It's been a long time coming, but former eBay chief Meg Whitman now appears to be preparing to run for the post of governor of California.

Whitman seems to be planning a future as Arnold Schwarzenegger's successor, and she's spent the past year getting her credentials in order. Her ties to the Republicans are tight: she was a co-chair of John McCain's failed election campaign and before that an adviser to Mitt Romney's failed campaign to win the Republican nomination.

With such a startling record of political success, I quite hope she gets the nod - but I also hope that people start to question her period in charge of eBay.

After all, yes, she guided the company from a small outfit to worldwide success. She made it through the dotcom bust and came out the other side. But then things started to go awry: when eBay turned into a massive struggling bureaucracy that needed a bit of direction and oomph, she decided to buy Skype (which the company had to write down by $1.4bn) and then, this time last year, got the hell out of Dodge.

And just a few months after she bailed, the company laid off 10% of its workforce. California's got plenty of problems already.

Still, record aside, Whitman wouldn't be the first technology executive to try her hand at politics. Although in recent years Bill Gates has wielded the greatest political influence of any technology supremo (he once told me that he regularly phoned Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to check on the progress of the NHS's troubled IT upgrade) in the end he preferred to exercise his muscle for the company, not the country.

In recent American history, that means the most famous example of a technologist-turned-politician is Ross Perot, the founder of Electronic Data Systems who ran as an independent presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996. At his most successful, Perot received as much as 19% of the popular vote. Crikey.

Sidenote: Whitman's political links have also led some to speculate that she could be lined up as a potential secretary of commerce under Barack Obama. But despite another high-profile vacancy under the new White House administration, there's no whisper that she could be up for the job of America's CTO.

• eBay
• Politics and technology

First off, happy new year! I'm back from my short hiatus from blogging and school. I trust everyone had a good holiday week. I saw a couple of good movies: Slumdog Millionaire, which was one of the best movies I've seen in a while, and Benjamin Button, which was good, but not as great as Slumdog. I also played a ton of NBA 2K8 on Xbox 360. I'm not much into video games (I really suck), but the plasma HDTV I got for my birthday/Christmas almost makes me feel like I'm in the game.

During the last few days of break I put together CookieSays. It's a toy Twitter application that lets you tweet fortune cookie fortunes and rate others. The point? Good ol' fashioned fun, of course. I don't know about you, but whenever I crack open a fortune cookie, that little piece of paper never fails to amuse me and everyone else at the table - no matter how ridiculous or incoherent. Now you can share them on CookieSays! Plus, it seemed fitting for the new year and all.

It's really simple. Just follow @cookiesays on Twitter and post your fortunes in the following format:

@cookiesays You will make a million dollars tomorrow.

That's it! Your fortune will appear here in about 10 minutes or so. In the meantime, rate other people's fortunes or just sit back and let the fortunes change on their own. Have fun! It was fun making it.

Now - back to work on my more serious project.

One of my holiday projects was to clean out some old client files, and the five bags of shredded paper are evidence of my success. In one of the files, I found notes from Windows 98 training that I did for a client.

Obviously, a few things have changed, but most of the tips still work. I had forgotten that the desktop icons could be changed to work on a single click, instead of a double click. Here are the instructions, modified for Windows XP.

Note: This will also affect the files in your Window Explorer folders.

1. Double-click the My Computer icon
2. Click the Tools menu, then click Folder Options
3. Click the General tab
4. Under ‘Click items as follows’, click ‘Single-click to open an item (point to select)
5. Select the formatting option that you prefer (I don’t like underlining, so I selected ‘Underline icon titles only when I point at them’)
6. Click OK

______________________

milk pleaz shaken, not sturred

nd plz maek it xtra cold.

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Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Flickr Gallery Plus Firefox extension or Greasemonkey script make browsing galleries faster and easier in Flickr.

Once installed and set up, Flickr Gallery Plus automatically grabs larger versions of each image in a set so you can view each picture waiting for another page to load. It even turns sets into nice slideshows that fade between photos. Like to navigate photos from the keyboard? You can advance between images with the right and left keys.

If you're a Flickr junkie, Flickr Gallery Plus is a great add-on to view Flickr sets. For more spicy Flickr improvements, check out our very own Better Flickr Firefox extension. Flickr Gallery Plus is available in both Greasemonkey script form and as an experimental Firefox extension (that means it hasn't been vetted by the folks at Mozilla yet and you need to log in to download it), works wherever Firefox does. Photos by Qole Pejorian.

puss in boot

picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: socer13

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Google has officially released their popular photo management application Picasa for Macs, after years of offering Picasa as a free Windows download.

It's an exciting announcement for anyone who's looking for a good photo management app on OS X that isn't iPhoto or for anyone who's used and fallen in love with Picasa on Windows or Linux. This release still sports the beta tag, so you can expect a bug here or there, but overall it appears to boast most of the same features as its counterparts. That includes:

Picasa scans your entire computer for new photos and keeps them neatly organized, with great timeline features, tagging, and folder organization.

Picasa sports simple but impressive editing capabilities, including non-destructive editing of photos. The Mac version offers a few smart options for users looking to run both iPhoto and Picasa so that neither application stps on the other's toes.

Just like Picasa for Windows and Linux, Picasa for Mac offers seamless integration with Picasa Web Albums, Google's online photo sharing site.

Which Do You Prefer?
( polls)
Let's hear more specific thoughts in the comments.

• Are there any free services where I can store my passwords online? Is this a good idea?
• Any suggestions for a cheaper alternative to my current internet provider?
• Is there a program that will display my keystrokes on the screen as I type?
• How can I achieve Gmail zen across my desktop and iPhone?
• Is it possible to burn M4V files to a DVD?

If there is one thing I detest when it comes to TV it is adverts that make spurious claims about a product based upon the dismal opinion of less than a handful of only one demographic; also usually people that at the same time are reading a magazine or buying at a store that has a heavy advertising deal with said product. Be it hair products where 93% of 140ish people surveyed in Marie Claire said it was definitely the most awesome hair care product (that they received a free trial of with the magazine), or butter that less than 50% of people say they preferred (yet the loop hole of those 7% of people that “don’t care” allows the brand to claim “most” people like them best).

So then, with that lengthy precursor to the article, perhaps you can understand why Hazel Blears and her team of community action planners have so frustrated me this week, publishing a report about the attitudes of white working class people in the UK. Well, I say published but the master of making information accessible to the public has yet to even ensure that even the news is reported on the communities.gov.uk website (as of Midday, 5th Jan), let alone the actual report, methodology and findings.

What we know from various newspaper articles is that an astounding 43 people were asked their opinion across various locations in the UK for their opinion on…well…we don’t exactly know, but it mostly seemed to revolve around immigration. Again. It’s a shame we don’t have an Advertising Standards Authority for government reports and media claims.

Blears said that changes in communities could generate unease and uncertainty and needed explaining, otherwise the myths that currently surrounded the treatment of ethnic minorities “jumping the queue” would become harder to shift.

The report found that some members of the white working class felt “betrayed” and believed politicians had washed their hands of them.

A lack of “open and honest discussion” about the impact of immigration among politicians locally and nationally had created fertile ground for rumours spread by far-right groups about preferential treatment being given to ethnic minorities.

Of course the real creator of fertile ground for rumours in this instance is Hazel herself, having managed to let almost every paper and media outlet in the UK proclaim immigrants, once again, as some kind of problem that needs solving. Even the (supposedly left wing) BBC had very little to show but sympathy to the working classes in their special report based on the findings of an interview with 43 people.

That’s right, 43 people! Let’s get hung up on this a second. It’s a less representative sample than those adverts I mentioned at the top of this article, it is certainly less than any number of polls that we all question and argue over. The fact is that this report is, statistically speaking, a non-report with that sort of number of interviews, even if all 43 people were from the same estate. Yet Hazel Blears chose to release a statement about them any way and specifically made immigration the big issue that encompasses the findings. Let’s face it, Labour WANT to keep race politics big right now, if they didn’t then this unrepresentative, non-study would have been buried along with countless other half-baked schemes.

Maybe I’m being harsh, I’m not trying to attack Blears directly here given she individually isn’t too bad on the direction of tackling such an issue, maybe it is all in the tune of “honest” and “open” discussion, it’s just a shame that the discussion seems to be about immigration rather than the more pertinent issues of housing, infrastructure, reality of achievement of aspirations, and combating poverty. The working class are hostile due to being deprived, says the Minister; but are they hostile because of immigrants, or are immigrants merely the subject of the ire of a hostile group of people that need, want and shout for help from their government but receive only greater taxation, condemnation and threats in return?

The working classes need real help, not platitudes; much like you would break up a fight between two people by separating them, talking with them and turning them away from one another, that is what needs to be done here. Telling the working classes that they’re wrong about immigration and trying to discuss myths with them is just two sides of the same coin. Forget immigration, Hazel. You know it’s all a big pantomime, your department states as much, talk with them about the real things that this government can do.

But then what can they do for them? There are as many homes already built and lying empty around the country as there are homeless people waiting to get in to housing yet the government continues to be reluctant to take definitive action to solve this problem. They know the economy is stuffed and that the only jobs they are going to be able to create are going to be for skilled workers, greatly limiting the opportunities of the resentful working classes. The conversation shouldn’t be about immigrants, but in reality Labour have painted themselves in to a corner with their core voters and have very little else to do but point over the working classes shoulders and shout “oooh, look, over there!”

So instead we have 43 people leading the way on “creating a debate” about an issue that runs parallel to the real issues. This whole report is based upon giving immigration an even stronger foothold in our mind, at a time when prejudices against immigration are falling, and I shall not be surprised if this is nothing more than the type of political manoeuvring and posturing that Blears herself was supposedly railing against only a couple of months ago. With government’s trying to make initiatives and issues based on this kind of evidence building, how can we ever hope to defeat the tabloid’s passion for the same?

Twitter is discovering that popularity brings attention from the sort of people you don't want attention from: hackers.

That's the clear message from the fact that 33 accounts were hacked, using the company's own internal support tools.

Yes, that's certainly Monday morning madness. Among those affected: Rick Sanchez of CNN and Barack Obama of, um, the President-Elect's office - though the latter hasn't used his account since winning the election in November.

These accounts were compromised by an individual who hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck. We considered this a very serious breach of security and immediately took the support tools offline. We'll put them back only when they're safe and secure.

The effect is that Twitter has now realised that encouraging - or at least, not actively dissuading - people from using third-party services such as Twply that ask them just to hand over their usernames and passwords, which are the only authentication you have with Twitter at the moment. (Twply is pretty much the poster-child for taking advantage of Twitter users' lack of care: it grabbed passwords and was rapidly put up for sale by auction. Quite a valuable database you have there..)

Which has driven Twitter towards something that I was going to predict they would do this year: implement something like OpenID (in this case, OAuth), to let people log in to such sites without actually handing over your details.

We plan to release a closed beta of the open authentication protocol, OAuth this month but it's important to note that this would not have prevented a Phishing scam nor would it have prevented these accounts from being compromised. OAuth is something we can provide so that folks who use third party applications built on the Twitter API can access to their data while protecting their account credentials.

True, it wouldn't have stopped either hack; but it will stop services like Twply etc from trying to spread themselves virally on the service.

However it's not a good thing overall that Twitter seems to have had a "security last" approach. Maybe 2009 will see everyone actually reaching a proper Web 2.1, where authentication, and not just providing the facility, matters.

• Twitter
• Hacking

iPhone/iPod touch only: Free application Craigsphone puts the popular online classifieds site Craigslist on your iPhone, complete with click-to-call, history, and mobile posting.

At first blush it may not seem like a Craigslist-focused app could offer much beyond what Craigslist on mobile Safari does, but you may be surprised. Craigsphone can post directly from your phone, including photo uploads and location sharing (instant missed connections, anyone?) and a Nearby feature that uses your iPhone's location awareness to find classifieds nearby (San Francisco Bay area and Manhattan only for now).

Craigsphone is distributed for free by the same people who develop the very cool Dial Zero app (which helps you skip directly to an operator when you dial a customer service line), works on the iPhone and iPod touch only.

500 Gazans dead in Israels' new year genocide. On 3rd January 2009 tens of thousands of people protested across the UK against the Israeli slaughter in Gaza.

Reports: Sheffield | Portsmouth | Lancaster | Manchester | Cambridge | Brighton | Shrewsbury: 1 | 2 | London: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Liverpool | Newcastle | Bristol |

Craig Murray has reported that "British diplomats on the United Nations Security Council are under direct instructions to offer "tacit support" to United States' efforts to block a ceasefire" and from this he has concluded that "Gordon Brown Is a Murderous Two Faced Cunt". Last year Ilan Pappé described the ethnic cleansing of Palestine as genocide and in a recent article he identifies "Zionist ideology as the best means of both explaining genocidal operations such as the current one in Gaza".

I have to admit, I think this new widget by the Labour party poking fun at Tory hypocrisy is rather amusing (via Tom Miller). New Labour have been quietly developing a whole host of online widgets, which aren’t bad. It won’t help them win the election though, will it?

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Tabhunter Firefox extension adds quick keyboard-based tab switching to Firefox—sort of like Launchy for Firefox tabs. Just invoke Tabhunter, start typing, and Tabhunter searches for a match through all your tabs.

Tabhunter searches only the titles of your open pages, but the search is very fast and works as advertised. You can invoke Tabhunter from the keyboard (Ctrl+Alt+T by default), start typing, and find the tab you want more quickly than you can likely switch over to your mouse and back.

Granted, Tabhunter is decidedly for keyboard shortcut lovers, but if you fall in that group and you regularly have a browser full o' tabs, it's a great extension. Tabhunter is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. If you're not quite into the idea, I've always liked previously mentioned LastTab for boosting my tab-switching skills. Unfortunately it's been buggy for me ever since Firefox 3, so Tabhunter is a welcome entry. Either way, your mileage may vary. Let's hear what you prefer in the comments.

According to my mother: why I am going to a university on the opposite coast

Graph by lonelyjew14, via our GraphJam builder.

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Ai dun care wut clock sez. Tummy sez iz breakfast tiem!

i maded u brekfast. y cant u do da same?

picture: dunno source, via our lolcat builder. lol caption: Cattails

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