News and opinion about US politics from a liberal perspective.

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AMERICAblog News: America's Taliban in action

On the heels of a move into the social networking sphere, Google on Wednesday announced that they are ready to tackle another role – Internet service provider. Google plans…

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Google to Build High-Speed Broadband Networks – AppScout

Moments after criticizing President Barack Obama for using a teleprompter to give his speeches, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was caught using crib notes scribbled on the palm of her left hand to remember her top priorities. …

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Sarah Palin's cheat sheet – The Daily Voice – Black America's …

One of the cooler stories out the whole Google-China debacle is that Google hacked the hackers. It “began a secret counteroffensive,” breaking into a computer in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government.

Google’s delta force found evidence that the hackers had attacked 33 other companies, like Adobe, and that the onslaught actually came from China, not Taiwan. More to the point, “much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them.” Unfortunately, Google can’t prove the Chinese government’s involvement 100 percent, which is why the Obama administration is pussy-footing around the issue.

Still, it’s pretty awesome: If you hack Google, they will hack your ass right back. [NYT]

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Google Hacked the Chinese Hackers Right Back [Google]

One of the cooler stories out the whole Google-China debacle is that Google hacked the hackers. It “began a secret counteroffensive,” breaking into a computer in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government.

Google’s delta force found evidence that the hackers had attacked 33 other companies, like Adobe, and that the onslaught actually came from China, not Taiwan. More to the point, “much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them.” Unfortunately, Google can’t prove the Chinese government’s involvement 100 percent, which is why the Obama administration is pussy-footing around the issue.

Still, it’s pretty awesome: If you hack Google, they will hack your ass right back. [NYT]

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Google Hacked the Chinese Hackers Right Back [Google]

One of the cooler stories out the whole Google-China debacle is that Google hacked the hackers. It “began a secret counteroffensive,” breaking into a computer in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government.

Google’s delta force found evidence that the hackers had attacked 33 other companies, like Adobe, and that the onslaught actually came from China, not Taiwan. More to the point, “much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them.” Unfortunately, Google can’t prove the Chinese government’s involvement 100 percent, which is why the Obama administration is pussy-footing around the issue.

Still, it’s pretty awesome: If you hack Google, they will hack your ass right back. [NYT]

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Google Hacked the Chinese Hackers Right Back [Google]

political pictures for your blog – barack and michelle obama – Breaking News – Obama signs contract for new wallpaper. …

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Obama signs contract « Pundit Kitchen: Lol News and Lol Sarah …

The Palm Pre hits CES, recession grips the globe and the Internet stops to hail the chief

2010 is fast approaching and with it the top gala events in technology. So while we wait for MacWorld, CES and friends, it’s the time of year that we take a look back over the last 12 months and see how much we’ve grown.

January is always the most exciting time of all. What better way to shake off the New Year hangover than with a hearty tech binge to get the blood pumping again? With MacWorld nipping in first, so as not to lose Apple’s announcements in the tide of CES, we were somewhat underwhelmed with the arrival of just one piece of kit to get hot about. The MacBook Pro arrived in all its 17-inch glory alongside the launch of the iLife 2009 software and the much needed “and finally” announced iTunes music losing its DRM.

Once the focus switched from San Francisco to the hotels of Vegas, it was the Palm Pre, the Powermatt, the MSI X-series, the Dell Adamo, the Samsung P3 media player and the “not a netbook” Sony Vaio P that took over. Many of these we didn’t see until much later in the year but there was plenty to keep us interested with the Mattel Mind Flex, Sansa Slot Radio, the the GiiNii Movit (first Android PMP despite never actually turning up), the Asus Keyboard and even the launch of Windows 7 beta.

Although many heralded the event as a quiet CES, it was still a decent show given the arrival of the recent recession. Accordingly, January was full of the news of job cuts and company downturns with employees at Dell, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, TomTom, Digg and AMD all suffering amongst many others. All the while, of course, Apple managed to pull in its best ever financial results.

At the same time, we were all told that our gadgets were going to get more expensive in the UK what with a lightweight pound, and just to illustrate the point, the Sony XEL-1 OLED TV arrived on our shelves at a not so cool ?3489 – ?1700 more expensive than in the US. Philips rubbed a little more salt into the wound by announcing the ground-breaking 21:9 Cinema TV which would later arrive at an even less affordable ?4500 or thereabouts.

Thankfully, Sanyo was reading from a different script when the company announced a fantastic range of HD Xacti camcorders that went on to dominate the field in 2009. RIM also decided that it was time to give the consumer a hand when it offered a BlackBerry device on PAYG for the very first time as the Pearl 8120 hit Orange stores.

Cheaper still was the Internet itself which finally attracted a enormous 1bn user population by January, equating to something like 1/6th of the people on the planet. This was all very good news to hackers everywhere who hit the headlines by relieving job site Monster of over 4.5 million profiles. Perhaps it then should have been of little surprise when Google accidentally deemed the entire Internet malicious and warned everyone to stay away from it for a few hours.

The biggest event for the whole world, whether you like technology or not, was the inauguration of the first black president of the United States of America. The Internet swooned under the weight of the millions following Twitter, video streams or any other media for that matter which would enable us to watch the historic event unfolding live. Whether Obama himself was following it on his BlackBerry is another question.

As for other handsets, the Nokia Tube finally hit the shelves and, despite not being the iPhone killer we’d all been promised, there were still plenty of people queuing up to see for themselves. At the same time, Acer announced its intention to launch into the smartphone market with a considerably larger splash than has actually been felt since, whilst the “second” Android phone as made by Kogan fractured and dissolved back in to the ether from which it came.

Instead photos of a rumoured G2 were beginning to surface. If, however, you liked your mobiles with a little more innovation, a team from Hertford showed off the prototype of a voice controlled future handset called the Zumba. Big for a day, no word on it since.

In the world of video games, MadWorld was given the all clear on Wii bringing an interesting, if brief, change of direction for the software available for Nintendo’s family console and a little game known as Call of Duty 6 was rumoured to be in development.

For the public as a whole, Twitter was hitting the headlines on a regular basis with more and more people joining up to the service. News from the plane crash into the Hudson River broke first on the microblogging site as one eye witness tweeted the events while they unfolded. If that wasn’t important enough for the world to take note of the way the connected world affects our lives, then the publishing of the Digital Britain report here in the UK certainly caused a stir.

But, for those who’d rather focus on matters a little less serious, there was a small whoop of child like joy as LEGO announced a range of their own look gadgets to come. And so ended January.

For a closer look at these events and the rest of January take a look at our weekly round-ups from the month or head straight to the archive itself.

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Related links:

• Weekly news roundup – 9th January
• Weekly news roundup – 16th January
• Weekly news roundup – 23rd January
• Weekly news roundup – 30th January
• News – CES 2009

Tags:
Audio Biz Car And GPS Dad Gadgets Gaming Hardware Home Cinema Phones Cameras Software Sports Fitness Features CES2009

2009: A year in review, January originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 11:00:00 +0000

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NEWS: 2009: A year in review, January

Got a new Palm Pre? Here are five apps to get you started

So you’ve just got a new Palm Pre or Palm Pixi. Yay for you! Whether it’s for work or for pleasure, there are thousands of apps you can download to suit virtually every situation.

With that in mind – here are five must-have apps for your brand new handset.

Evernote

Evernote claims to turn your Palm Pre into an extension of your brain. Strong words, but what it really does is let you capture, remember and recall anything that happens in your life and then synchronise it to your PC or Mac. Yep, it’s a glorified to do list service, but then as David Allen says – that’s the way to “get things done”.

AP News

You’re a world news and events person, aren’t you? Well if you want to keep in touch with the world, then AP News is one place to start. You’ll get to access its news feeds, photo galleries and be able to watch video on the go.

Tweed

The most popular Twitter App on the webOS platform is Tweed, allowing you to stay connected to the “Twitterverse”, wherever you are. In Tweed, you get conversations, url shortening and all the usual features you’d expect from a full-featured Twitter app.

Pandora (US only)/AccuRadio (internet radio for elsewhere)

With iTunes access for Palm handsets a little hit and miss (who needs it anyway?), Pandora in the US and AccuRadio elsewhere allows you to stream music directly to your phone. Both services let you create artist radio services, playing music that sounds like your chosen artist – a bit like Apple’s Genius. Either way, you get free music as long as you are connected.

Where

As the name implies, this is a location focused app. It lets you see where you are and then find stuff nearby. Information available includes everything from the weather, news, and restaurant reviews, to the cheapest gas, traffic updates, and film times.

What next?

What are your favourite apps? Share them in the comments section below.

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Tags:
Phones Mobile phones Palm WebOS Palm Pre Palm Pixi

First five… webOS apps to download originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 10:30:00 +0000

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NEWS: First five… webOS apps to download

Official Charts Company stats to be unveiled on air from today

As the Noughties draw to a close, BBC Radio 1 is set to unveil the charts of the decade – revealing which singles and albums have sold the most in the UK in the last 10 years.

Radio 1 will count down the Top 100 best-selling singles and albums of the decade – as compiled by the Official Charts Company.

Find out who made it and who didn’t on Monday 28 December between 1.00 and 4.00pm when Nihal unveils the best-selling albums of the last 10 years.

Then, between 1.00 and 4.00pm on Tuesday 29 to Thursday 31 December, Nihal will run down the most popular 100 singles of the decade, culminating on New Year’s Eve with the unmasking of the best-selling song of the decade.

Tags:
Audio Music BBC Statistics Radio Radio 1 Official Charts Company

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Radio 1 to reveal best-selling songs of the Noughties originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 10:00:00 +0000

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NEWS: Radio 1 to reveal best-selling songs of the Noughties

Kitchen is actually a place that is risky to be dirty. That is why many people are hesitant to décor their kitchen to be more beautiful. Well, actually the.

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Designing the Glass Tile Kitchen | Home GLASS Improvement

Great kitchen toys are a component of the toy trade that are around for generations. Kids like to pretend they are cooking just like their parents and family.

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Kitchen Toy Play Sets For Kids At Xmas | Personal Finance Guide

It started with a few kitchen tools. Now, it is all about the food.

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Cowgirl Creamery Cheeses: Local Cheese from Pt. Reyes and Petaluma …

My report on the koshering of the White House kitchen for the party here. Among the Chicagoans at the Obama Hanukkah party: Marcia Balonick Michael Bauer and Roger Simon Joan and Bill Brodsky Lester Crown Judy Gaynor Paul Gaynor …

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Chicagoans at Obama Hanukkah party; White House kitchen koshered …

NASA needs more money, because let’s face it, rocket launches ain’t cheap. The good news is, it looks like they’ll be getting some. Not as much as they want, but some.

In October NASA said they would need $3 billion more per year to go forward with meaningful human space exploration, i.e. not just sending more robots up. For a while there were rumors going around that Washington was going to severely scale back the program’s budget, but now according to Washington insider John Logsdon, “there will be more money.”

He’s also saying that Obama doesn’t want to be that president who cuts a future oriented program. So he’ll keep it alive, but he’ll only give them a budget somewhere between their current spending and the $3 billion per year increase NASA is looking for. But all that means is that NASA will have to buddy up with international space programs a little more.

Let’s face it, we weren’t going to get to Mars on our own anyway. As long as NASA is still alive, and there’s still a remote chance of me seeing a mission to Mars in my lifetime, I’m a happy camper. [New Scientist, image via Matthew Simantov]

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Good News! NASA Is (Probably) Getting More Money [Nasa]