The McCain campaign has certainly learned that it needs a cyber presence to reach out to voters, and has relaunched its McCainSpace with a new design. According to TechCrunch, John McCain hasn't been doing as well as he might hope with the online crowd. On Facebook, he has only 226,000 supporters, as compared to 1.4 million for Barack Obama.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Democrats had been boasting that the Denver convention would be the "most sustainable" in the history of conventions, and in some ways they may have accomplished their goal. CNET News says there were certainly separate trash containers for recycling waste, including biodegradable drinking straws. On the other hand, there were plenty of SUVs idling while waiting to ferry delegates around, and recycling all those signs is going to take energy.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

by Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff Writer

All federal agencies must adopt new cyber security measures by January, under an ordered issued by the Bush administration. The Washington Post reports that the measures, which are to be applied to all dot-gov domains, are intended to fix vulnerabilities discovered in the domain name system. The fix is intended to prevent cyber crooks from pretending to send messages from an official site. Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Whoever wins the presidential election, he'll likely increase funding for all forms of stem cell research, predicts University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan. Caplan tells Wired that, as stem cell research matures and the pile of money available for it grows, questions about ethics are likely to take a back seat to practical considerations. But he thinks there will still be arguments over what use to make of stem cells in humans and when to move them from the lab to actual use.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

by Eric Pfeiffer, CQ Politics Blogger

At the "Big Tent" outside the DNC perimeter, MyBarackObama administrator and former Facebook employee Chris Hughes held a chat with online activists about the role of social networking in the Obama campaign.

With one of the themes of the Democratic convention focusing on the need to go green, it's just natural that the world's largest maker of wind turbines would be in Denver to promote its product. Danish company Vestas brought a 131-foot turbine blade manufactured at a Colorado factory, Earth2Tech says. The company is already operating a plant in Colorado, and has plans for two more, including the largest in the world for building turbine towers.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

People have been all a-Twitter at the Democratic National Convention, sending out their instant reactions to events in the message sharing service's 140-character chunks. Wired tells us that Virginia Gov. Mark Warner lit up Twitter during his keynote speech when he said, "In four months, we will have an administration that actually believes in science," garnering the approval of geeks everywhere. So far, there's been little talk of science policy at the convention.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Fundraising and hitting the campaign trail are not the only key tasks in running for President. Business Week's Technology Insider traces how "technology and an appreciation of how to use it have always been important to political campaigns," from FDR's pioneering use of radio to today's use of microtargeting of voters and online social networks.

Web pick posted by CQ Staff

by Adriel Bettelheim, CQ Staff

Click on the image to see a slideshow about the "Green" convention

If the biodegradable coffin business ever takes off, its executives can point to this year's Democratic convention as the brea kout moment.

The convention organizers' goal of making the gathering the greenest political hobnob in history has unleashed a wave of pitches and promotions surrounding organic foods, renewable fuels, carbon offsets and consumer goods made from recyclable materials.

If the phone rings at 3 a.m., it's probably Barack Obama texting you the late news of his vice presidential choice. Nielsen, which normally measures television audiences, said about 2.9 million people received the cell phone message, which had already been scooped by the more old-fashioned media. The Wall Street Journal points out that Obama still wins, having collected all those cell phone numbers so he can contact supporters in the future.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found a virus that infects the world's most dangerous type of mosquito. The New York Times reports that the virus in its current form is harmless, but the researchers feel it could be genetically engineered to kill the mosquitoes. The virus targets the type of mosquito that is chiefly responsible for spreading malaria in Africa.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Despite months of calls for the presidential candidates to address questions of science and technology, it looks increasingly unlikely that there will be a debate on science in this election. But Science News reports that the organizing committee for Science Debate 2008 has gotten the candidates to agree to answer 14 questions, on issues ranging from stem cells to space exploration. It's unclear, however, when the campaigns plan to respond.

The candidates will reportedly respond to a list of 14 broad questions, such as: "What steps, if any, should the United States take during your presidency to protect ocean health? "

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

The Fiat Siena Tetrafuel can run on gasoline, ethanol, blends of gasoline and ethanol, and also natural gas.  Photo: Fiat Brazil

Lots of people are working on developing the best new fuel to power automobiles. At IEEE Spectrum one writer asks, why not design cars that can run on whatever fuel happens to be available at the moment. In Brazil, the magazine says, Fiat has already created its Siena Tetrafuel, which can run on pure gasoline, pure ethanol, any blend of gasoline and ethanol, or natural gas. That gives drivers the option to purchase the cheapest fuel, or use a better fuel that's only available some of the time.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff

LBJ had his war on poverty. Then there was Ronald Reagan's war on drugs and George W. Bush 's war on terror. Public health advocates are hoping a Barack Obama administration will wage war on fat.

They're encouraged by language in the Democratic platform, which for the first time mentions the need to combat obesity -- not just once, but three times.

Voice communications don't work for deaf people, and the quality of video carried by American cellular networks is generally too low to carry images of people signing. Now researchers at the University of Washington have overcome this problem by coming up with video-encoding algorithms that enhances only the important parts of a video feed, Ars Technica reports. Since speakers of American Sign Language rely mostly on hand gestures and facial expressions, the algorithm raises the image quality of hands and faces and lowers it in the rest of the video so the video doesn't overrun the cellular network's bandwidth limitations.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Software to automatically sign up for thousands of free email addresses is often thwarted by the use of CAPTCHAs, those little squiggly words you have to type in to move from one screen to the next. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog says that, while some spammers have made great strides in defeating the method, the quickest and easiest way is to hire humans to do the work. There are now websites that pay $1 for every thousand retyped CAPTCHAs sent in.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

The presidential campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain have learned to use the Internet to target potential voters and contributors. But the CEO of Rapleaf, a San Francisco company that analyzes data about people available on the Internet, says in BusinessWeek that Obama has the lead when it comes to using technology to his advantage. He says the Obama campaign is drawing on social networking concepts to build an army of volunteers, each of which is asked to do only a small amount of work.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

By Drew Armstrong, CQ Staff

Driver's licenses in states bordering Canada or Mexico may soon come equipped with RFID tags that can be read as far away as 30 feet. Though they're designed to decrease identity fraud, they and other RFID devices could also allow the government to track you without your knowledge. " Scientific American says lawmakers so far have done little to address potential privacy invasions for citizens.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Continuing his series about cyber criminals tools of the trade, Brian Krebs of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog talks about how the bad guys distribute their bad software. Whereas it used to be difficult to create a network of hacked computers, now online services make it easy for anyone with nefarious intent to spread data-stealing software around.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Everybody talks about wind and sun as among the most promising new sources of energy the world can tap. But speaking at the National Energy Summit in Las Vegas this week, Dan Reicher, director of climate and energy initiatives at Google, said the "killer app" of energy may be enhanced geothermal systems, which use artificial means to get heat from under the Earth's crust. The New York Times science section offers a video interview with Reicher on its site.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

One way NASA could launch more missions more less money is by increased use of microspacecraft that weigh less than an average man. The hurdle has been that the smaller craft can't use the shields and systems that larger ones employ to avoid damaging temperature swings and meteorite damage. But Wired Magazine reports that researchers have developed a plastic skin that helps the small craft regulate temperatures and makes possible their use above low-earth orbit.

By Ellen Perlman, Governing.com

Ann Arbor, Michigan is investigating LED street lighting in hopes of cutting its $1.4 million street lighting bill in half. (City of Ann Arbor photos)

Sam Palmer is not a choreographer, but he plays one at the public library in Fayetteville, Arkansas. From his basement office, Palmer has created a dance for the building's interior lights on his computer system, giving each a role for different times of day. Some dim on bright days. Others turn on as staff members arrive. In the late afternoon, half of the lights turn off.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, also relies on sophisticated computer programming to light its city buildings and conduct some intriguing experiments with outdoor lighting. The city started out by replacing more than a thousand 100-watt globe streetlights in the downtown area with 56-watt LED lights. Now, energy officials are taking control of 28 of them and using radios to dim them, make them flash, or turn off one or more of the four lighting panels in each streetlight.

Windmills could top New York City skyscrapers and bridges, or supply power from the waters off Manhattan, if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way. Speaking at the National Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Bloomberg cited studies predicting that wind energy could provide 10 percent of the city's electricity needs within 10 years, says CNET News. Most of the installations would likely be small turbines on tops of buildings. Well, after all, old New York was once New Amsterdam.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

from Governing.com Idea Center

More powerful and inexpensive microprocessors are leading to increased use of biometrics---the use of individual physical characteristics as identifiers. Scientific American says that fingerprinting, face recognition, and iris scans are becoming more popular methods to fight identity theft, because it's not as easy to fake an eye scan as it is to steal a PIN. One issue, though, is that the error rates in some systems are still too high.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Last week's military incursion into Georgia by Russian troops was preceded by an attack on government computers, and the same thing could happen here, experts warn. According to CNN, computer security experts say no one has devised a way to protect against online attacks on government systems. The fact that the U.S. is so dependent on the Internet makes us all the more vulnerable, they say.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

By borrowing a technique used in wastewater treatment plants, scientists from Washington University say they can make ethanol production more efficient. The technique involves mixing waste from the ethanol plant into an oxygen-free vat of bacteria, which digest the waste and produce methane gas, according to Technology Review. Capturing the methane and burning it as fuel could allow the production facility to cut its use of natural gas in half.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

By Penelope Lemov, Governing.com

CalPERS is a very big fish. When California's $250 billion employee pension plan flexes its muscle in boardrooms, corporate CEOs sit up and take notice. When it dumps stocks from countries with morally offensive policies, leaders of those nations hear about it.

None of the other public employee pension plans in this country has quite that much clout. But quite a few are starting to gain some. "Public pension plans were for decades sleepy things that nobody paid attention to," says Beth Almeida, executive director of the National Institute of Retirement Security. But in recent years, these funds have grown to some $3 trillion in value. "Obviously, with an investment that large," Almeida says, "they become a focus."

Infrared scans that verify identity by making a map of the veins in a person's palm will be required for all people taking the Graduate Management Admissions Test next year. Discovery News says this is the first use of this technology in the United States, although ATMs in Japan have been using it for about five years. A palm scan is considered more secure than a fingerprint, because it can't be lifted from an object as easily as a fingerprint and it requires a live hand with active blood flow.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

A blogger can tout a particular political candidate, even coordinating with the campaign, without being subject to campaign finance restrictions, the Federal Elections Commission ruled recently. A Hillary Clinton supported had alleged that Gordon Fischer, the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, coordinated his criticism of Clinton with Barack Obama's campaign, reports Online Media Daily. The FEC said even if he had, which it did not believe, Fischer's comments are protected by the First Amendment.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Open source software has led to better, cheaper applications. But the major providers of open source, such as Red Hat and Novell, have not profited much from such innovations, reports BusinessWeek. Instead, it's the tech giants such as IBM, HP, and Oracle that are making all the money.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com

Students at the Royal College of Art have designed a series of "concept cards" that not only look like some futurist's deam but are supposed to run on everything from electricity to algal fuel. Although practicality is not quite a hallmark of concept cars, Wired Magazine presents a gallery of 10 of them, noting that many Royal College alums have gone on to be top designers at major auto companies.

Synfuels International, of Dallas, TX, says it has developed a cheaper, cleaner method to convert natural gas into gasoline. Technology Review reports that the company says its technology will allow the U.S. to tap smaller reserves of natural gas that hadn't been considered economical before. The process relies on high temperatures and a catalyst.

Web pick posted by Neil Savage, xconomy.com