Google pays web pioneer to bash Apple — Tim Bray isn’t as well-known as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, but the guy has had a leading role in defining the Internet. When he announced this week that he’s joining Google as an evangelist for the Android platform, he published a blog post that was pretty critical of competitor Apple, and which VentureBeat’s Paul Boutin found “off-putting.”

Fastest site on the web: The IRS? — Performance monitoring service Gomez has released its annual list of major websites with the best overall responsiveness as measured by Gomez over the entire year 2009. Surprise winner: IRS.gov, a site that uses images sparingly and pushes off large documents to PDF format for downloading, rather than trying to serve them as Web pages.

Facebook ousts Google as most popular U.S. site — Facebook is now the most popular site in the U.S., according to analytics firm Hitwise. In the week ending March 13, 2010, Facebook surpassed the previous most popular site, Google, in terms of overall traffic for the week.

Google admits Buzz mistakes, tries again at SXSW — A product manager from Google told attendees at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas that Google had misstepped by launching its social network, Google Buzz, too broadly and too promiscuously. In the future, said Google’s Todd Jackson, the company will pre-test new features rather than roll them out to all customers at once.

Twitter launches “At Anywhere” platform, integrates tweets, profiles across the web — Twitter CEO Ev Williams demonstrated a new platform this week that will spread the microblogging network’s profiles, tweets, and possibly advertising across the web.

And here are five more stories we think are important, thought-provoking, or fun:

Evan Williams tries to do-over SXSW interview via Twitter — Although Twitter co-founder and and chief executive Evan Williams made a couple of interesting points during his keynote interview (and announced the ‘At Anywhere’ platform mentioned above), the consensus was that it did not go well. Following the tradition of journalist Sarah Lacy’s similarly-criticized interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW in 2008, where Zuckerberg staged a second interview where he engaged more directly with the audience, Williams offered to answer more questions over Twitter.

Sony shows what an epic game really is with God of War III — Sony’s role in video games seems to be to remind us every now and then what an epic game is all about. It did so again with the launch of God of War III for the PlayStation 3.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek vague on US launch, company has 320,000 paid subscribers — European music streaming service Spotify now has 320,000 paid subscribers, said chief executive Daniel Ek, speaking at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin. But he couldn’t give a firm date on when the service would come to the United States.

FCC announces National Broadband Plan — The FCC finally unveiled the National Broadband Plan following months of speculation. The plan — for how to extend internet access to all American citizens — marks the first time that broadband access, and internet access in general, have been given considerable government attention in America.

EPA, Energy Dept. sharpen Energy Star’s teeth — The Energy Star program has successfully broken into the mainstream consciousness. But before last year, it seems like the label didn’t mean much. Now government agencies are making good on their promise to be tougher about who gets certified and who doesn’t, and they’re kicking the effort up another notch.

Tags: Energy Star, FCC, God of War III, Google Buzz, National Broadband Plan

Companies: Facebook, Gomez, Google, Sony, spotify, Twitter

People: daniel ek, Evan Williams, Tim Bray

The agency may also open up parts of the spectrum for private experimentation

The tools on the FCC's Spectrum Dashboard provide access to information about the current spectrum allocations by frequency, type of use, and user. Study enabled by this dashboard can help us to better understand how portions of the spectrum are used and in what areas experimentation and innovation are possible.

The Spectrum Band Browser provides a color-coded breakdown of the current spectrum allocation scheme. Moving the mouse over a portion of the spectrum gives key details on the type of use.

If you find you like this spectrum chart so much that you would like to have a copy of your very own, the full chart is available for download here. Regrettably, the Government Printing Office no longer carries this poster, so you will have to make your own printing arrangements if you'd like to have this on your wall, as I do.

The Spectrum Dashboard also provides two tools for researching license holders and the portions of the spectrum to which they have been given access. Pictured above is a screen shot of the Map tool, which reveals license holders by county. Searching by both the legally registered and common brand name of the license holder is also supported.

The spectrum availability map by county provides a visualization of the amount of the licensed bands not currently allocated to license holders. For most of us at the present time, it is somewhere right around none.

If you find yourself interested in the details of the frequency bands, don't miss the "Search by FCC License Categories" tool. This is a search interface for detailed information about each of the allocated bands in the radio spectrum.

Radio-wave tinkerers may find something else to like. According to a recent New York Times article, "The plan will advise that some of the spectrum become unlicensed, so it can serve as a test bed for new technologies."

While there are already parts of the spectrum available for public usage, both through the portions allocated for amateur radio and the portions allocated for unlicensed operation, the FCC broadband plan acknowledges the benefits and innovations that have resulted from federal support of research and development and specifically addresses the issue of expanding the parts of the spectrum that are made available for research and experimentation. In section 7 of the plan, it states "Allowing research organizations such as universities greater flexibility to temporarily use fallow spectrum can promote more efficient and innovative communications systems."

The FCC's plan involves the expansion of both home broadband capacity, but also pays special attention to ensuring that hospitals, libraries, and schools, where most Americans currently use broadband Internet services, get upgraded as well. Ultimately, the FCC hopes to provide 50 megabits per second of upload speed, and 100 megabits of download speed, to another third of the US population over the next decade. Additionally, the FCC wants 500 megahertz of wireless spectrum, currently operated by TV stations, rededicated to servicing mobile devices.

Estimates place the cost of the plan at between $15.5 and $25 billion, but FCC claims that the majority of that money will come from altering the Universal Service Fund, a program to subsidize rural phone service paid for by telecomm companies, from paying for telephones to paying for broadband. Additional funds will come from the auction of wireless spectrum for mobile device use. And if that doesn't cover the bill, the FCC has plans to ask Congress for a one-time, $9 billion boost.

The FCC, the telecommunications industry, and Congress all agree that the expansion of broadband is key to ensuring that America remains competitive in the world. The integration of TV and the Internet, the digitizing of medical records, and an increased use of cloud computing all threaten to tax America's currently limited broadband infrastructure. Despite having more broadband users than anywhere else in the world, the US only ranks 19th in percentage use, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, behind economic competitors like South Korea, Germany, and Great Britain.

Starting at the end of the month, Congress will begin holding hearings on the plan. However, with a lawsuit between the FCC and Comcast over the FCC's ability to regulate the Internet still undecided, the climate change bill poised to distract the Commerce Committee members tasked with FCC oversight, and an election in November that could reverse party control in Congress, it may be some time before the FCC can begin implementing the plan in full.

[The NY Times, Reuters, The BBC]