Big stakes in online poker

I've been playing poker since I was a kid (with my parents' chips), so I couldn't help but notice that the return of the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour coincided with this article in yesterday's San Jose Merc: Big stakes in online poker. Internet gambling soars as thousands play for cash.

Meantime, millions of Americans who can't get to tournaments like this are flocking to online gambling sites, and the feds appear to be turning a blind eye. Which is fine in my book.

We’re not in Lake Wobegon anymore

In These Times: We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore, by Garrison Keillor. How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?

Sidekick II: The next hot toy

The San Jose Merc has a couple of stories today about Danger, the Palo Alto startup that makes the Sidekick II, a wireless device similar to the Treo600 (but more fun!) due out in about a month for $299 plus a one-year subscription to T-Mobile.

Startup that pioneered Sidekick enters uncharted territory

Langberg: Sidekick II a significant improvement

Startup launching Web-to-TV video service

AP: Startup Launching Web-to-TV Video Service.

Akimbo Systems plans to tap the vast vault of programming on the Internet, repackage it in DVD-quality, and bring it to a set-top box so viewers can watch it on their television sets. Over at Open Media, we'll be watching this closely.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Media facing 'epochal transformation'

Maine Today: Media Facing 'Epochal Transformation'

Fewer young people have an interest in the news, observes Irwin Gratz, the president-elect of the Society of Professional Journalists. Are we "not putting stories in the right format?"

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Media failed Swift boat mission

The ombudsman for the Palm Beach Post accurately sizes up the mainstream media's shameful coverage of the Swift boat controversy:

After weeks of covering the controversy, "the media" finally got around to covering the facts.

It took news organizations that long to advance from he-said, she-said reporting to Wednesday's unqualified dismissal by The New York Times of allegations against Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, by a group of President Bush's supporters calling themselves the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Presidential adviser Karl Rove must have been giddy by then. Tina Brown, in a column for The Washington Post, said it as well as any commentator:

Mr. Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist, "has brilliantly judged how much and how long the media can be relied on to run with a story until it plays itself out. It doesn't matter if the revisionist Swifties are discredited as long as a touch of virus enters the voter bloodstream to flow through the veins and arteries of blogs and cable and talk radio and Op-Ed columns and contradicting ads. The war record becomes 'the disputed war record.' " ...

BusinessWeek.com's new look

An editor at DMNews touts the new look of BusinessWeek.com.

Old photo shows Bush wearing medal he didn't earn

As Swift Boat attack ads continue against John Kerry, Britain's Telegraph reports that a photograph has been unearthed that reportedly shows George W. Bush photographed in 1970 in uniform wearing a medal ribbon he had not earned. The photo, discovered in his father's Presidential Library in Houston, shows the younger Bush wearing an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award medal ribbon. "It betrays the Honour Code that every officer learns and carries throughout his or her career," said Walt Starr, who investigated the medals for the group US War Report.

I haven't seen the photo; not sure if it's online yet.

This is kind of silly stuff, but it's not in the same class as the villainy of what the Swift Boat folks are doing, which amounts to rewriting history.

One correction to the Telegraph's story: No one from the "Kerry campaign" is brandishing this to attack the president, as the headline claims.

Florida judge requires manual recounts

In an important victory for trusted elections, a judge in Florida is requiring the state to provide a paper trail. That's huge, given the likelihood of another razor-thin election there in two months.

A social bookmarks manager

During the Mt. Tam hike last week, Howard Rheingold mentioned that he's becoming fond of a clever little new application called del.icio.us.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager that allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.

As soon as I get a spare moment, I'll give it a go. It's free.