One of the first things that President Obama did upon taking office was promise a much more open and transparent administration from what came before. He issued a "directive" to federal agencies to start with the assumption of openness and only back down from it with good reason. And yet, as we've seen over and over again, federal agencies have been anything but transparent -- and a new study...

TorrentFreak has an article about how Ari Emanuel, brother of Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and the "inspiration" for Jeremy Piven's "Ari Gold" character in the show Entourage, is claiming that he's talking to President Obama about implementing a three strikes law in the US. While I'm sure he's talking, I'm at least somewhat confident he's not getting very far. Al...

With the EU Parliament soundly voting against ACTA secrecy and current proposals, lots of folks have been wondering how the US was going to respond. So far, it's not looking good. The USTR gave a giant no comment, and President Obama (who had been pretty quiet on ACTA himself) addressed ACTA in a speech, where he expressed strong support for continuing to move forward with ACTA. What was tell...

The Apps for Healthy Kids competition is a part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Apps for Healthy Kids challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging tools and games that drive children, especially “tweens” (ages 9-12) – directly or through their parents – to eat bette...

Is Internet access a fundamental human right? According to a BBC global study that we posted about yesterday, 79% of adults believe that it is. Whether or not you agree with that statement, one things for sure: most people want free internet. And it looks like the Obama administration is hoping to give them just

A HTC Touch Pro2 from T-Mobile for only $149.99 with FREE SHIPPING? As President Obama said, "Yes, we can!"

Do you remember the personalized movies that had been showing up in your email a while back? The one that sticks in my mind was a 'get out the vote' video the Obama campaign sent out a month before the presidential election. The story told by the video was that Obama lost by just one vote and it was you, whoever you are. You name was smoothly integrated into about a dozen places in the n...

The guest lists for President Obama's series of lunches with corporate CEOs.June 25, 2009, with Obama and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett—Muhtar Kent, The Coca-Cola Co.—David Cote, Honeywell International Inc.—Randall Stephenson, AT&T Inc.—Ursula Burns, Xerox Corp.July 31, 2009, with Obama and...

Who you reckon gets more salary? Obama? In fact the highest paying leader comes from a tiny country with population less than 5 million, he is Lee Hsien Loong, the PM of Singapore who takes home $2.05 million, 5 times more than Obama.

With the rise of new forms of electronic communication, there have been growing problems in figuring out what sort of government communications need to be recorded and preserved. You may remember that there were concerns early on that President Obama wouldn't be allowed to use his Blackberry. Some of those concerns were over security issues, but also there were fears about how every message w...