Technologizer

Secret Service Investigates Facebook App

Monday, September 28, 2009

Facebook polls typically ask questions as mundane as “what’s your favorite breakfast cereal?” But over the weekend, a poll asking whether U.S. President Barack Obama should “be killed” was anything but mundane, and drew the attention of the Secret Service. The poll gave respondents four options: Yes, Yes if he cuts my health care, Maybe, and [...]

Obama Praises Tech Giants

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

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U.S. President Barack Obama heralded the technology industry in a speech today about the importance of education. The speech, which was given to school children across the country, emphasized personal responsibility, hard work, and perseverance. In his remarks, Obama told school children that students sitting in classrooms a generation beforehand had grown up to produce Facebook, [...]

Health Care Reform becomes Comedic Gold on Twitter

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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The U.S. debate over President Obama’s health care reform proposals has taken a humorous turn on Twitter today. Tweets making light of some of the more outlandish claims that are being made by the President’s political opponents have become trending topics: Under Obamacare and #Obamacarefacts. Here’s a sampling of some of the wittier remarks. @WinstonUK Under Obamacare two [...]

Obama’s Cybersecurity Initivate a Step in the Right Direction

Friday, May 29, 2009

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Today, U.S. President Barack Obama took the wraps off of a 60-day review of the nation’s electronic infrastructure. The report outlined concrete steps towards achieving better security, called for the creation of a cyber security czar in the White House staff, and emphasized the importance of respecting people’s privacy. In April, I wrote “Obama gets it,” [...]

Digg This: The White House’s Social Media Experiment

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

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Reviving an experiment it conducted during the transition, the Obama administration is using a Digg-style collaborative system called Open for Questions to collect questions for the president to answer. Here’s why it’s doi–oh, heck, wouldn’t you prefer to hear it from the horse’s mouth? Open for Questions lets registered users submit questions [...]

Obama Administration Appoints Top CIO

Thursday, March 5, 2009

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The White House press office announced today that Vivek Kundra, the current chief technology officer of Washington DC, will be assuming the position of Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the White House. U.S. President Barack Obama rode into office backed by an unprecedentedly sophisticated grassroots campaign that leveraged Web 2.0 technologies to rally and [...]

White House No Longer Using YouTube

Monday, March 2, 2009

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It appears as if the Obama Administration has decided to stop using YouTube as a method to embed its videos into websites for the Government. Starting with this weeks address, videos are now served in Flash through technology provided by Akamai. While most seem to be labeling it as a way to answer privacy concerns, I [...]

My.BarackObama.com’s Porn-and-Malware Problem

Monday, January 26, 2009

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An online community burgeoned out of Barack Obama’s use of Web 2.0 technologies during his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Supporters flocked to My.BarackObama.com to share blogs, videos and organized events. In the wake of that success, malicious hackers are leveraging the site in a socially engineered scheme to infect PCs with a trojan. The hackers [...]

The ObamaBerry: It’s Real!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

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Yes, you can be the President of the United States and a denizen of the 21st century, apparently–at least when it comes to cell phones. The U.S. government has figured out how to mod a BlackBerry for super-secure communications, giving President Obama the ability to use the gizmo he feared losing for routing and personal [...]

Whitehouse.gov Gets a Makeover

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

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At 12:01pm, the official website of the White House changed hands, and with it came quite a sea change as far as the openness of the executive branch. The website has a definite Web 2.0 feel to it — from the blogs, to the dynamic headers and whatnot. But what’s really exciting to me is the [...]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Presidents of the United States

Monday, January 19, 2009

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On Tuesday, Barack Obama will make history when he’s sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. Let’s pause to reflect on how how we got here: Here are the president-elect and his forty-three predecessors (counting Grover Cleveland as two presidents, of course). Click on any or all of ‘em, and [...]

Julius Genachowski to Chair FCC

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

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Reports indicate President-elect Obama is set to tap Juilus Genachowski to head the Federal Communications Commision. Genachowski has experience with the agency: he served as general counsel to former chair Reed Hunt, who served during the Clinton Administration. Obama and Genachowski are close associates. He was the President-elect’s chief technology counsel and they were classmates at [...]

Obama Fighting the Anti-BlackBerry Forces

Thursday, January 8, 2009

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President-elect Obama is still fighting to keep his BlackBerry, the addictive electronic device that has helped him keep in constant contact with friends and advisers from his Senatorial days right through the campaign, the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny reports. Saying “they’re going to have to pry it out of my hands,” Obama is arguing [...]

Sorry, Mr. President Elect: Twitter Gets Hacked

Monday, January 5, 2009

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Malicious users gained access to Twitter’s account support tools by exploiting an undisclosed security vulnerability and hacked into 33 high profile accounts, including those belonging to Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, U.S. President Elect Barack Obama, and CNN anchor Rick Sanchez. The intrusions caused no real harm, but Twitter’s status as a soapbox for public [...]

Shocker: Obama May Cut NASA Shuttle Replacement

Monday, December 22, 2008

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I know this is a bit outside of Technologizer’s typical coverage area but it is interesting nonetheless. There has been some reports of bad feelings between the President-Elect and NASA, and we may be finding out why. Obama may be considering ending the Ares rocket program, intended to be the replacement for the space shuttle. According [...]

President-Elect Obama, You Need that BlackBerry

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

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I just saw a piece by Jonathan Alter on Newsweek that responds to the talk surrounding Obama’s BlackBerry use: that it poses a security risk and he will be forced to surrender it upon inauguration. Alter argues that in order for Obama to be successful in the presidency, he will need to remain connected to [...]