Among the many online weather and emergency alert services, job listings, and the like, the Bush years also found a few more interesting new tools. The Library of Congress began posting photos of their incredible catalog on Flickr, for example, and the FBI created widgets for locating sexual predators and most wanted criminals. New tools for college students helped them find loans and compare schools, and finally we were able to pay taxes online. Diplomatic and Intelligence agencies jumped on the Wikipedia bandwagon with Diplopedia and Intellipedia, respectively.

Sure, it's not free broadband internet for all, but let's give credit where credit's due. That Flickr page is amazing! [Nick Thompson via Wired]

independent software developers who want to develop software for cellphones without having to go through the corporate red tape. Also in the ruling is the permission for educators to use snippets of movies for educational purposes and for blind people to use special software to read copy-protected e-books.

Several things come to mind with this ruling. Firstly, I'd like to thank the government for giving us small pieces of fair use once again. (Of course, the implicit indication is that now all other forms of fair use are illegal and can only be made legal by the granting of more exceptions. Oh DMCA, how we love thee.) It's also nice to see that blind people need to get special permission to use something that they've purchased. Secondly, how many people are going to claim to be educators know when they rip and snip DVDs? Laws are fun to sidestep. – Nicholas Deleon

U.S. Copyright Office issues new rights [AP/Yahoo! News]