Josh Marshall Points to Local News Site With Al Qaqaa Evidence

Josh Marshall points to a local TV station website with important Al Qaqaa evidence.

Calling All Technology Companies: A Manhattan Project for Voting Machines

The U.S. needs to launch a new 'Manhattan Project' to completely upgrade the voting system in this country, and since it is such a touchy issue for a political party to champion, we call on a consortium of technology companies: security, storage, networking, workflow, data management, etc. to take the lead. As much as the US faces important challenges at home and abroad, little is more critical than preserving faith in our democratic process. Disputed elections based on claims of fraud, incompetence, bad technology, malice -- whatever, undermines our society. We need a trusted, user-friendly system tested and rolled-out before the next presidential election. We need the great engineering minds of Silicon Valley and Redmond to join together and solve this problem fundamental to the functioning of our democratic society. Who will take up this task?

Yahoo! Buys Email Search

Not sure how DSBPI missed this one, but CNET reports that Yahoo! bought Stata Labs for email search.

Mary Meeker on RSS and Blogs

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley penned areport covering RSS.

Expand The Possible Outcomes in Iraq

To be Thomas Friedmanian: things don't look good in Iraq. Certainly, though, this is a relative statement. Things don't look good in Iraq compared to the Lucky Charms vision that the administration fed us before the war. But, ok, that was bad expectations management, a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering. But let's say the American people were prepared in advance for an ongoing guerilla war. Let's say that was the benchmark for success. Namely, if success was in just having to deal with a semi-organized, armed, underground resistance and not, for example, an Iranian front, a destabilize Jordan, or a Kurdish who knows what. If that were the case, the administration might be in a very different place right now.

We need to expand our view of the possible outcomes in Iraq and understand that as there were many more potential positive outcomes than the current state, there were many more potential negative outcomes as well.

One can argue that without the Pollyanna vision, the war effort would have never generated momentum. But the administration is now stuck with benchmark it set for itself.

In-Q-Tel Gets Another Exit

In-Q-Tel,the CIA venture capital fund, gets another exit today with the sale of Keyhole to Google.

Oil VC

Will rocketing oil prices herald the beginning of the end for big oil? Will the fact that ordinary folk in the US start feeling pain at the pump engender a bias toward more efficient engines? Will a new set of energy competitors challenge today's dominant oil players? DSBPI came across the ChevronTexaco VC website today. A corporate VC focused on investing in energy innovation. Imagine if big railroad had thought of that in the 19th century. Maybe JetBlue would be owned by JP Morgan.

GOOG Surpasses YHOO Market Cap

With GOOG at $183, it is now valued higher than YHOO.

Robert Scoble, a Microsoft blogger, writes about how new technologies are massively empowering people to create. In a "Message in a Botttle to Bill Gates," he writes: "I told him to understand the content-creation trend that's going on. It's not just pod-casting. It's not just blogging. It's not just people using Garageband to create music. It's not just people who soon will be using Photostory to create, well, stories with their pictures, voice, and music. It's not just about ArtRage'ers who are painting beautiful artwork on their Tablet PCs. It's not just the guys who are building weblog technology for Tablet PCs. Or for cell phones. Or for camera phones.

This is a major trend. Microsoft should get behind it. Bigtime. Humans want to create things. We want to send them to our friends and family. We want to be famous to 15 people. We want to share our lives with our video camcorders and our digital cameras. Get into Flickr, for instance. Ask yourself, why is Sharepoint taking off? (Tim O'Reilly told us that book sales of Sharepoint are growing faster than almost any other product). It's the urge to create content. To tell our coworkers our ideas. To tell Bill Gates how to run his company! Isn't this all wild?"

80/20 Rule Death Follow-up, Google

Follow-up to the "death of the 80/20 post on the Internet": Google reported today that its top 50 advertisers make up just 13% of revenue this past quarter.

Hollywood in Langley

From Maureen Dowd this morning: "C.I.A. officials were so clueless they wanted to sneak hundreds of small American flags into Iraq before the war started so grateful Iraqis could wave them at their liberators. The agency planned to film that and triumphantly beam it to the Arab world."

Objectivity in the Media: Why We Trust Blogs

There has been a lot of rhetoric recently around objectivity in the media -- especially post the ABC News memo. We are not talking about shoddy reporting or intentional falsification, but the notion of objectivity that tries to give balance and voice to each sides of an issue. This is so badly mangled so often by the mainstream media as they tend to equate opposing quotations as balance, whether those quotations have equal veracity or not.

But British papers, let's say, make no secret of their political leanings. They are partisan without shame, and because their biases are well-known, the reader can better assess the outlet's reporting. It is also a much more interesting read. Blogs are similar in this way. Further, if you read multiple blogs from different sides of an issue, you can achieve objectivity, using your own mind as filter and editor.

Because objectivity in reporting is so rarely achieved, should mainstream US media follow the British model of opinionated coverage?

80/20 Rule, Campaign Donations and the Internet

Kevin Laws had a great post on the Venture Blog about how the Internet has challenged the 80/20 rule (the post references Chris Anderson's article in Wired entitled The Long Tail). Kevin cites a few examples (and I quote):

• Amazon makes most of their profit from the tail - they receive a higher margin because they don't have competition in that area.
• Ebay does nothing but aggregate all of the tiny, single lot size items that were not being sold at all (or just through local classifieds).
• Google and Overture are aggregating all of the advertising spending that was not happening because it could not be targeted well enough. Coke doesn't go there in a big way, but Riley's Trick Shop in Worth, IL can target you if you're looking for vampire teeth.

DSBPI wonders when this will be the case for political donations -- when candidates, using the Internet to aggregate the "tail," i.e. the multitude of low-ticket donors -- will surpass the big fish. Perhaps this is already the case.

If Microsoft Spends $7bn on R&D, Why Am I Not Using More New Microsoft Stuff?

The DSBPI tech analyst emptied his pockets at the airport the other day before going through security. Out came: a Blackberry, an iPod and an M-Systems 512kb Disk-On-Key. No windows-based laptop. He was flying to New York to meet some friends, 90% of whom have iPods. One hundred percent of whom have digital cameras, and use tools like Google's Picasa or Kodak's Ofoto to organize their photos. None has a Microsoft smart phone, but Treos and Nokias abound. They all use Gmail. They use LinkedIn. None run PocketPC anymore although many tried it. Some have TiVo.

It's not that Microsoft">Microsoft needs to own every piece of consumer technology, but with $7bn in R&D spend, why - outside of the desktop - doesn't new Microsoft tech show up at all among DSBPI subscribers?

We know that Microsoft has amazing things in the works: we read Channel 9 and we love the idea of the Tablet PC. But we simply wonder: why aren't we using more new Microsoft stuff? We hope the answer isn't: "Just wait."

Gmail Now Has Auto-Forwarding

In case you didn't notice, Gmail now lets you forward your messages.

Update: Colorado, No Longer a Secret Swing

With election day looming, with big-ass states like Florida in the balance, where is George Bush spending two full campaign days this week? Yup, Colorado. Where is Edwards? Colorado.

Last time Bush was in Denver, he had John Elway introduce him -- this time it was Mike Shanahan, Broncos coach. In Colorada you can't top Broncos love.

But the candidates are not just here for themselves, Colorado is also home to one of the most closely watched Senate races Old Man Coors vs. Ken Salazar, a race that could tip the balance in the Senate to either side.

Exciting times in this here dustbowl.

Did Bush and Kerry Have the Same Pre-War Intel

During the debate, Bush claimed that Kerry looked at the same pre-war intel as he did. Is that true? Does the Sunday NYT piece on the "Tubes" claims impugn that? Namely, did Kerry look at the output of the intelligence -- the same output that Bush looked at, but not the input -- that is, all of the dissension.

Uh-Oh: Tom Friedman is Back

Friedman comes back from his hiatus with a whopper: "Sorry, I've been away writing a book. I'm back, so let's get right down to business: We're in trouble in Iraq."