Good morning tech

Industry notes

Boeing to launch space taxi service. Boeing announced a new partnership with Space Adventure of Vienna, Va. to establish a space taxi service that will launch passengers into a low orbit around Earth, the Washington Post reports.The firms believe they can begin offering their service in 2015. The move is part of the ongoing effort to boost the commercial space industry in the U.S. as the Obama administration tries to steer NASA away from costly human space flight programs. http://bit.ly/dA9D2P

No ‘Fairy Dust’ for Yahoo Turnaround. “Carol Bartz, in the midst of a turnaround effort as chief executive of Yahoo Inc., said she needs more time to pull off the kind of transformation seen at Apple Inc. under Chief Executive Steve Jobs,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Apple’s stock-market capitalization was “dead a— flat” for a number of years after Mr. Jobs returned in 1997, Ms. Bartz said in a wide-ranging interview on Wednesday. ‘You don’t come in and do fairy dust. You upgrade technology, you see what drives engagement,’ she said.” http://bit.ly/aqbsnS

Competitor Sues Google Over Location Software for Smartphones.“Skyhook Wireless, which makes software that shows smartphone users where they are on their phone’s maps, filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming Google had persuaded Motorola and another phone manufacturer to break contracts with Skyhook and use Google’s competing service,” the New York Times reports. http://nyti.ms/9AFwWl

AT&T: Premptive Strike On Paid Prioritization Could Hurt Broadband Plans. “AT&T continues to make its case for paid prioritization of Internet traffic, saying there is growing consensus on the issue, and has made an appeal to some critics of its position for direct talks,” Broadcasting & Cable reports. “Prioritization is one of the issues that put a crimp in FCC efforts to midwife compromise legislative language among stakeholders, including AT&T, on clarifying the FCC’s authority over Internet access service.” http://bit.ly/augj6S

Executive notes

FCC launches online database of licenses. The Federal Communications Commission launched an online, searchable database of licenses on Tuesday in an attempt to provide more transparency into the commission’s operations. http://bit.ly/dmQrsn

SCHEDULE

10 a.m. USF hearing before the House Energy & Commerce Communications Subcommittee. 2322 Rayburn House Office Building.

10 a.m. Competition in the evolving digital marketplace. 2141 Rayburn House Office Building. 

SAID

“Every pimp has a MySpace page.”

-Tina Frundt, the executive director of Courtney’s House, said at a hearing on Tuesday that Craigslist is an important thoroughfare for the trafficking of children, but that other parts of the Internet are concerning as well. http://bit.ly/bpPFyC

WATERCOOLER

SMALL SCREEN—Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing” was one of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite TV shows. Zuckerberg liked the “authenticity of the series—the way it captured the truth, at least as friends of his described it, of working in Washington,” Jose Antonio Vargas writes in a New Yorker profile of the social media executive. 

Now Sorkin has penned “The Social Network,” a movie due in October about Zuckerberg’s rise. “I told Sorkin that his TV series was one of Zuckerberg’s favorites,” Vargas writes. “He paused. ‘I wish you hadn’t told me that,’ he said finally.”

Sorkin’s guess for Zuckerberg’s favorite episode: “‘The Lemon-Lyman episode’—the one in Season Three where Josh Lyman, the deputy chief of staff, played by Bradley Whitford, discovers that he has a following on an online message board and unwisely interacts with its members,” Vargas writes.

Zuckerberg’s actual favorite episode: “‘Two Cathedrals,’ at the end of Season Two, in which Martin Sheen, who plays President Josiah Bartlet, grieves at the death of his longtime secretary and, after disclosing that he has multiple sclerosis, ponders whether he should seek reelection,” Vargas writes.  “He is inside the National Cathedral and orders that it be temporarily sealed. He curses God in Latin and lights a cigarette. ‘It’s, like, even in journeys like Facebook, we’ve had some very serious ups and downs,’ Zuckerberg said.”

Vargas adds that shortly after their conversation about the show, Zuckerberg removed “The West Wing” from the list of his favorite TV shows on Facebook. http://bit.ly/bpPFyC