IT : Buzz

US President Barack Obama? Check. That British crooner who swept the Grammy awards this year. Check.

Not surprising finds on Time's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. 

There's one that Baltimoreans can be proud of. Freeman A Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, made the list that even Mark Zuckerberg was left out of. 

"But perhaps the most envied science program in the country is at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County," Time writes. "That's where Freeman A. Hrabowski III, 61, has spent 20 years as president turning a humble commuter school into one of the nation's leading sources of African Americans who get Ph.D.s in science and engineering." 

You can read more about him here.  

Embarrassed over the Facebook pics your friends posted of you swilling beer at a pool party last summer? 

Well your employer won't see them if you work in Maryland. The state is the first to pass a law that prohibits employers from asking staff for their passwords to social media sites. The law's passage got coverage in newspapers and tech sites around the country. 

"According to Maryland’s ACLU, states like California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and Massachusetts have already developed legislation that would ban the practice," Government Technology writes. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Millennial Media's stock market debut is the biggest tech IPO since last year's LinkedIn offering, writes the New York Times.

The Baltimore mobile advertising firm went public March 29 and its ad network reached more than 300 million unique users in February, the Times writes.

"The exuberance for Millennial Media underscores the rising profile of mobile technology companies, particularly those that help serve advertising to consumers," the article says. 

You can read the rest of the story here. 

It was 2012's first snowfall, but that didn't stop 200 people from trekking to the University of Baltimore for the second annual Create Baltimore. 

"Ideas were spit-balled, the collaborators of tomorrow (perhaps) met each other and an assortment of topics were covered," writes the Baltimore Brew. "People discussed mapping and visualizing, journalism and various ways to shine a light on government data, creating an advocacy organization for city bicyclists, improving food access in urban neighborhoods and a host of other ripe topics."

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Scott Ferber is rebranding his new company TidalTV and is now calling it Videology, the Baltimore Business Journal writes.

Videology is building a network of advertisers for video content and has signed up AOL Video as a client, the newspaper reports.

Ferber is the Baltimore entrepreneur who co-founded Advertising.com with his brother John Ferber. In 2004, the entrepreneurs sold Advertising.com to AOL for $435 million. You can read the rest of the story here.

From the article: "Citybizlist took a look at the 10 finalists of TechNite's 10 Hottest Technologies in Town to see what their Facebook presence looked like. We figured that if these were the hot technologies in Baltimore, they would be on the forefront of how social media, Facebook in particular, could be harnessed to attract interest, promote dialogue, create connections, establish a strong brand, etc." Read the full post here.

Baltimore will soon be among the first nine markets to see the debut of a new live streaming TV service from EW Scripps.

From the source:

The E.W. Scripps Co. said Thursday that it will become the first TV station group in the nation to deliver live video programming to mobile devices.

The launch will occur in nine markets: Detroit, Phoenix, Tampa, Fla., Cleveland, Baltimore, Kansas City, Cincinnati, West Palm Beach, Fla., and Tulsa, Okla.

Users who download the mobile application for their local Scripps station will be prompted at certain times — such as during breaking news events or occurrences of severe weather — to view streaming content. Clicking on the prompt will open a media player that will show either a simulcast of the station's on-air content or special coverage tailored to small screens.

Read the full story here.

Health workers from Wichita, Kansas recently learned the value of simulated training from Betsy Hunt at Johns Hopkins.

From the source:

"Six Wichita doctors, nurses and medical students flew a Hawker Beechcraft business jet to spend five hours at Hunt's simulation training center on Thursday.

Hunt put them through three scary simulations: resuscitating two high-tech mannequin guys and a mannequin baby, all in cardiac arrest.

All six Wichitans are highly trained and motivated, yet Hunt saw them make minor mistake after mistake after mistake that might have prolonged patient suffering.

In medicine, Hunt said, no one trains together enough. From medical school on, doctors train separately from nurses, nurses train separately from pharmacists and anesthesiologists, and so on."

Read the full story here.

Maryland Technology Development Corporation's new head, Robert A. Rosenbaum, took a little time out to talk with The Washington Post about his plans for the agency.

Here's an excerpt:

"Rosenbaum, a former managing director of Baltimore-based Nobska Ventures, also is pushing to close a gap in how the money is handed out. Too often, early-stage companies are left gasping for funds as they mature. If funding permits, he wants Tedco to fill that gap by following up on its seed investments with a second infusion of cash to help promising companies grow."

Read the entire article.

Nearly four months after some 1100 cities submitted proposals as part of Google's Fiber for Communities initiative, a $1 billion project that will bring super high-speed broadband to the city or cities Google has chosen, the search giant responded with a YouTube video thanking them. Two of Baltimore's own Mario Armstrong and Joe Weaver, who's holding a Google logo created by his daughter, are included in the video.

Read Google's response here.

Watch the video:

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You can't see it but the air around Baltimore is teeming with bandwidth. PC Mag's Sascha Segan has been traveling from the Big Apple to Charm City for the past few years, testing out the city's bevy of mobile WiFi networks.

Here's an excerpt:

"Baltimoreans are lucky to have lots of choices, with AT&T, Cricket, Sprint 3G, T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint 4G all available in Charm City. Of the 3G networks, AT&T pulled the best speeds but had problems with consistency. Verizon offered..."

Read the entire article here.

Leaving the wilds of Texas behind for the urban environs of Baltimore turns out have been a good business move for Paniagua's Enterprises. The Charm City transplant has grown more than 100 percent since heading east. It's recent success landed the company the No. 4 spot on Bloomberg Businessweek's list of the "Fastest Growing Inner-city Companies."

Here's an excerpt:

"Paniagua's Enterprises specializes in voice, data, and video fiber optic cable installation for commercial and government clients. After relocating the company's headquarters from Texas to inner-city Baltimore, founder Jaime Paniagua says he established a relationship with United Cable (now Comcast)."

Read the entire article here.

As cities continue vying to become the city chosen as the test subject for Google Fiber's ultra-highspeed broadband network, TechCrunch takes note of the extremes and how the telecom companies have failed the U.S.

Here's an excerpt:

"A couple weeks ago, we noted the city of Topeka, Kansas' humorous attempt to get Google's attention: by rebranding their city "Google, Kansas." Why would they do such a thing? Because they want in on Google's fiber action � the search giant's proposed plan to sell 1 gigabit-per-second broadband to consumers. Now Baltimore, Maryland is getting in on the fun as well.

The city has appointed a "Google Czar" � yes, that's the actual title � to lobby the company to put Baltimore on the list of cities in the initial trial. Tom Loveland, CEO of a local tech company, Mind Over Machines, has been appointed by Baltimore's mayor to take this exalted, but volunteer position."

Read the entire article here.

Baltimore's grassroots effort to be one of the lucky city's chosen as a test ground for Google's ultra-fast 1-gigabit per second broadband deployment is just one of several currently taking shape in city's across the country. See what the other cities competing for the prize doing...

Here's an excerpt:

"Broadband-starved cities and towns across the country are going to great lengths to grab the attention of Mountain View (Calif.)-based Google, which in February said it will set up a network that can deliver speeds of 1 gigabit per second, about 20 times faster than the speediest ones sold by Verizon Communications (VZ). Google will spend "hundreds of millions" on the effort, Richard Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel, said in a recent interview with Bloomberg News.

To set themselves apart, some municipal officials are naming cities after Google, owner of the world's largest Web search engine. The city of Greensboro, N.C., is preparing an "Operation Google" gift package for delivery to Google headquarters and has earmarked $50,000 for promoting a Google broadband effort."

Read the entire article here.

The state's congressional reps along with Gov. O'Malley have launched an effort making the case that Maryland is fertile ground to become the home of the new U.S. Cyber Command. Should his nomination as leader of the command be approved by the Senate, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander has already designated Ft. Meade, MD as home to the new command.

Here's an excerpt.

"On Monday, Democratic members of Maryland's congressional delegation and Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) launched perhaps the most coordinated effort since their party took control of the White House to harness a stream of federal funding and a growing job sector, billing Maryland as the logical destination for thousands of new cybersecurity posts.

California, Texas, Massachusetts and other states have concentrations of high-tech security workers, but, O'Malley said, "we not only think that Maryland can be the national center for cybersecurity; the fact of the matter is our state already is the epicenter of cybersecurity."

The governor appeared with Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin and Reps. Chris Van Hollen and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, all Maryland Democrats, at the Gaithersburg headquarters of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

They said that since the National Security Agency -- as well as high-tech defense and intelligence installations -- are based in the state, Maryland should become the home of the fledgling U.S. Cyber Command, which could bring 24,000 to 28,000 jobs."

Read the entire article here.