mitt romney

Rep. Paul Ryan, the new Republican pick as vice presidential nominee, has not been a leader on technology topics and has a mixed tech voting record in this area.

This should be no surprise. If you're in the U.S. Congress, you're not likely to focus on technology unless you're a member of the relevant committees. Ryan isn't. Instead, he's the chairman of the House Budget committee and has spent years trying to get entitlements under control.

So far, though, Ryan's voting history indicates that he tends to align himself with the Republicans' party … Read more

In playing catch up with President Obama's social media savvy, Republican nominee Mitt Romney might have cut some corners. A new report by Barracuda Labs shows that more than 15 percent of Romney's Twitter followers may have come from bogus accounts generated by pay-for-followers services.

"We believe most of these recent followers of Romney are not from a general Twitter population but most likely from a paid Twitter follower service," Barracuda Labs research scientist Jason Ding wrote in the report.

It's important to note, however, that it's not clear if the Romney campaign, an … Read more

Pets have proven problematic for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He has been widely (and rightfully) pilloried for putting the family pooch on the top of the car during a long vacation roadtrip. And now someone is claiming to have hacked into his personal Web-based e-mail account by guessing the name of his favorite pet.

It remains unclear if "Seamus," the Irish Setter whose kennel he tied to the top of the car, was his favored pet. If so, I'd hate to see how he treated less preferential pets. Whatever the word was, someone is claiming to … Read more

How many people know the recipe for President Barack Obama's family chili? Before today, probably not many. But now anyone on the social-networking site Pinterest can find out how many onions, ground beef, and kidney beans the recipe takes, and then pin it to their own profile if they like.

Obama has added the popular virtual pinboard site Pinterest to his social-networking trove and today his filled-out profile page with eight boards and 44 pins was made public. According to tech news site Mashable, the Obama campaign set up the account a few weeks ago, but there wasn't … Read more

I never expected to write "Santorum," "Apple," and "1984" together in the same blog post, but here you go.

Apple fans (and anybody else even vaguely familiar with the history of commercials) will recognize a whole lot of vintage Macintosh-inspired marketing coming from Santorum's latest anti-Mitt Romney ad.

The video is titled "Rebellion." There's no doubt the Santorum ad is quoting from the original Apple endeavor. It features marching people wearing gray while authority figures bark slogans in the background and Romney's talking head glitches out like Max Headroom.

Instead of a woman in short-shorts with a big hammer, you get a woman hauling a "Santorum for President" political sign that she flips over to display a video of Santorum sharing his conservative views.

Santorum does manage to squeeze in a quick clip of some baby-hugging near the end. This is a political ad, after all.… Read more

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be a man who shoots animals so that he can eat, but surely many would imagine that his politics might tip slightly toward the Democratic side.

Until the last 24 hours, that is.

For the site's faithful suddenly got the impression that Zuckerberg was a keen liker of Mitt Romney.

Tech CEOs who wear jeans and look innocent are not supposed to be Republicans. They're supposed to be liberals who let youths skateboard around the office, while making billions of dollars.

How might this clear misunderstanding have occurred? Well, Zuckerberg decided that he … Read more

The saddest part of the rumor about celebrities getting paid thousands of dollars to send corporate-sponsored Tweets is that it's true.

It started with Internship.com paying Charlie Sheen $50,000 to solicit "Tiger Blood" interns, and today we're exploring the number of ways celebrities make money on the side.

We'll also talk about presidential campaigns embracing modern technology, starting with Romney's crew using Square hardware to grab donations and votes.

We'll also pick at the reasons why Obama and Google strategically ignored the most-voted question from yesterday's YouTube campaign q&a. Plenty of time to talk about late-night snacks, but what about the 4,500 users who have legitimate health concerns?… Read more

One shouldn't hold one's nose when politicians talk of space travel.

One should merely hold one's judgment until they've all finished and then simply emit whatever emotions might have built up in one's intestines over the minutes.

Tonight, the Republican presidential candidates debated in Jacksonville, Fla. It just so happens that jobs in Florida have flown many of its coops--and this just happens to be a state that has become a little synonymous with blasting off to the moon.

So here we had Newt Gingrich, squeezing himself gingerly into Neil Armstrong's boots. For yesterday … Read more

First Lady Michelle Obama officially joined Twitter this morning, and after only four tweets, she has 185,000 followers and counting.

"Hi, everyone, and thanks for the warm welcome. Look forward to staying in touch with you here. -mo," she first tweeted.

As the 2012 election season heats up, it's all hands on deck for Team Obama. The president, who joined Twitter during his 2008 election campaign and has almost 12 million followers, welcomed his wife onto the social networking site. "It's not every day we get to welcome the First Lady of the United … Read more