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Techies Get Friendly White House Reception – Roll Call

While President Barack Obama’s drive to curb influence-peddling has transformed the swank lobbying world into a kind of ghetto, there is an Obama Corridor on K Street, and it houses technology industry operatives galvanized by an administration that has put their issues at the top of its to-do list.

Not only do tech lobbyists have a leg up on their rivals in the business community, but they are getting the kind of solicitous treatment from Obama they never had under the business-friendly President George W. Bush.

Obama and his aides, according to numerous tech industry sources, buy into the notion that technology is special because it promotes the development of other industries. Bush viewed the tech world as just another business sector, these sources say. “He doesn’t know the difference between a silicon chip and a potato chip,” tech lobbyists were fond of whispering to each other.

“I really think that President Obama has shown he understands that innovation and technology can drive the economy,” said Josh Ackil, a partner in the Franklin Square Group, which specializes in representing high-tech companies. “It’s a different perspective,” Ackil added, saying the new view may stem from a “generational” attitude and from Obama’s successful use of technology in the campaign.

“There’s been rejuvenation,” said one Obama Corridor lobbyist. “We used to watch Bush’s State of the Union addresses and wait to see if he said the word ‘broadband’ — and if he did, that was it for the year.”

On Wednesday, Obama did his first bit of presidential glad-handing with the business community, inviting a tech-heavy group of 13 chief executive officers to the White House to share their thoughts. Among them were Micron’s Steve Appleton, Motorola’s Greg Brown, John Bryson of Edison International, Ann Mulcahy of Xerox, Sam Palmisano of IBM and Google’s Eric Schmidt.

Not wanting the tech community’s Washington reps to stink up the Roosevelt Room — where Obama met with the CEOs — the White House sequestered the lobbyists in another room with new National Economic Council Deputy Director Jason Furman. Some then joined the CEOs in the East Room for a few public remarks by Obama.

“CEOs are pretty good lobbyists, but they’re not registered,” remarked one source who spoke about the chiefs’ privileged access to Obama.

Sources say the meeting grew from a letter to the bipartisan Congressional leadership last week backing the stimulus. The letter was signed by many of those who found themselves at the White House. In a further sign of Obama’s commitment to the tech crowd, the stimulus itself includes large chunks of change for broadband, health information technology and scientific research, among other items. Even the road construction money, lobbyists point out, benefits technology companies because of sensor equipment that will be used on modern highways and the possibility of laying down wire as the roads are built.

On the Obama Corridor, sources point to an in-crowd with particularly tight ties to the Obama folks. Among them is Bruce Mehlman of Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti — ironically a Bush administration alumnus who is executive director of the Technology CEO Council, which includes several CEOs who met with Obama. Mehlman’s partner David Castagnetti is also close to the former Clintonites who make up Obama’s staff. And Jon Hoganson, a principal at the firm, worked for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for five years and is viewed as a key conduit to the White House. Hoganson has performed a critical role in building the type of relations between the White House and the tech officials that led to Wednesday’s CEO summit.

The first among equals of the CEOs is Google’s Schmidt, who served as an Obama transition adviser on tech issues and who has hosted Obama on Google’s campus.

Others with special reach into the West Wing, according to K Street sources, are Mark Bohannon of the Software & Information Industry Association and John Kenny and Ken Kay of the e-Luminate Group.

Several tech association officials said the Obama team was paying close attention to their needs.

Ralph Hellmann, senior vice president of the Information Technology Industry Council, noted that ITIC President Dean Garfield and other ITIC staffers have been in frequent contact with Obama aides since well before Obama was elected.

“It’s very logical that now that he’s in office, [the stimulus] largely reflects priorities that we recommended to them,” Hellmann said.

Phil Bond, president of the Technology Association of America — newly formed as a result of a merger between Bond’s old Information Technology Association of America and the American Electronics Association — said the Obama outreach to him and other techies has been significant. The administration asked his group in early December to convene a meeting of the tech lobby at AEA headquarters so that transition officials could get the gist of the industry’s needs and concerns.

It’s been better than under the Bush regime, agreed Bond, a former Bush undersecretary of Commerce.

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Techies Get Friendly White House Reception

Op-Ed Columnist – On the Edge – NYTimes.com

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.
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Paul Krugman
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It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy … the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

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On the Edge

LAS VEGAS — If there was one overarching theme from the Consumer Electronics Show here last week, it was that absolutely every device in our lives is becoming a computer connected to the Internet.
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Isaac Brekken/Associated Press

“TV is interactive TV these days. You will use the same TV and the same remote control, but have completely different functionality,” said Jong Woo Park, President of Samsung’s digital media business.
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Laura Rauch/European Pressphoto Agency

“You ought to expect that to be more and more unified – three screens: TV, phone, PC – one cloud-based experience,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft.

The sleek little Palm Pre phone promises to make it easy to call your friends by looking up their numbers on Facebook.

A new version of the Ford F150 pickup truck will let contractors check service manuals by browsing the Web from an in-dash computer.

New televisions from LG, Samsung and others will let viewers watch movies from Netflix and other Internet sites.

In two years, 90 percent of all Sony products will connect to the Internet, Howard Stringer, the chief executive of Sony, predicted.

These developments can be seen as more of the electronics industry’s constant quest for something new to tantalize gadget lovers.

But there is a darker side, too, for the companies that make the devices. If the most exciting thing about your phone or truck or TV is the Web sites you go to and the software applications you download, then the device itself is less important.

That is what happened to the computer industry, with its relentless price pressure and indistinguishable products. It is hardly an attractive business model, even for consumer electronics companies already accustomed to low profit margins.

“We are commoditizing new technology,” said William Wang, the chief executive of Vizio, which has become the country’s third-largest seller of televisions after Samsung and Sony. Now that flat-screen high-definition televisions have become commonplace, he said, “the technology shifts are not that dramatic.”

Other, more established brands beg to differ, of course. Their screens are thinner and their pictures are brighter, they advertise. So consumers will inevitably be drawn to them, they argue. And they are working on what they hope will be another technology on view at the show, one that makes mere high-definition sets seem passé: Three-dimensional televisions.

But the more established brands know the battleground is shifting. Increasingly what will differentiate one TV from another is the software it runs and the Internet services it connects to.

Even Nokia, which sells more cellphones than its three nearest competitors, says that much of its future success will come from selling services, ranging from music to maps, that operate on the phones.

Another approach is to try to embed computer chips with Internet connections, all of which keep getting cheaper and smaller, into ever more unusual devices. Sony introduced an Internet-connected alarm clock that will wake you up with your favorite music videos and traffic forecasts for your commute.

Asustek, the giant Taiwanese electronics company, has developed a touch-screen computer that hangs on a wall. It also has built a PC into a keyboard that lets users surf the Net on their TVs . In the future, according to Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek, everything in your house, even your bedroom mirror, will be a computer display.

So even as electronics makers struggle with the extremely sluggish economy and the relentless competition, they can look forward to finding ever more shapes and sizes in which to embed their gadgets.

Here are some edited excerpts from interviews with top executives who attended the electronics show. More of these interviews, along with other articles about the electronics show, can be found at nytimes.com/ personaltech.

Services via Devices

“For a long time, our business was defined as cellphones. Hardware is not enough. We need to have a wider array of services and content. This is a major change for us.”

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, chief executive of Nokia

“In the next five years, we are not only going to provide hardware, but content through our devices, in an easy, more convenient way. TV is no longer just TV. TV is interactive TV these days. You will use the same TV and the same remote control, but have completely different functionality.”

Jong Woo Park, the president of Samsung’s digital media business

“You ought to expect that to be more and more unified — three screens: TV, phone, PC — one cloud-based experience. Live, essentially projecting through consistently, and appropriately, to the three screens.”

Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft

The Evolving Television

“Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. One view is that the Web, a browser like Firefox, Chrome or I.E., will be right on the television in the next couple years. Another view is, no, a PC-based Web is just too complex. The second one is the phase that we’re in now.”

Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix

“Three-D television. That’s really a major, major revolution coming into consumer electronics. That’s one area where we are placing our bets”.

Woo Hyun Paik, chief technical officer and a president of LG Electronics

“Over five years, the big concept that changes for a consumer is, ‘Gosh, do I have to track whether I have my content on my PC, on my phone, on my TV and how do I move it around?’ ”

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices business

New Computer Shapes

“A fraction of what we sell, a much bigger percentage of it, will be lower-priced client form factor. It may have all the functionality of a PC, but maybe it’s smaller. Maybe it is just an LCD display with PC functionality in the back, that is sitting on a desk or hanging on a wall.”

Dirk Meyer, the chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices

“To make the whole digital home possible, in the eventual state, every wall becomes a display. The mirror should become a screen. You already watch the mirror.”

Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek

Coping With Recession

“Customers are spending less, but they are still buying. They are putting off vacations, so they can buy TVs and stay at home. Last year, customers bought $900 and $1,000 laptops. This year they are buying $500, $600, $700 laptops. They are not buying cars, so they’ve got to buy something.”

Gilbert Fiorentino, chief Executive of the Technology Products Group at Systemax, parent company of CompUSA and TigerDirect.

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To Connect to the Internet, Just Turn on Your TV

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LOS ANGELES, CA, June 14^th, 2007 – In the “olden” days, in order to attend college, you had to physically go to a campus and take courses. Wellington College is using MegaMeeting.com’s browser based video and web conferencing software to dramatically change the way students access college and college courses.

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The Indiana Fire Instructors Association (IFIA) is currently using MegaMeeting.com’s browser based video and web conferencing solution in its Training department and for use by its Board of Directors. The IFIA is utilizing MegaMeeting products to conduct seminars, company meetings and to train their clients. Additionally, IFIA uses MegaMeeting’s web conferencing software for monthly Board meetings and training sessions for their association members and clients.

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LOS ANGELES, CA, September 26, 2006-By utilizing MegaMeeting’s browser based video & web conferencing solution, Quantum Life has added a whole new dimension to its Sales and Training departments. Specifically, according to Ryan Williams, President of Quantum Life, MegaMeeting is used to “demonstrate our software online which results in higher profit margin as no outside sales agents are required”. Williams further explains that MegaMeeting also helps Quantum Life “provide continuous training to new customers all over the world – reducing the need for and lowering our travel expenses”.

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 MegaMeeting.com is a leading provider of 100% browser-based Video & Web Conferencing solutions, complete with real time audio and video capabilities. Being browser based and working on all major operating systems – Windows, Mac & Linux; MegaMeeting.com provides universal access without the need to download, install or configure software. MegaMeeting.com web conferencing products and services include powerful collaboration tools that accommodate robust Video & Web Conferences, including advanced features such as desktop/application sharing, i.e. Word and Excel documents and PowerPoint presentations without the need to upload any files. MegaMeeting is ideal for multi-location web based meetings, virtual classrooms, employee trainings, product demonstrations, company orientation, customer support, product launches and much more.

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MegaMeeting.com Web & Video Conferencing Helps Quantum Life