Technology

The Justice Department has given the go-ahead for Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Oracle had announced its intention of taking over Sun in April and Sun's stockholders approved the deal last month.

While U.S. antitrust regulators have approved the deal, Oracle must still wait for clearance by the European Commission.

Approval of the deal was expected earlier this summer, but the department said in June that it would also examine Oracle's acquisition of Java, which is one of Sun's key assets.

Oracle's acquisition of Sun was announced after talks between Sun and IBM fell through. Oracle's purchase of software maker Siebel Systems was also reviewed by the agency in 2005 before it was cleared.

-Kim Hart

The Federal Communications Commission just announced it created a Twitter account to keep followers up to date on the agency's progress in developing the National Broadband Plan, due to Congress in February.

The FCC is currently holding numerous workshops to gather ideas about the best ways to increase access to high-speed Internet.

You can follow at @fccdotgov. So far, the account has 5 followers.

The FCC also launched a blog dedicated to broadband issues, called "Blogband."

"To foster public dialogue about the National Broadband Plan, we're tapping the power of the Internet to launch a new FCC blog," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski wrote in the blog's first post, sent out via a press release.

"Blogband will keep people up-to-date about the work the FCC is doing and the progress we're making. But we want it to be a two-way conversation. The feedback, ideas, and discussions generated on this blog will be critical in developing the best possible National Broadband Plan."

-Kim Hart

Cross-posted to the Twitter Room

NetChoice, a coalition of e-commerce sites such as AOL, Expedia, Overstock and Ebay, this morning unveiled the second installment of its "iAwful" list, which ranks what the group calls the worst Internet legislation.

The top spot on the list goes to a recently passed Maine law that requires Web sites that cater to teenagers to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from the teens - a measure NetChoice says will restrict the exchange of useful information for the age group, such as ads for test preparation services or colleges.

The number two spot on the list is a city ordinance that would require travelers who book arrangements online to pay an extra tax on hotel rooms. The ordinance is scheduled to take effect in New York City next month, and states such as Florida are considering similar proposals.

"August means recess in Washington, but state and local governments never stop looking for ways to tax the Internet," said Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice. Legislation at the state level often paves the way for broader federal regulation on issues such as net neutrality, he said.

"When states being to regulate and tax the Internet, we have to try to beat them back one state a time," he said. "We pull our hair out trying to comply with 47 different state laws."

DelBianco, along with NetChoice policy counsel Braden Cox (who is also policy counsel for the Association for Competitive Technology and Competitive Enterprise Institute, all Washington lobbying groups), spend much of their time visiting state capitols to help block or repeal legislation they see as harmful to e-commerce companies.

The iAwful list debuted in June. Since then, DelBianco said NetChoice has successfully fought back against several measures ranked in that first list. The most notable victory was amending a California bill that placed technical restrictions on publishing photos to social networking sites.

The full list can be found here.

-Kim Hart

Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee told President Obama they have "profound disappointment" that he called for a short-term extension of the current transportation bill instead of backing a more comprehensive overhaul this year.

Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the committee's chairman, and 42 other Democrats wrote a letter to Obama Thursday pressing him to consider their $500 billion proposal to fund new road and rail projects for the next six years.

The White House has said it wants to extend the current bill for at least 18 months.

"Your proposal fails to acknowledge the severity and urgency of the challenges facing the nation's surface transportation system at this critical time," the House members wrote. "It will lock us into the discredited policies of the past and prevent us from moving toward the transporation system of the future."

(Read the whole letter here.)

The expiring bill, passed in 2005, runs out at the end of September.

Oberstar and other public transit advocates want new legislation that put more emphasis on mass transportation and a comprehensive approach to making travel safer and more efficient.

Surface transportation bills in the past have been derided as vehicles for earmarks and have been criticized for lacking a coherent plan to address failing infrastructure and increased traffic.

The current transportation bill, which cost nearly $300 billion over more than four years, raised tensions between the previous administration and lawmakers. President George W. Bush in 2005 had called on Congress to cut down on spending in the bill, while many members were willing to fight earmarks sending more money back to their districts.

The resulting standoff between Bush and Congress lasted until July 2005, months after the previous legislation it was supposed to replace was set to expire.

Federal authorities raided the home and office of President Obama's choice to become the federal government's first chief information, according to multiple reports.

FBI agents raided D.C. Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra's home and office in Washington, and have taken 40-year-old Yusuf Acar into custody, according to D.C. radio station WTOP. Acar served as Kundra's information system security officer, the Washington Post reported.


The raids mark the latest in a series of troubles for the Obama administration's political nominees, who have either withdrawn or been chastised for a variety of criminal or ethical problems.

WTOP reports that the employees at Kundra's D.C. office have been told to go home for the day, and that the U.S. Attorney for Washington would not comment on the raids.

UPDATE: Kundra is reportedly not the target of the raids.

A new presidential debates website from MySpace will let users watch the three presidential debates live, track issues important to them, and share debate clips online.

MySpace partnered with the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to launch MyDebates.org today. Voters do not have to register with MySpace to use the site, which is geared towards drawing more Internet users into the political process.

First-time visitors are given a quiz on 14 issues and, based on their answers, are told whether they agree with Barack Obama, John McCain, or neither on each. Once the first debate begins Sept. 26, users will be able to sort clips of the debates according to those 14 issues, share the clips with friends, and embed them in their own web pages.

In addition to broadcasting each debate live on the site, CPD will let MyDebates users submit questions for Obama and McCain, which CPD will consider for inclusion in the town-hall-style debate on Oct. 7.

"We believe that this landmark partnership will do for the debate series what TV did for the Kennedy Nixon debates in 1960," MySpace said upon launching the site today. "People, especially the youth voters so critical to this election, are living their lives online and getting the majority of their news and information there now."

MyDebates marks the first-ever online partnership for the presidential debates, and it is the latest of several election sites launched by online giants for the '08 race, as YouTube launched its YouChoose election channel in spring 2007, and Google launched its own election site last month.

After several news and gossip outlets reported today that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's (R) personal Yahoo! e-mail account had been hacked, John McCain's campaign released the following statement this afternoon:

"This is a shocking invasion of the Governor's privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment."

News and gossip site Gawker reported today that a group of hackers, dubbedn "Anonymous" and loosely affiliated with the message board 4-Chan, had obtained the password to Palin's personal e-mail account,

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's (R) personal Yahoo! e-mail account was hacked by a vigilante group of Internet users, the news and gossip website Gawker is reporting.

Gawker has screenshots purportedly snapped from Palin's account, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and is displaying images of e-mails allegedly sent by Palin on its site.

The send/receive list includes a Palin aide, and Gawker suggests Palin could have used her personal account to conduct state business, which could complicate public records requests. Read more...

Barack Obama and John McCain, despite being their hectic campaign schedules, are sharing news stories through their Google Reader RSS feeds.

Google today launched a new site dubbed Power Readers in Politics, and the McCain and Obama campaigns are using it to highlight news stories and blog posts, sharing content on behalf of their candidates.

The site is essentially a forum for the candidates as well as top journalists and bloggers--aka "power readers," the most influential consumers and producers of online news--to share articles and blog posts, making them viewable to ordinary readers who want to see what they're reading. The so-called power readers can comment on the RSS-fed content, and the site has the feel of a discussion board for the mega-brokers of political information.

The site's "power readers" include The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington, TIME Editor-at-Large Mark Halperin, The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini, and others, in addition to the candidates themselves.

Google Reader, a popular RSS feeder that displays content from newspapers and blogs, allows users to share and comment on news stories and blog posts with friends added through the site. Power Readers takes the friending out of the equation, letting browsers see what the power readers have read and said without friending them through the traditional process.

John McCain is catching some flack on the web today for purportedly ripping off Wikipedia in his speech on the Russia/Georgia conflict, delivered this morning in Erie, Pa. Taegan Goddard has a side-by-side comparison of excerpts from McCain's speech and Wikipedia's article on Georgia.

You be the judge: Read more...