Elections

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt advised Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, but apparently he's willing to diversify when it comes to his influence.

Schmidt will be international business adviser to the U.K.'s Conservative Party, according to leader David Cameron, the Associated Press reported Monday.

It's not his first time in the group's orbit. Schmidt gave a speech at a U.K. Conservative Party event in 2006, too.

Another adviser is Christopher Gent, the former CEO of mobile phone network giant Vodafone, according to the report.

Correction 11:32 a.m. PST: An earlier version of this story misstated the month Meg Whitman stepped down as CEO. It was March 2008.

Last month, the news was that former eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman had taken a tentative step toward running for California governor. On Monday, she took a more definite step by announcing a 2010 exploratory committee.

Whitman, 52, will become the leading Republican candidate to succeed outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger next year, who will retire because of term limits.

"California faces challenges unlike any other time in its history--a weak and faltering economy, massive … Read more

Forget the important task of opening up government. Never mind a recession that seems to be trying hard to be promoted to a full-scale depression. In geekish circles, the question of the week has been: Will President Obama manage to hang on to his BlackBerry?

Obama told us more than a year ago that it was his favorite gadget, and he was rarely without it during the 2008 campaign. In 2001, George Bush famously gave up e-mail, and there was plenty of speculation that Obama would too, either for privacy or open-government reasons. Last week, we suggested the Sectera Edge … Read more

Fans of President Barack Obama, or perhaps just those who dislike former President George W. Bush, seem to think there's something notable about the way the new White House Web site is configured to deal with search engines.

That configuration file is called robots.txt. It's designed to let Webmasters ask search engine robots not to include certain areas of a Web site in their index. Well-behaved robots will comply.

The Obama revamp of Whitehouse.gov included a shorter robots.txt file, which Thenextweb.com called "a sign of greater transparency and change." A BoingBoing poster … Read more

WASHINGTON--Barack Obama was sworn in as president Tuesday in what many spectators viewed as the nation's most interactive inauguration ceremony so far.

As millions of people in Washington and around the globe watched a weekend of festivities, culminating with Tuesday's ceremony, they gave their instant feedback online and through text messages and other means to family, friends, and anyone else listening. At the same time, event organizers were able to give spectators live updates about the state of affairs in the nation's chilly, crowded capital.

Most people who watched the inauguration did it through traditional television broadcasts, … Read more

Itzhak Perlman? Isabel Toledo? Simple Gifts? Huh?

During Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, people curious about unfamiliar references used Google to supply the footnotes for the ceremony. The phenomenon was visible on Google Trends, a service that shows which search terms are rapidly rising in use.

According to the U.S. results, Toledo, who designed First Lady Michelle Obama's dress, bubbled up to fifth place on the list earlier in the day. Once the ceremony began, up came violinist Perlman (ninth place), cellist Yo-Yo Ma (12th place), composer John Williams (26th place), and the variation on the … Read more

As President-elect Barack Obama began his inaugural address at noon on Tuesday, his aides were busy switching over Whitehouse.gov.

Until 11:59 am EST, the Web site featured a photograph of former president George W. Bush leaving the White House for the last time. The relaunched site's most prominent feature is an oversize photo of the new president next to the slogan: "Change has come to America."

Because the presidential Web site launched under Bill Clinton's tenure, this is only the second time that Whitehouse.gov has changed hands. The Clinton-Bush handover was not without … Read more

WASHINGTON--Cell phone traffic near Capitol Hill was three to five times its normal levels late Tuesday morning, just as Barack Obama was set to be sworn in as president.

Even with high traffic, most calls continued to go through, wireless carriers said--a good thing for the many spectators on the National Mall who were depending on cell phone service to get through the day, despite carriers' warnings of dropped calls.

Gridlocked crowds of people swarmed the perimeter of the Mall early Tuesday morning in an attempt to watch Barack Obama's presidential inauguration. Some inauguration-goers near the west end of … Read more

With reports all but confirmed that President-elect Barack Obama will be nominating Julius Genachowski to lead the Federal Communications Commission, speculation continues to grow over whom the incoming president may choose to be his chief technology officer.

An Obama transition team member would not confirm Genachowski's nomination but did not deny it. The transition team member could not say, however, whether the president-elect is any closer to naming a CTO.

A report from BusinessWeek maintains that the choice has come down to two people who already hold the title of CTO: Padmasree Warrior, of networking giant Cisco Systems, and … Read more