Obama and technology

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Because the Obama campaign made such astute use of the Net, there are high expectations on how his administration might use the Net to govern.

From social networking sites to blogs and from iPhone applications to text messaging, President elect Obama used the power of these hi-tech tools to get his message out, raise money, galvanise voters and get him elected.

Now some in the industry think it could be “pay-back time” as they looks to the country’s first tech savvy President to do his bit to push technology into a new era.

“He is the first real president who seems to understand technology and the needs of the industry,” said Tim O’Reilly, the man credited with coining the term ‘web 2.0’ and who is generally regarded as one of the industry’s visionaries.

Already there are some interesting developments — for example The White House 2, and Obamacto.org, both of which are Digg-type sites for policy ideas.

Meanwhile the BBC (and a host of other sources) are predicting that Obama will have to give up his BlackBerry when he becomes president — for security and legal reasons. Well, at least that means he won’t be upgrading to a G-phone. (I’m sure that his commitment to openness would preclude an iPhone!)

Pre-emptive celebration

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The Register believes in getting its celebration in first…

In two short months, Apple’s Macintosh will turn 25 years old. My, how tempus doth fugit.

To mark the awesome inevitability of January 24, 2009 following January 24, 1984 after exactly one quarter-century, tech pundits will bloviate, Apple-bashers will execrate, and Jobsian fanboyz will venerate the munificence that flows unabated from The Great Steve. The din will be deafening.

To avoid the crowds, we at The Reg decided to go first…

At the moment, Apple has $24 billion in cash reserves. Shouldn’t be surprised if they were up to $25 billion on the anniversary.

Recording angel

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I’ve been searching for ages for a small, trouble-free, high-quality audio recorder. I might just have found what I need — the Olympus WS-110. It’s tiny and produces incredibly crisp recordings, even without an external mike. (I bought a lapel mic to go with it, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary.) It cost £44 from Amazon and pulls apart to become a USB stick — Voila!

The one drawback is that it produces WMA files, but if you’re a Mac user then the wonderful Switch utility fixes that.

That bail-out

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The Republicans aren’t done yet, as Robert Reich points out…

Hank Paulson has just about burned through $300 billion, and it’s not clear what the public has got out of it. Perhaps things would be worse without the bailout but they’re certainly no better. Wall Street banks have not significantly stepped up their loans to small businesses, college students, car buyers, or distressed homeowners. Much of the auto industry is on the verge of bankruptcy. And the rate of foreclosures is rising.

What happened to all the money? About a third has gone into dividends the banks are paying their shareholders. Some of the rest into executive salaries and bonuses. Another portion toward acquisitions designed to raise share values. Another chunk for bailing out giant insurer, AIG.

That’s not what taxpayers bargained for. Paulson originally told Congress he’d use the money to buy mortgage-backed securities that were clogging the financial system. He’d create a market for them by holding a kind of reverse auction, buying them from the banks at the lowest prices they’d be willing to sell them for.

But Paulson has abandoned that strategy and is now just handing the money directly to the big banks, and AIG — all of which are using the money for their own purposes. It’s the worst type of trickle-down economics. Taxpayers are sending the money upward, and almost none of it is trickling back down.

What was it that the Soprano guy said? “Money goes up; shit comes down”.

Putin redux

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From Mark Andersen…

As many will have noticed this weekend, Russia slipped even further from the landfall of democracy, as Putin’s handpicked legislature voted almost unanimously to increase the presidential term from four to six years. Not only does Vlad intend to serve those next two sixers himself, but the smart money is on Medvedev stepping down early so Vlad can get back in sooner. Why change the curtains after all?

The funniest part of this whole charade: only one party had the guts to stand up to Putin’s self-serving antics, and vote No on the extended term. Want to guess who they were?

The Communists.

And that should tell you all you need to know about the State of the Russian Union. The Communists are opposing the KGB (FSB).

LIFE Photo Archive available on Google Image Search

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Wow! This is big news.

The Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; The Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen. These are just some of the things you’ll see in Google Image Search today.

We’re excited to announce the availability of never-before-seen images from the LIFE photo archive. This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.

Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.

Thanks to Tony Hirst for spotting it first.

Google’s predictive power (contd.)

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The story continues. Here’s Bill Thompson’s distinctive take on it.

As we have seen with flu trends, sometimes the “interesting” knowledge that can be extracted is well-concealed until comparisons can be made with other sources, as it was the correlation between some search terms and the real-world data that mattered.

Of course Google has not revealed which search terms it analysed because doing so would undermine the model’s effectiveness.

Unfortunately it is being equally reticent about how it has ensured that the data its uses is properly anonymised so that users cannot be identified on the basis of their queries.

A letter from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Patient Privacy Rights to Google boss Eric Schmidt has not been answered, leaving those concerned with online privacy uncertain over the broader implications of the project.

But as Cade Metz points out in an insightful article in The Register, we may all be happy to know that a ‘flu outbreak is coming, but what happens when the disease involved is more life-threatening and the government asks Google for the names and IP addresses of anyone whose search terms indicate that they are infected?

It’s not that I don’t trust Google. I don’t trust any company, government department or individual without a good reason to do so.

In the case of search engines that claim to protect my privacy I want to know just how they do it and will not accept vague reassurances.

That’s technology for you — dammit

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New research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life
Project shows that:

* 44% of those with home internet access say their connection
failed to work properly at some time in the previous 12 months.
* 39% of those with desktop or laptop computers have had their
machines not work properly at some time in the previous 12 months.
* 29% of cell phone users say their device failed to work properly
at some time in the previous year.

Full report here.

Go Charlie, Go

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The RIAA may finally have met its match…

Professor Charlie Nesson of Harvard Law has launched a legal attempt to have the federal copyright law at the core of the RIAA’s legal strategy declared unconstitutional. He has come to the defence of a Boston University graduate student targeted in one of the music industry’s lawsuits, arguing that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law.

In an interview with AP Charlie, who founded the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said that his goal is to “turn the courts away from allowing themselves to be used like a low-grade collection agency.”

Great stuff. Let’s hope it works.