We mostly use YouTube for clips of things like a cappella renditions of John Williams songs, but this address is helped by the familiarity of YouTube: it treads the line between casual and formal without ever becoming either. Yeah, we're a bunch of durn lib'rals here at Giz, but this is an important milestone in how we interact with our elected leader, and Obama made his weekly debut in the right way. There was no mention of the medium, nothing garish like, say, a holographic Will.I.Am.. YouTube is simply the easiest, most widespread, and most accessible way to directly address the people, and that's why it doesn't feel forced or stilted. Well, that and the way I just get lost in the music of his voice. [Change.gov]

They neither publicly released the changes they'd made nor paid Artifex for the privilege to keep the changes to themselves, and in the hippie-dippie share everything world of Linux, that doesn't fly. Luckily our new President of the Universe Barack Obama won by a large enough margin that we can't question the results, but good god, it's beyond time to ditch this aggressively stupid company and get an electronic balloting system that, you know, works. [LinuxDevices]

Take this quote from the Washington Times:

Pointing to President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon, Mr. Obama said: "I will set big goals for this country as president - some so large that the technology to reach them does not yet exist."

We all know saying and doing are two completely different things—especially when it comes to a presidential election. Hopefully, he will actually be able to pull some of this off. Hit the link for the rest of the list. [Junauza via Digg]

Results from "Do You Prefer a Paper Ballot or a Voting Machine?"

Which Do You Prefer?

Touchscreen 29%
Lever Machine 9%
Punch Card 3%
Paper (Optical Scan) 32%
Paper (Ballot Box) 20%
I Don't Care 6%

Which Did You Actually Use?

Touchscreen 26%
Lever Machine 7%
Punch Card 1%
Paper (Optical Scan) 42%
Paper (Ballot Box) 13%
I Didn't Vote 10%

Han first showed off his wall at an entertainment and design conference known as TED, where he charmed the CNN crew enough to take his product mainstream. The crew bought an eight-foot long version of his wall, which became an instant hit—garnering about as much screen time as Wolf Blitzer and inspiring parodies all over the place. But what I want to know, and what the article unfortunately doesn't touch on, is... where do I get my own? [CNN]

Did anybody catch Toobin doing anything? – Jason

CNN's holographic election coverage is fancy pantsy, but how did they manage to send 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station's election center in NY? As Arthur C. Clarke says, Magic. A magic made possible from technology Vizrt and SportVu with the help of forty-four HD cameras and twenty computers. Here are the details.

On the subject's side:
• 35 HD cameras pointed at the subject in a ring
• Different cameras shoot at different angles (like the matrix), to transmit the entire body image
• The cameras are hooked up to the cameras in home base in NY, synchronizing the angles so perspective is right
• The system is set up in trailers outside Obama and McCain HQ
• Not only is it mechanical tracking via camera communication, there's infrared as well
• Correspondents see a 37-inch plasma where the return feed of the combined images are fed back to them. Useful for a misplaced hair or an unseemly boogar
• Twenty "computers" are crunching this data in order to make it usable

On the HQ side:
• Only used on two out of 40-something total camera feeds that CNN has
• Wolf Blitzer really loves it (or loves Jessica Yellin):

It's still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin. I think a lot of people are nervous out there. All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram.

• The delay is either minimal, or we've gotten used to satellite delay that we don't even notice now
• An array of computers takes the crunched info feed from the subject's side in order to mesh it with the video from Wolf's side.
• Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the images are actually "projected" onto the floor of the CNN studio so that Wolf can actually talk to the person, you know, in a face to face. So it's not quite Star Wars just yet. Only after computers merge the video feeds together do you get a coherent hologram + person scenario

Technically Astronaut voters cast an electronic Absentee ballot that is prepared by the County Clerk's office in Harris and Brazoria counties. The secure document is then transferred to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, while an email with login instructions is sent to the astronaut. The astronaut logs in, votes and beams the ballot back down to mission control. The completed ballot is then sent back to the Clerk's office to be tallied. The first astronaut to do this was in 1997 when Michael Wolf voted from the Russian Space Station Mir and—OH MY GOD DID THOSE COMMIE RUSKIES GET TO WOLF AND HIS BALLOT AND CORRUPT OUR SACRED DEMOCRATIC PROCESS?! [Space.com via MSNBC]

The dude being beamed across the country next to Wolf will have 44 cameras trained on him, with 20 computers in his location crunching the video feeds to produce 360-degree imaging data. All of that stuff is sent to New York, where the images are processed and projected by another array of cams and comps. then, plasma TVs back in Chicago and Phoenix will let the interviewees see Wolf and the other CNN people. CNN can project two different views from each city, so Wolf can be flanked by two different holograms.

Man, I so know where I'm watching the election coverage. The future. [USA Today via The Guardian via Waxy via BBG, Whew]

I'm not suggesting you have to use Twitter—or know what Twitter is—to make sound judgments as a leader of the free world. It's not about being pro-net neutrality, either. These things are trivial. It's the long view—can someone who doesn't know how to read a newspaper online by himself truly comprehend just how connected the world is? (How can someone who can't read newspapers online function at all when they cease to be printed on paper?)

How can the techno-illiterate appreciate that technology is both the cause and the cure for our bruised economy, from the globally connected financial crises at hand to America's potential economic revitalization through a charge into green energy systems that spur innovation, create jobs and help to shatter our dependence on oil? Temporarily cheaper gas is a not a means to economics growth—and we will run out in our lifetime. US entrepreneurship is driven by technology and innovation, and it's key to maintaining our superpower status. A green energy—i.e., technology—economy would reboot all of that.

Technology constantly redefines the way we wage war, but it also aims to assuage the global food crisis. It will heal sick people who couldn't be cured before better. Hell, it's what will make flights finally arrive on time. The person at the wheel should know how to use a GPS—and Google, online newspapers, maybe even a smartphone.

That's a small list, but there's a big point. No, I'm not naïve enough to think this will change anyone's mind—in fact I hope your decision is not made so lightly that it possibly could. But I wanted to be clear: The future of this country, on many fronts, is tightly tied up with technology and what we do with it. I don't think it will ever again be possible to vote for someone who doesn't understand that. So why do it now?

[Left Image: Giz Photoshop Contest; Center Image: Thirty30 Photography; Right Image: Gary He]

Waybright actually seems like a really stand-up guy on people being able to vote the way they want, and details some of the measures they're taking to make sure that happens. The machines have confirmation screens, and they'll have techs at the polling places, just in case problems do pop up. It looks like an easy enough fix too—the same machine, when properly calibrated, should work just fine. So just be sure to double check your vote on Tuesday, wherever and however you're voting. [Video the Vote]

The Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy has gone and published a report detailing the security vulnerabilities of the Sequoia e-voting machines and exactly how they hacked them. It turns out you just need to replace a single ROM chip, a process that takes about 7 minutes. Just tell the poll workers that you're undecided and need to really think about it in the booth.

Even better? Once you install fraudulent firmware on one machine, it can virally spread itself to other machines, meaning you can commit widespread voter fraud across your entire state by just messing with one single machine. Isn't that awesome! And it'll keep propagating itself, effecting the next election as well, and the election after that.

Oh, and that fraudulent firmware? It's a mere 122 lines of code and took them 2 days to write. They say that anyone with a computer science background could cook it up pretty easily.

America! Wooooooo hoo! [Ars Technica]

Besides being ironically hard drive-less, they have most of the parts turned off for extra security. Even with essentially iron-clad dumb terminals, security remains a huge issue like it was when internet voting was considered in 2004, so we're still a couple elections away from voting while pre-ordering our next Nintendo system just one tab over. But at least we're getting there. [Pop Mechanics via Dvice]

Some officials blamed it on user error for not touching the screens properly—Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright said that 400 people voted early using Election Systems & Software's machines without any problems at all. Oh and:

"I hate the fact that stories like this are printed. It makes everybody get scared. That is not good for anybody. Where the fault is, I don't know and the voter doesn't know. There needs to be good communication between the voters and the poll workers."

After being contacted by the Secretary of State's office, though, they've agreed to re-calibrate the machines. Ones of the counties with touchscreen wonkiness, Putnam, will actually use an optical scan machine with a full-size paper ballot on election day—the touchscreens are just for early voting, so it hopefully won't be an issue.

The takeaway is that whoever you're voting for, wherever you're doing it, whatever you're using, double-check it to make sure it was properly recorded before you walk out of the booth. If it's not, call the poll person over, it's what they're there for. Of course, if you see voting machines doing anything particularly crazy, be sure to let us know about it. [Wired]

While Schmidt says the Goog is officially neutral, the WSJ notes that "Congress is considering measures that could have an adverse impact on Google's business" like "rules that would allow telecommunications companies to charge different prices for different levels of Internet service," i.e., net non-neutrality. Obama has said that he is pro net-neutrality, which would benefit Google. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, Google employees have donated nearly half a million dollars to Obama's campaign, and a mere $20,600 to John McCain as of Aug. 31, according to the Journal (which would likely make them among Obama's top corporate donors, since Verizon employees' $155,000 for McCain placed among his top 20 corporate donors ever).

Tuesday is the first day Obama and Schmidt hit the trail together, but some speculate he's been doing some campaigning of his own with Obama for a while—to be Obama's first tech chief:

Asked at a speech this month whether he would consider entering the political arena, the 53-year-old Mr. Schmidt shouted, "H-, no!" But some tech and media executives speculate that he might desire a role in an Obama administration, possibly the chief technology officer post Sen. Obama has said he would create.

I have to say, there are few more qualified than Google's CEO, especially since Bill Gates dreams beyond tech now, and Steve Jobs is perfectly happy within his own little world at Apple. Who would be your dream tech chief be? [WSJ via Valleywag, Image: Real Dan Lyons]