Nintendo had to be tickled to learn that the new White House will include a Wii. President-elect Obama told the New York Times that his girls got one of the consoles for Christmas and that he himself was putting in some time at the virtual bowling alley, with considerably more success than he had at the real-world lanes.

But Obama’s flirtation with the Wii is nothing compared to his deep devotion to his BlackBerry, which his advisors want him to stop using because of legal and security concerns. “I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Obama said Wednesday in an interview. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” What’s an endorsement like that worth if Research in Motion had to pay for it on the celebrity market? At least $25 million, maybe twice that, said agents asked by the New York Times. “You always want the celebrity to be a good fit with your brand, and is anybody considered a better communicator right now than Barack Obama, or a better networker?” said Fran Kelly, chief executive of the Arnold Worldwide ad agency. “It couldn’t have a better spokesperson.” This, of course, could all change if Obama can’t find the reset button for the economy.

Link.

Dubya had a lunch party today at the White House. Guests were his Pa, President-elect Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Apparently it was Obama’s idea. It was the first time since 1981 that all living presidents have been together at the White House.

Photo here.

Every year John Batelle makes some predictions about the year ahead and — to his credit — revisits them at the end of the year to see how he did. This year he’s clearly having difficulties. And he thinks the recession will end in the fourth quarter of the year. Sure it will. And pigs will fly in close formation.

Amazing video from JPL.

I always thought that Quentin and I must be the most chronic cases of travelling geeks (in terms of the amount of kit we take with us) in the western world. But I was wrong. We are mere amateurs, nay boulevardiers, compared with Mr Stephen Fry. Here is the list of what he has just unpacked in his New York hotel room.

7 x Mini USB cables: 2 of them are the new Micro type that Blackberry has switched to for the Storm only, the rest are standard.

4 x iPod/iPhone chargers: I seem to use one iPhone exclusively for mad hacking, jailbreaking and frigging about with, another as a pedometer, another for music, another as a – guess what ? – phone. I know I’m putting my botty on the line by confessing to jailbreakage and hackery, but I think Apple (while each update brings a new weapon in their war against Pwnage and SIM-card skulduggery) are man enough to take it.

3 x Hard drives: Took the hasty decision to come to America (I shan’t be back in Britain till late January) with just one computer, one of the new MacBooks. It doesn’t have Firewire. Duh? Maddening, since my favourite hard drive is Firewire only. But at least the MacBook allows a proper connection, unlike the underpowered USB of the original version of the scrumptious MacBook Air. You know that feeling when you have a whole lump of data on one device or peripheral and you want to get it on another and you suddenly realise you can’t? ‘Okay, so I upload it onto a compact flash card. No onto an SD card. Hell where’s my card reader? Right. I email myself the file…’ etc., etc. That happens to me a lot.

1 Snowball USB Microphone: just in case I have the sudden yen to record a podgram. You never know.

6 x SIM cards: Orange, Vodafone, 2 x O2, T-Mobile, AT&T. My UK mobile number is Orange, that’s my regular number, but one needs to swap and shuffle and use other networks in order properly to play. I know. I’m weird. I’ve long accepted it. But weird is just another way of spelling “wired”. I drew weird in another way and got wired.

1 x Blackberry Bold
1 x Blackberry Storm
1 x HTC G1 Android ‘Googlephone’
1 x Pocketsurfer
n x iPhones (too many, you’d only laugh or snort with derision if I told you the exact number)

Assorted CDs

Assorted Manuals and Quickstart Guides.

Mind you, he probably travels by private jet. Try getting that pile of stuff past a RyanAir check-in.

Chris Nuttall of the FT has become a Gmail user.  (He’s on the run from the dreaded Lotus Notes.)  He’s posted some helpful notes on how to make Gmail more efficient. I’ve learned some tricks I hadn’t known. Gratias!

… dangerous, apparently. This from today’s Guardian.

A man has been given an asbo banning him from carrying felt tip pens in public after writing abusive comments about women in public lavatories and buses.

David Jell, 49, is also prohibited from carrying spray paint and displaying rude comments or nicknames in a public place under the terms of the three-year order.

Magistrates in Sevenoaks, Kent, served Jell with the order on 22 December after hearing that he had committed criminal damage and harassment between January and September 2007.

Er, what about all those misanthropes and misogynists who write similar things in the pages of the Daily Mail, Sun and Star?

Well, this is a pretty strong contender. And it’s by Annie Leibovitz too. It’s crass in the way that Woolworth prints used to be. (Remember Woolworths? Neatly organised kitsch — as Nye Bevan put it. He famously observed that listening to a speech by Neville Chamberlain was “like paying a visit to Woolworth’s: everything in its place and nothing above sixpence”.)