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Google unveiled more details about its Chrome OS yesterday, and released source code for developers.

Guest: Tom Krazit, CNET News

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Regarding our recent story on the term "unfriend" being named the Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year, we heard from a number of people who say they've never heard anyone say "unfriend," but rather, they hear and use "defriend" instead -- as in, "I defriended her on Facebook because she was always sending me stupid quizzes." Ammon Shea from Oxford University Press was gracious enough to talk to us again to clear up this "unfriend" versus "defriend" issue.

Also today: Part two of our interview with David Michel-Davies regarding the most important Internet events of the decade.

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The folks behind the Webby Awards have published their take on the biggest Internet moments in the years 2000 to 2009.

Guest: Webby Awards Executive Director David-Michel Davies

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Today, Ammon Shea with Oxford University Press on why "unfriend" from the world of social media is the 2009 Word of the Year, and why "netbook," "intexticated," and "sexting" were also considered for the honor.

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Facebook, Twitter and the tools that enable them sometimes get a bad rap. A recent example: a weekend article in the San Francisco Chronicle, which quotes mental health professionals who worry that addiction to our digital tools will lead to a breakdown of interpersonal relationships and a rise in attention deficit disorder.

A new study from the University of Minnesota does not address those issues but does suggest social networks are a good way to get young people engaged current events and civic affairs, and have much potential as teaching tools.

Guest: Christine Greenhow, University of Minnesota

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The Gates Foundation is funding a project to create mobile phone software that will allow people to cough into their phones (PDF) to help determine whether they have pneumonia, influenza or other ailments.

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Google will soon begin rolling out new search technology called Caffeine. It's designed to producer faster, more relevant results.

Guest: Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land

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Ed Bott joins us today to discuss the many ways to avoid paying full price for Windows 7.

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Today we look back at some of the stories we covered in November, 1999.

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A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that the Internet and mobile phones do not lead to social isolation, as some previous research suggested. In fact, there's plenty of evidence that people who spend a lot of time online have fuller social lives.

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The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation is spearheading a project to build new voting machines to replace proprietary systems currently in place. The group is in the second year of a an eight-year plan to produce a publicly-owned, open source election system. OSDV has turned loose its first batch of software code for technical review.

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The Obama administration, like the Bush team before it, have talked a great deal about the need to strengthen our ability to fend off attacks that target U.S. computers. How much should we worry, really?

Yesterday we heard from James Lewis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He's just written a new report that concludes there is no chance another country or terrorist group will launch a major cyber attack against the U.S. anytime in the near future. Still, Lewis believes U.S. defenses against an Internet-based attack on its military and government computers, power grids and financial system are weak and need to be shored up to guard against future threats.

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There is no chance other countries or terrorist groups will launch an Internet-based attack against U.S. information systems in the near future, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Other countries have no political interesting in attacking the U.S. while terrorists don't likely possess the capability for a destructive cyber-war campaign, according to the Center's James Lewis.

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Microsoft has begun selling new PCs with no crapware, from the likes of Sony, HP and Dell. Of course, the machines will still come with plenty of Microsoft software that not everyone will want.

You can find these Microsoft Signature PCs at its new store in Scottsdale, Arizona and online.

Guest: Todd Bishop, TechFlash

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Verizon Wireless and Motorola are expected to unveil details of their new Android phone today.

Guest: Kent German, CNET

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Today, Dwight Silverman analyzes new commercials from Apple and Microsoft.

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The SenseCam is a specialized digital camera that's been percolating in the labs of Microsoft Research U.K for about five years now. It's designed to be worn around the neck on a lanyard. The device takes still images throughout the day, when motion is sensed or when people come into view, as often as every 30 seconds.

The camera can be used for everything from a scrapbooking tool to a medical device for patients with impaired memories. Microsoft has been able to produced only about 500 SenseCams, so it's decided to license its technology to ramp up production.

U.K. company Vicon will begin selling the cameras, under the name Vicon Revue, to researchers this year and to the general public in 2010.

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Consumers seem to like netbooks. Not Joe Wilcox. Netbooks are plague, Wilcox says.

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Rogue security software is a huge and growing problem, according to a new report from Symantec.

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Barnes & Noble is now selling its own electronic book reader to compete with the Amazon Kindle and the Sony device. Other companies will enter the market soon. So, this is a golden age for digital reading devices, right? No way, says publishing industry analyst Thad McIlroy.

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Our disparate gadgets will be able to chat with greater ease when Wi-Fi Direct arrives next year.

Guest: Glenn Fleishman, freelance tech reporter

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Windows 7 arrives this week. We asked Lance Ulanoff of PCMag.com to come up with a list of the five best things about the new Microsoft operating system.

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Part two of our interview with Wired's Robert Capps

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We love MP3s even though they sound inferior to CDs. We can't get by without our mobile phones even though they've tended to sound worse than land lines. We're watching more TV shows and movies on our little computer screens, even as our big TVs sit idle in the next room. It's the Good Enough Revolution.

Guest: Robert Capps, Wired

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123456.

Believe it or not, that was the most common password on a list of 10,000 e-mail addresses recently revealed after a phishing attack.

Guests: Robert Abela, Acunetix; Bruce Schneier, security technologist

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Part 2 of our interview with John Arquilla, Naval Postgraduate School

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The U.S. posture on cyber warfare is largely defensive, with military geeks focused on preventing and mitigating Internet-based attacks on critical infrastructure. John Arquilla, professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, believes Pentagon code-slingers should alter their focus somewhat and team with International white hat hackers to disable the war-making capabilities of nations preparing to go to fight.

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The Federal Trade Commission this week announced new guidelines that would penalize bloggers for failing to disclose when they receive money for endorsing products. The fine could go as high as $11,000.

Some consumer groups pushed for the change, saying Internet users need to be aware of payments before trusting information on products like diets and financial services. Others are concerned the government is sticking its nose where it doesn't belong.

Guest: Caroline McCarthy, CNET News

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Will people buy tablet computers in meaningful numbers? It looks like Microsoft will unveil a new device next year. We might see an Apple tablet as well. And then there's Crunchpad.

Guest: Brad Linder, Liliputing.com

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Last weekend, tech blogger and book author Ed Bott got an unpleasant surprise when fired up a machine running Windows 7. Apple's software update tool offered him (and other users) a program called "iPhone Configuration Utility." Bott doesn't own an iPhone. He says Apple violated a sacred trust.

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Microsoft has released its free security software package. Does it do the job? We put that question to Dwight Silverman.

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Google is sending 100,000 preview invitations today for Wave, its real-time communications product that combines e-mail, instant messaging, document collaboration and social networking.

Guest: Frederic Lardinois, ReadWriteWeb

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Rival companies Google and Microsoft fight on many fronts -- Internet search and advertising, for example, and operating systems. A newer battlefield is Southern California, where the companies are competing for a $7.25 million contract to provide email and office software for the City of Los Angeles.

The contract fight is significant because it could help determine whether upstart Google is ready for the big time when it comes to its cloud-based apps, according to David Sarno, business reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

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Harvard's Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Duke Universitie's AdViews archive of old TV commercials

Carl Sagan: A Glorious Dawn ft. Stephen Hawking

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Thousands of people across the country, at the invitation of Microsoft, are hosting Windows 7 release parties next month. Microsoft is giving away copies of Windows 7 Ultimate to party hosts, who are getting some guidance from Microsoft on how to show off the newest version of Windows at their parties.

We wondered who would host such a party, and why?

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In a recent scholarly paper researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University argue that secret question mechanisms are insecure. The study involved 130 people who use Web mail services from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, all of which have secret questions for password recovery.

Guest: Stuart Schechter, Microsoft Research

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In Wired magazine, Nicholas Thompson writes about system known as Dead Hand. It was designed by Soviet scientists in the mid 1980s to automatically retaliate against a nuclear strike from the U.S.

Thompson's new book on the cold war is The Hawk and the Dove.

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The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is proposing new rules that would require Internet service providers to treat all Web content the same. Under the rules, which apply to both wired and wireless networks, operators would not be able to discriminate on how they handle Internet content or applications on their networks.

Guest: Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm

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A new iPod Nano. New iPod Touch. New ZuneHD. It's a good time to be in the market for a new portable music player. Or a head scratching time, if you have trouble making a choice, like I do.

Guest: Donald Bell, CNET

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Libraries are taking a recession-induced hit even as they become more important for people seeking their way out of economic hard times, according to a new report from the American Library Association.

Guest: John Bertot, professor and director of the Center for Library and Information Innovation at the University of Maryland College Park

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Yesterday we heard from Fordham University Law associate professor Zephyr Teachout, who predicted that the Internet would cause the next generation to turn away from college campuses in favor of online education.

Today we have a rebuttal from John Sener, an online learning consultant and director of special initiatives for the Sloan Consortium, a group that promotes online education.

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Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by the Internet, according to Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law at Fordham University.

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Part 2 of our interview with Massoud Amin of the University of Minnesota

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The worry over coordinated cyber attacks against U.S. computer systems from foreign enemies or terrorists has been larger than any damage that's occurred so far, perhaps, but the bad guys are getting better and threats are growing, according to Massoud Amin, who heads a new master's program in security technologies at the University of Minnesota.

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One of our key protections against privacy invasion, the stripping of personally identifiable information from databases, is not working, according to Paul Ohm of the University of Colorado School of Law.

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Many Americans mistakenly conclude they have a rare illness after attempting self-diagnosis on the Internet, according to a recent study by researchers are Microsoft. The company conducted the study to improve its own search engine.

Microsoft studied health-related Web searches on popular search engines and surveyed 500 of its employees about their health-related searching. Microsoft's Eric Horvitz, an artificial intelligence expert and medical school grad, says Web search engines can increase our health-related anxieties and lead us to believe worst-case scenarios.

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A survey by the nonprofit Conference Board shows that nearly a quarter of households in the U.S. now watch television programs on the Internet.

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Scientists at the University of Rochester are working on a different kind of encoding that promises to make sound files 1,000 times smaller than MP3s.

The new method is not a recording technology. Instead, it recreates music in a computer based on what it knows about the real-world physics of an instrument and its human player.

Researchers say the real benefit is expressiveness, not file size.

This story originally aired April 10, 2008

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The average sentence length of a Twitter message is 1.40 sentences. Gerunds are more popular on Twitter than off. The second most popular word on Twitter is "I."

These are a few of the things the Oxford English Dictionary has learned by studying millions of Twitter messages.

Guest: Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large of the OED

This segment originally aired June 8, 2009

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New iPods? Tablet computer? Steve Jobs?

Apple fans wait to see what they will get at an invitation-only event next week in San Francisco.

Guest: Donald Bell, CNET

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Part 2 of our interview with Patrick Tucker of The Futurist magazine

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Exponential advances in technology will result in the merging of humans and machines in this century, according to renowned inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.

This theoretical point in time when computers gain a kind of super intelligence, and we humans incorporate remarkable computing power into our own bodies, is known as the "technological singularity."

Guest: Patrick Tucker, The Futurist

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Part 2 of our conversation with Gary Wolf of Wired

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Iconic Internet company Craigslist is a strange beast: The founder of the simple, text-based online classified site spends a great deal of his time as a customer service rep reading ad submissions and responding to complaints; the company refuses to adopt new features that most users expect from other sites; and Craigslist intentionally limits its profitability by charging for only a few kinds of classified ads.

Guest: Gary Wolf, Wired

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The semi-annual Web Hacking Incidents Database report finds an increasing number of malicious attacks targeting users of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networks.

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Sony has unveiled a new electronic reading device designed to compete with the Amazon Kindle.

The Reader Daily Edition is the first Sony e-reader to sport a wireless connection for downloading books. It will go for about $400 when it hits the market in December.

Guest: John Falcone, CNET

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The latest version of Apple's operating system - Mac OS X version 10.6 - is arriving at retail stores this Friday, a week earlier than expected. In the tradition of naming operating system updates after big cats, 10.6 is called Snow Leopard.

Guest: Dwight Silverman

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A new report from the United States Department of Agriculture says broadband Internet leads to more and higher-paying jobs in rural areas.

Guest: Matthew Lasar, Ars Technica

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New data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds young people aged 12 to 17 have adopted cell phones at nearly the same rate as adults. The small gap that exists now was much larger five years ago, according to Pew's Amanda Lenhart.

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A recognized genius in mathematics, cryptography, and computer science, Alan Turing cracked German naval code in World War II, and is thought to be the father of modern computer science. Despite his achievements he was treated poorly in his home country of Great Britain, which prosecuted him for homosexual acts, which were illegal at the time. That treatment likely led to his suicide in 1954 at the age of 41.

John Graham-Cumming, a British computer programmer, believes Turing is owed an apology.

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Today we feature part two of our interview with David Pogue of the New York Times.

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For the past few weeks New York Times technology columnist David Pogue has been urging readers to complain to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T about voice mail instructions that consumers hear when they leave messages or retrieve their own.

The 15-second message amount to theft of customers money and time, according to Pogue.

The campaign is beginning to work.

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Consumers in the U.S., Canada and Spain spend more money on mobile phone services than the remaining 27 countries in the OECD, according to a new report. Taylor Reynolds, an economist with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and author of the report, says residents of the Scandinavian countries pay the least to use their phones.

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A study by the OpenNet Initiative, an Internet freedom group comprised of researchers from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and the University of Toronto, finds rising government censorship of online information in most of the 18 countries of the Middle East and North Africa.

Guest: Rob Faris, Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society

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On his blog Minimal Mac, Patrick Rhone suggests we should ask ourselves what desktop icons, programs, and hardware we truly need, and then get rid of what we rarely or never use.

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Fueled by the Internet, the verb "fail" is being transformed into a noun, an interjection, and even an adjective.

Guest: Ben Zimmer, Visual Thesaurus

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I've finally chosen a new phone. I picked the T-Mobile myTouch, an Android device, over Apple's iPhone.

The actual device was less a factor for me than cost of the plan and quality of the network. The iPhone is clearly a more advanced creature (although the myTouch is good enough for me). T-Mobile's data plan is cheaper. In fact, thanks to a customer loyalty program (I've been withT-Mobile for a few years) I was able to get unlimited minutes, unlimited data, and 400 text messages per month for about $75.

The T-Mobile network, while not always perfect, has been generally reliable. All the stories about dropped calls and 3G outages on the iPhone with AT&T scared me away.

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Despite widespread censorship in China, 92 percent of Internet users there use social media, compared to 76 percent of U.S. netizens, according to a new study by Netpop Research.

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Spotify is Europe's hottest Internet property, and the free, ad-supported music streaming service is coming to the U.S.

To succeed Spotify will probably have to convert more users to premium services, according to Robert Andrews of PaidContent UK.

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President Obama has made it a top priority to assemble a White House-based team to fight Internet-based crime and defend the country against cyber attack, but first he has to find a person willing and able to lead the effort. Yesterday the interim cyber czar, Melissa Hathway, resigned, saying she's frustrated over the administration's delay in filling the post. Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, says some of the president's advisers had apparently turned against Hathaway.

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The departure of Google CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple Board of Directors highlights the growing competition between the two companies, according to Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who writes the Apple 2.0 blog for Fortune.

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Guest: Tom Merritt, executive editor at CNET

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In the final part of our series on mobile phone choice, we hear from a woman who gave up her iPhone, and a man who says he loves iPhones but would never actually buy one.

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I'm in the market for a new smartphone and can't decide what to buy.

My BlackBerry Curve has been a good phone but I just want something new and different. I'm not considering the highly-touted Palm Pre because it runs on the Sprint network, which is weak where I live.

So I've narrowed my choice to an iPhone or a device that runs on Google's open source Android operating system, like the T-Mobile/HTC myTouch.

Today, some Android fans try to get me in their corner.

Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, or call me on the comment line at 612-284-1965

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I'm in the market for a new phone and facing a bout of indecision. So I'm inviting folks to tell me what to buy. First up, commentator Dwight Silverman says I'd be a fool not to get an iPhone.

Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, or call me on the comment line at 612-284-1965

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Today we feature part 2 of out interview with Lawrence R. Samuel, author of Future: A Recent History. We discuss Al Gore, Ray Kurzweil, and Steve Martin.

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Futurism has seen better times than the last 15 years, according to Lawrence R. Samuel, author of Future: A Recent History.

In part 1 of our interview, Samuel talks about how caution and timidity have infected futurists.

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology plan to electronically track thousands of pieces of trash discarded by people in Seattle and New York, in part to give people a greater sense of their impact on the environment.

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A study by Internet analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group finds a correlation between profit growth and how well companies engage customers via social media.

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Today -- part 2 of our interview with Pandora's Tim Westergren.

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For a couple of years commercial Webcasters have fought mightily against royalties they were forced to pay music performers and record labels. One argument some Webcasters made was that Internet radio should not be forced to pay fees that terrestrial radio is not required to pay. Radio stations are required to pay fees to songwriters but not performers and record labels.

Now Pandora, perhaps the best-known Webcaster, is urging Congress to level the playing field and make radio kick in money for performers and labels, too. Pandora itself never argued it should be exempt from performance royalties, maintaining only that the fees were too high.

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A new survey by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group finds that 12 percent of Internet users open messages they know to be spam because they're interested in the product or service being pitched.

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"The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up."

That's probably true, according to Pete Meyers, associate publisher at O'Reilly and editor of the new book Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders.

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Microsoft says it will make lightweight, web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote as part of Office 2010. The "cloud" applications are part of a company push into collaborative document making, according to Microsoft chief strategist and researcher Craig Mundie.

In this interview Mundie also addresses Google Chrome OS and the future of Windows.

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Writers J.C. Hutchins and Jordan Weisman venture beyond the novel into interactive digital storytelling with the new novel Personal Effects: Dark Art.

The psychological thriller tells the story of Zach Taylor, an art therapist who must determine whether Martin Grace, a blind audio engineer suspected of a dozen murders, is competent to stand trial.

Included with the novel -- tucked inside the book's front pocket -- are physical artifacts to engage the reader beyond the pages -- including character's birth certificates, ID cards and family photos. Readers have the opportunity to call character's phone numbers to listen to messages. The authors have created real Web sites for characters, and they look plenty real. And readers have the opportunity to hear a podcast-only "prequel" to the novel.

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NASA and the University of Colorado Boulder are working to build a version of the Internet for communications in space.

Guest: Adrian Hooke, NASA

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How should Microsoft respond to news that Google will make its own operating system?

Guest: Michael Cherry, Directions on Microsoft

Here is an edited transcript of my interview with Cherry:

Gordon: How is Google's announcement of a new operating system likely being viewed at Microsoft?

Cherry: There's a certain amount of interest when someone else makes claims they can do an operating system. There will be a lot of interest in what are they doing, what are they actually delivering.

I think there will be concern on the part of the company that it could fragment the sales of netbooks into netbooks running the Chrome OS, Windows and Linux distributions. When you add another player into a mix it's going to have some effect.

The missing piece here is while Google promises us there is going to be great applications for this OS, we need to see them. It's those applications that are going to get people to use it. It's not the OS itself.

Gordon: Some people are painting the Chrome OS as sort of a nuclear bomb dropped into the lap of Microsoft, and that it sets up an epic battle. Do you see it that way?

Cherry: Not really. The thing that will keep operating system developers at Microsoft, Apple, and the operating system developers who contribute to Linux distributions doing their best work is alternative operating systems. I think its super for application developers and consumers. So hopefully what Chrome OS does is spur a new generation of applications.

Gordon: How should Microsoft respond to the Chrome OS?

Cherry: The best response is to keep making sure you do your best work with your operating system, that you continue to make it better. To make it a better platform to run applications on than your competition does. That means making sure its fast and secure.

Gordon: I guess the big question for me is will it end up being better to have this sort of Internet-based operating system versus a more traditional OS that sits on your computer and does what Windows does.

Cherry: There is tremendous potential for it in the future. I just don't think we're ready yet. I've yet to find a Web-based application that I'm willing to give up my locally-running counterpart for. Web-based applications don't have all the features I want them to have.

Second, I'm very concerned about storing my data in the cloud. We had a severe outage here in Seattle last week where a large data center that hosted a lot of Web services went down after a fire.

Third, there are a lot of privacy issues related to data. I certainly don't want my data in a Web-based application if a third party is indexing it and going through my data.

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Best Buy is selling a Compaq netbook computer for a dollar, when customers sign up for a two year subscription plan for mobile Internet service with Sprint. The tiny computer has a 160 GB hard drive, a gig of ram, and a 10.1 inch screen.

Over the life of the wireless contract consumers will spend at least $1,440.

Guest: Kevin Tofel, jkOnTheRun

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Researchers at the University of Rochester say adults who play a lot of action video games may be improving their brain's ability to process visual information. They say people who used a video-game training program saw significant improvements in their ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray, a finding that may help people who have trouble driving at night or in the fog.

The study appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

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Free and open source software, which in general can be used, modified and customized without restriction, has made impressive inroads since the movement got its start in the early 1980's.

But free software still has a ways to go when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of average computers users.

Guest: Benjamin Mako Hill, MIT Sloan School of Management & Free Software Foundation

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Today, part two of our conversation with Ronald Arkin, author of Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots

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Unmanned aerial vehicles and other robots are taking on an ever-larger role in how the U.S. wages war. Fully autonomous battle robots seem inevitable. One researcher is committed to the notion that battle robots should be imbued with ethical decision-making technology.

Guest: Ronald Arkin, author of Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots

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For seven months the New York Times managed to bury news of the kidnapping of one of its reporters by the Taliban. It also worked with Wikipedia to quash any mention of the kidnapping, and in doing so raised some questions about the very nature of the online encyclopedia.

Guest: Wikipedia researcher Joseph M. Reagle, adjunct professor at NYU

More coverage of this story:

Keeping News of Kidnapping Off Wikipedia (New York Times)

Why Wikipedia was right to stop the revelation of David Rohde's kidnapping (TimesOnline)

The Troubles of Crowdsourcing: How Do You Keep a Secret? (Mashable)

Wales quashes kidnapping on Wikipedia (TECH.BLORGE)

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Web usability campaigner Jakob Nielsen says its time to let users see their passwords as they type them.

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With Twitter serving as a key conduit of information coming from Iran, is the small company up to the task of being a player in geopolitics? It's a question posed by CNET staff writer Caroline McCarthy in a recent post.

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Future Tense commentator Dwight Silverman checks in on the thorny issue of using iPhones, BlackBerries and other smart phones during business meetings (and to Tweet that you're eating lunch with a friend you're ignoring in order to send that Tweet).

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Windows 7 goes on sale to the public this coming October and, based on reviews of various test versions, it's sleeker and better performing than its predecessor, Vista.

But even as the company puts the final touches on Windows 7 some top engineers and executives are working on a replacement operating system that would relegate the aging Windows to computer history museums.

Guest: Mary-Jo Foley, ZDNet

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Researchers at the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard University analyzed about 35,000 active Arabic language Weblogs in 18 different countries. One of the more interesting findings, according to Harvard's Bruce Etling, is bloggers tend to write mostly about their own towns and countries rather than wider, regional issues.

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Today, the conclusion of our three part interview with H. Keith Melton.

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Today: Part 2 of our interview with H. Keith Melton, author of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda

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Scientists working for U.S. intelligence have come up with some nifty ways to steal and communicate secrets over the years - from ball point pens that conceal tiny cameras to a freeze-dried rat with a hollow abdomen to hide information.

These days, of course, the spy game of covert communications is played out digitally, on computers, mobile phones, and the Internet.

Guest: H. Keith Melton, co-author of Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al Qaeda

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Today we feature part two of our conversation with Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis of public radio's Sound Opinions.

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Today we feature a conversation with Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, hosts of American Public Media's Sound Opinions program, regarding the recording industry's relationship with digital technology.

Kot is author of the new book Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.

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Today, part two of our conversation with Bill Wasik, author of And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture

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Culture in the digital age is being created from the ground up, and just about anyone with a computer or smartphone can become a content-producing superstar, according to Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's magazine and author of the new book And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture.

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Charity is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs and other social media. Mashable.com, which covers the world of social media, is hoping to change that. Mashable's Summer of Social Good project - which runs through August - is attempting to light a fire under social media users by encouraging them to donate money to four charities: The Humane Society, Oxfam America, Livestrong and the World Wildlife Federation.

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Next week in Minneapolis Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two from Brainerd, Minnesota, is scheduled to on trial for copyright infringement for the second time.

A jury found her guilty in 2007, ordering her to pay $220,000 in damages for illegally distributing 24 songs by the likes of Aerosmith, Green Day and Guns N' Roses over the KaZaA peer-to-peer network. But a judge subsequently threw out the conviction.

Guest: Nate Anderson, Ars Technica

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The average sentence length of a Twitter message is 1.40 sentences. Gerunds are more popular on Twitter than off. The second most popular word on Twitter is "I."

These are a few of the things the Oxford English Dictionary has learned by studying millions of Twitter messages.

Guest: Jesse Sheidlower, editor-at-large of the OED

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A new service unveiled yesterday will track policy changes imposed by popular Internet sites such as Facebook, eBay and Google.

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Today, we have an early review of Google Wave by Rafe Needleman, editor of CNET Webware.com.

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Online social networks will become a major economic force over the next decade, with powerful groups dictating what products will be made, who will produce them, and what prices they'll pay, according to a recent report by Forrester Research.

Guest: Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester

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Future Tense news analyst Dwight Silverman has been putting Microsoft search engine Bing through its paces. He calls it "intriguing."

Follow me on Twitter

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A company called The Extraordinaries is creating applications designed to allow users to do some good while they fiddle with their smart phones.

The idea is to allow non-profits and other organizations to tap into the power of their memberships and support networks -- enlisting people to perform tasks on their phones. Those tasks might range from classifying photographs to translating documents. A rough beta version is available for the iPhone, with a more complete version due later this year.

The Extraordinaries recently grabbed second place in the NetSquared competition for creative use of technology by non-profits.

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A new Zune is on the way. It will feature high definition video and HD Radio, a multi-touch screen, plus Wifi and a Web browser.

Microsoft has not announced a price for the Zune HD, which is due this autumn.

Guest: Dwight Silverman

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Microsoft plans to spend up to $100 million to promote Bing, its re-named and revamped search engine that debuts June 3.

Guest: Abbey Klaassen, Advertising Age

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Sonoma County, California winery Murphy-Goode is seeking a blogger/tweeter to hang with winemaker David Ready for six months. The Murphy-Goode lifestyle correspondent will write about wine making and promote the company on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Wanna-be wine bloggers are submitting 60-second videos to promote their candidacies.

Applications for the job close June 19th. It pays $10,000 per month for six months, and includes housing.

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The Obama administration has launched Data.gov, a much-anticipated site where citizens can download raw data from federal agencies. The idea is to encourage programmers and others to make new applications and mashups based on information from such agencies as the National Weather Service, the Census Bureau, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Center for Health Statistics.

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In a research paper being presented at a computer security symposium in Oakland, California today, researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University argue that secret question mechanisms are insecure. The study involved 130 people who use Web mail services from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, all of which have secret questions for password recovery.

Guest: Stuart Schechter, Microsoft Research

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Last week the Obama administration promised to strengthen antitrust enforcement as a means to deal with powerful companies. That would make the U.S. more aligned with the European Union, which last week fined chip maker Intel $1.45 billion for abusing its market power.

Technology companies such as AT&T, IBM and Microsoft have been the biggest antitrust targets for the government over the past several decades. In many ways, the most dominant tech firm now is Google, which is already under some scrutiny by the Justice Department. Last year the company abandoned a search partnership with Yahoo after the government threatened an antitrust lawsuit. And this year the government has opened two separate inquiries -- one for Google's book scanning project, the other related to Google sharing board members with Apple.

Will the government make Google a major antitrust target going forward? Possible but not likely, according to University of Iowa law school professor Herbert Hovenkamp.

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For the last year or so it's looked very much liked the inexpensive, small computers known as "netbooks" were poised to storm the marketplace. But according to Future Tense news analyst Dwight Silverman, netbooks have hit a roadblock.

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Online classified ad site Craigslist is dropping its controversial "erotic services" category -- but adding a new one called "adult services" in which all ad submissions will be screened before they're posted.

Guest: Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com

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California prison authorities confiscated 2800 cell phones from inmates last year - double the number the year before. And now a proposal being debated in California would make it a crime for the state's approximately 170,00 inmates to possess cell phones and for people to sneak them into prisons. Right now cell phones are banned from California prisons but not illegal.

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Rupert Murdoch says his News Corp. plans to charge people to read its news sites. News Corp. properties include the New York Post, the Times of London, and the Wall Street Journal, which already requires a subscription fee.

Murdoch says the ad-supported news model is "malfunctioning."

Guest: Robert Andrews, paidContent:UK

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Today's topics:

1. Kumo
2. John Doe
3. MiFi

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Computer science researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara earlier this year managed to infiltrate the Torpig botnet, a vast zombie network of infected Windows computers designed to steal identities and money from its victims. Torpig infects machines with malware, then monitors keystrokes to steal user names and passwords for logging into online banks and other sites.

Guest: Giovanni Vigna, UCSB

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Library groups are urging "rigorous oversight" of Google's agreement with authors and publishers that would allow it to put millions of books online.

Google reached an agreement last year with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers to pursue the project. The lawsuit settlement It is awaiting a judge's approval.

The American Library Association and Association of Research Libraries say they're concerned Google will not safeguard readers' privacy, and are worried Google would be the only online source for many books and academic journals.

Guest: Ryan Singel, Wired.com

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The United States has no clear policy on the use of digital weaponry to attack communications systems, financial networks and power grids, or to defend its own systems, according to a National Research Council panel of scientists and policy makers.

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Facebook executive Chris Kelly, former eBay C.E.O. Meg Whitman, former eBay executive Steve Westly, former tech startup C.E.O. Steve Poizner, and former Hewlett Packard C.E.O. Carly Fiorina have either announced their candidacies for statewide office in California, or at least expressed interest. What's with with the rash of Silicon Valley luminaries enterting politics? I put that question to Owen Thomas of Valleywag.

Listen to a longer, mostly unedited version of my interview with Thomas.

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Don't call WolframAlpha a search engine, says its creator, mathematician and physicist Steven Wolfram. Call it a "computational knowledge engine."

Guest: Frederic Lardinois, Read/Write Web

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Yahoo announced last week it would shut down its GeoCities personal website service later this year. Yahoo paid about $3 billion for the company in 1999.

Geocities allowed users to design personal websites. but the pioneering service has long since been eclipsed by blogs and social networks.

What will become of the million-plus GeoCities home pages out there? Yahoo is saying only that it will provide details later this summer on how customers can save their own data.

Jason Scott believes GeoCities deserves saving. Scott runs textfiles.com, a site devoted to computer history. He's lead organizer for a new group called the Archive Team, which is working to rescue a growing body of endangered Internet content, including GeoCities.

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At a congressional hearing last week, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) wondered aloud whether a technology called deep packet inspection needs to be outlawed. Deep packet inspection allows Internet service providers to examine in great detail an individual's activity on the Internet - from email to Web surfing habits.

Guest: Nate Anderson, Ars Technica

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Who will report the local news when newspapers cut staff or close altogether?

On today's show I talk with Mark Glaser of MediaShift, a PBS blog that covers the new media industry, about the new crop of local watchdog sites staffed in part by former newspaper reporters.

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Machinima -- a portmanteau of the words "machine" and "cinema" - is the topic of a two day conference underway at Stanford University.

Here are some places to watch/ learn about Machinima:

Machinima.com
Machinima.org
Machinima in Second Life
Myndflame
Callous Productions

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Google has unveiled a service that lets users fill out a profile to improve how they show up in search results. Filling out the profile will help users show up in a new feature at the bottom of a Google search page. Users can add pictures, a bio, and links to things like their Web sites and Facebook accounts.

Google says the feature is designed in part to allow people with the same names distinguish themselves.

So is confused online identity such a problem? I thought I'd investigate by asking some of the other top Jon Gordons on the Web - those who spell their first names J-O-N like me. I talked to Jon Gordon the author and motivational speaker, and Jon Gordon the acclaimed jazz saxophone player.

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Google has unveiled two new products: one for improving image searches; and the other to give users a timeline of stories appearing on Google News. The new services are not 100% finished, but the company says it wants to accelerate the release of projects in its lab. Google is still known primarily for search, and it maintains a stellar reputation. But according to a story in Advertising Age, the company is facing some real challenges.

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Some newspapers and magazines have abandoned their print operations as a way to cut costs -- most notably the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Christian Science Monitor and Blender magazine. What are the consequences when publications move to online-only? Some clues can be found by looking at Taloussanomat, a financial publication from Finland that stopped printing to focus on digital operations in December 2007.

Other stories mentioned today:

Searching for Silicon Valley (New York Times)

The Internet's Librarian (Economist)

Five Best Screen Capture Tools (Lifehacker)

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Cyber crooks stole more data from financial institutions and other businesses last year than in the three year period from 2004 to 2007, according to a new report from Verizon Business.

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Snipers of the American military are already quite accurate and deadly -- look no further than the recent standoff in which Navy Seal snipers killed three Somali pirates who were holding an American ship captain hostage.

The Defense Department is investing in technology to take snipers to another level, to be able to better handle long distances, variations in wind and air temperature, and heat shimmer -- when distant objects look wavy and distorted on hot days.

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In what appears to be the first project of its kind, utility company Pacific Gas & Electric is seeking approval from California regulators to buy power from a company that plans to generate electricity from a solar power plant in space. Solaren Corporation could be selling power from its planned solar power installation by 2016.

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Last week tens of thousands of Silicon Valley homes and businesses temporarily lost their ability to make land line and cell phone calls, and connect to the Internet, after an act of vandalism. The vandal's tool was not a virus, worm or any other kind of sophisticated cyber attack, but rather a simple hacksaw.

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Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School teacher Delainia Haug has tapped the power of digital media to create a learning community -- called DigME -- in her school. Using a variety of digital media, students are studying and producing content across four separate subjects.

I know the idea of a digital carrot-and-stick to motivate students is not necessarily new. But what Cynthia Lewis at the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development notes is that many students in this generation -- who we think are entirely comfortable with digital media -- often have few skills that they'll need, especially in college. In fact, this program seems to be showing the students that they can go to college.

It's unclear what the impact of a digital media program is on increased student achievement; this is the first year of the program and there were no plans -- this year -- to study the effect on progress. But Lewis keeps an eye on what the kids are up to and if the fact they're updating their wiki pages late into the evening is any indication, motivation will translate into success.

Here's the entire interview with Cynthia Lewis.

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Who will buy Twitter? Is Twitter even for sale? The tech sites were buzzing last week when it was reported Google was in talks to acquire the microblogging service. That is until Kara Swisher, the Wall St. Journal columnist, dispelled the rumors when her sources reported that product partnerships -- maybe. Merger? No.

Kara Swisher says the reaction this rumor of a Twitter-Google merger has gotten will surely be studied at Google. But at the moment, it's pure speculation.

Also on today's show, a couple of readers weigh in on Jon Gordon's story earlier this week when a representative of the Taser company talked about cameras police would wear to record an incident.

(Bob Collins is filling in this week for Jon Gordon.)

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New research says the Internet and social networking sites are not the threat to children we've been led to believe. A report from the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire says there's no evidence to support assertions that online predators are stalking or abducting unsuspecting victims based on information they provided on social networking sites, and that Internet in general is not more dangerous than other environments that children or adolescents frequent.

Janis Wolak of the Crimes Against Children Research Center makes clear however that the possibility that Internet use could fuel sex crimes against children does still need to be taken seriously.

Here's the full report.

(Bob Collins is filling in this week for Jon Gordon)

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Later this year Taser International is expected to begin selling a recording system that police officers strap to their heads. Officers would decide when it makes sense to begin recording an incident. When a scene has been captured the camera transfers the encrypted digital recording to police headquarters.

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In a recent TechCrunch post Eric Clemons, professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, argues that advertising on the Internet is failing.

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The BlackBerry app store is open.

Our guest today is Maggie Reardon, who covers mobile technology for CNET's News.com.

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The newest song parody from singer-songwriter Bruce Kerr, an attorney at Sun Microsystems, tackles cloud computing.

More Loose Bruce song parodies here and here.

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Microsoft's newest TV ad features the computer shopping quest of a hip young woman named Lauren. She has a $1,000 budget and wants a fast laptop with a 17-inch screen. The ad's message: Macs are not for shoppers on a budget.

Do Macs really cost so much more than Windows PCs? We put that question to Joe Wilcox, editor of Microsoft Watch and Apple Watch.

Listener comments:

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One of the most talked-about features in Google Voice is voice mail transcription. To get a sense of how well the machine transcription works, we asked listeners to leave messages at our Google Voice number. Here are some of the results:

Transcription for above:

the following taxes taken from and onion info graphics called tornados safety and spring is tornado season the national weather service recommend taking these following safety measures in the event of the twenty eight oh light down in a bit if you are already lying in a ditch do not attempt to set up the most important thing you can do is stay calm this will be difficult since you are almost certainly going to die twenty does spoke easily firing if you wanna shots in the air is usually enough to scare them off hey little little for a while strap yourself to the roof of your house enraged i haven't hey present tornados before they happen make sure that one memorial fair front's do not convert with cool dry ones if during a tornados the only safe places in my loving arts i'm here baby hey if atone eight oh strikes you're home is even your basement could be dangers so constructive basement for your basement and finally if you spot a tornado always remember to point at it and yelled tornado and then run like hell

Transcription for above:

our reading but you know do flynn the past of most resistance and it's fundamentally flood core the name of almost any learning program to help us become what we are not hey if you don't have national town with numbers you still force to spend time in that area area to attain a degree if you're not very impressed attic you get a sense to a course designed to and few sympathy into your personality from the cradel to the cubicle we devote more time to our shortcomings then to our strengths it's been has been a reading from strings finder two point oh part-time ralf goodbye two two four thank you

Transcription for above:

jabber walking hey floors brilly can the slightly toasted ironing gamble in the way down on the with the borrow grose animal morass upgrade be where the jetta lock my son the job byte the closet catch you where the jeff jeff bird and shawn the from this bender snatch if you get this mobile blade in hand long time the names of info you soft so message to you by the comes in three wants to the while involved and i was in the office talk to you stuart it's trevor walk with elisa playing came with we went through the told you would and behold as it came one two one two and coming through the republicans krisak he left a dead and with its head he can't about something back and has douse lane the driver walk coming to my office my name is boy ohh i'm just taking a break he totaled in is joy probably like and the slightly toasted guy ring and along the way but on and see where the bro goes animal mass upgrade

Transcription for above:

hi i just thought i'd read you the first amendment harrisville making a large back and if that was kind of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or bridging freedom of speech or a price for the rest of the people to use we have several expedition the government's for regressive griffin says hope google voice works out for you

Other stories mentioned today:

Conficker FAQ (F-Secure.com)
The evolution of an extraordinary globe-spanning worm (lastwatchdog.com)

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Corner-cutting college students have long been able to pay someone to write an essay or term paper for them. But the Internet has turned the essay mill into a global enterprise, and makes cheating a little easier and more convenient for students wanting to avoid writing tough papers on subjects like Tolstoy or transportation technology.

Guest: Thomas Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education

Listener comments:

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In a new report the Pew Internet and American Life Project places American adults into ten different technology user categories -- from the persistently offline to the constantly connected.

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A new report from Web security company Finjan describes how cyber criminals are redirecting visitors of legitimate Web sites to pages that sell fake antivirus software.

Finjan says the scammers are inserting popular search keywords and hidden bits of code on Web sites. This causes Internet searches for those sites to return results that trick people into visiting sites selling antivirus software that only pretends to find and fix viruses.

To leave a voice comment on this story, call 612-284-1965. Or, find me on Twitter

UPDATE: Here is a list of rogue antivirus software from Wikipedia.

UPDATE 2: Here are some listener comments, via Google Voice:

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Once-promising Internet music service Spiral Frog, which attempted an ad-based business model, has ceased operations.

Guest: Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com

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I know what you're thinking: Great, another segment on file sharing. But a poll out of Canada seems to suggest the debate is over. The music industry is never going to live the good life again, because whatever compunction people feel toward paying for something they can get for free is disappearing.

A majority of Canadian Internet users see nothing wrong with file sharing -- downloading digital music files or movies free. File sharing, according to the firm Angus Reid Strategies, is simply "the new normal."

For this segment, I talked with the firm's Matt Kleinschmit.

Kleinschmit says music companies will pursue more "extras" to move you to paying for what you might be getting for nothing. He calls this the "bottled water" method and it includes more editorial content and digital booklets attached to music. Still unclear, he says, is where the tipping point is, when the lack of revenue for music producers leads them to stop producing it.

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If you die, how will your online friends know?

Many of you have "the envelope" tucked away in a desk somewhere. Scrawled on the front is something like, "do not open this until I'm dead." Maybe inside you've got the important stuff -- insurance papers or the locations of key documents. More often than not, the first time a family knows the envelope exists, is when they stumble across it years later while looking for a paper clip.

With more of our lives being spent online, who will know when you're gone? What will happen to all that stuff locked behind passwords only you know? What if there's stuff online that your survivors need to know that you never got around to telling them?

Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist David Eagleman has set up the online version of the envelope called Deathswitch.

Here's how it works: You sign up for this and configure it the way you want. It sends you an e-mail however often you want to be "pinged," so that the Deathswitch can make sure you're still kicking. If you don't respond, it goes into "worry mode," and eventually, if you don't respond, it announces to the online world that, yes, you've gone toes up.

Here's an extended version of the Future Tense interview I did with Dr. Eagleman, who, incidentally, is also a writer of fiction. His first book is "Sum: Forty tales from the afterlife."

Listen

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Picture this: Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are heading toward a village. A drone aircraft, armed with a laser weapon, blankets the village, killing the mosquitoes, sparing everything -- and everyone -- else.

Astrophysicist Jordin Kare has spent his career doing things many people consider far fetched. He hunted for supernova explosions with an automated telescope, and designed interstellar propulsion systems. Now, he and astrophysicist Lowell Wood -- they also worked on President Reagan's Star Wars initiative -- are working on building the laser weapon the mosquitoes.

Life imitates art. It was just a few years ago when this spoof went viral:

But this is no joke. It's serious business with serious Bill Gates-like money behind it.

I know what you're thinking. "Give me one of those babies and a warm summer night." And while it's true that Jordin Kare says he wouldn't mind seeing his project be used for that, it's not the priority.

Here's an extended interview with Jordin Kare. Listen

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You have mail. Ignore it.

While you're reading this entry, the chances are pretty good that you'll get some e-mail. You'll stop what you're doing and read it, and it probably won't be all that important. That's the problem. Every time you get some e-mail, you drop what you're doing to read it.

Ashish Gupta, an operations management professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, along with along with his colleague Ramesh Sharda at Oklahoma State University, have developed a computer model -- called SIMONE -- that allows your organization to release e-mail to you in batches, and you wouldn't miss the important ones -- the ones that are important for you to do your job.

It can be configured to allow messages from your boss to zip through. Through the use of keywords, other important e-mail can get through. But the e-mail that isn't critical to your job, wastes up to 30 minutes of your time each day, compared to a structured four-times-a-day release of e-mail to you, according to Gupta.

Here's an extended interview with Professor Gupta. Listen

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In her new book The Trouble with Boys, former Newsweek education reporter Peg Tyre argues schools and parents do boys a disservice when they rein in boys' natural play that involves fantasy violence -- like a little game of cops and robbers. "There is a palpable sense," she writes, "that the ways in which boys play need to be suppressed or rigidly controlled." Such control, she argues, inhibits boys' ability to learn and understand the world. Violent video games, she says, could be beneficial as an outlet for naturally violent tendencies.

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On today's show, freelance technology journalist Glenn Fleishman provides an update of Wifi on U.S. air carriers.

Fleishman wrote an extensive piece on the topic for Ars Technica.

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In 2007 Google bought a company called GrandCentral, then appeared to ignore its new toy.

GrandCentral allowed consumers to sign up for a new, free phone number. Users could then choose to have the number ring to their cell phone, work number, or home phone, or all of them simultaneously. Users could easily record calls, and listen to their voice mail on the GrandCentral Web site.

Google put no marketing muscle behind GrandCentral and in fact closed down the service to new users. Turns out, though, that Google was quietly remaking GrandCentral into Google Voice, which should be available to the public in a matter of weeks.

Google Voice includes some important new features: It automatically transcribes voice mail messages into text; delivers SMS messages into a users' inboxes; and allows people to make cheap international calls.

Guest: Dwight Silverman

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Recent business history is replete with costly mistakes regarding the handling of customer information.

According to a new report (PDF) by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, companies fail to to take privacy and free speech issues into account when they design new products and services. Companies need to bake privacy and security into their operations early on, according to the ACLU's Nicole Ozer.

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An audit of 700 mobile phone customer bills by the San Diego-based Utility Consumers Action Network concludes that consumers are overpaying for their cell phone service -- and that the average cost-per-minute is shockingly high.

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Public Printer is not the kind of job one would normally launch a high-profile public campaign to land. But Carl Malamud believes that head poobah of the U.S. Government Printing Office is such a cool and important gig that he's asking for the job from a dedicated Web site, Yes We Scan.

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The federal government's new Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra says a major part of his job is to ensure the public has access to information, and to use the Internet and technology to change the way the public interacts with the government.

Guest: Kim Hart, Washington Post

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Over the past several years, profit motive has become one of the primary reasons for carrying out Internet attacks. But according to the new Web Hacking Incidents Database Report, the number one motivation for Web-based attacks in 2008 was defacement targeting political parties, candidates and government agencies.

Other items mentioned on today's show:

Read Me A Story, Mr. Roboto (Slate)
Amazon Releases Kindle App For iPhone (TechBlog)
New Kindle Better But Still Pricey (Houston Chronicle)
Surveillance Self-Defense (EFF)

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As federal agencies decide how to spend $7 billion dollars allocated for high speed Internet deployment from the recently-passed stimulus package, a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture attempts to quantify the extent of the digital divide between urban and rural America. The USDA says 72.6 percent of urban dwellers use the Internet somewhere, compared to 63.3 percent of rural residents. Internet penetration is lowest in the rural south.

The city-country gap is much bigger when it comes to broadband deployment.

Advocacy group Free Press, which campaigns for universal broadband, has just released a report called Five Days On the Digital Dirt Road which attempts to put a human face on the digital divide.

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While President Obama has been widely praised for his use of the Internet to communicate with the public, not all are happy. For example privacy groups have raised a stink over President Obama's use of Google's YouTube as the primary distributor of weekly video addresses on the WhiteHouse.gov Website.

Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation objected to YouTube's use of small files known as "cookies" that track users' movements across the Web. The White House is now using a different video provider.

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Ever notice how fast kids kids seem to learn intricate video games? There's a school of thought that says there's something about the nature of games that help kids learn effectively -- perhaps more so than in traditional school-based learning. There's a new public school opening soon in New York City that aims to use game design principles to create immersive, game-like learning experiences for students. Quest to Learn is a grade six through 12 school that will open its doors in the fall.

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Researchers from Coventry University in the U.K. studied 88 children between the ages of 10 and 12 to help understand the impact of text messaging on their language skills. They found that the use text messaging shortcuts could be helping children read better.

The study is published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

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Microsoft this week announced a program aimed at boosting the technology skills of up to two million Americans. As part of its Elevate America initiative Microsoft will offer some its training programs and certification tests for free.

The classes range from the basic, like how to use the Internet and send email, to advanced classes for using Microsoft applications.

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Despite numerous reports that the U.S. has fallen behind many countries in deployment of high speed Internet, it's apparently the model country when it comes to turning information technology like broadband, software and computer networks into economic productivity. The 2009 Connectivity Scorecard has the U.S. atop the rest of the world.

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What's the argument for capitalizing Internet? And who says it should be internet?

We put those questions to Luke Taylor, host of the Grammar Grater podcast.

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A study conducted by computer forensics firm Kessler International found four in ten used hard drives for sale on eBay contain sensitive information.

Also mentioned on today's show:

Why More Megapixels Isn't Always Better (Gizmodo)

30+ Websites To Visit When You're Laid Off (Mashable)

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Seven months after IBM delivered the world's fastest supercomputer, it's announced an even speedier one. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will use the IBM Sequoia to simulate nuclear weapons tests.

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The center of America's technology industry is now feeling the full effects of the global recession, according to a new report from an organization that tracks Silicon Valley's economy.

Joint Venture Silicon Valley says the region held steady throughout 2008, but now is seeing a sharp rise in unemployment as tech companies accelerate layoffs.

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In a journal article to be published later this year, Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman will argue that the popular, collaborative online encyclopedia is doomed to fail. Goldman believes Wikipedia is trapped by its increasing popularity.

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On today's show I visit Google's founding executive chef, Charlie Ayers, at his new restaurant in Palo Alto.

Charlie Ayers does some early morning work in his new restaurant, Calafia, which is located across the street from Stanford University

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A group that represents authors is urging its members to be wary of the text-to-speech feature on Amazon's updated Kindle electronic reading gadget, saying it could violate copyrights.

The Author's Guild says the Kindle 2's "Read to Me" feature presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry because it could eventually undermine the market for audio books.

Guest: Nilay Patel, Engadget

Also mentioned on the air: Amish Hackers

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The bad economy is likely to blame for a big increase in identity fraud, according to a new study from Javelin Research.

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Google says it will help consumers track their home energy usage in a bid to lower demand and the harmful emissions that come from producing electricity.

Guest: Jesse Berst, SmartGridNews.com

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What kind of smartphone would you get if users helped design it every step of the way?

Mozilla Labs is asking the public to help come up with a concept for a phone that improves on the iPhone, Blackberry, G1 and other smartphones.

Also today:

Retrevo, a search site that helps people find consumer electronics products, is acting as a matchmaker between Americans who need a government coupon for a digital television converter box and those who don't intend to use theirs.

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Earlier this month, some residents of Grand Forks, North Dakota found parking tickets attached to their car and truck windshields. The tickets instructed them to visit a Web site to get the details of their supposed violations. Turns out the tickets were fake, and directed drivers to a site designed to deliver malicious software to their computers.

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President Obama is promising to use the Web site Recovery.gov to track spending under the economic stimulus bill passed by the U.S. House and being considered by the Senate. But that site hasn't been built yet. Until then, you can follow requests for stimulus money coming from local governments on Stimulus Watch. The new site relies on public contributions - a process sometimes called "crowdsourcing" - to help monitor stimulus spending.

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A new service from Google enables mobile phone users to broadcast their whereabouts to family and friends. The software plots a user's location by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection.

Guest: Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle

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A new non-profit venture called The University of the People will employ free academic materials that other schools have posted online, volunteer professors and student social networking in a bid to offer real college degrees. The Internet-based school will charge only modest fees, but no tuition, and will attempt to become a fully accredited school.

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"The pace of the e-book market over the past decade has been excruciatingly ... slow," writes John Siracusa on Ars Technica.

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Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, now in a public test phase, looks to be a whole lot better than Vista, which earned a bad reputation for not playing nice with older peripherals and software.

Guest: Ed Bott, ZDNet

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On the new site Academic Earth you can watch lectures on physics from M.I.T., or catch a Yale history course on the origins of World War I, or see a U.C. Berkeley professor cradle a brain while she talks about human anatomy.

Backed by angel funding, Academic Earth aims to bring videotaped university courses and lectures to a wide audience.

Other stories mentioned:

What the Web Knows About You (Computerworld)

Google and the Future of Books (NY Review of Books)

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Technology enthusiasts have been cooing over the Palm Pre, a touch screen phone previewed earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show. Many reviewers have taken note of the similarity to Apple's iPhone, especially in its use of multi-touch technology, which allows users to control a graphical interface with multiple fingers.

Apple has noticed, too. Acting CEO Tim Cook made a lot of noise recently when he said Apple will use all its weapons to defend its intellectual property. And Apple was granted a new patent on touch screens technology this week.

It all points to possible legal battle between the powerful Apple and Palm, which desperately needs a hit product.

Guest: Nilay Patel, Engadget

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Want to watch Frost/Nixon from the comfort of home tonight? Or maybe The Wrestler is more to your liking? You can find pirated, DVD-quality copies of those films, and most of the other Oscar-nominated pictures, on the Internet right now.

Independent journalist and programmer Andy Baio has been tracking Oscar Internet piracy for the past seven years. He says the Motion Picture Association of America and Hollywood studios are not making progress in their campaign to keep copies of nominated off the Internet.

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation has begun a campaign to persuade the U.S. Copyright Office to extend an exemption from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on the unlocking of phones from their networks, as well as "jailbreaking," or tweaking phones so they'll run blocked programs.

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In a new scholarly journal article, Texas A&M psychology professor Christopher Ferguson argues there is no significant relationship between violent video games school shootings like those at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School. A sense of "moral panic" rather then good science is driving many people to conclude that violent games lead to violent acts, said Ferguson.

Ferguson's article appears in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling.

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Microsoft announced yesterday it will make the first mass layoffs in its 34-year history, cutting 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months as demand for personal computers falls.

Guest: Matt Rosoff, Directions on Microsoft

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As hacking targets go, they don't come much juicier than a credit card payment processing company. Such firms transmit credit and debit card transactions from merchants to Visa, Mastercard and banks.

We learned this week that malicious hackers managed to install spying software on the computer network of Heartland Payment Systems, the sixth largest payment processor in the U.S. It could go down as one of the biggest credit card theft schemes on record, but you may have missed the news, coming as it did on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration.

Guest: Brian Krebs, Washington Post

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Barack Obama's use of the Internet during his campaign and transition has been so effective we're all expecting him to transform Washington in the same way. But the federal government is a different beast than a campaign.

Guest: Evan Ratliff, Wired

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Consumers spend a lot of money on technology to help them skip television commercials, but new research to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests commercial interruptions make TV shows more enjoyable.

Guest: Jeff Galak, NYU's Stern School of Business

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In some ways blogs are the opposite of newspapers. Produced by people who don't own printing presses, blogs link to other places and lend themselves to community discussion and collaboration. Digital media such as blogs are growing while newspapers and magazines contract.

So why would Josh Karp want to make a newspaper out of blog posts?

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A task force charged with assessing technologies for protecting children from unwanted contact online has concluded that fears of Internet sexual predators are overblown.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force, led by Harvard University, grew out of an agreement reached between MySpace and 49 state attorneys general a year ago.

(Some audio excerpted from podcast by Berkman Center for Internet and Society)

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Thirty-five percent of adults who go online have accounts on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networks, according to new survey data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Just eight percent were on social networking sites four years ago.

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Every resident of Hawaii now has the option of going online to visit with a physician.

There's almost no waiting for a two-way Webcam appointment or text chat. The 700,000 members of the Hawaii Medical Service Association, the state's Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance provider, pay $10 for such a visit. But anyone - insured or not - can see an online doc for $45.

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Barack Obama says he's still clinging to his BlackBerry, but it looks like aides will pry the smart phone from the presidential hands in short order. The Secret Service and Obama's lawyers say the Verizon BlackBerry 8830 World Edition phone is too much of a security risk and legal liability.

Guest: Maggie Reardon, CNET News.com

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She ran eBay. Now she wants Schwarzenegger's job.

Political observers say former eBay chief Meg Whitman is preparing to run for California governor in 2010.

Guest: Mary Anne Ostrom, San Jose Mercury News

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Dwight Silverman is on the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. On today's show we discuss 3D glasses, a potential hit for down-and-out Palm, and convergence.

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The Internet is a second front in the war in Gaza, according to a cyber war researcher.

Hackers on both sides are waging a battle of words and vivid imagery by defacing Websites, according to Jart Armin with HostExploit.com. He says Israelis and Palestinians have been waging cyber war on and off since 2001, but now hackers are intensifying their Internet vandalizing campaign outside the Middle East.

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New research finds that more than half who adolescents who use the social networking MySpace have posted information about sex, substance abuse or violence. The research, published in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, also shows adult attention can help kids be savvier about what they disclose online.

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CNN's Rick Sanchez is not high on crack as his recent Twitter update stated. Sanchez had his account hacked, as did dozens of other users of the microblogging service.

Other recent victims include the President-elect, Britney Spears, and Fox News.

And over the last few days Twitter users received a series of messages promising free iPhones and debt relief. The messages directed them to a site that asked for their user names and passwords.

Guest: Dan Tynan

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Putting content on the Web has never made business sense for the triCity News of Monmouth County, New Jersey. The small, alternative weekly is doing just fine on paper, according to publisher Dan Jacobson.

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We asked folks on the social network Twitter to share some of their favorite podcasts. Here are some they liked:

Onion Radio News
MacMost Now
In Our Time
Radio Lab
This American Life
Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's Film Reviews

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The worldwide economic slump will hasten the inevitable demise of land line telephones, free tech support, the once-formidable Internet company Yahoo, satellite radio and more, according to according to ComputerWorld.com write Mike Elgan.

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A new report from security company Sophos claims American websites host more malicious software than any other country. Sophos says that's because so many computers in the U.S. are under the control of malicious hackers.

But the attacks that enslave U.S. computers into botnets commonly are launched from outside our borders. How should we respond?

Guest: James Lewis, Center for Strategic and International Studies

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2009 will see the biggest computer security breach ever, according to Tom Merritt of CNET TV.

Merritt's other predictions: handheld GPS gadgets will begin to disappear; a mainstream video game company will unveil technology to allow players to control action with thoughts; and bad feelings will emerge between ISPs and customers over bandwidth limits.

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People in the Middle East and India are dealing with slower-than-normal Internet connections this week. That's because three separate undersea Internet cables were severed last Friday in the waters of the Mediterranean.

It's the second time this year the region has been hit with Internet service disruptions as a result of severed undersea cables.

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded about $7 million in grants for faster Internet connections at public libraries in seven states. The grants are seed money to help libraries attract long-term financial support for high-speed access.

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CNET TV's Tom Merritt has been combing through tech predictions made for this past year. He's come up with a list of the five worst.

Other items mentioned on the air:

Why We Need More Torture in Videogames

CAN-SPAM: What Went Wrong?

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Internet company Yahoo says it will anonymize some user data within 90 days of its collection. That includes information on the sites users visit, and advertisements they click on.

Meanwhile the Ponemon Institute, a research group that focuses on privacy issues, hasreleased its annual Most Trusted Companies survey. Google fell from its top 20 perch, partly because consumers expressed growing unease with Google's data collection and retention practices.

Guests: Jay Cline, Minnesota Privacy Consultants; Larry Ponemon, Ponemon Institute

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Delta Airlines is now offering wireless Internet service on board some flights between Washington D.C., New York and Boston. Delta says it will expand the Wi-Fi service to its entire fleet -- including planes operated by its Northwest subsidiary -- by next summer.

Earlier this year American Airlines and Virgin America began selling in-flight Wi-Fi.

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A panel of government and industry experts is urging President-elect Barack Obama to create a new White House office to protect the country from malicious hackers and Internet attacks from foreign governments.

Because cyber attacks are so frequent the government should give them the same level of attention as threats from weapons of mass destruction and global jihad, said James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

For more on this topic, listen to today's Midmorning broadcast:

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Didn't get a chance to watch the Giants-Cowboys game last night? Assuming you didn't TiVo it, you can now pay to watch a high-def replay on the net - or any game played yesterday for that matter. NFL Game Rewind will run you $20 for the season, or $5 for a single week.

Game Rewind gives you some DVR features and lets you watch up to four games at once. You can't watch games live.

The NFL's online video offerings pale compared to Major League Baseball, but Game Rewind is a step in the right direction, said Dan Rayburn of StreamingMedia.com.

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The earth will get a little quieter when American television stations turn off their analog signals in February. It seems the digital broadcasts the government is mandating are harder to detect from the heavens. Dan Werthimer cares about this. He directs the SETI@home project, which scans space for radio signals that could indicate intelligent life.

Other stories mentioned on the air:

The Facebook Virus Spreads: No Social Network is Safe (ReadWriteWeb.com)

Video Shows Every Flight on Earth in 72 Seconds (Wired.com)

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CDs are losing ground but will still account for a significant percentage of music sales five years from now, according to a new report by Forrester Research.

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A few years ago doctors removed Rob Spence's right eye. He damaged it more than 20 years ago while shooting his grandfather's gun on a trip to Ireland.

Now the 36 year-old Canadian documentary film maker is working with a team of scientists to implant a camera in his prosthetic eye. Spence plans to use the eye-cam to shoot scenes for a new film, which will examine the perils of surveillance by camera.

Here is a longer version of my interview with Spence:

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Apple this week took down from its Web site a technical bulletin that advised Mac owners to run anti-virus software. Apple's move came after the Washington Post took note of the document, which apparently had been up since the middle of last year.

Apple has made the built-in safety of its computers a selling point, but some security experts have been warning Mac users against complacency, saying the number of security threats is rising.

In revoking its advice on anti-virus software Apple's chose marketing over security, according to Future Tense news analyst Dwight Silverman.

Mac users should be using anti-virus, said Silverman.

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Adam Jackson left Florida 6 months ago on a whim - to chase the dream of working in San Francisco's tech industry. He hurriedly rented the first apartment he saw, unaware the 6th floor unit sits at the edge of the city's sketchy Tenderloin neighborhood -- known in part for its high crime rate, massage parlors and abundant liquor stores.

Wanting to show folks back home what life was like at the intersection of Ellis and Taylor streets, he decided to point a 24-hour Web cam at the corner.

Clips from Jackson's camera can be found on YouTube. Here's one:

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Mini-laptop computers, known as netbooks, appear to be selling well this holiday season. Computers like the two pound Asus Eee PC 900 are dominating the computers and PC hardware best seller list on Amazon.com.

Guest: Brad Linder, Liliputing.com

(See previous entry for a longer version of this interview)

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Technology journalist John Brandon recently paid a visit to the Microsoft campus, where he got a peek at some of the company's research projects. He wrote about 10 of those projects on NetworkWorld.com. On today's show we discuss three: Eagle 1, a robotic receptionist, and Lucid Touch.

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Today's show features an interview with Julio Ojeda-Zapata, author of the new book Twitter Means Business: How Microblogging Can Help or Hurt Your Company.

Disclosure: My own use of Twitter is discussed in the book.

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The annual Video Game Report Card came out this week. It's the thirteenth year for the influential report from the National Institute on Media and the Family, which has consistently criticized the violent nature of some games. This year the Institute gives good grades, saying game makers and retailers are taking effective measure to limit kids' exposure to violent and inappropriate content.

The report comes on the heels of recent studies suggesting that video games have positive effects on learning, social development, technology literacy, and civic participation.

We asked David Walsh, director of the Institute, to provide us with the research he finds most persuasive in showing that violent games are harmful to children. Here is what he wrote:

The book that I mentioned which gives a good overview of the research is Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Research, Theory and Public Policy by Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile and Katherine Buckley (Oxford University Press, 2007). A recent longitudinal and cross cultural study is "Longitudinal effects of violent video games on aggression in Japan and the United States" Pediatrics, (2008) 122, e1067-1072. A meta-analysis that examines the statistical power of the body of video game research is found in Anderson, C.A. (2004). An update on the effects of playing violent video games. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 113-122. An example of the brain based research I mentioned is summarized as follows: Teenagers' brains are fired up by violent video games, while at the same time areas of the brain associated with self control become subdued, say researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Dr. Vincent Mathews, head researcher, explained that this study shows, for the first time, that violent video games affect the physiology of the brain and the way it functions. He said the teenagers had increased activity in the amygdala, an area of the brain involved in emotional arousal. "At the same time, they had decreases in activity in parts of the brain which are involved in self-control," he said.

Video games are big business - in the USA alone sales hit over $10 billion in 2005.

44 teenagers were randomly asked to either play a violent video game or a non-violent one, for half-an-hour, after which they underwent an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). An fMRI measures changes that take place in the active brain in real time. The teenagers of either group did not differ in age, IQ or gender.

They found that those who had played the violent games had more activity going on in the amygdala, as opposed to the teenagers who played the non-violent games (who did not have more activity there). Those playing the violent games also had lower activity in prefrontal areas of the brain - these areas are associated with self control, inhibition and focus (concentration), compared to the non-violent game players (who did not have lower activity there).

Dr. Mathews presented the findings at the Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

"Short-term Effects of Violent Video Game Playing: An fMRI Study"
Vincent Mathews, M.D., Yang Wang, M.D., Andrew J. Kalnin, M.D., Kristine M. Mosier, D.M.D., Ph.D., David W. Dunn, M.D., and William G. Kronenberger, Ph.D

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Many Americans mistakenly conclude they have a rare illness after attempting self-diagnosis on the Internet, according to a new study by researchers from Microsoft.

The company conducted the study to improve its own search engine.

Microsoft studied health-related Web searches on popular search engines and surveyed 500 of its employees about their health-related searching.

Web search engines can increase our health-related anxieties and lead us to believe worst-case scenarios, said Microsoft's Eric Horvitz, an artificial intelligence expert and medical school graduate.

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Forecasters are expecting a bleak holiday shopping season for the PC industry -- but that means very good prices for those who will be in the market for a new computer, according to Future Tense news analyst Dwight Silverman.

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A new study by the MacArthur Foundation finds teenagers learn important social and technology literacy skills when they spend time on MySpace, send instant messages, and generally hang out with their friends online.

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In a recent story in USA Today, Byron Acohido reports that malicious hackers recently broke into the computer network of a large Houston-based technology company, infecting more than 300 work stations with a virus that harvested company documents, sending the data to a gang of thieves in Turkey.

Acohido says the heist underscores a shift in computer crime, where criminals are going after corporate users instead of individuals.

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For years YouTube has championed user-generated videos over Hollywood-style programming, and steadfastly avoided obtrusive advertising.

But recently YouTube announced it will sell search terms as part of an advertising program, and secured the rights to post full-length movies from a major Hollywood studio. And that's probably just a taste of what's to come for a site that's captured the world's imagination but has yet to figure out the money thing, according to Greg Sandoval of CNET News.

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If you're bogged by the volume of your e-mail but don't dare walk away for fear of missing critical messages, a new Web-based program could offer some relief. AwayFind provides a custom form that senders can fill out if they really, really need to reach you.

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Fifteen percent of people who had some piece of technology break down in the previous year were never able to get it repaired, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. That figure is even higher for cell phones - as one in four people report an unresolved problem.

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Security experts who helped shut down a shadowy Silicon Valley Web hosting company this week say the result is an instant 40 percent drop in spam. But that won't last, according to Paul Ferguson of security firm Trend Micro.

Ferguson is part of an alliance of security researchers called HostExploit.com that's been keeping tabs on Web hosting company McColo for the better part of two years now.

HostExploit's sleuthing helped persuade McColo's Internet service providers to pull the plug on the company.

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Popular online classified ad site craigslist has introduced new rules aimed at reducing ads placed by prostitutes and pimps. The San Francisco company is now charging a small fee and requiring credit card verification for postings in the "erotic services" section of the site. Advertisers must also supply a working phone number. Craigslist promises to donate revenue generated from ads to charity.

Guest: Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica

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During his campaign Barack Obama leveraged the Web, social networks, text messaging and e-mail to amass supporters and money. The question now: Will Obama use his millions of Internet friends to help him run the country and bring change to Washington?

Guest: Phil Noble, Politics Online

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Mobile phone company Nokia and the University of California Berkeley have released software that allows some San Francisco Bay Area drivers to use their GPS-enabled phones to better monitor traffic congestion.

The software turns AT&T and T-Mobile phones into traffic sensing devices that transmit speed and location information to traffic engineers. Drivers can tap into the information collected by other phones in the network to get commute times and find alternate routes.

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Environmental activists and more than two dozen recycling companies have created a certification program designed to curtail the export and improper disposal of toxic electronic waste.

e-Stewards is an independently-audited program in which certified recyclers promise that computers, monitors cell phones and other e-waste will not be dumped in local landfills, exported to foreign countries, or handled by prison labor.

Guest: Jim Puckett, Basel Acton Network

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The Federal Communications Commission this week decided to free up the little-used "white space" spectrum between television channels. That spectrum slice will no longer be needed when the U.S. ditches analog TV broadcasts early next year.

Backers of the move believe it could usher in the age of a faster, universal wireless Internet. Broadcasters and mobile phone carriers have opposed the move, arguing new devices running in the white space could cause interference.

Guest: Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOm

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Today we feature an interview with Jonathan Taplin of the USC Annenberg School for Communication, who recently analyzed the tech policy platforms of the presidential candidates. We talked about President-elect Barack Obama's positions on broadband, net neutrality, and electronic privacy.

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Malicious hackers are finding it more difficult to exploits flaws in Windows, so they're going after individual programs instead, according to Microsoft's semi-annual Security Intelligence Report.

Microsoft says security holes in its own software are down by 33 percent in the first half of the year, but the number of serious vulnerabilities is increasing overall.

Microsoft has learned a lot about making secure software over the past few years, said George Stathakopolous, general manager of product security.

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Eager Windows fans are already downloading a very early, unfinished version of Windows 7 via BitTorrent. The successor to Vista is not expected in its final form until 2010.

People who write Windows programs recently got a sneak peak of Windows 7. Many reviewers say the new OS looks quite stable.

Windows 7 is a direct descendant of the much-maligned Vista, according to Future Tense news analyst Dwight Silverman.

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A game that lets users create an alternate, evolving universe and software for creating 3D worlds are among the top technology breakthroughs of 2008, according to Popular Mechanics magazine.

Guest: Popular Mechanics Senior Tech Editor Glenn Derene

Update: Here's part two of our conversation

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There's little doubt that computers, cell phones and the Internet have stirred up our culture and economy -- but a prominent neuroscientist argues they're physically altering our brains as well.

In his new book, "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," UCLA's Gary Small posits that technology has great influence over our emotions, intelligence, language processing and social interactions.

Update: Here's part two of our conversation:

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It was cold where Glen Martin lived in New Zealand and one of the few places to stay warm was the library. There he read what he needed to become a biochemist but to take a break he read the Wright Brothers diaries and studied what it would take to build a jetpack.

It paid off at the world's biggest public airshow at Oshkosh Wisconsin in July. He unveiled the Martin Jetpack, a two-engine, gasoline powered backpack that can lift a 280-pound person and transport that person through the air.

Martin's Jetpack, for which people -- mostly in the United States -- have plunked down a $10,000 deposit, is now undergoing flight testing. It uses gasoline, can fly for a half hour, and, theoretically, can fly to 8,000 feet.

He figured a few rich people would buy one, but that most people wouldn't be interested in the concept, until 10,000 people showed up to see it in Wisconsin in July. That, he says, has changed who he thinks might buy a jetpack.

The Experimental Aircraft Association produced the following video following the demonstration in July.

If you'd like to hear more from Glenn Martin, here's the unedited (for broadcast) interview.

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It was a little more than four years ago when Howard Dean grabbed the Internet and shook it loose for all the political capital it had. Four years later, has politics online really changed? Chris Wells studies these things. The St. Paul, Minnesota native is a PhD student and researcher at the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at the University of Washington.

Wells says a challenge for candidates on the Internet, is figuring out how to integrate the voice of their online communities in their campaigns.

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Professor Dan Wallach at Rice University recently gave his students some electronic voting machines. They weren't the actual machines, but they were close. He's one of four academics who has played with the source code for the commercial voting machine companies. He told the kids to figure out ways to rig them to return favorable results for their candidate. And they did.

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In 2006 a YouTube video sunk the political career of Virginia Sen. George Allen. It captured him making racial slurs. It's one reason viral video is at the top of Brad Reed's list of ways technology has shaped the 2008 elections. The writer at Network World says tech shapes elections in ways that are both silly and real. Overhype? Barack Obama sending out a text message of Joe Biden's selection as running mate. Real? How candidates act on the campaign trail.

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Todd Herman is a former talk show host who says he realized he had to do something about "spin" in the news when he "heard a national anchorman lie" to his well-educated mother. Herman, a conservative, and John Atcheson, a liberal, created a Seattle company called SpinSpotter. A downloadable add-on to Firefox (3.0 is the minimum at the moment), Spinoculars, helps detect spin or bias in online news articles.

The program uses a mixture of algorithms and human editing to highlight passages in articles that constitute spin. An advisory board of journalists and journalism academics helped create the program's standards.

SpinSpotter focuses primarily on the Web sites of CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, The New York Times, and Yahoo News, but over time, Herman hopes, the browser add-on will be an effective tool on any news Web article.

Here's an extended version of the Future Tense interview with Todd Herman. (Listen)

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The Internet and cell phones are bringing family members together rather than creating isolation, according to a new study.

Based on a recent survey of 2,252 adults, the traditional nuclear family has the highest rate of technology usage among all household types, according to University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman and researchers from the Pew Internet and American Life project.

inside those families, parents and children are using cell phones, texting and e-mail to forge a new kind of connectedness, said Wellman.

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Megan Wiseman feels like she probably should buy a video game console or two, plus a handful of games -- she works as a technical writer for a video game company and needs to stay on top of the industry.

But with the stock market plunging, job losses increasing, and the threat of greater inflation, she's resisting. The Raleigh, North Carolina resident dumped her cell phone plan in favor of a cheaper pay-as-you-go phone.

"I kind of miss having a gadgety phone and I've been kind of trying to think of how I can work that back into my budget but it just hasn't really been possible," she said.

It's not just the cell phone. Wiseman's also saving money on television.

"I used to have digital cable, you know having a DVR and nifty technology where you can record and fast forward and back up," she said. "And I just couldn't afford that so I just have plain old basic cable."

Wiseman and other members of American Public Media's Public Insight Network recently responded to a questionnaire about how the economy is forcing them to change their technology spending habits.

Derek Hansell, who staffs a technology help desk at a biotech firm in Clinton, New Jersey, said his tech spending has fallen by the wayside. If it weren't for the bleak economic outlook, Hansell said he might now be the proud owner of a 3G iPhone and a new computer graphics card.

"Splurging on technology was something I did readily even just a few years ago," he said. "Those kinds of things just aren't happening anymore."

Hansell is even cutting back on small purchases like 99 cent songs from iTunes.

Ellen Crain, a home-schooling mother from Hudson, Wisconsin, feels she needs to save money to soften the blow of a deep recession, so she's nixing any new cell phones, and found a creative solution to the recent demise of her DirecTV receiver.

"I ended up calling my parents who had had the same satellite service and had switched over to cable and they shipped me their old box that had been sitting in the basement," she said. "So we've upgraded to my parents hand-me-downs."

Scary economic news actually prompted one person to make a big purchase. Software writer Lisa Twede of Burbank, California bought a computer so she could work more hours outside the office as a way to boost her standing in the eye of her company.

"I had to buy a laptop so I could work from wherever and it's turned out to be quite a blessing because I can kind of like take even more vacations now because I can just take the laptop with me," she said. "I just went to Canada and I just worked there for a week."

An urgency to spend money before it's gone prompted Anna B. Scott, an assistant professor of dance history and theory, to requisition a much-needed external hard drive from her school, the University of California Riverside. She's afraid her budget is about to dry up.

"So I just went ahead and found an external drive that came in under $250 and I'm going to use some of my research funds to get that," she said.

Not everyone is cutting back on technology of course. Some people told us they're vetoing other household budget items to protect their need for tech.

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Consumers will bypass expensive gear like laptops and flat screen televisions in favor of much cheaper gadgets in the all-important fourth quarter, according to Roger Kay, computer industry analyst with Endpoint Technologies.

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David Ewing Duncan writes in the latest issue of Portfolio magazine, "While we're spending hundreds of billions to bail out financial institutions, why not also bail in the future by investing more in science and technology?"

The government should pour money into things like green technology and basic infrastructure, said Duncan, who's written for the Atlantic, National Geographic, and the New York Times.

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On today's show, Lem Fugitt of Robots Dreams reviews Rovio, a new domestic robot designed for remotely-controlled Web chats and friendly surveillance.

Here are some videos of Rovio in action:

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As the economy worsens, funding for new technology companies has grown scarce. Venture capital firm Sequoia Ventures, which backed Google among other companies, has warned Silicon Valley firms to cut expenses and expect a protracted downturn.

New companies hunting for investors are out of luck, but established firms that have already secured venture funding are in better shape, according to Matt Marshall, founder of VentureBeat.

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Today, we feature part two of our interview on broadband caps with Stacey Higginbotham, lead writer on technology blog GigaOm.

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Increasingly, some Internet service providers are placing limits on their broadband services. Comcast, for example, forbids customers from transferring more than 250 gigabytes of data per month. Customers who go over the limit risk getting dumped. Time Warner is experimenting with a tiered service, charging extra to customers who go over their monthly data limit.

Why do Internet service providers cap the amount of bandwidth consumers can use? I put that question to Stacey Higginbotham, lead writer on GigaOm.

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MySpace Music, which allows users to listen to major label songs for free, debuted late last month, and has already streamed one billion songs. That amounts to about eight songs for each of 120 million MySpace members.

"MySpace Music lets you listen to pretty much every song ever recorded, and it still sucks," writes Farhad Majoo on Slate.

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Three-fourths of American teenagers say they've been bullied online, but only one in ten tells their parents, according to a new survey by UCLA.

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Microsoft this week launched another rewards program that pays people for using Live Search, which has failed to make much of a dent in the most popular search engine, Google. The new SearchPerks program - available only to Windows and Internet Explorer users - awards points for using Live Search, which can be redeemed for prizes like music downloads and video games.

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Researchers at the University of Toronto have discovered a large surveillance system in China that monitors, censors, and archives text conversations exchanged by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture of eBay-owned Skype and a Chinese wireless company.

The university's Citizen Lab, a research group that investigates Internet censorship, discovered the operation in September, and was able to access an archive of messages from inadequately-protected computers. They discovered a list or restricted words - such as "democracy" and "Falun Gong".

UPDATE: Skype responds

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John McCain and Barack Obama are engaged in an advertising contest on the Internet, where both are buying up keywords from the likes of Google and Yahoo. Ads for the campaigns appear in results when surfers search on keywords and phrases like "Iraq war" and "bailout."

But McCain is besting Obama in search engine advertising, according to a story in Advertising Age magazine.

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Sprint Nextel opened a new wireless network to customers in Baltimore this week, offering Internet service for laptops for $45 per month. It's Sprint's first deployment of WiMax technology. WiMax is akin to Wi-Fi, but covers much greater distances.

Sprint calls its WiMax network Xohm and offers speeds of 2 to 4 megabits per second, about twice as fast as cellular broadband networks from the likes of Verizon and AT&T. To use the network, customers need a $60 laptop card or an $80 home modem.

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We already know that people tend to be nastier in e-mail than pen and paper. Now some university researchers say workers are significantly more likely to lie in e-mail messages than hand-written notes.

Guest: Terri Kurtzberg, Rutgers University

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