Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Have You Visited Recovery.gov Lately?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Technology, Transparency

I hadn’t, but when I did…wow.
First, right there on the front page you have a map that details the total dollars announced, available and spent on the both the national and state levels (when you mouse over each graph or state).

But the most impressive feature by far is when you enter in your zip code [...]

October 6th, 2009 | Permalink| 24 Comments »

Cash For Clunkers Turns Into Cars.Gov

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Cars, Economy, Energy, Environment, Fiscal stimulus, Money, Technology

A new website for the controversial, popular program is up and it includes some things you need to know if you’d like to take advantage.

Your vehicle must be less than 25 years old on the trade-in date

Only purchase or lease of new vehicles qualify

Generally, trade-in vehicles must get 18 or less MPG (some very large [...]

August 5th, 2009 | Permalink| 4 Comments »

No Mre Txting N Drvng?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Good Decisions, Law, Technology

After the release of a study that showed somebody is 23 times more likely to get into an accident, Dems in Congress are working on legislation that would make it illegal across the country.
From the AP:
WASHINGTON — States would be required to ban driving while texting or face the loss of highway funds under legislation [...]

July 29th, 2009 | Permalink| 4 Comments »

The Legalized Theft That Is High Frequency Trading

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Money, Technology

Another day, another incredibly questionable Wall Street practice. And this one is particularly galling.
Basically, some of the stock exchanges allow companies to see trades 3 milliseconds before they hit the market. It’s called “flash” trading, and the only folks who can take advantage of such information are the ones who pay a fee (of course) [...]

July 25th, 2009 | Permalink| 4 Comments »

Iranians Boycotting Nokia Siemens, But Is It Justified?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Iran, Technology

About a month ago, when most of the unrest in Iran was happening, I wrote about the fact that Nokia Siemens seemed to be helping the Iranian government track down protesters.
Well, it looks like the Iranian people are doing something about it and protesting with their wallets. Perhaps you should too?
Not so fast…
More at [...]

July 24th, 2009 | Permalink| No Comments »

Helium-3: Energy Godsend?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in China, Energy, Russia, Science, Space, Technology, The Politics Of Film, The World, United States

I’ve been genuinely intrigued at how much fiction and reality have been intersecting recently.
See, there’s this film called MOON and it follows the story of a guy working on the far side of the moon who figures out that there’s a lot more to his mission than collecting the natural resource Helium-3. It’s a [...]

July 23rd, 2009 | Permalink| 4 Comments »

Cellulosic Ethanol no longer in its infancy

By Solomon Kleinsmith | Related entries in Business, Economic recovery, Economy, Energy, Environment, Fiscal Responsibility, Fiscal stimulus, Gas, News, Oil, Politics, Polls, Science, Spending, Stimulus, Technology

Thanks to Justin and company for welcoming me on here as a regular contributor. I will be posting on a number of issues, but one area you can expect that I will regularly be tracking is technology related developments and how they interact with the political world and policy. I also live less than ten [...]

July 13th, 2009 | Permalink| 12 Comments »

Quote Of The Day – The Social Revolution

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Internet, Iran, Quotes, Technology

“Today you are the media, it is your duty to report and keep the hope alive.”
- A recent Facebook status update by Mir Hossein Mousavi
Over the weekend, I touched on the significance social media is playing in this revolution, and Mashable has more details…
The status update, posted in Farsi and translated both in the Facebook [...]

June 22nd, 2009 | Permalink| 2 Comments »

Yes, The Revolution Will Be Twittered

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Iran, Technology

Between the 2008 election and the current situation in Iran, social technologies have changed politics in very real, very meaningful ways.
Now, with these immediate, uncontrolled communication channels available (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook), citizens finally have the ability to share what’s really going on without the media filter.
Iranian leaders didn’t anticipate this, but other repressive regimes [...]

June 20th, 2009 | Permalink| 7 Comments »

Do You Use Twitter And Want To Help Iranian Bloggers?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Blogging, Iran, Technology

Then here are 5 simple tips…
The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.
1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it [...]

June 16th, 2009 | Permalink| 2 Comments »

Obama Team Asked Twitter To Wait On Site Maintenance

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Elections, Iran, Technology

And interesting little factoid in all of this Iran election stuff.
From Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election.
Confirmation that the U.S. government had [...]

June 16th, 2009 | Permalink| 42 Comments »

Mind Tweets

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Science, Technology, Tweets

O.k., this story is just cool:
Earlier this month, Wilson thought of a tweet (the name for a post to the social networking site) and poof, his computer read his mind and sent the darn thing. At just 23 characters, Wilson’s message, “using EEG to send tweet,” was done with a computer setup that interprets brain [...]

April 24th, 2009 | Permalink| 2 Comments »

Obama’s Weekly Address Focuses On Efficiency, Innovation

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Fiscal Responsibility, Obama, Technology, Video

First, he talks about how he’s going to start talking about all the spending he’s going to cut in the coming weeks. I wonder if it’ll quiet critics who say he’s spending us into the poor house. Probably not, but I’ll keep my eye out nonetheless.
He also introduces the Chief Performance Officer and Chief Technology [...]

April 18th, 2009 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

Will The A.P. Try To Stop Bloggers From Using Their Content?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Blogging, Media, Technology

(AP world headquarters)
A while back, the A.P. targeted a site called the Drudge Retort for using excerpts of its stories on the site. This caused quite an uproar among bloggers because they felt that excerpting portions of a story’s copy was considered “fair use”, and I let my feelings be known as well.
The A.P. [...]

April 6th, 2009 | Permalink| 11 Comments »

Data.Gov To Launch In May

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Technology, Transparency

Yet another step towards the goal to make the government’s actions more transparent than any other time in our history…
“In late May, Data.gov will launch, in what US CIO Vivek Kundra calls an attempt to ensure that all government data ‘that is not restricted for national security reasons can be made public’ through data feeds. [...]

April 5th, 2009 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

Is Flutter The New Twitter?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Comedy, Technology, Video

If you use the Twitter as much as I do, like I do, then you’ll definitely want to check this out.

And scene…
(h/t: Mashable)

April 5th, 2009 | Permalink| 7 Comments »

FinancialStability.Gov Launches

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Technology, Transparency

The site got some meat on it a couple days ago, and here’s what you can expect to find there right now.

A map that details the local impact of the Capital Purchase Program, which is basically the “Don’t Let Banks Fail” program. Some states, like Missouri, haven’t received any money because our banks are sound. [...]

April 1st, 2009 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

McCain Says Public Financing Is Dead

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, History, McCain, Money, Technology

I do feel bad for the guy, but with the internet providing the means for anybody to easily donate to a campaign, the game changed and McCain’s public finance laws couldn’t change with it.
From Wash Times:
“No Republican in his or her right mind is going to agree to public financing. I mean, that’s dead. That [...]

March 29th, 2009 | Permalink| 5 Comments »

Once Again, Sorry For The Site Issues

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Technology

It went down a couple hours ago because the server just shut off. We’re optimizing some things currently, but there may be some hiccups throughout today and into tomorrow.
Please hang in with us. We’ll get it figured out soon.

March 29th, 2009 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

Site Issues & Server Changes

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Technology

Sorry the site has been behaving weird for, well, a while. And it has been especially bad this last week. We were having some major database issues and very normal things were taking forever to load. And so the problems and so the frustration and my sincere apologies for all of it.
That’s why we’ve upgraded [...]

March 28th, 2009 | Permalink| 4 Comments »