Obama Crowdsourced Resolutions For 2009

What should be Barack Obama’s resolutions for the New Year once he takes office? He needs to look to further than his transition Website, Change.gov, where more than 74,031 people have submitted more than 53,369 questions (and counting) for his administration and voted 3,122,015 times to prioritize the questions in a Digg-like fashion. Part of his Open Government initiatives, the Open for Questions part of the site is powered by Google Moderator. (You need to sign [+]

GoDaddy Moves To Close Shady Standard Tactics Subsidiary

Earlier this month, we reported on The Go Daddy Group doing everything it could to keep the public from knowing about its subsidiary Standard Tactics, which it used for domain warehousing. Although the practice wasn’t necessarily against the Terms & Conditions of ICANN, they sure went through a lot of trouble to make sure Standard Tactics couldn’t easily be identified as a GoDaddy company. Andrew over at DomainNameWire was the first to take the story public, [+]

Ill. governor arrested on corruption charges

Feds: Blagojevich put 'for sale' sign on naming of Obama's Senate successor WASHINGTON - Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on federal charges that he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder. A 76-page FBI affidavit says the 51-year-old Democrat was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to use the vacant Senate seat to obtain personal benefits for himself and his [+]

Obama seeks peace between activists, centrists

CHICAGO - President-elect Barack Obama is refereeing a struggle between liberal activists, who want to help their candidate score rapid wins in Washington, and party traditionalists who would turn his powerful grass-roots organization over to the Democratic National Committee. Any mishandling by Obama and his aides could cost him support from factions that were crucial to his Nov. 4 victory and that remain important to his hopes of launching a smooth administration in January. A top Obama [+]

The End Of Venture Capital As We Know It?

Last week, something turned. We found out that not only are we in a recession, but it started a year ago. Tech layoffs went into overdrive (12,000 at AT&T, 600 at Adobe, 130 at Real Networks), bringing the total unemployed tech workforce to at least 90,000, by our count. Even Facebook decided to indefinitely postpone an earlier plan to allow employees to sell some stock privately. One likely consideration in Facebook’s about-face is that [+]

The Huffington Post Raises $25 Million from Oak Investment Partners

We already knew The Huffington Post was looking for capital, but it turns out to be a little more than the $15 million the Times of London projected earlier. Kara Swisher says the political uber-blog network has in fact raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners and will announce the news later this morning (press release below). This third round brings the total amount of funding raised to a whopping $37 million. When The HuffPo raised [+]

Terrorists used BlackBerrys to cause horror

Among their arsenal of weapons are bags of almonds and BlackBerry mobile phones – almonds to keep their energy up, and the mobile internet connections to stay one step ahead of police and the military. These fuckers turned our tools against us and it’s an embarrassment - and a reminder - that the tools that make our lives easier and, dare I say it, better, can also be used to sow doom and destruction. The story says [+]

U.S. stimulus likely to target infrastructure needs

The next government stimulus effort is likely to target America's crumbling infrastructure, and experts say the funding is sorely needed with bulldozers ready to roll on scores of projects. "We have projects that are shovel-ready -- the designs are complete, the environmental permits have been obtained, the right-of-way has been obtained, and the state is waiting to get funding," said Wayne Klotz, the Texas-based president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. For years, engineers and planners [+]

Obama presses economic theme as team solidifies

President-elect Barack Obama takes another step toward tackling the ailing U.S. economy on Wednesday as part of an aggressive effort to demonstrate that his administration will face the global financial crisis head-on. In his third news conference this week, Obama will make an "economic announcement" at 10:45 a.m. EST, his transition office said, following a similar event on Tuesday, when he presented his picks to head the White House budget office. The Wall Street Journal reported Obama [+]

Obama: Costly stimulus needed to jolt economy

President-elect Barack Obama promised on Monday to jolt the faltering U.S. economy with a costly stimulus package next year and introduced the team that will help him navigate the global financial crisis. Obama, who warned again that the economy would likely get worse before it got better, declined to put a price tag on the two-year stimulus proposal which other Democrats have estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars. Financial markets fell as traders lamented Obama's refusal [+]