The Communication Workers of America just released their 3rd annual Speed Matters report on broadband upload and download speeds by state across the U.S. Like their last report - that I wrote about in these pages a while back - this year's report makes the rather obvious case that America needs better and faster broadband internet coverage. They indicate that we're only number 28 in the world in average internet connection speed - still a shockingly low number considering that the internet was primarily created by the American military together with American research universities with public money.

Recently the AFL-CIO launched a new site called Unemployment Lifeline that uses modern social media to provide a place for laid-off American workers to get some help and to connect - often for the first time - to the labor movement.

The surprisingly colorful and attractive site (sorry, but as someone involved in building labor websites, I notice that many union leaders ask for, shall we say, plain design concepts) offers a variety of ways for people to get involved with actions for national health reform and against giveaways to big business. It also provides forums where unemployed folks can talk with each other and compare notes, a calendar of relevant events nationwide, and a resource page where people can turn for human services and legal advice.

Diigo: A Web 2.0 tool to get user input on your website

Here's a site that's posting videos of its members - a nice idea, as it'll encourage their workmates to visit the site too!

http://www.seiu888.org/news/channel888/Default.aspx

Interesting study from Ball State:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.92e661444313b232e8931de00c29...

"Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens -- televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study.

"The study also found that live television in the home continues to attract the greatest amount of viewing time with the average American spending slightly more than five hours a day in front of the tube.

"The figure drops to 210 minutes a day of average TV viewing time among 18-24 year olds but rises to 420 minutes a day among those aged 65 and older"...

"-- computer video consumption tends to be quite small with an average time of just over two minutes a day."

In my web-trolling for this blog, I happened upon mention on a Department of Labor Grant Program called Technology-Based Learning Grants in a Reuters release of a government press release. The purpose of the grants, according to (the thankfully) ex-Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, is to "increase workers' access to skills training through the Internet, video teleconferencing and other technology-based learning media." In the 2008 cycle, the DOL gave out $10,000,000 under the program.

But funny thing, not a plug nickel of that money seems to have gone to labor unions - many of which, I do hear tell, have just these kinds of skills training programs for their members and even for non-members in some cases.

A couple of months ago at a talk at MIT on social media, I made a point that in a down economy, we should not assume that all the nifty free services we've all come to expect on the web are going to remain free forever. After all, only 10 years ago we still had to pay to have simple listservs and forums. We had nothing like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook and so on.

Yet we know that the business model companies have built many of these major services on - and they are, alas, mostly corporate run at this point - has been advertising-based. That is, these companies offer a service to users like us for "free," but hope to turn a profit based on selling advertising to other companies.