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A study by Wichita State University and a non-profit group shows that U.S. newspaper Web sites are unfriendly to people with vision impairments and other disabilities.

Guest: David Kamerer, WSU adjunct professor and communications director for Envision, a group that provides services to people with vision loss.

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How much do you know about the machine on which you'll cast your votes in November? How much do you need to know?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology advocacy group that has been critical of touch-screen voting, has compiled detailed guides to the Diebold Accuvote TS, the Sequoia AVC Edge, the Hart E-Slate and other touch-screen machines. You can learn about how the machines work and problems associated with them, including lost votes, miscounts, dead batteries, and complete meltdowns.

Guest: EFF staff attorney Matt Zimmerman

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Internet security company VeriSign and government-funded non-profit i-Safe America have launched a new technology to make it safer for kids to be online.

In the early going, school children in about a dozen cities across the country will be using the i-STIK (PDF), a small device the plugs into a computer's USB port. The i-STIK confirms the user's identity, making it harder for a predator to deceive children.

Image courtesy of VeriSign

Guest: Tom Galvin, VeriSign vice president

Elsewhere:

News.com: Florida e-voting lawsuit can proceed
U.N. warns that nuclear facilities are at risk of cyber attack
Reuters: Compact Disc dominance to last five more years
Industry Standard: Microsoft, Amazon file phishing, spamming lawsuits

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Google News is the popular site filled with stories, headlines and photographs chosen from thousands of other news sites by a computer algorithm. No human editors are involved.

An informal analysis of Google News political coverage shows and odd kind of bias in favor of President Bush.

Guest: Journalist and blogger J.D. Lasica, a senior editor at the Online Journalism Review and author of the upcoming book Darknet.

Elsewhere:

News.com: Fantasy sports good business, bad for workplace
New York Times: Philly plans huge Wi-Fi zone
USA Today: CNET seeks to broaden appeal
AP: U.S. makes spy images inside U.S.
NPR: Bloggers' impact on presidential race
BBC: European watchdog group to monitor U.S. elections

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Firefox is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer created by the folks at Mozilla. That group is made up engineers who worked on the original browser from Netscape.

Firefox has won many fans, who say it works as well or better than Internet Explorer, and is much less vulnerable to malicious hackers. In the last ten days, nearly two million people have downloaded the latest version of Firefox.

Guest: Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation

Elsewhere:

BBC: Apple v. Apple row goes to core of online music
News.com: Bosses track workers who carry GPS cell phones
AP: Internet emerges as potent terrorist tool
VeriSign touts children's online identity token
NPR: Documentary film chronicles inventor of "Moog" synthesizer

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A new national survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 60 percent of parents are "very concerned" about the amount of sex and violence their children are exposed to on TV. At the same time, only a small percentage of parents use the content-blocking technology called the V-Chip that's built into most newer televisions. The survey also found that parents are more concerned about inappropriate content on television than on the Internet.

Guest: Vicky Rideout, vice president and director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health

Elsewhere:

News.com: Microsoft to provide browser security fixes for Windows XP users only
BBC: Google building a browser?
SF Gate: New California law requires e-mail address for file sharing
eWeek: Anti-spam group throws in towel
New Scientist: Most financial sites have "phishing" flaws
Wired: E-vote fears soar in swing states
NPR: Apple Computer sued by Beatle record company

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A recent study said the Web sites of the U.S. government are third best in the world, behind Singapore and Taiwan. Jon Roig, a Website developer from Phoenix, thinks America is tops.

His new weblog, called Cool Gov, features information and images from scores of government Web sites. He's posted entries about food safety month, trends in piracy and armed robbery at sea, slang terms for illegal drugs, and a failed government plan to stop hurricanes.

Elsewhere:

BBC: Spam messages in Korean, Chinese, Japanese on the rise
BBC: Iran's bloggers in censorship protest
News.com: IM stands for "instant music'?
Ireland blocks calls to 13 countries fight Internet scams
ZDNet: House targets fraudulent Web site registration
Wired: Activists find more electronic voting flaws
Reuters: German mobile phone to detect bad breath, offensive body odor

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Computer security company Symantec says the number of new viruses and worms aimed at the Windows operating system rose 400 percent in the first six months of this year. Symantec's semi-annual Internet Security Threat Report comes from monitoring computer firewalls and security software in 180 countries.

Symantec says profit is the reason behind the increase in threats.

Guest: Dean Turner, executive editor of the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report

Elsewhere:

Business Week: The ABCs of VoIP
News.com: Ford revs up Internet phones
Reuters: U.S. broadcasters object to McCain digital TV proposal
New Scientist: India launches world's first education satellite
USA Today: Elusive "cybersleuths" hunt Internet crooks
Wired News: TV news documentary Outfoxed offered for remix
AP: AOL moves beyond single passwords

An anonymous cab driver claims to have found a digital media card filled with 227 photos in his taxi, and is posting one image per day his blog in hopes of finding the owner. Make-believe narrative accompanies the pictures.

I asked the operator of "I Found Some of Your Life" for an interview, but was turned down. The person cited unknown legal ramifications of the project.

Some commentators on Slashdot think the whole thing is a hoax. Seems like a good possibility.

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The U.S. government should be prepared to spend freely if it decides to encourage "bounty hunters" to track down e-mail spammers, according to a congressionally-mandated study by the Federal Trade Commission.

California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren and other advocates have said such an approach would encourage citizens to help government investigators track down spammers who often hide behind a trail of false online identities.

The FTC says it would take six-figure awards to get the job done, but that a bounty system may have too many obstacles.

Elsewhere:
Net security threats growing fast
AOL launches comparison shopping site
Dell, Microsoft tops in consumer loyalty
Code created for shape-shifting robots
Digital music prices to fall like rain?

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Wikipedia turns the traditional notion of an encyclopedia on its head. Anyone on the 'Net can write an article, or contribute to an existing piece. It's an open-source encyclopedia written by its audience.

Sounds kinda crazy, but it works. Bad information tends to get weeded out by the online community. Still, it can't be considered the last word on anything. Not yet anyway.

Guests:

Hiawatha Bray, tech reporter for the Boston Globe

Elsewhere:

Airbus says mobile phones are safe on airplanes
FTC proposes big dollar rewards to catch spammers
British music fans peeved at iTunes prices
Hackers jump on new Windows flaws
Kryptonite lock hack spreads on 'Net
New, smaller PlayStation 2 on the way
NPR: Brazil embraces open source software

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A small company created by Web retailer Amazon.com is the latest challenger to Google. The new search engine from A9 allows users to store bookmarks and save previous searches.

Guest: Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch.

Elsewhere:

Will blogs clog the Internet?
Why robots are imitating animals
Firefox browser gaining on Microsoft Internet Explorer
FactCheck.org debunks political propaganda
NPR: Paying for music in the digital age

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The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is financially supported by tax dollars, is seeking permission from the government to place the whole of its radio and television archive on the Internet for public use. Britons would be able to re-distribute and creatively re-use old radio and TV shows.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently testified in favor of the BBC Creative Archive proposal, saying it would strengthen British cultural identity, benefit U.K. cultural institutions, and "lift the whole world to a new heights of creativity, freedom, and cooperation."

Guest: Cory Doctorow, European Affairs Coordinator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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Researchers at Brown University say the governments in Singapore and Taiwan outshine the United States government in the quality of Web sites that offer information and services to citizens.

Brown political scientist Darrell West evaluated the online offerings of 192 countries.

Elsewhere:

Business Week special report: Tomorrow's safer cars
Government employers hackers for national defense
Big payout possible in Apple v. Apple
Voting machine bug turns up at bad time
Pairing iPods with vacuum tubes
Yahoo to buy Musicmatch
The state of hurricane science

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The New York Times calls Skype "the most popular and sexiest" way to make phone calls over the Internet. More than 25 million people around the world have downloaded the free Skype software, which allows users of high-speed Internet connections to talk with each other for free. Users can make calls to outside phones for a small fee.

Bob Stocking of Chapel Hill, North Carolina has just started using Skype to converse with his distant business partners.

"The software was very easy to set up, and the quality of the sound is unbelievable," said Stocking.

Future Tense analyst Dwight Silverman says Skype uses peer-to-peer technology, just like file-trading services such as Kazaa.

"They're trying to wow you with the one-on-one software, and then pull you in to the feature that lets you call any phone anywhere in the world at pretty low rates," said Silverman.

Elsewhere:

Lens does away with blurry digital pics
Patent dispute clouds future or radio tracking chips
Bullies move online
New Sims games takes leap in artificial intelligence (registration required)
China is new hotbed of research
Robot spider walks on water

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Unable to find corporate underwriters, Chuck Strinz says he went deeply in debt making his film "Back on the Mississippi." The film tells stories of people and places along the Mississippi River, from St. Paul to the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa, and will air later this year on several public television stations across the country. It's already been shown on stations in Minnesota and Iowa.

Strinz would still like to find underwriters for the program, so he's trying to auction an underwriting credit on eBay.

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In Philadelphia, city officials hope to turn all 135 square miles of the city into a wireless Internet hot spot. The ambitious plan would involve placing thousands of small transmitters around the city. Each of these wireless hot spots would be capable of communicating with the Wi-Fi network cards that now come standard with many computers.

The $10 million network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere radio waves can travel -- including poor neighborhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare.

Guest: Dianah Neff, Philadelphia's chief information officer.

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Vocaloid is a software package that turns your lyrics and musical notes into a song with synthesized vocals. You can choose from three singers: Lola, Miriam, and Leon.

The software taps a library of vocal performances from three real singers, so it produces songs that sound somewhat realistic.

Brent Hoover is a Los Angeles area musician who reviewed Vocaloid in the online publication distributed by electronic music gear retailer "AudioMidi.com." He says Vocaloid is an interesting product, but ultimately falls short.

I tried Skype for the first time this weekend. It's a very impressive VoIP application from the fellows who brought you the Kazaa file-swapping service. VoIP, which stands for "Voice over Internet Protocol," is a way to use your broadband Internet connection to make phone calls. In the New York Times, James Fallows says: "Skype's distinction is that, for now at least, it is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way for individual customers to begin using VoIP."

You can call other Skype users for free, or connect to outside lines for a fee. I talked with my friend Dwight Silverman over a Skype connection. The sound quality was excellent. Much better than a standard phone line.

Do you use Skype? I'd like to hear your comments for an upcoming Future Tense segment on Skype. Drop me a line.

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New data from online audience measurement firm Hitwise suggests that the Web could be playing a key role for voters in 17 states where the race between President Bush and Senator Kerry is closest. Battleground voters are twice as likely to visit the candidate's official sites than the country as a whole.

Guest: Bill Tancer, vice president for research at Hitwise.

TANCER: I think the Internet has become a more prevalent means for voters to look into candidates' viewpoints, research issues and decide how they are going to vote. We saw it starting with Howard Dean's blog sites, and now we see ... more and more traffic going to our politics category. We're tracking a little over 500 sites within our politics category.

Why are candidate sites getting more traffic in battleground states?

TANCER: I would say that because of the extra attention candidates are paying to those states, users are going to the Web and looking up some of these issues on sites of their choice to get a better understanding of where the candidates stand.

What we don't know is what affect the political sites are having on battleground state voters, right?

TANCER: Yeah, exactly. It's something we don't know. But we do see some interesting patterns. One of the things we found very interesting is that the number one site within our politics category is actually a spoof site called JibJab.

This is the "This Land" parody.

TANCER: It's getting about seven percent of all visits to our politics category.

What are some of the other top-visited sites?

TANCER: A lot of them are from the 527 organizations ... such as Free Republic. We've seen Swiftvets.com get a lot of traffic in light of the controversy with Kerry, as well as other sites such as Town Hall and Moveon.org, which is one of the more liberal-leaning sites among the top sites. We see a lot of the top sites are actually more conservative, such as Free Republic, Town Hall and another one called ScaryJohnKerry.

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Last month, Stamps.com launched a service that prints custom stamps from digital photos. The stamps are legit. You can send letters with them. Stamps.com says it will not make stamps with "offensive" content. No Hitler images, no pornography, that kind of thing.

It all sounded a little silly to the folks at The Smoking Gun, a web site that publishes celebrity mug shots, court papers and government documents. So they decided to send some digital photos to Stamps.com. The results are pretty funny, and maybe a bit disturbing.

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Nearly half of Americans online use instant messaging on the internet, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That amounts to 53 million people. Twelve million Americans use IM more than e-mail.

However, Pew researcher Amanda Lenhart says IM still has a ways to go in the workplace.

LENHART: It's actually something that we found a bit surprising in this research, that instant messaging wasn't as big a tool in the workplace as we thought. We saw that 21 percent of instant message users told as that they IM at their job. That's about 11 million American adults. I think some of that has to do with companies' indecision or uncertainty over how the technology should be used. Is it safe? Are people using it to goof off? Is it really going to help workplace productivity? What we found is that users said it's a mixed blessing. There are good things and bad things about it but overall it's a very positive tool that allows us to be more productive ... to stay in better contact with our co-workers and have a more balanced life.

Some of your data suggest that instant messaging is much more intimate tool than e-mail.

LENHART: You're absolutely right. What we found is that most instant message users have a relatively modest universe of people they communicate with on a regular basis. So while they may have a rather extensive "buddy list," there's really a core of people they're using this tool to communicate with.

What kind of future do you see for IM?

LENHART: We'll see a move toward audio and video uses as more people have broadband ... I also think we'll see an integration of instant messaging, text messaging and cell phones.

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Apple Computer has unveiled its new iMac desktop computer. Disk drives and processors are tucked into a flat display less than two inches thick. With the iMac G5, the monitor IS the computer.

Even though the new iMac design is less edgy than many hoped, it should appeal to consumers, said Leander Kahney, who writes about Apple for Wired News and edits the Cult of Mac Weblog. Image Courtesy of Apple.