MEGAN BOLER

Interesting opinion piece in Wired about US Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell’s  proposed plan to monitor all internet communication.  According to writer Bruce Schneier:  “The debate isn’t security versus privacy. It’s liberty versus control.”

According to DeviceGuru: “The unoccupied radio spectrum between broadcast TV channels may soon become a source of low-cost, ubiquitous broadband connectivity” That means that the unused space between channels may utilized to provide broadband access to more rural areas, like tv, this kind of wifi/wimax alternative will be able to cover huge amount of soace and easily travel through objects like trees.

According to DeviceGuru: “The unoccupied radio spectrum between broadcast TV channels may soon become a source of low-cost, ubiquitous broadband connectivity” That means that the unused space between channels may utilized to provide broadband access to more rural areas, like tv, this kind of wifi/wimax alternative will be able to cover huge amount of soace and easily travel through objects like trees.

engadget has in depth review of the new Mac Air: “the sexiest laptop around today”

Striking writers for The Colbert Report and The Daily Show masterminded a brilliant comedy mock-hearing on the Hollywood writers’ strike, including an arch (and brilliant) meta-moment where they disrupted their own hearing with nonsensical grandstanding from seeming participants.

Documents on Wikileaks show that the German government had planned to release trojans — malware — designed to allow them to intercept Skype calls. The leaked documents include wrangling over the pricing and payment for the malicious software. The docs were leaked by the German Pirate Party.

One of the more exotic premieres at this year’s Sundance Film Festival is “Invisible Threads.” It’s not a movie, but a virtual sweat shop that exists only on Second Life, the online virtual world, yet produces real-life, custom-ordered, personalized blue jeans.  (link)

Global Voices Online:

“Based on Hamed Saber’s “Access Flickr” Firefox extension, which enables users to circumvent the filter currently in effect in Iran and in few other countries that block Flickr, the popular photo-sharing website, another Iranian developer, MohammadR, has released “FreeAccess Plus!“, a nifty extension that turns Firefox into a proxy that bypasses censorship on popular Web 2.0 websites such as YouTube, del.icio.us, Flickr, Technorati.com, FriendSter.com, livejournal.com, MySpace, Hi5 and others. Many of those web sites are barred in Iran.”

theuptake.org has some pretty good citizen journalist coverage of the primaries

Michael Geist comes up with 8 tech law issues to watch in the upcoming year, among them is the expansion of the digital divide in Canada and information security.