Not that he can match Al Gore's politech savvy, but Barack Obama is bidding for the wired vote by making open file standards part of his platform. That's got to piss off Microsoft. More important, it puts computing and online living issues into the campaign. Why shouldn't they be? There are about 185-million internet users in the U.S. according to comScore. Let's have a tech-only debate covering the candidates' policies on spam, file-sharing, domain trademarking, online sales tax, ad-blocking, disruptive technology, and their personal content preferences.

Yippee -- I can finally get the Google Maps pointer to my home address positioned on my house, instead of down the street where it has always pointed. This thanks to the new Edit feature. Google Maps becomes Wikipedia, with user-edited location pointers. But is this good? Wikipedia is (potentially) a description of all human knowledge, so is naturally a venture for the group mind. But geography? Google Maps is (potentially) a description of all human address knowledge. Will I be unable to find my midtown hotel because a disgruntled guest moved the address pointer into Queens?

I'm doing the keynote panel at Blog World & New Media Expo in Vegas this afternoon (5:15 PST). Also on the panel: Richard Jalichandra (CEO, Technorati), Roger L. Simon (Pajamas Media), Jeremy Wright (b5 Media), and moderator Jason Shelling (ex-Google, now founder of The Secret Agency). Jason put up a comment page for question submission -- here it is. Have at it ... questions about my dogs are particularly welcome, if outrageously off-topic.

Euphoria (well, mild gladness) over the NY Times announcement had barely faded when Murdoch started making noises about unlocking the WSJ online -- increasing gladness around the world. Well, around my household.

The long nightmare is over. The New York Times is dumping its content firewall, putting all articles back onto the free site, skittering back from near-irrelevancy, and making it much easire for me to get my daily Op-Ed fix. Archives will be free, too! Must be painful to realize that you're not the WSJ.

It occurs to me that some people who keep an eye on this blog might not know: Adam Finley, one of our long-time bloggers, died a few days ago in a traffic accident. It happened on Thursday; we found out Saturday morning. Adam was in TV Squad from the start, and was one of the great blogging talents in our company -- funny, quirky, a little unhinged, dry, very imaginative, trusting of the reader to get the joke.

TV Squad is running an all-day tribute to Adam, reposting selected entries. Even in the shock and sorrow over the weekend, there was an uplifting quality to watching the staff clamor over Adam's wonderful posts, everyone claiming favorite gems to highlight. Reading through his stuff is like watching a DVD collection of a show you loved when it was first on.

There is little consolation here, but it is good to know that Adam's wit and terrific personality will live uninterruptedly in the blog. Search engines deliver visitors to pages regardless of when they were produced. Even years from now, readers will LOL over one of Adam's peculiar scenarios, and imagine him at his computer that very day, typing gleefully. That's how I'll always remember him.

NBC Universal has indicated its intent to back out of iTunes video distribution of its TV shows. (NBC and Apple could still reach agreement, but NBC's notice fulfills a contract stipulation to give 90 days notice to avoid an auto-renewal of the contract.) This notice comes soon after Universal Music Group, the world's largest label, said it would withdraw its catalog. More defections could be imminent as distribution deals approach expiration.

If this revolt gathers momentum it will turn into an entertaining and potentially explosive example of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Both sides are right. The media publishers want more control over how their product is priced and packaged. It is preposterous that the owner cannot have such control. Apple says that uneven pricing and complex packaging would ruin the elegant iTunes buying experience and soften demand. Apple is correct: witness Google's generally unsuccessful attempt to sell owner-priced media in Google Video.

As an Apple hater, I'm happy to see pressure applied. The media companies know that their stuff is being flagrantly used to sell Apple's higher-margin devices. The iTunes music consumption experience, and the iPod, have been inferior products from the start. As a major-label hater, I scorn their avarice, uninformed as it is by the experience of the last ten years during which Apple saved their hides and dragged them into the digital distribution age. And even I admit that if it weren't for iTunes, I would have missed out on Battlestar Gallactica (an NBC Universal show) completely.

Change is usually good. Sometimes it's hard to see who will win.

Now that Yahoo! Mail is out of beta, Mossberg wrote a comparison review and chose Yahoo!. I posted a review of the new Yahoo! Mail 90 minutes after it was launched in September, 2005, and the basics remain unchanged. Mossberg praises the same basic features that were in place back then.

Mossberg likes the tabs in Yahoo!, which also stood out to me as the groundbreaking feature from the start. With email tabs (as with Firefox tabs), you can multitask email effectively, keeping several inbox items open at a time. Gmails "New Window" feature is a clunky alternative that I dislike using every time I'm forced to. That's a main reason I like working on two computers -- I use two iterations of Gmail. Of course, one can also open Gmail in several browser tabs, but that's really clunky.

Mossberg also likes the drag-and-drop of emails into folders that Yahoo! provides, but that is less meaningful for me. The primary argument between Yahoo! Mail and Gmail is: Folders vs. Tagging. Tags win.

Then Mossberg says something odd: "Gmail [...] forces you to view your mails as bunched-up 'conversations'." But ... but ... threading is Gmails main differentiating advantage! It's not that you're forced into it; you benefit from this native layout scheme. It liberates you from the dreadful, eye-wearying scan down the long inbox list to find responses in a conversastion. Gmail is concise, and that is the primary imperative of a power email service.

Yahoo! Mail is a terrific accomplishment, and a sweet service. But my vote still goes to Gmail.

The return of AllofMP3? Best a-la-carte model for music downloads I've ever seen. Worst a-la-carte model for music downloads the music industry has ever seen. I'll never abandon Rhapsody, but give me back my AllofMP3!

Ironic moment of the day: GoDaddy is suing someone for squatting on Go-Daddy-Domains.com ... which the individual registered (where else?) at GoDaddy.

About time: MySpace planning a summer music tour.

Privacy concerns aside, I don't really believe that the street-imaging movement will come to anything. Maps are great; satellite imagery is great; but street-level reconaissance doesn't give me a buzz. Everyscape is doing video.

It's the first day of this thing, and I'm really appreciating Google's consolidation of Maps mashups into My Maps. The idea is to integrate some of the best API developments into the Google Maps portal, where they will be more directly and centrally useful to people. Only a few are featured so far, one of them being an absolutely essential distance measurement tool. Interactive distance measurement is a crucial feature in Google Earth, and has been crucially missing from Google Maps.

Here's hoping that tons of mashup developers create the "mapplets" necessary to repackage their work in My Maps.

The people I work with tease me because I'm so pleased with my deck. Some day I want to bring the whole Weblogs, Inc. team here for a staff meeting on The Deck. And now my deck-inspired self-satisfaction has been escalated by a renovation -- the thing has been power washed and stained (New Cedar stain). It gleams.

Next up: the yard. The previous owners of this house (original buyers; built in 1991) took care of the house well, but apparently cared about the yard less than Homer Simpson cares about aerobics. The woods are a rampant jungle. The lawn is a sickly grass-weed combination on hard clay. I tried aerating and overseeding -- an amusing exercise in futility. We're taking professional estimates to fix everything with varying degrees or organic integrity, and the financial pain is about the same whatever the method.

Today is the anniversary of our moving in here.

I'm certainly the last person to realize this, my only excuse being that I usually go to YouTube in search of videos, not to Google. But now I'm pleased to realize that you can stream them inline, right on the Google search results page. Try it by searching for richter chopin etudes.

I have a certain type of awesome cosmic power. It makes desirable stores open near wherever I'm living.

When we lived in Princeton my awesome cosmic power (ACP) caused a Wild Oats store to be built, one block away. In celebration, I was the first customer to enter the store on opening day. My ACP also influenced our bank to open a branch within walking distance.

When we moved one town away, to Monmouth Junction, the shopping center across Route 1 was dying, its anchor store empty and a stand-alone restaurant likewise unoccupied. By the time we left, two years later, a sweet Mexican restaurant had moved in, and a clothing store, and little empty storefronts filled. ACP.

Here in North Carolina, I recognized one major lack, and figured the challenge was too great even for my awesome ACP: There was no nearby cafe -- a devastating deficiency of this area north of Durham. Our closest shopping center, a small affair anchored by a Harris Teeter grocery store, contained an empty structure that might have previously housed a Burger King or something of that ilk. At first view of the forlorn and deteriorating building, I voiced the hopeless wish that Starbucks grab it up and stake its claim to this nearly-rural region.

My wife and I were driving home from Durham one twilight a few weeks ago when a half-concealed sign fluttered in front of the abandoned building. We knew immediately that something was coming, and I -- believing that any change would be a good change -- began congratulating myself on the ACP. But I didn't fully realize the utter awesomeness of my ACP until we drew close and saw that it was a Starbucks sign.

Progress has been swift. I thought I might take a picture every day and turn them into a video documenting the construction of a Starbucks, but laziness prevailed. The thing is almost done, and I'm told it will be open June 30. Anyone want to come over that morning and help me inaugurate it?

The trade-off between life's intransigence and its rewards seemed fairly balanced, then Brian Alvey quit. Is there something about the Friday virtual happy hour that *causes* resignations? Because Judith, Brian, and Martha Fischer have all hung it up since I started those things. Brian and Martha have the same last day: next Friday. Martha is headed for Portugal. Brian is headed into a full-color panel. I am now the second-oldest (in longevity) holdover from the old days (after Peter Rojas).

Martha has been a splendid force in shepherding the Cinematical/Moviefone and TV Squad/AOLTV collaborations. Brian, um, invented Blogsmith. Hard to imagine my team without Martha. Hard to imagine Weblogs, inc. without Brian. Change is the only constant in life. But can't we all just get along?! Wait -- we do get along. Can't we all just work together forever?!

The new Google Trends is fun, no question about it. At first glance it reminds a person of Google Smackdown, where the volume of search results for one keyphrase battles the volume of search results for another keyphrase. But Google Trends doesn't count results; it counts queries. Then it correlates the trend lines with relevant current events culled from Google News. Then it breaks down further by region, city, and language.



Of course, the trend comparison on most people's minds: Brad Hill vs. George Clooney. Man, it is neck and neck.