05/10 Comedian in chief — You’ve heard about (or maybe you haven’t) President Obama’s turn as a comedian at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. I was looking for, and I found the full video of his remarks. In fact, pretty funny. (Who writes for him?)

05/08 Government Efficiency — Check this post Government Efficiency from Dilbert.com Blog: > A confusopoly is a situation in which companies pretend to compete on price, service, and features but in fact they are just trying to confuse customers so no one can do comparison shopping. (from: Government Efficiency) Nice new term: Confusopoly

05/08 Manny being Manny — Check this post Thank you Jason Bay from 38 Pitches: > “… Yet somehow we’re hearing these same people talk about being struck momentarily stupid when West African bullfrog se...

05/06 Help your favorite Massachusetts historic site win a grant — The National Trust of Historic Preservation and American Express are giving away $100,000.00 to a Massachusetts historic site. All you have to do is to exercise your left mouse finger to increase the chances of your site. [Click here to register and cast your vote. It’s all free and takes (by my wat...

05/02 A touching piece by Curt Schilling — This is from his blog: “When our third child was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome almost two years ago all I can say is that my heart was aching. A child that I had raised to that point like his siblings, I couldn’t understand how he could be so different.   I was in the doctors office when I heard the words ” On the spectrum of Autism” Aspergers.” (from 38 Pitches)

04/30 Twice as many people vote for Idol than watch it? — This does not compute: **“As the final five contestants on “American Idol” competed for a chance at the top prize on Tuesday, Fox once again took first place in the night’s ratings. According to Nielsen’s estimates, 22.5 million viewers tuned in to the reality show during the 8 p.m. hour, easily m...

04/30 “What’s next in tech” event in Boston in June — If you live in the Boston area and somehow connected to technology professions you should be interested in this meeting being put on in June: What’s Next In Tech – Where will the next waves of growth will come from? > Date: Thursday, June 25th Time: 6:00 PM –...

04/27 Back from Barcamp Boston — This weekend I had a chance to attend BarCamp Boston (4). As usual it was fun and interesting and I had a chance to hang out and talk with a bunch ...

04/25 Weapons of civic mass destruction — I am struck by how broken our political process is. I’m not the first nor the last to make this observation, How did we get here and what are the underlying reasons? Here’s one way I have started to look at it: we have perfected the science of persuasion to such a point that it is **now destroying u...

04/23 The torture discussion back in 2001 — Recently of course, because of the ‘torture memos’, the topic is all over the papers and cable ‘news’ programs. It’s brought back to mind a discussion that was raging hot and heavy, starting back in 2001, about the idea of allowing the issuance of ‘Torture Warrants‘. [Alan Dershowitz](http://en...

04/17 Great proposal re: http://data.gov from Sunlight Foundation — Check out this post [Re...

04/16 Inside the Shot Heard ‘Round the World — Did you wonder how those snipers were able to shoot those pirates when both groups were on boats on the open sea? Check out this post Inside the Shot Heard ‘Round the World: > ""These guys can put three rounds onto the head of a quarter at that range," Allen told me. " (from: from Defense Tech)

04/13 [GEEKY] How DataRSS might work — Editors Note (that’s me, Pito): I’ve decided to change the name of this thing to “Decentralized Data Discovery – DDD” because I learned from more than one person that calling it Data RSS was misleading and confusing. I need to go back and update the papers and blog posts. I’ve just finished writ...

04/11 An excellent paper about Curaçao Politics — This is probably not high on your radar, but if you have interest in the island of Curaçao you may have heard about the big referendum issue that is being hotly debated these days. I won’t even try to capture the sides of the argument, rather I want to refer you to this outstanding paper written by ...

04/10 Has Paula gotten Smarter? — I’ve been an American Idol fan for a while now, in fact from the very start. I’ve been commenting to the TV Set that Paula is seeming much smarter, incisive and interesting this year than in the past.[I see I am not the only one to notice 🙂](http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/04/07/judging_p...

04/09 If you think stronger regulation is a good answer, heed Buffett — Check out this post If you think stronger regulation is a good answer, heed Buffett: > “Warren Buffett gave a three-hour interview in August. Here’s an interesting [bit from the transcript](http://www.clusterstock.com/2...

04/08 Great paper about Harri Hursti’s demonstration of ballot scanner security concerns — I recently saw the movie Hacking Democracy. It’s absolutely fascinating and basic background for anyone interested in election reform. In it you learn about some of the heroes of election reform, including Harri Hursti ...

04/07 Paul Simon’s Graceland Album: the back story — Ethan Zuckerman writes a great piece about how Paul Simon’s Graceland album came to be, with some of the historical context, backstory and being a xenophile. A great read: > “At its best, Graceland sounds like Simon is encountering forces to large for him to understand or control. He’s riding on top...

04/05 Maybe I hate my iPhone — This is from today’s New York Times Magazine. I didn’t know Virginia Heffernan was funny! > “Actually, the iPhone probably sips, like a lipsticky girl with a vodka drink. It usual...

04/03 Meeting24.tv Keeps Online Meetings Simple — Check out this post Meeting24.tv Keeps Online Meetings Simple: > "Like Utagoe Live 100, meeting24.tv also has a similar minimalistic feel to it, which is supposed to make it easy for anyone to use – even those with little web experience. The service is based on the assumption that other online meeting solutions such as TokBox (which we covered three times), Cisco’s Webex, Polycom or Skype are just too complex. " (from: from TechCrunch) I tried it, at least by myself. It seems to work but I am not sure that I am getting the most performance out of my Logitech webcam. Pretty cool.