Cyrus Farivar

Seriously, if you needed any more convincing about who to vote for, I present the following: McCain is selling golf gear on his website. Obama offers (free) mobile phone wallpaper and (as I mentioned before), ringtones. Could the symbolism be any more striking?

I was back on Chuck Joiner’s MacJury podcast yesterday. The entire hour is available here, both in stream and MP3 flavors. The topic? WWDC Preview – iPhone Speculation, Apple TV Wishes and Mac OS Expectations

I’m back in The Economist! The rise of the low-cost laptop Jun 5th 2008 From The Economist print edition Computing: The ambitious “$100 laptop” programme is having a few problems, but it may have catalysed a whole new market IN NOVEMBER 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society conference in Tunisia, Nicholas Negroponte, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a small, cute, lime-green computer. The “$100 laptop” caused quite a stir among those interested in…

Slate: So what happens when good fortune delivers vouchers (and hence computers) into the homes of Romanian youths? Obviously a lot more time logged on to a computer—about seven hours more per week for vouchered versus unvouchered kids. Much of this computer time came at the expense of television-watching: Children in families that received a voucher spent 3.5 fewer hours in front of the tube per week. But computer use also crowded out homework (2.3 hours less per week), reading,…

There’s no way that Obama will pick Clinton as VP. After reading The Huffington Post‘s analysis about VP picks, it would seem that there are three likely contenders: – Gov. Bill Richardson – Sen. Jim Webb [Here’s a Slate commenter and other bloggers on why Webb should get it.] – Gov. Kathleen Sibelius Harping on my international theme, Richardson seems the best choice here. He’s got the foreign policy creds, and hell, HE SPEAKS SPANISH. And as David Boyk pointed…

WashPost: The message — of unity and hope — did not come out of nowhere. David Axelrod, a Chicago campaign consultant, long ago hatched the idea that Democrats’ campaigns should revolve more around personality than policy. The money turned a seat-of-the-pants enterprise into a vast operation that occupied the 11th floor of a skyscraper on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, where 20-somethings tossed footballs, computer whizzes designed interactive Web sites and older volunteers filled an entire call center, not to place calls…

Like the French, I’m pretty stoked about Obama’s victory, largely because he is America’s first “global candidate.” If Obama were to be elected, he would be: – the first American president to have significant, non-political and non-military experience of living overseas in some time. – the first American president to speak a foreign language — at least halfway decently — since Herbert Hoover. (He and his wife apparently spoke Mandarin Chinese.) Also Le Monde mentions: La société américaine est de…

I was back on Chuck Joiner’s MacJury podcast yesterday. The entire hour is available here, both in stream and MP3 flavors. The topic? Recovering Stolen Macs, Common Sense Security and Starbucks’ WiFi.

WashPost: The first time Hillary Clinton called, Heather Mizeur didn’t pick up. Listening to the message, she heard Clinton’s voice and assumed it was a campaign robo-call. But then the New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate asked Mizeur to call back — and left her personal cellphone number. In the weeks that followed, Mizeur’s iPhone was besieged. Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe called to check in. So did Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), three…