Weekend Update, 10/03/08

Beth Callaghan — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:49:31 +0000

The week ending Oct. 3, 2008, was a momentous one and not solely because of ongoing McCain-Obama high jinks like Tina Fey’s encore as Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live” or the one and only Web site where you can decide the race in a Kung-Fu Election.

First and foremost, this week’s big slide on Wall Street hit tech stocks with a vengeance, too, disproving Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s assertion a little more than a week ago: “My guess is that the drama is New York and not here.” Ouch. But don’t say BoomTown didn’t warn you.
Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s new general counsel, has “strong ties to the Republican Party.” Including a stint in former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s office, where, as chief of staff, he handled the government’s response to the the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s indentity. “Ted’s arrival demonstrates we’re a little more grown up.” No word on whether or not you need to change your status immediately.
Unsurprisingly, the ad partnership between Yahoo and Google is on hold so the Justice Department can spend more time reading the small print. The much debated deal is now also much delayed.
Google will spend the interim rolling out Clean Energy 2030, a $4.4 trillion dollar plan to transition the country from coal and oil dependence to clean energy. And to lower the gas and electric bills on all those Google data centers.
People have some strong ideas about the term “cloud computing”–if not about the concept itself. In September, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said, “Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anybody is talking about … It’s complete gibberish.” Well, Steve Ballmer doesn’t think so–though what he coyly announced this week at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference will go by another name. Or maybe not. Says Ballmer: “Let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud.’” Let’s.
Walt Mossberg lays out the different ways to make a Mac emulate a PC, including one option that’s just gotten better. He also answers readers’ questions, which this week include issues about following features from one version of Microsoft Office to another, dealing with malware, and embarrassing CD misidentifications.
And in a showdown at the iTunes Corral, Apple walked off into the sunset with its profit margin intact. It was threatening to shut down the iTunes Store if the Copyright Royalty Board were to raise royalty rates 66 percent–as had been proposed by the National Music Publishers’ Association.

Follow the Election Anywhere

Walt Mossberg — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 19:15:40 +0000

Now there’s a cool new way to follow the 2008 presidential election anywhere you go. Today I discovered a rich, data-packed app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that displays updated polling data, both nationally and state-by-state, for the presidential campaign. It’s called Election ’08, and can be downloaded here. It costs 99 cents, and it requires at least the 2.0 version of the iPhone/Touch OS.

This iPhone app lets you track the campaign anywhere you go.

Election ’08 contains the latest national tracking polls and performs an algorithmic calculation of who’s winning currently in each state based on multiple available polls in that state. Then, it generates an electoral vote projection. It also gives the sources of the polls, and provides recent and historical data for context.

Some iTunes commenters complained that the app’s polling data were stale, but today, it seems up to date.

The program, from a company called Chimp Software, lets you view the data in a variety of ways–most recent data, alphabetical by state, battleground states only, or in lists arranged by each candidate’s strongest states, in descending order (McCain is cleaning up in Utah, Obama is uncatchable in DC.)

If you care about politics, and understand that polls aren’t perfect, Election ’08 can put a snapshot of the political horse race in your pocket.

AllThingsD » McCain

Weekend Update, 10/03/08

Follow the Election Anywhere