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Technorati Crashes, Bloggers Commit Suicide

9:31pm EST on March 26, 2007.

Stop the presses, and the blogs!

Technorati.com is currently down.

This is terrible, hopefully it comes back soon.

Thousands of bloggers reportedly commit suicide in the five minutes the site was down.

Update: Went back up at 9:36pm EST, after 5 REALLY LONG minutes.

Sprint to Provide Wimax to 100 Million People

Sprint has just announced 20 of the lucky cities that will be provided free WiMAX by the end of 2008. To those of us (about 1/3 of the U.S.) that live in these cities, this is an amazing development. This, along with the proliferation of inexpensive computers, should do wonders to shrink the digital divide in these major urban population centers.

Ever since Sprint promised to blanket 100 million people with WiMAX by the end of 2008, we've been wondering just who exactly those people would be. Well, in addition to a few other specifics, Sprint is finally coming clean about nineteen of those markets.

The promised cities are as follows: Motorola is prepping service for Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Minneapolis; Samsung will develop Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Providence and Washington D.C.; and Nokia will work on Austin, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Seattle. There'll be more location info to come, but that should get us started nicely. Sprint is still promising the limited initial launch by the end of 2007, and that 100 million target for the 2008, but also has an April '08 goal for launching a "number" of markets.

Kudos to Sprint, Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia for getting this project off the ground. Additional Kudos to Engadget for spreading the good word.

Diebold to Sue Massachussetts

From Boston.com via Slashdot:

Diebold Election Systems Inc. , one of the country's largest manufacturers of voting machines, is scheduled to argue in court today that the Office of the Secretary of State wrongly picked another company to supply thousands of voting machines for the disabled.

Diebold says it will ask a judge to overturn the selection of AutoMARK , a Diebold business competitor, because the office of Secretary of State William F. Galvin failed to choose the best machine.

The contract is valued at about $9 million.

Yes, this is the same Diebold that is perpetually mired in controversy.

About This Blog

This blog is based on three assumptions:

1. The Internet is quickly becoming the medium of choice for campaign communications. While television is still used to convey a simple message to the masses, it is unable to engage the voter in a satisfactory way.

2. Technological improvements are rapidly changing the way we vote and the way we gather political information. Touchscreens without a paper trail may only be the beginning. Defending the integrity of our electoral process is a critical aspect of maintaining a legitimate democracy.

3. The blogosphere and web 2.0 are transforming the way political news is transmitted and reported. Bloggers are redefining the role of the media in campaign and election coverage.

Anything related to politics or the Internet is fair game. The focus will rest on the intersection of the two.