The Hyundai Equus, pronounced Eh-cuus, is Hyundai’s flagship luxury sedan in South Korea—so popular among the upper-class, that the South Korean President has one. Continuing off the car maker’s recent successes in the states, Hyundai is bringing the Equus here to enjoy sales from the already-brimming full-size luxury segment. This is the first Korean car to compete directly with the flagship sedans from Japan, German, and India/Britain (depending on where you call Jaguar home.) The Equus has been on the market for some time in South Korea, in fact, this is the second generation since its debut in 1999.

We’ve only had the car for bit, but can already tell that it will live up to the hype. This car is for real. There’s enough technology within the driver’s (and backseat passenger’s) reach to require a few trips to the manual, which just so happens to be an app on the included iPad. Yep, this is the car that comes with an iPad as the user manual. It makes sense, too. Instead of following a series of step-by-step instructions to, say, change the audio settings, you can just refer to the app for a quick demonstration. It’s genius from a user experience and marketing standpoint.

But this car isn’t all flash. Nope, a few minutes with the Equus will tell you that Hyundai just hit the market with another surprisingly competent vehicle. It’s going to be a great week.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

A Week In The High-Tech Hyundai Equus Super Sedan

Earlier this week, I participated in a fascinating series of discussions at The Economist magazine’s summit called “The Ideas Economy: Human Potential – When the world grows up”. I came away with the realization that we’re not tapping into even a tiny fraction of the potential that human beings have. Additionally, we have a unique opportunity, today, to leverage the entire world’s talent.  In Silicon Valley, in particular, ideas are the currency that matter, and these are the keys to innovation and economic success. Knowledge creation has globalized and there is a fierce race underway for talent. We can fear this all we want, but we have a choice: raise protectionist barriers and lose the race, or recognize the new reality and take advantage of the opportunities for collaboration and innovation.

At the event, Kauffman Foundation senior fellow Ben Wildavsky discussed key findings from his book, The Great Brain Race. He documented that student mobility is now taking place to a degree never been seen in history. More than three million students travel outside their home countries to study—a 57 percent increase in just the past decade. What’s more, those extraordinary numbers are projected to nearly triple, to 8 million, by 2025. In a competitive global marketplace, student recruiting is fierce. (New Zealand even resorted to a viral video showing two students making out in the corner of a hot tub; the camera pulls back to show a pair of disapproving adults in the other corner followed by the caption “Get further away from your parents”.)

Western universities are bringing their offerings to students all over the world. There now have more than 160 branch campuses, mostly in the Middle East and Asia—an increase of 43 percent in just a few years.

Perhaps most significant, according to Wildavsky, is the intense desire among nations from China and South Korea to Saudi Arabia to create universities that can compete with the top-rated institutions in the United States and Britain. They know that universities are vital to innovation and economic growth, and they’re no longer content just to send students overseas or to host branch campuses on their soil—they want to create world-class institutions of their own. They are:

• Pouring money into education. China is expanding and improving several dozen universities, and recently announced formation of an elite consortium known as China’s Ivy League. In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah earmarked $10 billion of his own funds to the brand-new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), giving it the sixth largest endowment in the world at its inception.
• Recruiting faculty globally. China is working hard to lure back overseas Chinese who have Western degrees. South Korea is making a big push to recruit foreigners in schools such as its elite Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and in Saudi Arabia, KAUST recently recruited the president of the National University of Singapore as its first president.
• Forging partnerships. This is a key strategy of Singapore as it strives to become a global academic hub. It is bringing in foreign schools such as Duke University’s medical center, the University of Chicago’s business school, and MIT. South Korea is creating an academic free-trade zone near the Incheon International Airport, where it is hosting a number of Western branch campuses.

The U.S. is still the biggest talent magnet, however, with two-thirds of the world’s foreign graduate students at American universities. But what is there for the U.S. to worry about?

• Our market share is falling as other countries step up their recruiting efforts. Among OECD nations, the U.S. share of foreign students dropped from 32 percent to 23 percent from 1998 to 2007. Many Asian countries that have traditionally been “sender” nations have set ambitious targets to recruit more foreign students, usually from their own region.
• There is a battle for faculty talent. Half the top physicists in the world no longer work in their home countries. Three-quarters of young economists in top U.S. universities earned their undergraduate degrees in another nation.
• Foreign students are returning home. As I have documented with my research, Indian and Chinese students don’t feel welcome or see enough opportunity in the U.S. any more. So, the U.S. is experiencing the first brain drain in its history.
• Tsinghua and Peking Universities combined recently surpassed UC-Berkeley as the leading source of students earning U.S. PhDs.

Despite the new realities, U.S. leaders have been enacting misguided legislation to close the doors, as I wrote about in this piece. This is hastening the brain drain and scaring away the world’s best and brightest who might otherwise come here to study or work.

Protectionism in education is actually a global ill. India has, for years, kept out foreign universities, despite a huge hunger for education. Only now is it debating legislation to open up the market, but even this will come with many restrictions—so it is unclear if it will make a dent.  Indian protectionism of education has been so bad, and has weakened its education system so much, that a few years ago the president of IIT-Bombay barred students from taking overseas internships in an effort to keep Indian brainpower at home. Malaysia limits the proportion of foreign students in its public universities to 5 percent. In the U.S., the University of Tennessee, until a decade or so ago, limited foreign graduate students to 20 percent of each department.

Wildavsky says that knowledge isn’t a finite resource like gold or diamonds—it’s something that can grow; it is a public good. I agree that knowledge can’t be contained within the borders of one country. This means that innovators around the world, including U.S. entrepreneurs, can take advantage of research breakthroughs in places like China or India. So yes, we should do everything we can to boost our own human capital. But rather than fearing the globalization of higher education, which will be counterproductive, we should embrace it. As executives in the tech industry know, the best strategy to compete is to hire all stars from wherever you can find them.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa  is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwaand find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

The Global Education Race

Earlier today I posted my notes from an informal Google press lunch with CEO Eric Schmidt, SVP Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg and President Global Sales Operations and Business Development Nikesh Arora.

These events are of course on the record, which means there usually isn’t much that’s said that’s all that interesting. Usually though we can’t just video the whole thing. This time Google said it was fine, so I set up my Flip camera and filmed away. So you, too, can witness first hand the glamorous life of a blogger.

And yes, it’s true, I admit the iPhone is better than any Android phone on the market at around the 29:30 mark.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

This Is What A Google Press Lunch Looks Like (Video)

HP’s buyout of Palm may have won them webOS, but it doesn’t seem to have won them many friends within the company. There are only so many names within Palm that are so oft-mentioned that I could name them off hand — and of those, the talent seems to be disappearing left and right. First to go was interface mastermind Matias Duarte, followed shortly thereafter by Rich Dellinger, best known for coming up with webOS’ incredible notifications system.

And now, they’ve lost another; I’m hearing from an unshakably solid source that Lynn Fox, Vice President of Public Relations, left the company earlier this week.

Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Palm Loses Their Ex-Apple PR Head, Lynn Fox

With a recent public launch under its belt, OpenSky is adding $6 million in new capital. Existing investors Highland Capital and Canaan Partners invested in the series B financing. A year ago, the company raised $5 million.

OpenSky is a social marketing/e-commerce startup which connects manufacturers and distributors directly with influential bloggers who recommend their products and get a cut from resulting sales. It is much more than an affiliate networks. As I described OpenSky when it launched:

While OpenSky sounds at first like an affiliate network, it isn’t. Instead of sending customers off to other online stores, they send them to their own stores where they can track sales and follow up with personalized messages. OpenSky hand picks the publishers who are allowed to set up shops and sell in its network. It then strikes deals directly with manufacturers and distributors who agree to drop-ship any sold items to readers who click to buy through an OpenSky shop. Instead of the blogger getting a 3 to 10 percent affiliate fee, they split the net profits 50/50 with OpenSky. The economics work best obviously with high-margin products.

OpenSky CEO John Caplan was previously the CEO of Ford Models, and before that the president of About.com. He tells me that “seller conversion rates grow and repeat shoppers buy more frequently” since the launch (before that, OpenSky was in private beta with 250 bloggers). His plans going forward include hiring more people, releasing a distributed cart (for onsite shopping without sending readers off to a store), opening up OpenSky’s APIs, improve the relevance matching between product manufacturers and bloggers/influencers, and better direct marketing support for sellers.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Blogger Commerce Network OpenSky Fetches $6 Million Series B

Credit card company Visa has agreed to acquire e-payment company CyberSource for $26 per share, or total consideration of approximately $2 billion to be paid with cash on hand. The price represents a near 34 percent premium over Mountain View-based CyberSource’s Tuesday closing price.

The deal will enable Visa to bolster online sales and offer new and enhanced online fraud prevention services to merchants, financial organizations and end consumers.

CyberSource is said to process about 25 percent of all e-commerce dollars transacted in the United States. The company serves more than 295,000 merchants through its CyberSource and Authorize.Net branded solutions, including companies like Google, Facebook and British Airways. Most of its revenues come from the United States, although Visa says this positions the company for global growth.

Visa and CyberSource have partnered since 1999, and currently collaborate on risk models built into CyberSource’s automated fraud management solutions.

CyberSource’s President and CEO, Michael Walsh, will continue to oversee CyberSource’s operations. The company’s Chairman and Founder, William S. McKiernan, will join Visa as an Executive Advisor to assist in the integration of the two businesses.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Visa’s fourth fiscal quarter of 2010.

This is the second significant acquisition in tech land this morning; Salesforce just announced it’s acquiring Jigsaw for $142 million in cash.

Who’s next?

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Visa Picks Up CyberSource For $2 Billion

The New York Times will begin publishing daily on the iPad, offering readers around the world immediate access to most of the daily newspaper’s contents.

The New York Times on the iPad, as the electronic publication is known, contains most of the news and feature articles from the current day’s printed newspaper, classified advertising, reporting that does not appear in the newspaper, and interactive features including the newspaper’s crossword puzzle.

The iPad App (address: http:/www.nytimes.com) is part of a strategy to extend the readership of The Times and to create opportunities for the company in the electronic media industry, said Martin Nisenholtz, president of The New York Times Electronic Media Company.

The company, formed in 1995 to develop products for the rapidly growing field of digital publishing, is a wholly owned subsidiary of The New York Times Company, and also produces the times service on America Online Inc.

Mr. Nisenholtz reports to Russell T. Lewis, the president and general manager of The New York Times, and to Joseph Lelyveld, the newspaper’s executive editor.

The iPad-based Times is the newest of dozens of papers available to a global audience on the Internet’s fastest-growing service, which lets iPad users see electronic publications consisting of text, pictures and, in some cases, video and sound.

A selection of the day’s news, discussion forums and other material from The Times has been available through the @times service since the spring of 1994 on America Online.

The iPad’s global audience means a larger potential readership than that of @times, which is limited to America Online’s subscribers, currently more than four million. The new site also offers new products and services.

“Our iPad App is designed to take full advantage of the evolving capabilities offered by the Internet,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times. “We see our role on the iPad as being similar to our traditional print role — to act as a thoughtful, unbiased filter and to provide our customers with information they need and can trust.”

The iPad will also offer access to much of what the newspaper has published the previous week and access to feature articles from as far back as 1980.

Mr. Nisenholtz said that initially, at least, no subscription or access fee would be charged for readers in the United States and that the iPad App would generate revenue from advertising. Readers who connect to the iPad App from outside the country will be offered a 30-day trial without charge, but will eventually face a subscription fee.

Advertisers that have already announced participation on the iPad App include Toyota Motor Corporate Services, Chemical Bank and the Northeast real estate concern Douglas Elliman.

Subscribers will have limited access to archives of Times articles and features dating to 1980, and will be able to copy articles to their own iPads for $1.95 each, Mr. Nisenholtz said.

The new service will also offer, for a fee, a customized clipping service that delivers to a subscriber’s electronic mailbox articles gleaned from each day’s editions of the newspaper, based on key words the subscriber selects.

With its entry on the iPad, The Times is hoping to become a primary information provider in the computer age and to cut costs for newsprint, delivery and labor. Companies that have established iPad-based information sites include television networks, computer companies, on-line information services, magazines and even individuals creating electronic newspapers of their own.

“The New York Times name will get people to look at the product once or maybe twice, and the fact that The New York Times has the kind of reach and credibility it does may persuade people to look three or four times,” said John F. Kelsey 3d, president of the Kelsey Group, a consultancy running a conference on iPad Apps next month.

“The market is booming for newspapers on the iPad,” Mr. Kelsey said.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

The New York Times Introduces An iPad App

Streaming video site Ustream has just pulled in a massive new round of funding: $75 million. This second round was led by SoftBank, a Japanese telecom giant. Previously, the site had raised just below $13 million in funding, which came from its Series A in 2008 and its angel round in late 2007.

Perhaps even crazier is that the service is saying that additional funding commitments are pending from other investors in the U.S. and Asia, so the round may actually be larger than the $75 million, which is all from SoftBank. We’re hearing reports that there was quite a bit of competition to be involved in the round, and apparently all the dust hasn’t settled yet.

So why on Earth does Ustream need $75 million+? CEO John Ham says in the release that the money will be used to expand on the other side of the world, particularly Japan (obvious, given the SoftBank involvement), China, Korea, and India. Mobile video is particularly hot in some of the Asian countries where their faster wireless networks allow for more functionality than the comparatively slow ones in the U.S. Ustream will open offices and hire staff in all those countries, apparently.

Alongside this new round, we’re hearing reports that the founders of the company, Ham, Brad Hunstable, and Gyula Feher were able to sell some shares as a reward.

Just a few days ago, Ustream launched a new desktop client to help video producers give their work a more professional feel. Prior to that, in December, Ustream made headlines by being the first big video streaming site to offer that (recording) functionality on the iPhone.

Ustream says that its iPhone apps has been downloaded over 1.5 million times to date (it has had other apps before the live streaming one was available too) and notes that 3.8 million people tuned into the service to watch the inauguration of President Obama in January of last year.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

A Massive $75 Million Round Streams Into Ustream. And More May Be…

On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union speech, which will be broadcast live on YouTube’s CitizenTube channel as well as on The White House’s brand new iPhone app.

Google is stepping up its game, as it will also give YouTube users the opportunity to ask Obama some follow-up questions in video or text.

On Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET, during the live broadcast of the State of the Union on Citizentube, YouTube will be opening up a special Moderator series for citizens to submit their questions.

Evidently, President Obama will not be answering those questions live: the days following the speech, users will be able to submit additional questions and vote on their favorites.

Next week, although Google still has to communicate the exact timing, the top-voted questions will be asked to the president in a YouTube interview from the White House, which will also be broadcast live on Citizentube.

Read more on the YouTube blog and the White House blog.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Have Questions For Obama? YouTube’s Got You Covered

2009 is coming to a close, which means it’s time to reflect on the events that shaped the last twelve months. And there’s nothing like a whirlwind animated musical to put everything into perspective. Cue JibJab, which has just released their annual Year In Review: a two minute video romp that recaps the last year in all its glory. The video is packed will everything from momentous events like the induction of our first black President to moments of unparalleled stupidity (Balloon Boy). Even Three Wolf Moon made the cut.

This is the fifth year that JibJab has produced their Year In Review, and we’re told it will be seeing airtime on a number of national television networks tomorrow. For those wondering how the video was made, the company has put together a thorough blog post detailing its production.

Aside from the video, CEO Gregg Spiridellis tells us that JibJab is having a very strong holiday season. The entertainment portal, which offers customizable Flash videos, greeting cards, and a variety of other content, drew 33 million unique visitors in the last month according to Quantcast. Spiridellis adds that the site has served 90 million video views this quarter alone (which was likely helped in part by its always popular ElfYourself feature).

Watch the video in the embed below:

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

JibJab’s Year In Review Plays Off 2009, With Help From Keyboard Cat

Last week we reported on Shakira’s decision to use Ustream and Facebook to live stream the debut of her latest music video, Give It Up To Me — a move that’s a fairly huge departure from the standard MTV route we probably would have seen a few years ago. Ustream has just given us the stats of yesterday’s launch, and it’s clear that it drew quite a crowd: over the course of the ten minute live stream, Shakira’s video had 95,000 unique viewers during the initial broadcast. And over the course of the last 24 hours, the video has seen a total of over 500,000 views.

Ustream says that Shakira video wasn’t its most popular of all time — the streams for Michael Jackson’s memorial service and President Obama’s Inauguration saw much more traffic, with 4.6MM and 3.8MM total streams respectivly. But those streams were both hours long, while Shakira’s stream lasted a mere ten minutes. It’s also important to note that these viewers were likely more engaged than they would be if they were just staring at the tube. By integrating Ustream into Facebook, Shakira was likely able to gain quite a few new Fans on her Facebook account, which means she’s established a long term way to reach out to them.

It’s worth pointing out that Shakira was’t the first artist to stream her video — that title appears to be held by Chamillionaire who debuted his video for Good Morning a few days prior. Given Shakira’s success don’t be surprised if more artists start following suit.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

Shakira’s Stats Don’t Lie: Facebook/Ustream Music Video Debut Is A…

MySpace has just announced the appointment of four new members to its executive team, which saw a major shakeup last April. The new hires include Nada Stirratt, who will serve as Chief Revenue Officer and Dustin Finer, who is now Chief People Officer. Joining them will be iLike founders (and brothers) Ali Partovi, who is now SVP of Business Development based in San Francisco, and Hadi Partovi as SVP of Technology, based out of Seattle.

MySpace acquired streaming music service iLike in August for $20 million.

Other recent MySpace hires include Mark Rosenbaum as CFO and Alex Maghen as CTO (he was formerly CTO of MySpace Music, now he heads technology at MySpace proper as well).

Below is MySpace’s bio about Stirratt, who served as EVP of Digital Advertising at MTV before joining MySpace:

Prior to MySpace, Stirratt served as Executive Vice President of Digital Advertising at MTV Networks where she oversaw advertising sales and strategy, ad operations, Digital Fusion-integrated marketing, and Tribes, the company’s third-party vertical affiliate network. Before MTV, Nada served as Senior Vice President and General Manager of advertising sales at Advertising.com. Earlier in her career, Stirratt worked in ad sales and business development for such entertainment brands as AOL-Time Warner, Moviefone, Allure and Cosmopolitan.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

MySpace Fills Out Executive Roster With New Hires, iLike Execs

Feeling a bit under the weather yesterday - presumably my body’s reaction to the fact that San Francisco has suddenly become sunny - I decided to take a jaunt around the Internet for column ideas. My deadline was a whole 24 hours away, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?

My first find was this story about a bear who had got trapped in a Colorado skate park, presumably after breaking in to practice his Ollies, or whatever it is bears do on skateboards. The bear was finally rescued when townsfolk dropped a ladder into the park, allowing him to climb to freedom.

To any normal person, a bear trapped in a skate park would be little more than a heartwarming newsbite; a quirky story to distract from another week of war and terrorism and kidnapped children living in back yards in Antioch. But not for the lazy tech columnist looking for inspiration.

For the lazy tech columnist looking for inspiration, a bear trapped in a skate park easily becomes a metaphor for the attitudes of certain Silicon Valley types who are trapped in their little Northern California bubble and don’t realise - or care - that there’s a world outside. And the ladder, I suppose, represents the columnist whose job it is to provide escape from the ignorance. Perfect. Another Saturday box ticked. Move on, nothing to see here.

But just as I was about to shut down Firefox and start scribbling skateboard jokes in my special columnist’s notepad, another headline caught my eye, this time from CNET. It read: ‘Bill would give president emergency control of Internet‘. Wow, I thought, this Bill guy sounds like a dick.

But no, as it turned out, the Bill in question is the Rockefeller-Snowe bill (S.773), notable both for being the first piece of US legislation to be named after a Fat Boy Slim track and for the fact that it gives the President the power to shut down the Internet whenever he feels like it. Unsurprisingly, the 1000+ comments on the article are somewhat hostile, helped by a link from Matt Drudge who thoughtfully added his own scare quotes around the word ‘emergency’.

‘This has nothing to do with “prorecting” [sic] the internet,’ wrote one commenter, ‘and everything to do with the power drunk, dicatorial [sic] Obama engaging in an unprecedendted [sic], unconstitutional power grab, orchestrated by his psychotic lunatic fringe “czars”.’

A bold statement, from that rare person who can spell ‘psychotic’ and ‘czars’ only to stumble over ‘protecting’.

‘Can you say, “Caesar Chavez?”‘, asked another, presumably rhetorically - while a third managed to wrangle two talking points into one meaningless one with: ‘Of course this goes along with the Obamacare nonsense that the government will have direct access to your bank accounts if this Obamacare BS becomes law. Hitler all over again’.

Well said, Sir. It’s a scandal that Adolf Hitler’s cybersecurity bill and healthcare proposals don’t get the criticism they deserve. But behind the megaditto rhetoric, some of the commenters do actually have a point. Unlike the previous administration’s PATRIOT act, which promoted freedom of information by wiretapping every man, woman and child in America, the Democrats’ Rockefeller-Snowe bill does sound pretty creepy and invasive.

All the President needs to do is declare a state of emergency and he’ll have the right to disconnect US citizens from the web, access their computers and even hack into the servers of private companies. That’s a horrendous power-grab for use in an unspecified emergency.

Or at least it would be. If that’s what the bill actually proposed.

In fact, in its current form, the worst the bill does is to clarify the President’s existing power to take limited control of communications networks in the case of national emergency or war. Like President Bush was able to order all planes to be grounded on September 11th, the bill would allow President Obama to ground parts of the Internet in similar circumstances.

But at this stage even those powers aren’t set in stone - the bill is still in draft form, having already been redrafted after early objections that the wording was too vague. And it’s still too vague, to the point where Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, says: “we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill.”

Indeed. What we really have here is a classic situation of a ambiguously-drafted bill, not even close to passing but which has the capacity to generate some pretty scary headlines. Last week it was death panels, this week it’s Obama stealing our Internets. Like a bear trapped in a skate park, critics - mainly of the President rather than the bill - are running round and round, without any kind of information ladder to help them out of their pit of paranoia.

And so, as ever, it falls to me to provide that missing ladder. Don’t ask me how (*cough* French hacker *cough*), but I’ve managed to get hold of a copy of a secret memo sent to Senators Rockefeller and Snowe by the Whitehouse, outlining exactly what powers Obama wants over the Internet, and why.

I think you’ll agree, it makes pretty interesting reading…

Hey Senators,

Please find below President Obama’s wishlist for taking control of the Internet. As promised, these powers will only be used in the event of a national ‘emergency’ ….

1) In the event of an ‘emergency’ drop in poll numbers, the President needs to ensure that copies of Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity’ and Rush Limbaugh’s ‘The Way Things Ought To Be’ are automatically deleted from the nation’s Kindles and replaced with ‘The Audacity of Hope’. (Note: contrary to previous draft, there is now no need to extend this to Ann Coulter’s ‘Treason’ as it is already basically unreadable)

2) Should the US deficit pass 20 trillion, the President will need to take over private email servers to send an ‘emergency’ 419 scam message to every American citizen. In these emails, the President will invite Americans to send him their bank account information, so that he might use it to process the fortune of his late uncle. Obviously, he will request their confidential co-operation in this matter, in exchange for a share of the proceeds.

3) Following the recent successful trial in France, the President requires the ability to turn the iPhones of any of America’s enemies into improvised exploding devices. Or ‘Freedom Phones’.

4) Should US unemployment levels continue to rise, the President needs the ability to order the shut down of World of Warcraft, forcing millions of Americans to go out and get fucking jobs.

5) In case of ‘emergency’ bad press over a badly-drafted cybersecurity bill, the President will require unfettered access to Drudge Report servers to delete all ’scare quotes’. This would prevent Drudge from using the headline ‘Bill would give president “emergency” control of Internet’ to suggest that Obama might just decide to nuke the entire web because he’s having a bad day.

6) If the bad press ‘emergency’ continues, Obama will need to shore up support by ordering that the hashtag ‘#Ilovethepresident’ be appended to all tweets. In response to specific threats, he may also request that trending topics to be replaced with a new, approved list including: #everythingisfine, #nothingtoseehere, #lookoverthere, #areyoukiddingme and #theotherguywasfarworse

Ok, that’s all for now! Let’s pass this thing, comrades!

Liebe Grüße,

Caesar Chavez

Policy Director, The White House

So there you have it. The bear of ignorance, rescued by the ladder of facts. My work here is done: let the mature, informed debate begin.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Post from: Technology News Videos And Resources

WITN?: Exit ignorance, pursued by a bear. The truth behind Obama’s…