Obama on Technology and Government

In his interview with Rachel Maddow, Barack Obama addresses the role technology will play in an Obama administration:

"One of the things that I'm excited about is to transfer what we've learned from this campaign in using technology, into government. I mean, there are huge areas where we can open things up, make things more transparent."

He went on to talk about the "Google for Government" bill, and the necessity to "remove bureaucracy...(and) make the whole process more customer-friendly."

Last November at eDemocracyCamp, we hoped this would be the case. The Obama campaign has truly embraced web 2.0, social media, and social networking. I hope he continues to listen via all these same channels if he is elected.

The Web's Most Useful Sites (according to PC Magazine)

PC Magazine profiles the heavy-hitters of Web 2.0. Event calendars, to-do lists, word processors, bookmark managers, desktop widgets, etc. Not too many surprises, but a couple of smaller companies make a big splash (congrats 30 Boxes!).

I'm happy to say that several of the winners are on my daily hit-list: 30 Boxes, Upcoming.org (I don't visit daily, but my upcoming events are pulled into 30B), Remember the Milk, Del.icio.us, Meebo, Yelp... even Pandora FM made the list!

while you're at it, check out Mike Arrington's list of web 2.0 companies he can't live without. [digg it!]

read more | digg it!

iPhone Zeitgeist

"iPhone" on twitter -- watch this number grow as the pages get cached. unfortunately no way to search the public timeline.

"iPhone" on google blog search (searching only 1/9/2007) -- currently more than 4,500 posts

"iPhone" on technorati -- currently 3,327 blog posts tagged 'iphone'

and apple has updated their homepage and site navigation to include the big announcement. gadget geeks everywhere drool in anticipation...

iPhone is no longer a rumor

[photo via engadget]

it's true. steve jobs announced a couple big products this morning -- Apple TV and the long-awaited, vastly-speculated-upon, years-in-the-making iPhone.

some links...

• jobs's keynote this morning at macworld
• engadget blogged the entire keynote
  
• engadget highlight reel
• iPhone product page at apple.com
  (yes, it's real! and holy crap they created some very cool demos!)

quick specs... [via The Unofficial Apple Weblog]

• The iPhone will use a revolutionary interface called MultiTouch, first seen in Apple patent filings over a year ago.
  
• The iPhone will run OS X, and be capable of running desktop-class applications.
• The 4GB costs $499 and the 8GB $599 (includes a 2 year contract with Cingular). It is shipping in June.

My 1st Apple

And now, like millions of bloggers before me... I will blog my first Apple purchase.

I'm rather notoriously anti-Apple, though as their machines get slicker and slicker (not to mention the killer specs) it's hard to remain a totally PC gal. I've been an Apple enabler in the past -- I got the wife a shiny white iPod video last year. But we don't use iTunes, and it's hers.

However, after receiving a gift certificate from my boss, along with a note of encouragment to "come on over to the dark side," I have, like Anakin Skywalker before me, done just that.

Here are pictures of my brand-spanking-new black iPod nano. It really is impossibly small! (Collage courtesy of Picasa 2.)

nano collage Hosted on Zooomr

Since this isn't exactly my first Apple experience (I'm the one who had to deal with the technical details of getting the wife's video iPod loaded and ready to go), I know what to expect. I'm hoping the battery life is decent, and I'm looking into how to carve a hole into my running shoes so that I don't have to buy new Nikes to take advantage of this.

Hopefully I won't be running back to the Apple store in 2 weeks, cuz this shiny new gadget is awfully cute and needs a good home!

GYM-free success!

well, i made it through the week without mentioning Google, Yahoo or MSN. fortunately i had bill o'reilly to bitch about and harry potter to look forward to. (totally excellent, by the way... but more on that later.)

it's late news, but hell, i might as well mention some of the big news that dropped last week. first up, Google Analytics. yup, google took urchin, souped it up with some ajax and a killer brand and made it free!

i have the "No Script" extension running in firefox, and i haven't "allowed" the google-analytics javascript yet just so i can see who is running it. nearly half of the sites i visit have already installed the service. hell, the first day it was announced most of the sites i visit on a regular basis were already running it. "like white on rice," as my PM guru larry used to say.

in other Google News, the bloginfamous (did i just create a word?) Google Base officially launched last week. we can officially move on from the "All your base are belong to Google jokes," and just dive right in. at first glance, the UI could use some major fixer-upping, but the depth of the app is pretty impressive. there have been rumours all around the blogosphere that this could be a craigslist/ebay/etc killer. i think it might be a bit too complicated for the average user to dive right in creating content. but as usual, the search aspect is definitely killer.

for example, search for "vegetarian recipes" and you're invited to narrow your search by clicking "recipes (94) cuisine (34) health (30) cooking (30) fitness (28) weightloss (28) more..." clicking cuisine lets you refine your search even more with links (recipes (33) main ingredient (24) vegetarian (20) vegan (5)) or a dropdown list of cuisine types (indian, italian, mexican, etc.). some killer search functionality, but in the end user satisfaction will be determined by content. and right now the content is pretty scattered and somewhat, dare i say, useless.

next up -- Google is officially in the WiFi provider market. they aren't admitting to plans of world domination just yet, but one bay area city council has approved their proposal to provide free Wi-Fi. no, it's not san francisco, but Mountain View, where google is headquartered.

"Essentially there's very little downside for us," [City Councilman Tom Means] said in an interview Wednesday. "It's an experiment. Google wants to do a test market here to see if they can do it, and they're going to pay us [for it]."

some experiment... "very little downside" is right. if GOOG pulls this off, mountain view is the flagship installation in a long line of GoogleNets. not too shabby.

and finally... have you looked at their stock lately?!?!? enough said. bubble 2.0 in full effect.

DirectTV and XM Radio finally get their act together

DirecTV is now streaming 72 XM radio stations!

As part of DIRECTV's dedication to offering the best in entertainment to its customers, beginning Nov. 15, 2005, 72 channels of XM's quality music, children's, and talk programming will be available via DIRECTV, nearly doubling its current audio programming lineup at no additional cost. In addition to music channels and children's programming, XM will provide XM's Major League Baseball "Home Plate" talk radio channel, and its High Voltage channel, featuring talk radio stars Opie and Anthony.

sure enough, channels 801-879 are now XM radio stations. Channel lineup (PDF)

it took them long enough -- Sirius has evidently been providing Dish with radio content since sometime last year. but better late than never... the stereo sound quality is good, and the "top" stations appear to be represented. my faves are all there -- deep tracks, top tracks, real jazz, beyond jazz, xm live, xm cafe, xmu, fred, ethel, music lab, lucy, the loft. perhaps they'll figure out a way to allow a local traffic & weather station based on subscriber zip code!

the only glitches i can see are that song synchronization is sometimes slow, and some stations provide minimal (or even no) song info -- which is weird since it seems like it would just be a port of exactly what is coming through normally. but hey, it's free!

between this and free internet streaming, i'll definitely be keeping my satellite radio unit in the car!