I was pleased to see that John McCain will soon be able to use the "Internets" without the aid of his wife. The man who wants to be the leader of the free world will in no time have the ability to use the same technology already mastered by my 10 year old nephew and my 74 year old mother. After all, Senator McCain did graduate from the top 99.44% of his class at Annapolis (894/895). And while he already knows that you can accomplish vetting of VP candidates with "a Google", I wonder if he has yet to Google himself? Let's see what he would get if he Googled himself right now and see if there's anything there on the first page that might ignite that famous temper of his...

cross posted at The Ohm Project (Yes, we're back up thanks to you and Computer Tyme webhosting!)

Yesterday's hearings before Rep. Ed Markey's (D-MA) House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet reminded those concerned about Internet privacy and free speech that there are a number of clear and present dangers coming from  several different sources, both private and public.

At one point, the CEO of NebuAd, a company that wants to get to know you better through "deep packet inspection" of your Internet traffic, objected to one of Chairman Markey's questions, claiming that it was the equivalent of "Have you stopped beating your wife recently?"

Markey countered:

No, no, no, it's 'Have you stopped beating the consumer?' is the question.

Google has developed a new web gadget to open the gateway to political speeches. This tool will be a serious headache for McCain who flips his position all the time. But, it also is a tool that will allow the average Internet user to stay politically informed as well.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/...

Not sure if this is diary-worthy, but this tip is cool.  You can search election-related videos for phrases.

Want to hear what the candidates are saying about net neutrality, privacy, or other topics, from their own mouths? Google has added a Google Elections Video Search gadget for iGoogle home pages, which searches the transcribed text of YouTube's Politicians channels for the keywords you enter.

The Williams sisters played in the Wimbledon tennis final, Venus Williams won her fifth Wimbledon title. Serena seemed headed to victory early but ran out of gas. The sisters are to be congratulated for their redemption and recovery from all the distractions and injuries they have had since the last time they dominated women's tennis some five years ago. It was good television what with the drama of the family watching and knowing that one had to lose. I don't know how they do it. I sometimes think that Venus as the older sis sandbags little sis Serena with some mind games, but then, you still have to hit the shots don't you. No doubt the Williams sisters will enjoy the extra shopping money they just shagged out of merry old England as they well should. They earned it!

For those who need to catch up:

Viacom (CBS, Comedy Central) is suing YouTube/Google for $1 billion for facilitating copyright violations when videos (e.g. Daily Show, Colbert, CBS News) are uploaded to the YouTube site.

During discovery, Viacom demanded that Google turn over just about everything in its database, and the trial judge has ruled that they will have to turn over:

* all data concerning what videos users watched and uploaded;
* usernames;
* user IP addresses.

It's yet another example of the copyright laws being used to suppress free speech.  Don't buy it?  Read below the fold.

As I wrote in my previous diary, I attended Camp Obama and learned how to become a community organizer for Barack Obama exactly one month ago.

One of the important yet simple tools that my community group Temescal/Rockridge Neighborhoods for Obama! (please only sign up if you actually live in that neighborhood, that's the point) has implemented is using Google Docs to track our new volunteers.

What I'd like to do tonight is to provide you with a very elementary guide to using a Google Doc and show you a template for building a New Volunteer database. I'd also like to, in the process, tell you some stories from my recent Obama organizing and invite you to share your own...

By nature I’m not that suspicious.  But there’s a trial about to begin in Pensacola, on the Redneck Riviera, that has me worried.  It’s the State of Florida versus an alleged Internet pornographer.

As in these kinds of cases, the prosecutor has to prove that what the defendant is selling violates community obscenity standards, while the defense needs to demonstrate that what his client is peddling is not any different than what is commonly available and purchased in that seemingly conservative area.

Wikipedia defines click-fraud as

a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link.

I'll make this short, simple and to the point because I'm in a very dark mood about this FISA business.

Search engine or pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the most important new tools being deployed in this election and it appears to me to be almost completely unregulated.

FEC internet rules issued in 2006, exempt bloggers but not paid advertisers, from disclaimer requirements. McCain is raising money by ignoring this rule. At least, I think it's McCain. Why don't I know? The answer, the ad, the rules, and more angst, after the jump.

Well, I am fan of Dilbert Comic Strip..Lets see what Dilbert tells feels about it..Have fun..

If there was any further doubt that Google News is a huge shipment of fail when it comes to content aggregation, this little experiment of mine banishes that worry.

Doing a simple search of Google News for the search phrase "global warming" I note that at least 6 of the entries on the first three pages (all within an hour of this writing) are Heartland Institute shitspam "articles", all engaged in the typical debunking we've come to associate with the craptacular anti-science polemicists of the right.  Some examples (after the jump)

(cross posted at BareNaked Pundits)

A few nuggets from some quick Google searches. The wisdom of crowds in action?  You decide...

-- "Obama" + "excitement" = 539,000 results
-- "McCain" + "excitement" = 329,000 results

-- "Obama" + "hope" = 8,230,000
-- "McCain" + "hope" = 1,010,000

-- "Obama" + "future" = 5,320,000
-- "McCain" + "future" = 1,440,000

-- "Obama" + "pie" = 512,000
-- "McCain" + "pie" = 2,280,000

So McCain at least wins on "pie."  And pie is a beautiful thing.  But I'll still take hope, excitement, and future any day...

(Go ahead -- add your own below)

Yesterday, the Obama campaign bought a new domain name that links to a page on the campaign site that lists any and all rumors about the Obamas and soundly debunks them all.  We all can help push this new site address to the top of Google and Yahoo lists by publishing the link all over the web - on websites and on blogs like this.

It's become an article of faith that the Dems, much more than the Republicans, occupy the national interest. Bored at work, I decided to test this theory. Despite my expectations, I was surprised at what I found.

well, the first thing we can say is, interest in Obama absolutely dwarfs interest in McCain:

This is searches and news stories for each candidate over the last month. Blue is BHO (duh). The upper graph is searches, lower is news items.

-- more after the jump --

I like their "Come Back With A Warrant" attitude towards those seeking to get videos removed based on claims of copyright infringement. Most corporations would like to deny that a 'fair use' exception to the copyright law even exists. Google lets you know right away that here it will be vigorously defended. The 'don't tread on me' statement below is from the Google website instructions for filing a copyright complaint:

Infringement Notification - copyright in the US

To file a notice of infringement with us, you must provide a written communication (by fax or regular mail -- not by email, except by prior agreement) that sets forth the items specified below. Please note that you may be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys' fees) if you materially misrepresent that a product or activity is infringing your copyrights.

(Cross-posted on Open Left)

I was planning to update my earlier "Obama VP Rundown" analysis diary, where I assessed and ranked 20 top vice presidential candidates against a variety of metrics, but my brain wandered off on another train of thought:

A lot of folks on the blogs are declaring this or that person a 'likely,' 'mainstream,' 'conventional,' or 'shortlist' vice presidential pick, and/or discrediting other candidates on the basis that they aren't 'realistic,' or even 'plausible.'  

I'm not one to rely on conventional wisdom - so I decided to perform a crude analysis of who "the mainstream" considers a plausible vice presidential pick for Obama, by executing a set of Google News searches and tabulating the results.  

Join me for total "buzz volumes" for 30 candidates - plus analysis - on the flipside!

If there is any cardinal benchmark that one can use to measure someone's relevance and influence today, it has to be that person's rankings in a simple Google search. It sounds counterintuitive but the fact is we live in a computerized world and it's no longer just about how much money you have, how many times you've appeared on television or radio, how many times your name is printed in the papers, or the amount of albums you've sold as an entertainer; the fact is if your name (I mean anything unique to your, there is always a chance that someone has the exact same name as you) isn't showing up on the first three pages of the Google search results it means you're just not there yet. For example, I typed my name in the Google search box and only found one entry about myself for the first 10 pages. It had to do with an article I commented on, on the bbcnews website. So in that sense I'm a virtual nobody but I figure that's the case with many of you who are reading this diary. I'm not trying to insult you or anything I'm just trying to make the point that most of us are just average people.