Pew's social media study pushes all the wrong buttons

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  HOLD FOR RELEASE UNTIL 12:01 A.M. EDT. THIS STORY MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST OR POSTED ONLINE BEFORE 12:01 A.M. EDT - Donald Conkey, 15, checks his smartphone while doing homework in his bedroom on Monday, March 11, 2013, in Wilmette, Ill. A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says more teens are using smartphones as a main means of accessing the Internet -- moreso than adults. (AP Photo/Martha Irvine)

Most Americans like to poke fun of just how tech savvy Asian-Americans are. The stereotypical assumption is often accurate when it comes to finding the coolest social app or digital designer. 

Experienced business travelers know that if you want to find the latest generation gadget, go to Seoul or Hong Kong or Tokyo. This fact, however, seems to be lost on the well-respected Pew Research Center.  How else can you explain their latest work, “The State of Social Media Users,” which remarkably excludes Asian-Americans from the study?

The February 2013 report of social media users has either forgot about Asian-Americans, lumped them in with their white counterparts or refused to score them. Why would Pew publish a comparison of social media users that doesn’t track Asian-Americans?  Perhaps it might be that Asians’ social media habits score so high against other races that it might not be an interesting or alarming comparison.

Why wouldn’t Pew want to compare Asians to the other minority groups?

Demographic research shows the rapid growth of Asian-Americans – an increase of 46 percent between the 2000 and 2010 Census. And even though Asian-Americans comprise a smaller part of the population than other groups, their growth rate is four times that of the general population. So why wouldn’t Pew want to compare Asians to the other minority groups?

It’s not the first time policy makers, the mainstream media, advertisers, think tanks or influential research groups have forgotten about Asian-Americans.  Sadly, it probably won’t be the last.

The studies that ignore the rise of Asian-Americans and the Asian impact on American culture not only deprive Asians a seat at the table, but it denies our society as a whole valuable information.  Dismissing Asian-Americans when it comes to social media is a particularly bad idea.  According to the most recent Nielsen Social Media Report, Asian-Americans are the most likely group to have visited a social network, interacted with social media advertising and made purchases through social media.  So why are we ignoring the leaders’ habits?

There are far greater consequences for those minorities left behind in studies like Pew’s latest.  Government and non-profit funding for social, health and economic programs use these studies to make grant decisions. While national organizations like Pew marginalize Asian-Americans in their studies, critical research is left to smaller, regional groups and universities that don’t have the same clout. If an audience isn’t counted, it doesn’t get any attention, funding or support for pressing issues. Consequently, myths about Asian-Americans as the “model minority” prevail.  In the U.S., the common perception holds that Asians are harder working, more educated, higher earning and more successful than other ethnic groups.

Stereotypes like this, however positive they may seem, are detrimental in that they gloss over the serious problems facing Asian-Americans.  Pew’s refusal to include Asians in their social media study creates an over-hyped distraction that diverts attention from the threats and problems facing Asian-Americans.  Every ethnic group has unique and inherent problems that should not be overlooked by false narratives.  For example, black Americans have diabetes at nearly twice the rate of whites and nearly half the Hispanic population considers access to affordable health care a “very serious” problem. The successful Asian stereotype also means less than 1-in-3 Asian-American children receive mental health care treatment when parents determine there’s a need, but fear the stigma attached to seeking treatment.

Are Asian-Americans perceived as non-existent, unimportant or maybe just honorary Caucasian? The problems facing researchers in counting smaller groups is understandably an inconvenience.  Asian-Americans are frequently undercounted because of linguistic and cultural barriers -- the result of grouping together dozens of peoples from diverse ancestries that sometimes share little more than a common region of the world. But the invisibility created by being left out also creates countless problems.  Health needs are not met.  Funds for social services are unfairly distributed. Politicians and policy makers ignore the problems they don’t even know exist.  Entrepreneurs, particularly social entrepreneurs, miss opportunities to generate business, jobs and tax revenues.

Studies that omit key groups are a waste of time and lack credibility because their conclusions are based on only part of the picture.  It seems to me, Pew should want to study the social media habits of those leading the digital revolution.

Julia Y. Huang, CEO of interTrend Communications - a national advertising agency connecting FORTUNE 500 companies with Asian-American audiences.

View the original article here

Wright or wrong? Smithsonian enters 'first in flight' fight

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  Gustave Whitehead, 2nd from left, with visitors in front of his "No 21". At his feet the self built gas pressure motor.Flight Historical Research Foundation Gustav Weisskopf

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  Aviation Pioneer Whitehead with daughter Rose in front of his "No. 21". In the foreground is his self-built gas pressure motor.Flight Historical Research Foundation Gustav Weisskopf

Next Slide Previous Slide

Is his plane claim full of hot air?

Orville and Wilbur Wright were actually second in flight, and the Wright Flyer honored with a spot at the Smithsonian wasn’t the first plane. That stunning claims come from Australian historian John Brown, who told FoxNews.com that Gustav Whitehead -- a Bavarian who immigrated to Connecticut -- made a sustained powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine on August 14, 1901, two years before the Wrights.

'Are we to assume that he forgot the secret of flight?'

- Smithsonian senior curator of aeronautics Tom Crouch

Balderdash, says the Smithsonian’s chief curator of aeronautics.

In a statement published on the National Air and Space Museum’s website Friday, senior curator of aeronautics Tom Crouch stood by Orville and Wilbur -- arguing that we were right about the Wrights.

“The strongest argument against the Whitehead claims is to be found in the fact that not one of the powered machines that he built after 1902 ever left the ground,” Crouch wrote. “Are we to assume that he forgot the secret of flight?”

Whitehead flew a winged, bird-like plane called No. 21 or "The Condor," with wooden wheels and canvas wings stretched taut across bat-like wooden arms. Brown said it rose over the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Conn., and covered an estimated 1.5 miles at a height of 50 feet.

Whitehead reportedly brought the chief editor of the Bridgeport Herald to witness the event, which led to a news article for the paper and a photo of the historic event -- a photo that, unfortunately for history, turned out to be awfully blurry.

What happened to Whitehead?

  * Patent problems. Orville and Wilbur filed a patent as well as numerous injunctions against other early pioneers, Brown said.

  * Criminal associates. Whitehead disastrously picked a convicted criminal to help commercialize the technology. He was locked from his own factory.

  * The Smithsonian. Jackson wrote that the Institute obtained Wright Flyer No. 1 from Orville only after agreeing not to state that any earlier aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power, something Jakab called a misunderstanding of a feud between Orville and the Smithsonian. "On the surface, yes this agreement does exist … and the agreement has never been secret," he told FoxNews.com.

Brown instead based his claims on an exhaustive analysis of a century-old image, a picture of that picture that he believes depicts Whitehead in the air over Connecticut.

Brown blew up the image 3,500 percent. It yielded a blurry smudge. But based on that image and a slew of turn of the century news accounts, he convinced the authoritative publication “Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft” of Whitehead’s story.

In the introduction to the 100th edition of the book, posted online March 9, editor Paul Jackson sided with Whitehead. The Smithsonian curator took issue with Jackson too.

“Mr. Jackson would have been well advised to take a look at the historical record of the case, and not make his decision based on a flawed website,” Crouch wrote.

Connecticut politicians have nevertheless been eager to shanghai the “first in flight” mantle from North Carolina. Bill Finch, the mayor of Bridgeport (where Whitehead reportedly made his historic flight) recommends that the state get new license plates reading “First-er in Flight,” according to the CT Mirror website.

There’s even talk of “Whitehead bratwurst” at local restaurants, the site notes.

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America's patent system is all wrong for today's high-tech world

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It’s no secret that the Obama administration is looking for excuses to regulate and intervene in the free market, whether it is telecommunications, energy, homeland security or everything else.

And unfortunately, there are “bad actors” in the technology community that are inviting increased scrutiny of their business practices and abuses. Patent pooling – or agreements between two or more companies to collectively license patents for specific technologies – is a fairly common practice among device companies. 

These for-profit pools are formed only following a business review by the Department of Justice, which agrees not to initiate antitrust enforcement against them if they operate fairly and adhere to a set of mutually agreed upon terms for operation. When structured and operated in accordance to the guidelines under which pools were formed, these organizations reduce the amount of intellectual property investment by the companies who use them, benefiting consumers with lower prices and helping to spur innovation. 

From the Googles and Motorolas of the world down to small Silicon Valley startups, companies are on the forefront of consumer innovations, developing new products and software that will no doubt inspire the technologies of tomorrow.

We have today a patent system that is ill-suited to today’s rapidly changing, high-tech world.

But because of patent abuses – particularly through the use of patent pools – the industry and the media are taking more notice of how companies manage and license their patents. The offenders inviting increased government oversight are not Google, Motorola and others which have encountered their own very public challenges with patent law as of late. Rather, patent holding entities that do not produce anything in the way of devices or technology are disrupting the free market and stifling innovation for consumers.

We have today a patent system that is ill-suited to today’s rapidly changing, high-tech world. Software patents have been approved that are overly broad, and these approvals have been done on a massive scale. No surprise, patent litigation has exploded. You produce any product these days and you’re likely to “infringe” on some vague, ill-defined patents.

These are companies you’ve never heard of – companies like MPEG LA and Mobile Media – which license technologies to innovators in the form of patent pools. Technologies like the MPEG 2 video format – which is likely used in the very device you have in your back pocket – should be offered at a fair and reasonable fee. 

Yet, these unscrupulous patent pools lock in licensors for extraordinarily long terms at rates which don’t reflect their near-valueless expired patents. MPEG LA has absolute power over the MPEG 2 technology, and innovators are forced to accept MPEG LA’s license fees and terms regardless of actual patent value.

Think of it this way: The Motorola RAZR has evolved from a simple flip phone to a dynamic touch screen smart phone in the last decade. While the technologies that made this evolution possible certainly build off each other, consumers would no longer pay the same price for a Motorola RAZR V3 today as they would have when it was first released. But this is what MPEG LA is asking of companies – to pay full price for patents that are expiring, rather than reflecting the current marketplace.

These license fees erect barriers to entry for small and medium sized tech startup companies, and these companies cannot afford to sink millions in IP like many larger corporations.

This is especially harmful to those small business startups that are most reliant on gaining access to patent pool technologies, the very startups that create jobs and fuel innovation here in America. MPEG LA’s manipulative price structures are not only standing in the way of consumers being afforded access to these new innovations, they are also driving up prices on devices that are currently available.

Even worse, MPEG LA’s Mobile Media subsidiary is also biting the hand that feeds it by deploying often frivolous “patent trolling” lawsuits on the very innovators that pay to access their patent pools. 

Companies like Mobile Media are labeled a "troll" because they don’t use their patents in building or innovating on anything, but rather exist to initiate legal action against those they allege who infringed upon their intellectual property. 

Many claim the “trolling” will only become more rampant under the ‘first to file’ terms set forth in the Patent Reform Act. Recent research shows that patent trolls bring more than half of the total patent lawsuit claims in the United States, which is astounding considering these companies, again, do not produce any technologies of their own.

If companies like MPEG LA and Mobile Media do not amend these unscrupulous business practices, the Department of Justice will have no choice but to intervene, inevitably slowing down innovation and creating even more barriers for a fast-moving marketplace.

And don’t we have enough regulatory hurdles to jump in the first place?

Steve Forbes is Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media and co-author of Freedom Manifesto:  Why Free Markets Are Moral and Big Government Isn’t (Crown Business)

View the original article here

Wright or wrong? Smithsonian enters 'first in flight' fight

• 

Is his plane claim full of hot air?

Orville and Wilbur Wright were actually second in flight, and the Wright Flyer honored with a spot at the Smithsonian wasn’t the first plane. That stunning claim come from Australian historian John Brown, who told FoxNews.com that Gustav Whitehead -- a Bavarian who immigrated to Connecticut -- made a sustained powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine on August 14, 1901, two years before the Wrights.

'Are we to assume that he forgot the secret of flight?'

- Smithsonian senior curator of aeronautics Tom Crouch

Balderdash, says the Smithsonian’s chief curator of aeronautics.

In a statement published on the National Air and Space Museum’s website Friday, senior curator of aeronautics Tom Crouch stood by Orville and Wilbur -- arguing that we were right about the Wrights.

“The strongest argument against the Whitehead claims is to be found in the fact that not one of the powered machines that he built after 1902 ever left the ground,” Crouch wrote. “Are we to assume that he forgot the secret of flight?”

Whitehead flew a winged, bird-like plane called No. 21 or "The Condor," with wooden wheels and canvas wings stretched taut across bat-like wooden arms. Brown said it rose over the darkened streets of Bridgeport, Conn., and covered an estimated 1.5 miles at a height of 50 feet.

Whitehead reportedly brought the chief editor of the Bridgeport Herald to witness the event, which led to a news article for the paper and a photo of the historic event -- a photo that, unfortunately for history, turned out to be awfully blurry.

What happened to Whitehead?

  * Patent problems. Orville and Wilbur filed a patent as well as numerous injunctions against other early pioneers, Brown said.

  * Criminal associates. Whitehead disastrously picked a convicted criminal to help commercialize the technology. He was locked from his own factory.

  * The Smithsonian. Jackson wrote that the Institute obtained Wright Flyer No. 1 from Orville only after agreeing not to state that any earlier aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power, something Jakab called a misunderstanding of a feud between Orville and the Smithsonian. "On the surface, yes this agreement does exist … and the agreement has never been secret," he told FoxNews.com.

Brown instead based his claims on an exhaustive analysis of a century-old image, a picture of that picture that he believes depicts Whitehead in the air over Connecticut.

Brown blew up the image 3,500 percent. It yielded a blurry smudge. But based on that image and a slew of turn of the century news accounts, he convinced the authoritative publication “Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft” of Whitehead’s story.

In the introduction to the 100th edition of the book, posted online March 9, editor Paul Jackson sided with Whitehead. The Smithsonian curator took issue with Jackson too.

“Mr. Jackson would have been well advised to take a look at the historical record of the case, and not make his decision based on a flawed website,” Crouch wrote.

Connecticut politicians have nevertheless been eager to shanghai the “first in flight” mantle from North Carolina. Bill Finch, the mayor of Bridgeport (where Whitehead reportedly made his historic flight) recommends that the state get new license plates reading “First-er in Flight,” according to the CT Mirror website.

There’s even talk of “Whitehead bratwurst” at local restaurants, the site notes.

Related Stories

Wright brothers 'first in flight'? Not quite, researcher claims

3 astronauts return to Earth after 144-day mission to space station

Hundreds of dinosaur egg fossils found

Bat-eating spiders are everywhere, study finds

View the original article here