Disney has promoted Richard Bates to run its government relations operations in Washington.

Bates will replace Preston Padden, who will have been with the company for nearly 30 years when he retires next year. Padden plans to become a senior fellow and adjunct professor at University of Colorado Law School.

Bates, who has served as Padden's No. 2, has been with Disney for 19 years. Before joining Disney, he was executive director for the Democratice Congressional Campaign Committee.

His promotion ends speculation that Bates would replace Dan Glickman, who stepped down as head of the Motion Picture Association of America. Bob Pisano has been named interim CEO while MPAA searches for a replacement.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will lead a presidential delegation to Poland this week to commemorate the 65th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27.

Genachowski has alluded to his family's connection to the Holocaust in the past.

Before he was officially nominated to the top job at the FCC, he told me about his relationship with then president-elect Barack Obama.

"We were two guys with funny names, and our backgrounds, while different, shared some important features that brought us together," he said. "My parents were immigrants, and we have our share of Holocaust stories. So we shared an appreciation that people with backgrounds like his and mine could end up at a place like Harvard, where we never expected to be."

Other members of the delegation include U.S. Ambassador to Poland Lee Feinstein and Hannah Rosenthal, Special Envoy to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism for the State Department.

Susan S. Sher, assistant to President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady and Liaison to the Jewish Community, and Roman Kent, chairman of American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors will also be part of the trip, as well as Auschwitz survivors Charlene P. Schiff and Edwarda Sternberg-Powidzki.

Citizens will be able to submit questions for President Barack Obama via YouTube once the State of the Union address begins tomorrow night.

Next week, Obama will answer select questions in a special online event broadcast live from the White House.

You can send questions and vote on the best ones at YouTube.com/CitizenTube.

Apple reported a 50 percent surge in fiscal first quarter profit, which reached $3.4 billion on iPhone and Mac sales .

Tomorrow, Apple is expected to unveil a new addition to its popular product line-up. Executives said little about the product during Monday's earnings call other than that they are "really excited about it."

Rumors predict the company will release a tablet device--a handheld device with a touch screen that can be used to surf the Internet, play games or watch TV.

If the rumors are true, a new Apple tablet could unleash a new wave of products and applications in the same way the iPhone did three years ago. As policy-makers in Washington wrestle with ways to expand wireless broadband and mobile content, a tablet could help further demonstrate the need for more spectrum as a it encourages hordes of new adopters to hop on the airwaves.

It's Rey Ramsey's fourth week on the job as the new chief executive of TechNet, an industry coalition with 120 members that range from venture capital firms to the biggest tech companies in the world.

He says he's still finding his footing in his new role, but he's already jetting off to tech-centric regions--this week, Portland; next week, San Francisco--to meet with CEOs about TechNet's agenda under his leadership.

"It's important to foster innovation in all areas of the country," he said in an interview. "I'm not suddenly going to be the D.C. guy with tunnel vision."

Ramsey is best known for co-founding One Economy in 2000 with three others in a basement. The organization now has more than 80 employees in four countries and aims to spread the benefits of technology to low-income and disadvantaged regions of the world. Ramsey still remains chairman of the non-profit, which is currently searching for a new CEO.

His roots in broadband expansion have colored his early priorities for TechNet. He said so much of the path toward universal broadband hinges on the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which is due to Congress mid-March.

The Office of Personnel Management's new federal job site, USAJobs.gov, got a makeover today. It now eerily resembles Google's spartan homepage with two simple search fields.

Google isn't the only tech company from which OPM took cues.

OPM Director John Berry visited Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters not too long ago to gather ideas and advice about the new site. Berry also met with Facebook's human resources department and with employees to talk about their perceptions of government jobs.

And now job-hunters can share information from USAJobs.gov with others on Facebook.

The government is expected to increase its hiring over the next two years, and the recession has prompted tens of thousands of job seekers to apply through the site.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said the Internet needs to keep thriving in China during an interview with ABC's Good Morning America.

"You've got to decide: Do you want to obey the laws of the countries you're in, or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there," said Gates, without mentioning Google by name.

"The Chinese efforts to censor the Internet have been very limited. It's easy to go around it, and so I think keeping the Internet thriving there is very important," he said.

Google said last week that it would like to remain in China, but plans to stop censoring search results.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has become more defensive of its Internet restrictions, calling the United States "hypocritical" by blocking some content that can be seen by children. The country has also accused the United States for using social media to support political disruption in Iran.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln's (D-Ark.) reelection campaign sent out an email today urging supporters to friend her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter.

"When Blanche first ran for Congress, there was no such thing as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace or Flickr. All she had was a pick-up truck, some yard signs and flyers. Times sure have changed," wrote her campaign manager Steve Patterson.

"The online grassroots community will be a critical component of our victory in 2010!"

We should expect to see more of this as mid-term election campaigns kick into high gear. Especially after Sen.-elect Scott Brownmade such a splash online in his successful run in Massachusetts.

But, as online political strategists have pointed out in the past, sending press releases may not be the right way to win online support. The whole point of social media is to reach voters in a new way and letting that support grow virally, not using a stale medium to ask for support in a new medium.

Free Press, the public interest group that has been one of the most ardent supporters of net neutrality, lashed out against the Art + Labs coalition today in response to an op-ed published Friday in which the coalition's adviser called Free Press "radical" and "neo-Marxist."

It all started on Thursday when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Internet freedom has become a top diplomatic priority in the protection of free speech. Free Press executive director Josh Silver said in a statement that enacting net neutrality rules would be a good first step to achieving Internet freedom.

Art + Labs adviser Andrew Keen wrote in an op-ed that comparing repressive regimes in China to the network management practices of cable and phone companies was inappropriate. Read more...