive on a product, a quick glance around the internet will make it seem like everyone despises it.

This tends to be less of a problem on e-commerce resale sites, especially those which see lots of return buyers. Sites like Amazon have built entire communities out of the reviewing process, thus enticing folks to return and leave reviews for all products they buy - not just the ones they hate. People connect with the process and leave reviews both good and bad, and others seem to follow by example.

With Verizon, it’s a whole different story. With 2-year contracts as a part of nearly every phone sale, the volume of return sales just isn’t that high. In 10 years, the average soccer mom might buy/trade up through 5-6 phones. That’s 5-6 opportunities to review, across a decade. Are they going to connect with the review process and tell of the good times they’ve had with the handset? Or will the only ones who bother be those looking to unleash their buyers remorse and all of their pent up frustration from spending hours dealing with customer service?

Verizon has put up a safety buffer: they’re manually approving reviews, which may take up to 2 days. But what’s the criteria? Are they simply filtering out the messy, profane garbage, or will they nix reviews they feel are being too harsh? The masses (read: angry consumers on social sites) wouldn’t respond too kindly to the latter.

What do you think - a good move toward openness, or a good way to doom handset sales?

[via PhoneArena]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Look closely at Time magazine’s online voting results so far for the Time 100 and you will see at the top someone called moot (aka 21-year-old Christopher Poole), the founder of 4chan, the notorious online bulletin board where hackers like to hang out. Not only did moot’s followers manage to get his name to the top of the Time 100 reader’s list, they also manipulated the next 20 spots. If you take the first letter of each name, it spells out the cryptic message, “Marblecake, also the game.” (See image below).

It turns out the results were hacked with an auto-voting program spread on 4chan. (For details of the hack, read this post). What does it mean? Marblecake is a sophomoric sexual reference, which is in keeping with the spirit of 4chan, which also claims to be where Rickrolling and Lolcats got their start.

As for the Time 100, the people have spoken. At least the people who hang out on 4chan.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

President Obama will be naming Aneesh Paul Chopra as his choice for CTO during tomorrow’s weekly address, according to a press release posted to the White House’s official web site. Chopra currently serves as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, and has previous acted as the Managing Director for the Advisory Board Company, where he advised executives on health care operations.

According to Virginia’s state website, Chopra was recently recognized by Government Technology Magazine’s for excellent ‘use of technology to improve government’, and he was awarded Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s 2007 State Leadership Advocacy Award.

The choice comes after months of speculation, during which many of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures, including Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Eric Schmidt (among many others) were named as possible candidates. Whether or not some of these people actually wanted the position is another story, but obviously President Obama chose a different route.

According to this article published in the Washington Post in 2005, Chopra was not a career technologist before he became Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, but he has extensive experience in policy making. He also co-created a venture fund called Avatar Capital, which invested $11 million in 18 companies (though these figures are likely dated).

While he may not be a lifelong coder, Chopra has previously stated that his “primary understanding is from customer need, not bits and bytes”. During his time as Virginia’s SoT, he drove the state’s partnership with Google to become sitemap compliant, and also partnered with Cox and Comcast to broadcast free GED classes to Virginian citizens.

According to President Obama’s upcoming remarks, Chopra will “help achieve our most urgent priorities – from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure. He will work closely with Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients (also being named tomorrow) and recently-named CIO Vivek Kundra.

Via Scobleizer.

President Obama’s full remarks for tomorrow are below:

It’s not news to say that we are living through challenging times: The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. A credit crisis that has made that downturn worse. And a fiscal disaster that has accumulated over a period of years.

In the year 2000, we had projected budget surpluses in the trillions, and Washington appeared to be on the road to fiscal stability. Eight years later, when I walked in the door, the projected budget deficit for this year alone was $1.3 trillion. And in order to jumpstart our struggling economy, we were forced to make investments that added to that deficit through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

But as surely as our future depends on building a new energy economy, controlling health care costs and ensuring that our kids are once again the best educated in the world, it also depends on restoring a sense of responsibility and accountability to our federal budget. Without significant change to steer away from ever-expanding deficits and debt, we are on an unsustainable course.

So today, we simply cannot afford to perpetuate a system in Washington where politicians and bureaucrats make decisions behind closed doors, with little accountability for the consequences; where billions are squandered on programs that have outlived their usefulness, or exist solely because of the power of a lobbyist or interest group; and where outdated technology and information systems undermine efficiency, threaten our security, and fail to serve an engaged citizenry.

If we’re to going to rebuild our economy on a solid foundation, we need to change the way we do business in Washington. We need to restore the American people’s confidence in their government – that it is on their side, spending their money wisely, to meet their families’ needs.

That starts with the painstaking work of examining every program, every entitlement, every dollar of government spending and asking ourselves: Is this program really essential? Are taxpayers getting their money’s worth? Can we accomplish our goals more efficiently or effectively some other way?

It’s a process we have already begun, scouring our budget line by line for programs that don’t work so we can cut them to make room for ones that do. That means ending tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas; stopping the fraud and abuse in our Medicare program; and reforming our health care system to cut costs for families and businesses. It means strengthening whisteblower protections for government employees who step forward to report wasteful spending. And it means reinstating the pay-as-you-go rule that we followed during the 1990s – so if we want to spend, we’ll need to find somewhere else to cut.

And this Monday, at my first, full Cabinet meeting, I will ask all of my department and agency heads for specific proposals for cutting their budgets. Already, members of my Cabinet have begun to trim back unnecessary expenditures. Secretary Napolitano, for example, is ending consulting contracts to create new seals and logos that have cost the Department of Homeland Security $3 million since 2003. In the largest Department, Secretary Gates has launched an historic project to reform defense contracting procedures and eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful spending and cost overruns. And I commend Senators McCain and Levin – a Republican and a Democrat – who have teamed up to lead this effort in Congress.

Finally, in the coming weeks, I will be announcing the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective. In this effort, there will be no sacred cows, and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it’s time their government did the same.

That is why I have assembled a team of management, technology, and budget experts to guide us in this work – leaders who will help us revamp government operations from top to bottom and ensure that the federal government is truly working for the American people.

I have named Jeffrey Zients, a leading CEO, management consultant and entrepreneur, to serve as Deputy Director for Management of the Office of Management and Budget and as the first ever Chief Performance Officer. Jeffrey will work to streamline processes, cut costs, and find best practices throughout our government.

Aneesh Chopra, who is currently the Secretary of Technology for Governor Kaine of Virginia, has agreed to serve as America’s Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities – from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure.

Aneesh and Jeffrey will work closely with our Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, who is responsible for setting technology policy across the government, and using technology to improve security, ensure transparency, and lower costs. The goal is to give all Americans a voice in their government and ensure that they know exactly how we’re spending their money – and can hold us accountable for the results.

None of this will be easy. Big change never is. But with the leadership of these individuals, I am confident that we can break our bad habits, put an end to the mismanagement that has plagued our government, and start living within our means again. That is how we will get our deficits under control and move from recovery to prosperity. And that is how we will give the American people the kind of government they expect and deserve – one that is efficient, accountable and fully worthy of their trust.

Thank you.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

This week we saw quite a few new jobs on CrunchBoard, companies are still adding positions in New York, Silicon Valley, Boston, Philadelphia, and Austin. For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard.

Dont’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch.

New jobs on CrunchBoard:

• Product Manager
  BillShrink - Redmond City, CA

• Software Engineering Manager- Core Site
  TripAdvisor - Newton, MA

• Software Technical Support Engineer
  Articulate - 100% Telecommuting

• Technical Operations Manager
  Yelp, Inc. - San Francisco, CA

• Junior Software Engineer
  doubleTwist - San Francisco, CA

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0