Remember the Idaho elected official a few weeks back who got in trouble for forwarding a message, comparing Michelle Obama to a black widow spider, to 26 people from his official email account? It gets better. The Kuna-Melba News, a weekly paper that covers western Ada County and eastern Canyon... (Read More)

A number of localities have tried to recreate the magic that resulted in locations such as Silicon Valley in California and Route 128 in Massachusetts. Now it's Idaho's turn. More than 100 Idaho business executives and politicians want to turn some 79,000 acres of land in Idaho, about 20 miles... (Read More)

Ah, yes, the wonderful Christmas tradition of watching Santa's travels around the world using a missile defense system. It's actually a very sweet story. "The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the... (Read More)

For many people, the first they heard of Saturday's plane crash at Denver International Airport was via a Twitter message from someone who'd been on the plane, which quickly made its way through the Internet: "Holy ****ing s*** I wasbjust in a plane crash!" (Despite what some overly dramatic news... (Read More)

Yet another nebulous set of organizations are exhorting people to help "save the Internet!" by making high-speed Internet more broadly available but where it's not altogether clear just how the organization is planning to do that. And surprise, some of the people are the same between the two... (Read More)

Perhaps Idaho politicians and government workers just shouldn't be allowed near the Internet. Steve Rule, commissioner for Canyon County, was criticized earlier this month for forwarding an email message, comparing Michelle Obama to a black widow spider, to 26 people, many of them at Canyon County... (Read More)

A newly elected Idaho state legislator is considering drafting a bill to make anonymous blogging illegal. Ironically, the legislator in question is a retired newspaper editor. (Idaho has a "citizens legislature" that meets only three months a year; few of them are professional politicians.) Steve... (Read More)

Forgive the guffaws of uncontrolled laughter from over here. I've just seen that the US Government - January Obama edition - is considering making IT security a matter for its specific attention and put someone in charge of Cybercrime. So why the laughter from the UK? Yes, I can understand that... (Read More)

In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in New York while, reportedly, about a dozen people were able to hear her screams. Her death became a cause celebre about the callousness of New Yorkers, though in reality they may not have realized what was going on. On November 19, a... (Read More)

'Internet for Everyone' sounds like a laudable goal. Very Mom and apple pie. Who could be against that? The problem is that the name of an organization doesn't necessarily accurately depict what it's trying to do, and what Internet for Everyone is actually trying to do is far from clear -- and... (Read More)

Ever had some computer malware spit a bunch of porn onto your screen? Now imagine it happening in a roomful of schoolchildren. Now imagine it could send you to jail -- for forty years. That's what happened to Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Conn., in 2004. Using a computer in a... (Read More)

If you thought the Barack Obama Presidential candidacy was wired, wait til you see the Obama transition team. The team has already put up a website on the transition, including places where people can sign up, make suggestions, and apply for jobs. In addition, according to some reports, Obama has... (Read More)

In another case of a potentially rogue government programmer, the investigator found more than he bargained for: tens of thousands of pornographic images of children. As with San Francisco city government computer engineer Terry Childs earlier this year, Marc Young, computer applications manager... (Read More)

Sarah Palin is always keen to talk about open and transparent government, indeed it was one of the main focal points of her campaign when she ran for the office of Governor in Alaska. Of course, she continues to talk the transparency talk now that the campaign has ramped up a notch or three to... (Read More)

I'd like to start today's blog with a big hello to the British Government. I say a big hello although they won't be watching everything I type just yet, that's going to be a little later. They're trying to pass laws over here that mean they'll be allowed to monitor every mobile phone call and every... (Read More)

Federal, state, county, and city governments and agencies are beginning to use Twitter to update constituents on what's going on. A recent post on Silicon Alley Insider listed a number of federal Twitter sources (with more added in the comments), but a casual Twitter search for other government... (Read More)

The group Stop Internet Predators, claiming that the Street View 360-degree technology can be used by pedophiles to help stalk their victims, is recommending that municipalities "an Street View from your neighborhoods until it is safeguarded to ensure children's safety and privacy." How Google is... (Read More)

Last Saturday, Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin held a rally in Los Angeles in the Home Depot Center, and the California Democratic Party rented a giant electronic billboard during the event, and solicited questions from people, via texting, to display during the... (Read More)

The initial model for looking at Twitter was horizontal -- see everything that all the people you follow are thinking about. Now the model has been turned on its head 90 degrees -- see everything that anyone says, whether you follow them or not, that has to do with a particular topic: in this case,... (Read More)

Effective Wednesday, October 1, each business in Nevada must encrypt customers’ personal information when it is transmitted outside the business’ secure network, such as when it's transmitted over wifi. Initially passed in October 2007, it was said to have been the first law of this type. The... (Read More)

Buddhist writer Scoop Nisker used to close out his news reports on a San Francisco radio station by saying, "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." Now, if you don't like political advertising, you can go out and make some of your own. Using Google AdWords, anyone can... (Read More)

We were all treated this week to a lovely example of why it's a good idea to use standard email for government business (or corporate business, for that matter). First, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin mentioned that she used Yahoo Mail for some of her email, which is a problem... (Read More)

You have no friends named "palin". Sob. I had been so proud, the day after Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose her as his running mate, to be her friend on Facebook. I hadn't even done it cold, either; a friend of mine had recommended to me that I friend her, and I was happy to... (Read More)

No sooner had the echoes of “Sarah *who*?” faded than the blogosphere was on the job, showing that even for an unknown person from a remote area, there was plenty of readily accessible information available – and not only perhaps doing a better job of vetting than the McCain campaign itself... (Read More)

If you were one of the just seven people in the first half of the year who went to the Washington State Department of Transportation web page using free wifi from the rest areas along its highways, you're out of luck -- the state dropped the little-used service as of September 1. The state... (Read More)