More than 400,000 people now work in the state tech industry, according to a new study released by the Technology Alliance at its annual luncheon in Seattle.

The trade group found 396,818 people are directly employed in tech jobs, up 15,272 from its 2010 study.

This year it began tallying self-employed tech workers, which brings the total to 434,343 jobs or 13.6 percent of jobs in the state. The industry's combined payroll is $41 billion, it said in a news release.

Employment counts were based on data from the first half of 2011. The chart below was part of today's presentation.

Applying a multiplier to gauge the industry's broader economic effect, the group's study concluded that the state's tech industries support 1.4 million jobs and nearly $86 billion in payroll, or about 45 percent of the state's employment.

Wages averaged $94,531, compared to $49,829 for other industries, the release said.

The average pay is down significantly from the group's 2010 report, when tech jobs averaged $110,145 versus the stage average of $57,654.

Companies in the industry had $231 billion in sales last year, 76 percent of which were outside of the state.

Alliance chairman, Jeremy Jaech, said the job growth underscores the need for the state to invest more in educating future tech workers. Through 2018 the industry will add 6,900 jobs per year on average but state schools' output will lag that demand by 4,400 positions a year, he said.

"We're not cultivating a sufficiently large home-grown talent pool and this is a bad thing," said Jaech, a UW alum.

Jaech is stepping down as chairman of the group and being replaced by Cheryl Vedoe, chief executive of Apex Learning. During the group's luncheon,

Vedoe introduced the group's annual "Innovation Showcase" company of the year, MobiSante. The manufacturer of cell phone-based medical imaging gear presented its business to a tech alliance showcase in 2010 and received FDA approval for its products in 2011.

The luncheon's main event is an on-stage conversation between F5 Chief Executive John McAdam and UW professor Ed Lazowska.

They discussed how F5 has evolved beyond its first products for balancing network traffic loads. Its technology was initially developed by UW students, and the name was inspired by the move "Twister" and refers to a "force 5" tornado.

Most people don't realize how widely F5 equipment is used to manage networks but if you book an airline tickete online, send a text or do social networking, "there's a high likelihood you've been through an F5 product," McAdam said.

F5 employed 2,800 last quarter and plans to add at least 125 this quarter, he said.

A turning point for the company came in 2002 when it began developing a traffic-management operating system. At the time F5's revenue of $27 million made it appear to be chasing a small market but sales started to "rocket" after the operating system was released in 2005, McAdam said.

Last October, F5 reported that its annual sales had crossed $1 billion.

The company's high market capitalization now gives the company the "luxury" of becoming a bigger independent company, though it also raises expectations for the company's quarterly performance.

"Frankly it's our biggest defense against an acquisition," McAdam said.

McAdam agreed with Jaech's concerns about education and said F5 has to import about 40 percent of its employees into the state.

Here's a chart that Jaech presented, showing the distribution of tech jobs in the state:

Seattle basketball fans may have a reason to cheer for Facebook's upcoming public stock offering.

One of the early investors who stands to make a quick fortune on the deal is Chris Hansen, the San Francisco hedge fund manager trying to develop a new arena in Seattle and bring an NBA team back to town.

Hansen bought private Facebook stock in 2010 that's worth up to $1.27 billion at the high end of Facebook's IPO plan, according to a Forbes story. It estimates that Hansen paid up to $500 million for the shares.

Altogether his fund, Valiant Capital, has 36,335,590 shares of Facebook, or about 2 percent of the voting shares, according to the social networking giant's stock registration statement. For perspective, Microsoft has just under 2 percent, with 32,784,626 shares.

If the stock prices at $35, that would net Hansen's investment firm nearly $800 million - enough to finance two new basketball arenas without any public assistance.

Or to build one arena and a new shipping terminal for freight traffic farther away from the stadium district. Or to refit KeyArena with heated massage chairs throughout the stands and provide helicopter shuttles to fans from Bellevue, Everett and Federal Way.

That's at Facebook's initial price, at the high end of the projected range. Imagine the possibilities if the stock jumps after the offering.

Forbes notes that Hansen's Valiant Capital was managing $3.26 billion worth of assets as of February, including big stakes in Apple and Google.

It's not clear how much of a personal stake Hansen has in these holdings. Hedge funds typically charge a percentage or two for management and take a share of the funds' returns, perhaps 10 to 25 percent.

At Valiant, he's representing an unnamed group of investors in the fund, similar to the way he's representing a group of unnamed investors pursuing the Seattle basketball venture.

Forget about Seattle's grand plans for a city-sponsored, superfast broadband network.

Seattle has quietly given up, ending nearly a decade of blue-ribbon commissions, reams of studies and public outreach.

Since 2004, residents were tantalized by the prospect of affordable, fiber-optic service that would offset the near monopoly of Comcast and boost creativity, collaboration and innovation.

The closest Seattle came was a meager test of public Wi-Fi service along a few blocks in Columbia City, University Way and downtown parks that began in 2005.

Last week the city literally pulled the plug, ending its "community wireless service" April 29.

It was time to update the network, and the city opted to spend the $100,000 elsewhere.

"With the general-fund budget situation being the way it is, I recommended to the mayor -- and he agreed -- we should shut it down," said Bill Schrier, chief technology officer.

Providing more and better access to the Internet is a national priority. It's seen by local governments as key to improving quality of life, attracting entrepreneurs and nourishing business.

Yet few cities have found the gumption to get it done and challenge the powerful telecommunications industry.

Municipal Wi-Fi is easier to build than fiber broadband, but it's still been a mixed bag. Over the past decade, cities across the country tried offering free Wi-Fi through public-private partnerships that largely failed.

Now phone and cable companies are trying to seal the coffin. To protect their lock on broadband, they've pushed state laws blocking or preventing municipalities from offering Wi-Fi or broadband services. The laws have passed in at least 19 states, according to Muninetworks.org.

In years past, Seattle stood up to this kind of bullying and built its own public utilities.

Schrier hasn't heard of such laws surfacing in Washington, yet. Phone companies needn't bother.

Now the hero may be San Jose, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's building one of the nation's fastest Wi-Fi networks to serve city agencies and provide free public access in 1.5 square miles of its downtown.

Networking gear must be cheaper closer to the source. San Jose expects to spend $94,000 building the new network and $22,000 a year to operate it, which is about the same cost as its current system.

Schrier wasn't familiar with the details of San Jose's plan.

He was an early proponent of Seattle's broadband plan, but no longer.

He's retiring after 29 1/2 years and spent Friday packing up his office. Among the artifacts he uncovered was a 2003 plan to provide free Wi-Fi downtown, another forward-looking project that never came to pass.

A series of mayors talked about the importance of citywide broadband, but none saw it through.

The new plan is to hawk portions of the city's internal fiber network to the highest bidder. Schrier said Mayor Mike McGinn will propose an ordinance within two weeks to offer up "excess capacity."

Apartment developers, private schools or even a hospital could end up using parts of the network Seattle spent more than $50 million building for city use.

The city is putting energy into a project with the University of Washington to use city assets for a small pocket of fast broadband, perhaps in South Lake Union.

That won't do much for people like Gordon Curvey, a Columbia City resident who used the city Wi-Fi to learn the HTML language for building Web pages and to run a music website.

For Curvey, it's appalling the hometown of Amazon.com and Microsoft's founders can't keep providing the service.

"I could see it happening in Olympia or Wenatchee or something like that, but Seattle?" he said. "Come on, I don't get it."

Neither do I.

Donning his global statesman hat, Bill Gates spent time discussing America's concerns about its future with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

Gates talked about paradoxes - such as polls showing that Americans see a bleaker future despite the huge amount of innovation in their country that will lead to advances in medicine, energy and other fields.

"There's more innovation taking place in this country still than the whole rest of the world put together," Gates said in a video of the chat. "Now over time that will shift and they'll carry their more fair share of the burden, but in all these fields, the most interesting work is still largely in the United States."

Gates also touched on concerns about the effect of polarization on U.S. government, a topic he raised during an October speech at the University of Washington that also highlighted opportunities being created by innovation.

Seven years after it began pursuing a city broadband network, Seattle's trying again. Sort of.

Mayor Mike McGinn and other dignitaries will announce a new, smaller effort Monday morning in South Lake Union. The plan is to offer city infrastructure to lure phone or cable companies willing to build ultrafast broadband in one or two neighborhoods.

More and faster broadband is better, but I'm not sure this is going to result in much change. It's unlikely to help many homes or businesses truly suffering from a lack of fast service, especially since the targeted neighborhoods already have pretty good broadband.

Helping a small pocket of the city may be more realistic than pursuing top-notch broadband across the city, but it pushes the true goal farther back.

As it did in 2006 and 2007, the city's offering access to 500 miles of fiber-optic lines the public spent at least $50 million to install.

This time around, the city's hooked up with the University of Washington and an alliance of universities across the country that's trying to get companies to provide faster service to research schools and their surrounding communities.

The alliance, called Gig U, wants to foster new research and development of applications using ultrafast connections. Success in these areas could prod telecommunications companies to provide more ultrafast broadband. Project proposals from companies are due early next month.

Broadband companies negotiate for city right of way to deliver service in Seattle. But McGinn said the city doesn't have enough leverage over the companies to extract better pricing or service from them.

"This is why it's so important for the city to start looking at different models... to start driving some competition or create the competition ourselves, ultimately."

But the city has started off on this road before and never went anywhere.

A high-profile broadband task force formed in 2004 said the city should pursue a network that would provide affordable, fiber-optic connections to everyone in the city by 2015, with minimum speeds of 20 to 25 megabits per second.

That led to a request for proposals from telecommunications companies willing to partner with the city, and talks with 11 providers. In 2007, Mayor Greg Nickels wanted to pursue a fiber network but the effort fizzled before there were any firm proposals to build anything.

One possibility that was never pursued was to have City Light become a broadband provider, similar to the approach taken by the city of Tacoma and other public utilities.

McGinn said that could be an option someday. But first the city will try to encourage a pilot project, in neighborhoods adjacent to the UW or UW facilities -- meaning South Lake Union or the University District.

I asked McGinn and Bill Schrier, the city's chief technology officer, why this will fare better than the city's earlier, more ambitious broadband plans.

Schrier said there's higher interest, driven by the federal broadband plan issued in 2010 and Google's 2010 offer to wire a few cities with ultrafast, experimental networks.

"There's a much wider awareness for broadband and its value than there was in 2007," Schrier said.

I hate to be critical about this because the need for better and more affordable broadband in America is real. There's not enough competition to bring prices down and there's little incentive for companies to provide faster service outside of dense, prosperous areas. But the project being floated today doesn't address those problems.

Also, Gig U's concerns about universities having ultrafast broadband do not apply to the UW proper. The UW has one of the world's fastest Internet connections. It's part of the Internet2 research consortium that's operating a new 100 gigabit per second network. Seattle is one of 10 cities connected by this network, enabling the UW to do cutting-edge research in computing and sciences.

South Lake Union is also an odd location for Monday's news conference. It may be the last place you'd talk about a broadband crisis.

A mass of fiber runs through the neighborhood, alongside the new Terry Avenue headquarters of Amazon.com.

"There's fiber all over South Lake Union from like eight carriers -- the biggest fiber route in the Northwest goes right down Terry," said John Van Oppen, chief executive of Spectrum Networks.

Spectrum provides 100 megabit-per-second Internet service to dozens of office and apartment buildings in the region, charging people $60 per month for unlimited usage.

Next spring, Spectrum services will be upgraded to 1 gigabit per second, at the same price. That speed is already available at Van Oppen's condo -- in South Lake Union.

Van Oppen said the city's making a good effort to improve broadband offerings, but he doesn't expect there will be a lot of private-sector interest in using its fiber to serve a neighborhood or two.

One reason is that fiber isn't as scarce a resource anymore. The biggest cost to provide ultrafast broadband is in the "last mile" connection, hooking up the individual homes and buildings.

"The cost isn't in anything but that last little bit," Van Oppen said. "The reason it's so expensive isn't because you need to get fiber from one of the data centers, it's because you need to get fiber into the building."

It's nice to support the Gig U effort, which may have better luck advancing broadband nationally than the FCC's federal plan.

But Seattle needs to be sure that in its eagerness to join the movement it doesn't give up fiber-optic capacity that city agencies and schools may need in the future.

The city also needs to be sure the public gets a good return on its infrastructure investment -- and not just intangible benefits.

Still hanging out there is the question of whether we'll ever see a citywide, municipal broadband service. If that's at all possible, the city has to take care it's not giving up fiber capacity the whole city may need someday, just to enhance neighborhoods that are already doing well.

Bus riders in the greater Seattle area have a friend in Switzerland.

That would be Brian Ferris, the University of Washington computer-science student who graduated in the summer and now works for Google, in Zurich. (He's pictured below in his UW office in May.)

Ferris built and ran One Bus Away, a collection of phone apps that inform riders when buses are expected to arrive at their stop, using data shared by transit agencies.

His hobby morphed into a Ph.D. project and a job with Google's Zurich office, where the search giant does much of its mapping and navigation work.

That was great for Ferris and Google, but it left One Bus Away's users in limbo. They continue to use the service more than 50,000 times a week, accessing it via smartphones, browsers and a dial-in system at 206-456-0609.

Fortunately, the UW has continued to run the system -- on servers in the Computer Science & Engineering Department -- while the school and regional transit agencies hashed out a plan.

It could have gotten sticky earlier this month. King County Metro did a major restructuring of its network Oct. 1, changing dozens of routes, adding a new rapid line and rerouting others to deal with the Alaskan Way Viaduct project.

Those changes introduced glitches in One Bus Away that needed to be fixed, even though the agencies were still negotiating who would pick up the tab for the service.

So Ferris went ahead and updated the system himself -- just as he had for years at the UW -- except this time he did it from Zurich.

"He's not getting paid for it. He's just doing it because he believes in it," said Alan Borning, a UW computer-science professor who worked with Ferris on transit information research.

A slightly longer-term solution will be announced soon, perhaps in the next few days.

Metro, Sound Transit and Pierce Transit are working with the UW to fund One Bus Away for a year. Funding will enable the UW to hire someone to manage and update the service.

"We wanted to keep it going," said De Meyers, a Sound Transit information technology manager who is researching and developing rider-information systems.

It's unclear what will happen beyond the one-year contract, but Seattle-area agencies are apparently interested in a similar system being developed by a group in New York.

Called Open Trip Planner (OTP), it's an open-source project that started in 2009 and drew in part on the work that Ferris did at the UW.

The OTP software is freely shared, but several groups charge agencies to customize, host and support the system. OTP is being tested in Portland, where the TriMet transit agency helped develop the system.

In July, OTP held a user meeting in Portland attended by Meyers, another Sound Transit representative and a King County Metro manager, according to the group's attendance list.

An OTP presentation on its website also lists Sound Transit and King County as "prospective users" having "early conversations."

So is One Bus Away simply being extended until OTP is fully up and running?

"We don't know really right now," Meyers said, adding that "we're still in the assessment phase."

Meanwhile, Borning and his students may continue to use One Bus Away as a platform for research purposes.

One Bus Away users may also be asked to help out.

Borning envisions a sort of crowd-sourcing approach. People with knowledge of particular routes could become "transit ambassadors" and help run the system.

(That would be a cousin to a crowd-sourced voters guide -- at livingvotersguide.org -- that he and students are developing.)

Demand for One Bus Away continues, and it's likely to grow over the next few years as massive road projects strangle Seattle-area traffic and put more pressure on transit agencies.

The system is also uniquely accessible, enabling even basic phones to access the same information as fancy smartphones.

Crowd-sourcing may help keep the service going, Borning said.

"On the other hand," he added, "I don't have another Brian Ferris who can put in 10- or 20-hours a week."

More than 600 people are expected at the Social Innovation Fast Pitch event tonight at Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion, where 14 ventures are making pitches in the final round of the event.

The event's theme is "New Ideas for Social Impact," and presenting ventures include services for organic farmers, special-needs students, alternative energy and K-12 teachers.

Winning non-profits will share awards totaling $100,000. Awards of $75,000 are available for winning for-profit ventures. Judging is by a panel with members from 11 different business, education and philanthropic organizations.

Competitors include two team of high school students and two of college students.

They're all pursuing funding from Social Venture Partners Seattle, a local chapter of SVP. Backers of the event include Ashoka Seattle, Bezos Family Foundation, the Microsoft Alumni Foundation, Social Venture Partners and Bill and Paula Clapp.

"We have had overwhelming participation in this inaugural Fast Pitch event, with 120 applicants and dozens of the area's best civic affairs and business minds participating in the extensive mentoring and judging processes over many weeks," Will Poole, SVP lead partner and fast pitch organizer, said in the release.

For some participants, the exposure was as valuable as the cash awards would be, Poole said at the event.

The top non-profit winner was Viva Farms, which received a $30,000 grant, plus the audience-selected "Most Innovative" and "Best Fast Pitch" awards each worth $5,000.

Here's the full list of presenting companies and the prizes won, as described in SVP's release:

Biodiesel Cooperative: A student led, student run biodiesel conversion lab at the University of Washington, procuring used cooking oil on campus, converting it to industry-grade biodiesel and selling it back to the UW to power part of their on-campus diesel fleet. A non-profit, college team; it won $2,000.

Dynamic Labs: Dynamic Labs develops breakthough solutions to problems faced by children with special needs. It operates a self-sustaining social enterprise incubator to generate ideas for products and services that will help children reach their full potential. A nonprofit, it won the $20,000 Zino Society Award.

FindProz: An "eBay for education," FindProz is described as "the marketplace for private instruction." A for-profit venture, it won a $25,000 investment.

Flash Volunteer: Flash Volunteer provides tools to create, discover and easily share local service events via social media, mobile and our unique Cause Crowd feature. Nonprofit, won $10,000.

Food N' Me: Food N' Me is a nutrition system that changes eating behaviors in children and families. It claims to be "Fighting childhood obesity with pounds of fun!" A for-profit venture, it won a $50,000 investment.

BOSS: BOSS empowers project owners/managers and minority small businesses with the tools and information to create sustainable social change. A for-profit venture.

Jolkona: Jolkona helps non-profits improve fundraising efforts by providing a simple online microgiving and reporting platform to crowdsource funds online. Nonprofit, won $15,000.

MoneySense: Building an interactive website and offering training clinics around educating middle school and high school students about financial literacy and the dangers of financial mismanagement. A non-profit, high school team, it won $1,000.

Northwest Sustainable Energy for Economic Development: Solarize Seattle harnesses the collective impact of community to accelerate solar energy adoption via a group purchasing program. A nonprofit.

SIFF (Sharing Interests Forming Friendships): Breaks social barriers between special needs students and their peers at three public high schools in the Puget Sound and is expanding every year. A nonprofit, high school team, it won $2,000.

Reach Out: Brings an innovative approach to day camps, providing 1:1 counselor-to-camper, week-long camps designed to change the self-impression and life-trajectory of disabled, disadvantaged, and homeless youth. A nonprofit, college team, it won $5,000.

Village: A health and wellness model simultaneously stimulating healthy mothers, babies, families, providers, healthcare systems and the planet. A nonprofit, it won $5,000.

Viva Farms: Viva Farms is helping launch the next generation of organic farmers by providing land, capital, expertise and dedicated markets. A nonprofit, won $40,000 as mentioned above.

Youth Suicide Prevention Program: "K-12 Lessons for Life" is a new web tool that links educators to Best Practices curricula to support school-based suicide prevention and save lives. A nonprofit.

It's great news for Kindle owners that they can finally get library books on their devices.

I always thought this was one of the biggest shortcomings of Amazon.com's device. It also highlighted the fact that Kindles are designed as much for buying books as for reading them.

But, while good for Kindle users, it may not be such a great deal for everyone else using public libraries.

I'll bet that last week's announcement that libraries across the country are working with Amazon to offer e-books for borrowing will come to be seen as a turning point, when libraries accelerated their shift toward digital content bound in content-protection software.

The convenience of digital books is compelling, especially to public libraries struggling to manage costs, grow their collections and stay relevant.

At the same time, there are trade-offs that may be overlooked or downplayed as libraries rush to embrace new formats and satisfy the demands of gadget-toting patrons.

For starters, this transformation may erode the democratic nature of libraries.

To meet growing demand from owners of Kindles and other reading gadgets, libraries are shifting more of their budgets from physical books anyone can read to digital copies that require a computer or e-book to consume.

The King County Library System is working on its 2012 budget and expects to dramatically increase its spending on digital copies after digital circulation increased by 150 percent over the past year, according to Director Bill Ptacek.

It now spends about $800,000 of its $14 million material budget on digital and audio books.

"It's a delicate balance," Ptacek said. "We want to have a big enough collection and offering that people who do have the devices will come to the library. On the other hand, we don't want to go so far overboard."

This balancing act is tricky in part because Amazon -- the leading e-book company -- doesn't disclose how many Kindles it has sold. Libraries are constantly asked for Kindle material, but nobody knows the size of this audience.

Ptacek estimates 10 to 20 percent of its 900,000 cardholders have e-reader devices.

Seattle's library system has seen digital circulation double every year since it began working in 2005 with OverDrive, a Cleveland company that runs the digital lending websites of most U.S. libraries.

Last week, OverDrive added Kindle to the list of devices supported by its service.

Libraries don't have to buy special Kindle editions of digital books. They just buy a digital copy from OverDrive, which serves the copy in whatever format the patron chooses at checkout.

Amazon's arrangement also adds a new layer of commercialism into the public service that libraries provide.

Unlike digital books offered in other formats through library websites, Kindle versions require you to complete the checkout process at Amazon's website. The process ends with a pitch from Amazon to buy more books, and the system feeds Amazon's database of customer interests.

It's still early days for digital books. The next step will be applications that let library patrons borrow digital books directly from their e-reader, Web tablet or smartphone. This will appear on a Sony reader coming in October, and could be on the new color tablets that Amazon's expected to unveil Wednesday.

"There is a road map where we're going to be able to do more of the experience within the app," said David Burleigh, OverDrive director marketing.

At the Seattle library, digital consumption reached a "critical mass" in 2010 with the proliferation of e-readers, smartphones and tablets, said Kirk Blankenship, electronic-resources librarian.

Blankenship expects circulation of downloadable books to triple this year from 100,000 to 300,000 checkouts. Overall circulation has been steady at about 11 million.

That doesn't necessarily mean there's been a major shift in reading habits. Budget cuts forced Seattle to dramatically cut library hours, reducing access to printed books and skewing circulation patterns.

Blankenship and Ptacek both see digital copies as additions to the printed collection, rather than as a replacement. But they are having to make decisions about where to spend their limited budgets.

What will the mix looks like two or three years from now? "We'll have a much more robust e-book environment and alongside that we'll have the print collection we'll be doing just as well," Blankenship said. "When you get a little beyond that ... that's much more of a gray area."

In the meantime, I'd argue that libraries should be pushing for ways to share the gains that e-book companies are seeing.

For instance, Amazon pays commissions to websites that refer shoppers to its online store. Why doesn't this "affiliate" program extend to the 11,000 public and school libraries now channeling book lovers to Amazon.com.

The elephant in the room, though, is the tax question.

Amazon is not only the leading e-book company, it's also become the nation's most notorious evader of local sales-tax collections.

While it's fighting to avoid local taxes across the country, tax-funded libraries are going to extraordinary lengths and paying a premium for content to satisfy Amazon customers.

These public institutions are making the Kindle more appealing, and helping to usher in a transformation in which Amazon may be the largest beneficiary.

Maybe it's time to pay the fees.

Seattle-area libraries on Tuesday began testing the long-awaited Kindle feature that lets patrons transfer borrowed library books to the electronic device.

This morning (Wednesday), Amazon.com announced that the program is now available across the country, at more than 11,000 libraries.

Amazon agreed in April to work with OverDrive, a Cleveland company that provides electronic book lending services for numerous libraries, but the companies didn't provide many details of what to expect. Amazon's website had promised the service was coming to 11,000 libraries.

The beta test version of the service offered by the Seattle Public Library and King County Library System lets people select and place holds on Kindle versions of books.

Libraries have offered digital downloads of books and other materials to various devices for years, but the Kindle has been notably absent from the options.

"It's a big deal for us because so many of our patrons have purchased Kindles, and they've been asking for the longest time," said Bill Ptacek, director of the King County Library System, which began offering the service Monday.

Ptacek said digital book lending has grown about 150 percent over the past year. Kindle lending is one of several digital lending services it offers, and additional partnerships are in the works.

But Ptacek is expecting Kindle usage in particular to proliferate after the company launches an expected color tablet version this fall. Checking out library books will apparently be relatively easy for buyers of those devices.

"We understand that the new Kindle that's coming out ... will make it possible for those folks to think of their library as their content provider in this arena, which is great," Ptacek said.

He said the county and Seattle library systems so far are the only ones testing the system, "which is an indication of where we are in regard to having Amazon in our community."

On Tuesday, Amazon's Kindle spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment, and a Seattle library spokeswoman referred questions to OverDrive. They were apparently waiting for Amazon to issue its press release today.

"Libraries are a critical part of our communities and we're excited to be making Kindle books available at more than 11,000 local libraries around the country," Jay Marine, Kindle director, said in the release. "We're even doing a little extra here - normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no. But we're fixing this by extending our Whispersync technology to library books, so your notes, highlights and bookmarks are always backed up and available the next time you check out the book or if you decide to buy the book."

"We're thrilled that Amazon is offering such a new approach to library ebooks that enhances the reader experience," Seattle's city librarian, Marcellus Turner, said in Amazon's release.

While the service is a convenience and added benefit for owners of Kindles, users will sacrifice the privacy and direct service offered by their libraries.

To check out a Kindle book using the new service, you select the book from the library's website, then log in to an Amazon.com account. There you can "redeem" your loan, at which point the book is transferred into your Kindle library for the duration of the loan.

Amazon said the service lets people read books in their Kindle software which is available for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and Windows Phone and through web browsers.

Amazon will email a message to you three days before the loan expires.

The arrangement doesn't mean there is an unlimited supply of digital copies of books available now. Libraries have a limited number of Kindle "copies" to lend, and popular books at Seattle's library are already checked.

"The Help," for instance, has 147 people on the waiting list for 91 Kindle copies.

Seattle's online catalog lists about 25,000 Kindle books, compared with 644,325 results for "book" presented by its online catalog. The county library lists 11,815 titles.

Libraries have made digital books available to other e-reader devices for some time, including Barnes & Noble's Nook and the Sony Reader, but the download procedures are more complicated than buying books from their built-in wireless stores.

Marsha Iverson, spokeswoman for the county library, noted that library patrons don't need a Kindle or Nook from Barnes & Noble to download electronic versions of their library books. Patrons can download the Kindle and Nook reading applications to a computer, smartphone or other device and use the digital lending services.

Libraries also offer electronic versions of books and periodicals without routing their lending through online retail systems. Seattle, for instance, lends books directly in OverDrive and Adobe formats. They can be read on a PC or device running free applications available here from the library's site.

The debut of Amazon's library program was first reported earlier today by AOL's TechCrunch site, which noted discussion of the service at Amazon forums, where there were complaints that the service requires Amazon's proprietary AZW format instead of Adobe's ePub format.

In a quick test of the service offered by the Seattle Public Library, I had to futz a bit to get a library book on to a Kindle DX.

You can't use the 3G wireless service to load library books, so you have to connect via Wi-Fi or a USB cable to a PC. The book I checked out was available on the device for 21 days, and I can check out a maximum of 25 books on my account.

The downside, from my perspective as a fan of public libraries, is that the process requires you to visit Amazon.com to borrow a book and have commercial offers interjected into the process. But then again, you're opting to consume a public library book via the world's largest e-commerce business, on a device optimized for selling books.

I hope libraries are getting a deal on the service and the Kindle editions they acquire, because Amazon will benefit from the traffic and profiling opportunities generated by the public libraries, not to mention the big improvement in the Kindle's utility and appeal that library lending brings.

At the last page of the checkout process, the bottom half of your PC screen is filled with pitches to buy various books related to the one you're checking out and others based on your history with the company.

Here's a walk-through of the process to check out a library book and get it onto a Kindle device.

Here's the complaint the U.S. Department of Justice filed to block AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile USA. The link below is to a PDF version and a scrollable version is embedded below.

ATT-TMO DOJ.pdf

A few excerpts:

Seattle would be particularly affected by the market concentration:

AT&T has been feeling heat from T-Mobile's innovation:

T-Mobile has pressured other carriers to invest and improve:

The DOJ's summary:

Here's a version of the filing that's easier to scroll through:

The Supreme Court's ruling that violent video games can be sold to children puts the onus on parents to protect their kids from offensive games.

Citing First Amendment protections, the court rejected California's efforts to restrict sales of violent games to children under 18.

The government shouldn't be trying to decide what's acceptable content, and politicized censorship is more offensive than any video game. But the ruling is a little troublesome because it's not a pure First Amendment question and gets into what material should be accessible to kids.

The court basically told California it can't make it illegal for retailers to sell kids violent games, even games that carry a "Mature" rating that's equivalent to an R or MA rating on movies. Instead, it pointed toward the industry's voluntary rating system, which encourages retailers to refrain from selling mature games to minors. The problem is the state being the one to define what's acceptable.

"This system does much to ensure that minors cannot purchase seriously violent games on their own, and that parents who care about the matter can readily evaluate the games their children bring home," the ruling said. "Filling the remaining modest gap in concerned-parents' control can hardly be a compelling state interest."

Lots of parents don't care what games their kids play, judging from my conversations with pre-teen kids.

Maybe parents don't think the games are a big deal, or they don't have the time to manage their family game systems.

Perhaps those who are really worried about violent games don't understand that all current consoles have built-in parental control systems.

This technology has been sitting there all along, enabling families to do what states cannot, under the Supreme Court ruling -- block children's access to violent games.

In other words, kids can buy all the violent game software they want, but they won't be able to play them at home if parents take charge of the hardware on which the games are played.

"I don't have time to deal with that" is a weak excuse. Video games increase the amount of time parents have available, because they glue kids to the TV set for an extended period of time.

It takes just a few minutes to set parental controls on a console. Once they're set, the console is locked down until parents decide to change the settings.

It's not complicated -- it's far easier than tweaking a Facebook account, and takes about the same amount of time as paying a bill online.

All three current consoles -- Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii -- enable parents to create a password and decide whether to block kids from playing violent or racy games.

The consoles use the game industry's standard rating system -- "E" games are for everyone, "T" games are rated for teens and "M" games are for mature players 17 or older. The boxes usually specify why the rating is given, noting whether the game has violence or nudity, for instance, and ratings are encoded on the discs.

Here's a quick overview of how to set up parental controls. For more information, each of the console makers has detailed instructions online that I've linked to below.

On the Xbox 360, go to "My Xbox" and select "Family Center" or "Family Settings." Click on "Console Safety" and click "On." The First Amendment right to violent video games is now void in your rec room.

You can click "ratings and content" to adjust the settings further.

On Sony's PS3, go to "Settings" on the main menu and "Security Settings." Select "Change Password" and create a password -- the system comes set with "0000" as the password. The system lets you choose which rating level is allowed, without having to enter the password. The same password system can also be used to block playback of video discs with mature ratings.

On Nintendo's Wii, go to Wii System Settings. Click the blue arrow to access additional menu options. Choose "Parental Controls" and select "Yes." The system uses a four-digit PIN number to access these controls. It lets parents choose the "Highest Game Rating Allowed" on the console.

The Wii parental controls (picture below) can also be used to restrict use of the Opera browser, if it's been downloaded to the console, and use of its online communication and shopping capabilities.

There are also parental controls that limit what games can be played on the PC, including Microsoft's free Live Family Safety service.

A footnote: These programs are easy and powerful, but they won't guarantee that kids won't see violent video games.

There always seems to be a friend down the street with parents who let them play whatever they want, or with an older sibling who lets them play M-rated games.

Fortunately, most kids turn out fine no matter which games they play. If they go astray, it's unlikely that bloody video games will be the culprit.

Brian Ferris, the creator of the OneBusAway bus arrival application, has a summer job after he finishes his PhD work at the University of Washington.

Ferris will spend a month or two coding for King County, helping it complete and test software for Metro's new bus radio and GPS system. He's already been developing the software that transmits bus location information in a standard format used by transit apps and services, and the temporary job will enable him to finish the project and test it within Metro's firewall.

At the same time, the county and other regional transit agencies have met and begun talking to the UW about ways to continue operating the collection of OneBusAway apps and web services.

I reported in May that Google hired Ferris to join a team in Zurich that works on transit and direction services and the UW and the county were hoping to find a way to continue his project.

In a blog post today, Ferris reiterated his hiring and disclosed that he's starting a temporary job at King County next Thursday.

Separately, transit officials are talking to the UW about ways they can keep the OneBusAway apps and services operating after Ferris leaves. They run on servers in the computer science school, where students and faculty have been working on related projects for decades, and are used for research in different departments at the university.

"We're all interested, we know OneBusAway is a great application, we'd like to see it survive," said Wayne Watanabe, IT service delivery manager for the transportation department.

Watanabe said his agency has been talking to Ferris for years about sustaining his work after he graduates.

Specifically, Ferris will be working on a SIRI repeater. SIRI stands for service interface for real time information, which is an "XML protocol to allow distributed computers to exchange real-time information about public transport services and vehicles," according to a description of the standard hosted at kizoom.com.

Metro's SIRI repeater should be complete this summer but the new radios and GPS systems it draws upon aren't on many buses yet. So far they're on the "rapid ride" fleet and being steadily added to other buses. They should be used throughout the fleet by the end of 2012, Watanabe said.

King County plans to freely share the location information for developers to build applications. If necessary, it will build a location tool for the public itself, Watanabe said.

"We feel that there are certain basic services that the public should have," he said. "Having a good real-time application is one of those, just like timetables."

One of Seattle's least-known secrets is a magical app for your phone.

It can make you more efficient, reduce stress, give you more time, save you money and help the environment.

Best of all, it's free.

You don't even need an expensive smartphone or one of those wireless plans that cost as much as a car payment.

I'm talking about OneBusAway, an app that tells people when their bus is arriving. It started in 2006 as the side project of a University of Washington student and grew into a transit app platform used by software developers, researchers, transit agencies and 50,000 commuters a week.

Brian Ferris, a computer-science graduate student from the Tri-Cities, began hacking it together in 2006 after getting frustrated by the spotty arrival times of the Metro Route 44 bus he'd take sometimes when he missed the 46 commuter route from Ballard to the UW.

This was before the iPhone and the frenzy around mobile apps. Ferris thought you should be able to use a phone any time to find out when the next bus arrives.

With a collection of free software and services, he built a system that lets people with any kind of phone dial 206-456-0609, enter a stop number and get the estimated arrival time.

Ferris kept at it, often writing code on buses. He built fancier versions that blend with Google Maps and run on the iPhone, and collaborators built apps for Android devices and Windows phones.

All the versions and free tools for app developers are available via onebusaway.org.

At the end of 2008, Ferris persuaded academic advisers to let him make this his full-time project, instead of a Wi-Fi location technology he had been pursuing.

Among the research published since was a 2010 paper by Ferris, civil-engineering student Kari Edison Watkins and Professor Alan Borning that found using OneBusAway made riders feel safer and less stressed. They spend less time waiting, ride more frequently and are more satisfied with transit in general.

Ferris, 30, said they also observed that people's sense of time changes when uncertainty about their bus is removed. A 5-minute wait can seem like 10 if you don't know for sure when the bus is coming. If you know it's coming in 10 minutes, the time can seem like it's going by faster, he said.

Knowing when the bus is coming also can make people more productive, because they can do something instead of just waiting. Ferris has favorite places he visits -- coffee shops and bookstores -- when the system tells him he has extra wait time.

OneBusAway gets about 27,000 unique visitors a week who are using iPhones, 18,000 from Android devices and 18,000 from the Web.

Only about 2,000 weekly visits come from the dial-in service, which is surprising since most people don't own a smartphone. About 31 percent of the population had smartphones as of December, according to Nielsen research.

Ferris said people with basic phones probably aren't aware of the service.

The trickiest part of the dial-in system is finding the number of a bus stop.

It's a five-digit number printed at the top of posted schedules or painted on covered stops. But schedules sometimes are missing or the number is obscured.

Ferris has tried to persuade King County to change the way the number is displayed. He rode his bike to 800 stops in the south end of Seattle last summer, discreetly applying vinyl stickers displaying each stop number.

You also can enter your location or a route number by punching through the phone menu. The system remembers your number and can bookmark regular stops.

Arrival information isn't exact. Accuracy depends on information provided by the bus system.

OneBusAway works with Metro Transit, Pierce Transit, Sound Transit and Community Transit.

King County uses an older system that calculates arrival times as buses pass certain points along their route. This information is sent over bus radios to Metro.

Several earlier UW projects exposed this location information over phones and the Web, and Ferris built on top of their work.

Metro is upgrading bus radios and adding new location-tracking technology, including GPS. It intends to give developers like Ferris access to data from the new system after it's fully installed in 2012.

Transportation apps are hot nowadays.

Search giants, app developers and transit agencies are working on new tools for mapping and tracking different means of transport, drawing on government's newfound enthusiasm for sharing streams of data such as bus locations.

Metro holds workshops for app developers, about 100 of whom have asked for access to its data.

It's all part of an explosion of creativity ignited by mobile devices and fast wireless networks.

But what's refreshing about OneBusAway is that it's a pure service, created simply to make life better for commuters of all stripes. It's not trying to sell you anything, ping your friends, track your whereabouts, deduce your buying patterns or point you toward a nearby store.

It just tells you when the next bus is coming, so you don't have to stare down the road, wondering and hoping.

Bus ridership is growing. Metro provided an average 375,000 rider trips per weekday last month, up 3.5 percent from a year ago.

Meanwhile, Seattle's outrageous combination of tunnel, bridge and viaduct projects, road diets and other construction is making bus schedules elastic and tracking systems more important than ever.

The timing couldn't be worse, but now the future of OneBusAway is in limbo.

Ferris will finish his Ph.D. next month then work for Google at its Zurich, Switzerland, office, with a team that works on transit and direction services.

Local supporters are looking for ways to keep the project going. King County is talking to companies about contracts to support and extend the project.

At the UW, Borning hopes to raise enough money from transit agencies and others to hire a part-time developer to maintain the system.

"An extremely high priority is to make sure it keeps running -- we need to figure it out," Borning said.

In a way, the project will continue in Zurich, where Ferris hopes to keep working on it while building more tools to help people find and use all kinds of transportation.

"My goal," he said, "is to go to Google and do this worldwide."

It may be time for Jeff Bezos to wander down the beach in Medina and ask his neighbor Bill Gates for some advice on damage control.

Perhaps Gates could tell him over a soda or two, as they watch the sun set over Seattle, that it's not worth being pushy or stubborn when you're on the hot seat and the nation's watching.

Amazon.com is facing a huge government battle that could approach the scale and long-lasting effect of Microsoft's epic antitrust challenge.

This fight is over whether Amazon -- the largest online retailer, by far -- should collect the same sales taxes as local retailers. Right now, it collects taxes in only five states, including Washington.

States have grumbled for years about people bypassing sales taxes by shopping at Amazon and other online stores. They're losing up to $12.6 billion a year this way, according to a University of Tennessee study.

Now the states are at a breaking point, struggling with huge deficits and declining revenues. On top of that, people are doing more shopping online, reducing local business activity and sales-tax receipts.

For their part, online stores claim they're exempt from collecting taxes in states where they have no physical presence. They're relying on a 1992 Supreme Court ruling, which favored a mail-order company that didn't want to collect sales taxes in North Dakota. That case built on a 1967 ruling in favor of another mail-order business.

Justices acknowledged the "physical presence" rule gave mail-order companies an advantage, but said it was important to clarify when and where states could collect taxes.

"Indeed, it is not unlikely that the mail-order industry's dramatic growth over the last quarter century is due in part to the bright line exemption from state taxation" created in the 1967 case, they wrote.

Since the nation began, there have been concerns about conflicting state tax laws interfering with interstate commerce. Clarity in this area helped keep the states united and prosperous.

But perhaps it's time for a more contemporary interpretation that takes into account the scale, effect and presence of online retail.

It seems reasonable to think of Amazon as establishing a storefront locally on your computer, where it uses the local infrastructure to conduct transactions and local roads to deliver merchandise.

It's silly nowadays to argue it's a burden for online companies to figure out the different tax rates.

It's a snap for Amazon to figure out how much tax each customer owes, based on their billing address. The company already calculates this in some states and on behalf of merchants that use its retail platform.

If Amazon can't figure this out, a Bainbridge Island company called Avalara offers software that does sales-tax calculations instantly for all sorts of companies.

The dissenting justices in the 1967 case said it best. Writing long before the PC arrived, they said fretting about the tax complexity facing interstate businesses "vastly underestimates the skill of contemporary man and his machines."

A coalition of 24 states, including Washington, is trying to take complexity out of the equation by streamlining and aligning their sales taxes. There's been talk in this group of pursuing a lawsuit to overturn the 1992 ruling, said Dan Schibley, a state-tax analyst at CCH, a publisher of tax research.

Some in Congress repeatedly have tried to introduce a federal rule setting a standard for collecting online-sales taxes. The latest was proposed last month by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., but he's yet to formally introduce his Main Street Fairness Act. His office said Friday the bill should be filed in a few days.

Amazon executives have said the company favors a nationwide approach. On Friday, spokeswoman Mary Osako reiterated this position with a statement: "We've long supported a truly simple, nationwide sales tax system, evenhandedly applied."

But this is kind of like saying you favor a blue moon. Amazon knows bills like Durbin's have a slim chance. Similar bills failed in the past five or six sessions of Congress, Schibley said.

"In Congress, the problem is that it's perceived as a tax increase, even though it's technically collecting a tax that's already owed," he said.

Amazon isn't acting like a company that's ready for progress on the tax front. It's fighting like a wolverine in states that have found ways to collect some taxes.

Six have passed laws to collect from local Amazon affiliates -- websites that get a commission for Amazon sales made through their sites. Amazon responded by cutting the affiliate program in Illinois and suing to block the legislation in New York.

At a conference last week, Bezos said the company will continue cutting affiliate programs in states where such laws are passed.

Amazon also is trying to get around the physical-presence rule in other states. In South Carolina, where Amazon was locating a distribution center, it demanded a special exemption from sales taxes. The company was given free land there for a center that would employ 1,249, but it abandoned the partly built facility after lawmakers voted against the tax exemption last month.

Earlier this year, Amazon decided to close a distribution center in Texas and drop plans for additional facilities there after the state tried to collect $269 million in unpaid sales taxes.

This seems like a million miles away from Washington state, where Amazon always has collected sales tax because it's based here. Washington is grateful for Amazon's presence and all the smart people it's bringing here.

Amazon is thriving in this climate, but I shudder to think what might happen if our state ever crosses its path.

If the FCC gives much weight to public comments, AT&T is going to have a tough time getting approval for its $39 billion acquisition of Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA.

Poking around the 4,227 public comments submitted so far, it was hard to find people supportive of the deal.

The opponents aren't all T-Mobile employees. Only 190 of the comments as of Wednesday afternoon were submitted by people in Washington state, which has a huge concentration of wireless industry employees.

Texas -- home of Dallas-based AT&T -- generated 352 comments, but that includes filings by AT&T.

Comments can be submitted through a form on the FCC's website, at FCC.gov/ecfs. You'll need to enter the proceeding number, which is 11-65.

Here's a sample of comments by Washingtonians.

"As a T-Mobile customer of approximately eight years, I am vehemently opposed to the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom," wrote Aaron Burke of Everett. "If the deal is approved, it will sponsor massive anti-competitive behaviors, increased prices, and lower quality of service."

Trent Gillespie of Seattle identifies himself as the chief information officer of a midsize company who has worked with different phone companies.

"In my experience, AT&T has the worst customer service of any of the wireless providers I have worked with. I believe they also use their predominant position in the market place to keep rates artificially high (especially texting and data rates), limit devices that come to market, and essentially act as an obstacle to competitiveness that would be had in a more competitive environment. On the other hand, T-Mobile is the largest U.S. cellular provider who is pursuing new ways of conducting business, a focus on customer service, and quickly bringing new technologies and devices to the market."

Seattle's Deepak Sukumaran cited the Clayton Antitrust Act and wrote: "In any other environment and time, this type of acquisition would not even be attempted because it is
clearly illegal and violates antitrust law. It is my opinion that given no effective regulations, these companies have and will keep consolidating and strive to re-form Ma Bell, and in so doing overturn over 100 years of progressive antitrust, anti-competitive legislation and the progress we have made."

Triet Nguyen in Bellevue was a T-Mobile customer "until I got jealous of my iPhone friends telling me how great the iPhone is. I switched to AT&T and it was the worst mistake of my life. I regret and am counting down the days when I can switch back. AT&T has horrible phone service. I have dropped calls DAILY. I hate it when I'm talking and then find out my phone is ringing me from the person I was talking to. Their data coverage has a lot of dead spots. I never had these issues with T-Mobile. I think the merger will degrade phone service and worse, get rid of competition."

But T-Mobile's not perfect.

Separately, I received a copy this week of an internal memo sent to employees, after the company miscalculated severance benefits and significantly overestimated what some will receive. The memo was an apology from Larry Myers, chief people officer at T-Mobile, who said the severance estimates are being corrected.

It sounds like an awkward accounting error that's being fixed. What's surprising is how far along the discussion of severance has come, since the merger still needs regulatory approval and isn't expected to close until early 2012.

A T-Mobile spokeswoman wouldn't say much about the memo but provided a statement confirming that a mistake had been made.

"T-Mobile USA has a long history of open communication with our employees, which is why when we discovered a data error, we promptly advised our employees of the situation and provided them with updated information."

Bill Gates shared a few thoughts on Microsoft's deal with Yahoo during a Fox Business Network interview keyed to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting.

Gates was interviewed by Liz Claman along with Buffett and Susan Decker, former Yahoo president.

Gates and Decker both said the Yahoo merger was sensible, although other Microsoft shareholders were relieved that Yahoo rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion offer before the economy dove in 2008.

Here are a few excerpts provided by the network.

Decker on whether Yahoo should have teamed up with Microsoft:

"Yes absolutely. I think it was a mistake that the merger was not effected for Yahoo shareholders."

Gates on the strategic partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft:

"The companies are doing a lot together. Google is a tough competitor, so combining some of the strengths of Yahoo and Microsoft clearly made sense; whether that was done through a merger or a key business deal where it ended up that gives that partnership a chance of competing with Google and making sure they don't get too lazy."

Gates on whether he advises Buffett to buy technology companies:

"I think he is very wise in sticking to businesses that have a more predictable future."

Gates, Buffeet and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger all said the rich should pay more taxes -- and the Bush tax cuts shouldn't have been extended -- to help lower the deficit. The exchange:

Munger: "No. I would argue that we could stand a little higher taxes on people like me."

Buffett: "And me."

Munger: "And you, too."

Claman: "Bill?"

Gates: "Absolutely."

Claman: "Bill's a little quiet there."

Gates: "I'll pay if you pay."

(LAUGHTER)

Gates: "No, I pay more taxes than anyone so I'm -- and I'm glad to pay more."

Washington regulators unanimously approved the merger of Qwest and CenturyLink, despite a number of public comments opposing the deal.

The approval by the state Utlilities and Transportation Commission finalizes an agreement negotiated in December, under which CenturyLink will cap residential phone rates for three years and spend at least $80 million expanding broadband service.

The companies have 15 days to object to the conditions imposed by the UTC.

Merger costs cannot be passed on to ratepayers, savings must be reported to the UTC and CenturyLInk must reduce fees charged to other carriers, which could lead to lower long-distance rates for in-state calls.

Before voting on the agreement, the UTC received 95 public comments -- seven in favor, 51 opposed and 37 undecided or neutral, according to a UTC release.

Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink will serve about 1.5 million lines in Washington after the merger closes, including 1.3 million lines now served by Qwest.

The $10.6 billion merger was announced last April. It's been approved by 20 states and the Department of Justice. Oregon regulators and the Federal Communications Commission are still reviewing the deal, which is expected to close April 1.

If you think the taxes on your wireless phone bills are outrageous, you're right.

A new report, called out by the Washington Policy Center, says the state has the second-highest wireless taxes in the country.

The report was produced by KSE Partners, a Vermont group backed by wireless companies pushing to reduce taxes on their services.

It found the combined federal, state and local tax rate on wireless services in the state is 23.53 percent. Nationally, the average rate is 16.26 percent. In Oregon the rate is 6.86 percent, and in Idaho it's 7.25 percent.

The number includes fees such as the Enhanced 911 fee approved last year, which adds 95 cents per line, and extra wireless taxes imposed by cities. Cities can impose telecommunication taxes up to 6 percent or more with voter approval; the report notes that Olympia's wireless tax is 9 percent.

Washington trails Nebraska's combined wireless taxes and fees of 23.69 percent and beats the 22.83 percent paid in New York.

"This puts Washington wireless customers paying a tax that is approaching the level of "sin" taxes; the state of Washington's tax on cigarettes is approximately 50 percent on a per-carton basis, and approximately 40 percent for alcohol," the group's small business and technology director, Carl Gipson, said in a release.

President Obama may be Googling for Gary Locke's replacement as secretary of commerce.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt (left) is a possible candidate for the job, according to a Bloomberg report.

Schmidt - and Google - have been close to Obama. Maybe too close, like when the White House hired Google's top lobbyist to guide technology policy, and he kept schmoozing with Mountain View.

This is inside baseball, but it would be a little ironic if Locke - a friend of Bill Gates - is replaced by Microsoft's arch-nemesis.

I wonder how Schmidt being part of Obama's cabinet would affect growing concerns among federal regulators about some of Google's business practices?

Other possible Locke replacements named in the story are former Pfizer Chief Executive Jeffrey Kindler and Ron Kirk, U.S. trade representative.

In case you haven't seen it, here's the official White House picture of President Obama's dinner with Silicon Valley's most prominent tech leaders in Woodside, Calif., last night.

Steve Jobs was on Obama's left, Mark Zuckerberg was on his right and Larry Ellison was facing him across the table. Apparently it wasn't a necktie sort of event.

Microsoft wasn't represented, unless you count board member Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, and partner Carol Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo.

Can you pick out the billionaires?

Other guests were Cisco's John Chambers, Twitter's Dick Costolo, Google's Eric Schmidt, Genentech's Art Levinson, Kleiner Perkins' John Doerr, Stanford President John Hennessy and Steve Westly of Westly Group. It took place at Doerr's house, according to the Mercury News.

(Today's column ...)

With all the lingering angst over bailouts for banks and carmakers, you'd think we'd be taking a closer look at stimulus funds for high-tech companies.

Especially since government isn't recovering from the downturn as quickly as industry, especially in Washington state.

Tech companies have turned the corner. They're growing, hiring and reporting record profits.

It seems like a good time to ease up on their tax breaks and shift some of that money to education and science that fuel the industry's future growth.

But just the opposite is happening.

State residents are apparently nonplussed about how the Qwest-CenturyLink merger is going down.

Of the 73 public comments submitted so far to the state Utilities and Transportation Commission, 34 are opposed, 33 undecided and six are in favor of the deal.

Last week, the companies, the UTC staff and the state Attorney General's Office reached an agreement on conditions needed for the deal to receive state approval. Among other things, the deal caps residential phone rates for three years after the deal closes and requires CenturyLink to spend at least $80 million upgrading broadband infrastructure in Washington. (Here's an earlier post
with more details of the agreement.)
That agreement must now receive final approval from the commission, which is holding its first hearing on the topic at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 5 at its headquarters at 1300 S. Evergreen Park Drive S.W. in Olympia.

Here is a Web page for electronically filing public comments and a link to the proposed agreement with the phone companies. The settlement agreement and related documents are available here.

State regulators have reached a deal giving CenturyLink approval to take over Qwest operations in the state.

As part of its tentative agreement with the state Attorney General and Utilities and Transportation Commission, CenturyLink pledged to freeze basic phone rates for three years.

The Louisiana-based company will also invest a minimum of $80 million upgrading broadband infrastructure in the state over the next five years.

That includes a "significant" amount dedicated to improving broadband in underserved areas, the company said in a press release. This comes just after the state issued its broadband report raising concerns about limited broadband availability in rural areas.

CenturyLink announced in April that it planned to acquire Qwest in a $10.6 billion stock swap. Including Qwest's debt, it was a $22 billion deal. The combined company will serve 17 million phone lines in 37 states.

The Washington agreement must be finalized by the UTC, which will hold hearings on the settlement Jan. 5-7. Elements of the agreement were first proposed by UTC staff in September.

Highlights of the settlement, as listed by the AG's office:

- Basic residential telephone rates are frozen for at least three years for all customers, as are basic business rates for CenturyLink business customers.
- Qwest basic business rates, currently "price deregulated," are limited to a $1 increase (up to a $30 per month maximum) for the next three years.
- Qwest and CenturyLink can't collect any of the costs of the merger from their customers in rates, including any transaction, branding, integration, or increased management costs. These costs will be paid by shareholders. The companies have agreed not to request in the future a higher rate of return than would have applied without the merger.
- The merged company will continue to offer a "DSL only" plan.
- The merged company will continue to honor terms of service for plans purchased before the merger; for example, "price for life" contracts.
- CenturyLink agreed to mirror Qwest by adopting a $25 credit for a missed appointment and a $5 credit for service failures. (UTC staff had suggested raising this to $35) C- enturyLink and Qwest agree to extensive reporting requirements to allow the UTC to track the impact and implementation of the merger. They will provide information on financial conditions, service quality, broadband deployment, capital expenditures and integration of the companies.
- The companies commit to better promoting Lifeline, a program that offers reduced phone bills for low-income customers, and to improve how they handle complaints from Lifeline customers.

UPDATE: To comment to the UTC on the proposed settlement, you can attend a hearing at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 5 in the commission's hearing room in the Richard Hemstad Building at 1300 South Evergreen Park Drive in Olympia.

Comments may also be mailed through Jan. 7 to UTC, P.O. Box 47250, Olympia, Wash., 98504, or via e-mail to comments@utc.wa.gov. Mailed comments should include your name and mailing address and mention "docket no. UT-100820."

A few questions have come up about the chart showing broadband costs in Washington that was included in the broadband report released yesterday.

The chart was based on data from Ookla's Net Index service, which compiles connection speed data from Ookla's Speedtest.net and pricing and quality information provided by Speedtest users.

The numbers shown are the median monthly cost per megabit per second, for downloads.

It's a little confusing because the state's chart - which we ran in the paper - doesn't specify that it's a monthly cost.

The state report also mixed up the Net Index data a bit, presenting the numbers as the "relative cost of broadband," which is a different category of data. The "relative cost of broadband" is the mean broadband subscription cost divided by the gross domestic product per capita.

Further confusing things are the averages. The chart makes it look like you can get 1 Mbps broadband for $3 or $4 per month. That's not the case. Most people pay for many more megabits per second, with monthly plans generally around $48 per month in cities, according to Net Index results.

Here are latest cost per megabit per second per month results from Net Index - based on surveys between June 8 and Dec. 28:

For comparison, here is the latest "relative cost of broadband" data from Net Index, showing the mean broadband subscription cost divided by GDP per capita. Of all these numbers, I think the mean broadband subscription cost is the most interesting since it shows what households on average are actually forking over for broadband.

This data is unfortunately based on pretty small surveys. The cost per megabit in Bellevue is based on just 250 surveys voluntarily completed by Speedtest users over the last six months. In Bellingham, the data is based on just 174 responses out of 21,899 IP addresses that used Ookla services.

The bigger question about the chart may be whether the state broadband office can use its $7.2 million to come up with better data on how much residents are paying for their Internet service.

Net Index is offering a nice public service but it's most useful for gauging available speeds. These cost surveys are not complete or rigorous enough to be used as the basis for public policy decisions.

Washington residents generally have good access to fast broadband services - as long as they're not living in rural areas.

That's the gist of the first comprehensive report from the Washington State Broadband Office. A federal program to assess and improve the nation's broadband funded the office, which is part of the state Department of Information Services.

Broadband speed isn't an issue, generally, in Washington. The state's average download speed is 6 megabits per second, versus the national average of 3.9 Mbps.

Access isn't a huge problem to most residents. The state "ranks about average" for service with downloads up to 10 Mbps.

Fast broadband is available to nearly 90 percent of the state's households. In highly populated areas, affordable broadband at all commercially available speeds is available. Businesses and major institutions generally have access to ultrafast speeds, up to 10 gigabits per second, the report said.

The cost of service also tends to be lower than the national average of $8 per megabit per second (which in turn is much higher than in Korea, England and Japan, which pay around $2 per meg). A chart included in the report (UPDATE: I've further explained the chart in this entry on broadband costs):

As in the rest of the country, rural areas are the least served. About 1.8 percent of households in the state can't get service faster than 3 to 6 Mbps. The report estimates that 8.3 percent of the state's households can't get access at the state's average speed of 6 Mbps.

Despite the relatively fast broadband available to most residents, the report has an urgent tone and recommends the state do more to propagate broadband and assist telecommunications companies.

It suggests speeding permits for broadband projects, making public property available, deploying more fiber-optic cables during road projects and offering up underutilized portions of government fiber networks.

The report recommends putting more state services online. It also says the broadband office is working on a public-private partnership that will launch a campaign "to educate the public about the benefits of broadband."

As directed by the Legislature, the broadband office is forming a "broadband advisory council" that will create another report on ways to leverage broadband to boost businesses, government services and economic development.

The state office was funded with $7.2 million in grants from the American Reinvestment
and Recovery Act Broadband Stimulus Funds. It's part of a national effort that began in 2008 to assess and map broadband service.

I wonder if anything can be done to bring additional broadband providers to rural areas, giving phone and cable companies more competition. The report says 19 percent of property parcels in the state have only one broadband provider available and 9 percent have no broadband providers available.

Federal help may come to some rural residents in the meantime.

The report notes that $244 million in stimulus money was awarded to extend broadband in Washington. Additionally, Frontier Communications - the company acquiring Verizon's phone business in the state - has pledged to invest $40 million over the next few years in its system.

Here are the areas that still have no broadband available:

The federal case against a Los Angeles parking attendant who hacked an Xbox 360 console isn't going too well, according to a Wired report.

The judge "unleashed a 30-minute tirade" against the prosecution, criticizing potentially illegal acts by prosecution witnesses and faulty instructions proposed for the jury.

"I really don't understand what we're doing here," U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez said, according to the report.

Dazed prosecutors asked for a recess "to determine whether they would offer the defendant a deal, dismiss or move forward with the case that was slated to become the first jury trial of its type."

Among the rants: An Entertainment Software Association investigator secretly taped the defendant, Matthew Crippen, possibly violating California privacy law, and a Microsoft expert witness -- Ken McGrail -- admitted that he, too, had hacked Xbox consoles while in college.

Maybe Gutierrez is reflecting the softening stance the government and even Microsoft have taken toward copyright protections that limit what people can do with their technology products. In July the U.S. Copyright Office decided that it was legal for people to "jailbreak" their iPhones, and late last month, Microsoft backtracked on its opposition to hackers tinkering with its Kinect motion sensor.

A key issue is whether they're hacking the devices for illegal gain, or to make backups and customize their gear for personal use.

UPDATE: The prosecutors decided to dismiss the case against Crippen.

The city of Seattle is having fun with Amazon.com and other new occupants of the South Lake Union biotech-software-condo zone.

McGinn's merry transportation troupe is giving them puzzles, like this one on Mercer. Deciphering the detours is almost as fun as the Canlis menu hunt.

Today's round: Which way do you turn?

A Bellevue couple won honorable mention in the "Apps for Healthy Kids" contest sponsored by First Lady Michelle Obama, with their game "Smash your Food."

Frederic and Marta De Wulf submitted the free, online game in June. She's a nutritionist and he's a multimedia producer who has worked with Microsoft and other companies.

In their game, different foods are crushed in goofy machine, revealing how much sugar, salt and oil they contain.

Game blog Joystiq -- where I first read about the winners -- especially liked the exploding food effect in "Smash your Food."

Microsoft's plans to expand its huge datacenter in Quincy will undergo a public hearing, giving people a chance to weigh in on the addition of 13 diesel backup generators planned for the complex.

The center already has 24 generators that can produce 60 megawatts of backup power. The expansion would add the capacity for an additional 32 megawatts, according to a release from the state Department of Ecology.

A higher level of environment review is being done with the expansion because of new state rules that took effect in 2008 and because the state's looking at the effect of the cluster of datacenter that developed in Quincy.

From the release:

Considered by itself, the Microsoft expansion would not necessitate the third-tier review. But due to the interest expressed by other data companies to expand or build in the Quincy area, Ecology was concerned that the cumulative effect of diesel engine emissions should be assessed. This approach elevated Ecology's review of Microsoft's permit request to the director's level.

They're located in Quincy because of cheap hydropower generated by dams on the Columbia River, but the backup generators emit diesel engine exhaust particulate (DEEP), a toxic air pollutant. That triggered a review of the project's health impact.

In applying for the expansion, Microsoft offered to take steps to cut emissions from its current generators by up to 49 percent. It began running the Quincy center in 2008.

That led to the agency to decide "that the cumulative health risks from DEEP exposure as a result of Microsoft's proposed expansion project are acceptable, and the proposed maximum annual facility-wide fuel usage reduction would result in a greater environmental benefit to the state of Washington."

The company plans to install the 13 Caterpillar 3516C diesel engines in phases (shown in this image from the Ecology Department), starting with five in 2010, four in 2011 and the remaining four in 2011 or 2012.

Microsoft expects to burn up to 139,493 gallons per year in the new engines during testing, storms and outages. Maximum fuel use at the overall site is expected to decline from 890,021 gallons per year to 439,493 after the project's done and changes are made.

At this point, the state is inviting public comment on a permit for Microsoft. The permit was proposed Aug. 20.

The hearing is scheduled for Sept. 28 at Quincy City Hall. It begins with presentations at 5:30 p.m. and the actualy hearing at 7. Written comments will be accepted until Oct. 4.

In a nationwide public relations push today, Google has released a report claiming that businesses make double their money when they buy ads from the search giant.

Google released the information on National Small Business Day and said it shows how the company supports small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The move comes as Google increasingly pursues local ads that are still mostly handled by traditional media, including newspapers and TV.

Google's announcement is also political. It was simultaneously delivered in Washington, D.C., and at events across the country attended by elected officials.

The company faces growing scrutiny from regulators as it uses its dominance of online advertising to expand into new markets, and the economic impact information implies the company is helping rather than hurting. As it matures, the company is also developing deeper relationships with governments, especially in places where it has major operations.

"We thought it was important to help people understand Google is not just the place where you search for information, but it's also become a critical source of new customers and new revenue for businesses here in our state," Rob Torres, a Google sales director, said at a Seattle press conference today.

The company asserts that each dollar businesses spend on Google AdWords generates $2 in revenue and $1 in profit for the businesses. That's based on methodology and research that the company's economist, Hal Varian, and two other researchers published last year.

Google combined that data with the amount of money it shares with Web site publishers who display its ads. It also wrapped in the company's charitable donations and came up with a total of $58 billion worth of "economic activity" it generated for U.S. companies, Web sites and charities in 2009.

The company, at the Seattle event, said it generated $2.8 billion worth of economic actitivity last year in Washington state for 44,700 advertisers. The company also donated $3.14 million to 140 non-profits.

For perspective, the gross income of the state's 328,372 businesses was $565.6 billion last year, down 9.8 percent. That includes retail business sales of $106.6 billion, which were down 6.7 percent from the year before, according to the state Department of Revenue. Apparently they weren't spending enough on Google ads.

Google declined to provide the usual economic impact data that companies give lawmakers, such as direct and indirect employment and spending on goods and services, but it did say Google employs more than 600 people at its Seattle and Kirkland offices.

Microsoft's most recent state economic impact study, produced in March, didn't estimate how much business was generated by customers using its products.

But the Redmond company said it spent $7 billion on employee compensation and $2 billion on services in 2008. Microsoft's study asserts that this is multiplied through the state's economy, generating $18.95 billion in personal income in the state and $43.84 billion of the state's gross product.

Google included three state legislators in the Seattle press conference -- state Reps. Zack Hudgins and Ross Hunter and state Sen. Margarita Prentice.

"They want more friends," said Hunter, who used to work at Microsoft. "They want people to see how they really impact your economy."

Prentice said the information will influence her when considering future legislation affecting Google.

"Yes, I'm very much for doing everything we can to induce them to stay," she said.

Google's event was held in a Seattle showroom of Allied Trade Group, a Kirkland-based lighting manufacturer that has expanded into a major online retailer with 500 Web storefronts drawing more than 25 million online visitors a year.

"Google is a key driver of all that business," said Michael Pinkowski, director of marketing.

Allied Trade's a particularly good example for Google. Pinkowski explained that people shopping for lights don't tend to shop for brands they've learned about elsewhere, such as Marvin windows or Kohler faucets, and use search to discover what's available.

Does Allied make $2 back for every $1 it spends on Google ads?

"It varies by category because the categories have different profit margins in them; some things are much more competitive than others," Pinkowski said. "But as a rule we beat that number."

Now Google and other online ad companies are aiming to take a greater share of local advertising, where they still have a relatively small market share.

Of the $144 billion spent on local ads in the U.S. last year, $15.2 billion was spent online and $115 billion went to traditional media, according to BIA/Kelsey forecasts.

If you're curious about what sort of broadband is available in your neighborhood, check out the new interactive map released today by the state of Washington's Department of Information Services.

After you enter an address, the map lists broadband providers in that area, the technology they use and their advertised upload and download speeds.

Additional map layers that can be displayed include population, age, median income, education level, land use and small business locations.

The state also is offering a link to an Internet connection speed test to see how fast your service really is, plus an optional survey for reporting your situation.

It's part of an effort to improve broadband infrastructure by first establishing what services are offered. The state worked with Sanborn Map Co. and Applied Geographics on the map, which was funded by the state and a National Telecommunications and Information Administration grant.

An opening day rush overwhelmed the site today, making it slow to load, but the state was adding another server to handle the demand.

The NTIA's also building a national broadband map using up to $350 million that it was allocated from last year's stimulus bill.

Washington's map is kind of interesting, and lawmakers will no doubt refer to it as they debate ways to improve broadband service.

But it would help the debate if it provided details about which services people are actually using in a particular area. It would also be more useful to consumers if it displayed the offered or average prices for the various services available to them.

Results for several residential locations I checked also blended consumer and business services, which may confuse consumers. For instance, I compared my neighborhood with that of Bill Gates, and we both had the same options: DSL from Qwest, cable from Comcast and business DSL from Covad. Wireless broadband offered by Clearwire and under testing by Verizon wasn't mentioned.

Also cool are the accompanying gallery of maps showing broadband and wireless availability across the state. A sample, showing maximum speeds across the state:

It's not yet an e-reader, but the Seattle Public Library has released a mobile application for reserving books and accessing online services from a phone.

The SPL Mobile app, developed by Boopsie, is available in versions for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian and J3ME platforms.

It's available by visiting spl.boopsie.com on your mobile device.

The app appears as the library begins a study of what sort of technology services it should offer. The process includes a panel discussion at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Central Library on technology and how it will affect the future of libraries.

"The Library is hosting this program to stimulate broad thinking about future library services and models as we begin developing a new strategic plan," City Librarian Susan Hildreth said in the release.

A schedule is out for the National Academy of Engineering's Grand Challenge Summit taking place May 2 and 3 in Seattle, a high-profile gathering of students and engineers in the aerospace, computing and biotech industries.

The forum is one of six being held across the country this year to discuss challenges that engineering may help solve in the coming decades. It starts at the University of Washington and concludes at the convention center downtown.

"This is a unique event to talk about what it really means to be an engineer in the 21st century, and how engineering and related disciplines are going to affect life in the coming years," Matt O'Donnell, dean of engineering, said in the release. "For students, it's a chance to discuss the issues that will define their careers. For others, it's an opportunity to learn about fundamental issues for our society in the 21st century."

Seattle's event will focus on the challenges to "Engineer better medicines" and "Engineer the tools of scientific discovery," including computing tools for data-intensive science and space exploration, the release said.

Speakers include representatives of Seattle's PATH, Microsoft Research, Google, General Electric, Gilead Sciences and Facebook.

Also speaking are a former NASA administrator and former astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, who now heads the Museum of Flight, as well as professors from the UW, University of Texas, University of California at San Diego and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They'll address questions such as:

-- How will emerging medical technologies, which span both a device and a drug, be regulated?

-- How can genetic therapies become a reality?

-- Is the future of aerospace innovation in the public or private sector?

-- Can we continue to send humans into space, or should we send only robots?

-- How will we store and make sense of the flood of data generated by modern science?

Registration before April 19 is $100, or $75 for academics or $20 for students. After April 19, prices are $175, $125 and $20 for students. Here's a UW engineering site with more details.

At a Mobile Breakfast event at the Seattle Marriott today, former FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, is giving a preview of what to expect from the federal broadband plan the FCC will release Tuesday. Martin's now at law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

Commenting on yesterday's disclosure that the FCC may offer free wireless broadband access, Martin said it's probably similar to a proposal he put forward to add a free broadband provision to spectrum sales, requiring wireless companies to provide free baseline service in return for paying slightly less for the spectrum.

"I imagine some form of that is what they're talking about," he said.

Additional spectrum sales will be a component of the broadband plan, he said. Martin said the spectrum available for mobile data is being overwhelmed by dramatic increases in usage. During his term spectrum for mobile data usage was nearly tripled but "exponential increases in data will outstrip that soon," he said.

Martin said the goal is to find 500 Mhz of additional broadband spectrum. For comparison current carriers are using about 450 Mhz "so you're talking about almost doubling the current allocation again."

One approach may be to use spectrum now held by broadcasters, perhaps with an auction where broadcasters can return their spectrum to the government and get a share of proceeds from the auction.

The FCC is considering whether to use publicly owned spectrum to provide free or low-cost wireless broadband service, according to a Reuters report today:

One way of making broadband more affordable is to "consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low cost wireless broadband service," the FCC said in a statement.

A recommendation will come in the National Broadband Plan due next week, with details to be sorted out later, the report said.

Free federal wireless broadband was mentioned in a statement released at the "Digital Inclusion Summit" in Washington, D.C. Most of its proposals focused on educating people to increase "digital literacy."

The upcoming broadband plan should increase home broadband use from 65 percent of homes to 90 percent by 2020, the FCC statement said.

"In order to ensure long term American competitiveness and prosperity, we must not leave one-third of the nation behind," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in the release. "The National Broadband Plan provides a vision for federal, state and local leadership and partnerships with the private and non-profit communities that will bridge the digital divide and transform America into a nation where broadband expands opportunities for all."

Mayor Mike McGinn just announced that Seattle will indeed ask Google to pursue one of its fiber-optic broadband experiments in the city.

From the release:

Seattle will actively seek to partner with Google in creation of a fiber network here. The city itself has many assets to bring to the partnership, including an extensive existing fiber network of over 500 miles connecting every school, college and major government building in the city.

Seattle has been hashing over ways to entice companies to extend fiber broadband service to homes in the city for years and McGinn pledged to pursue citywide broadband.

Google on Wednesday announced that it wanted to partner with municipalities to develop and experiment with an ultrafast fiber network. Its experiment would reach a total of 5,000 to 500,000 people across the country.

If Seattle were to beat out cities across the country vying to partner with Google, the experiment would only provide service to fraction of the city. It's also unclear how long Google would continue the experiment and what it would cost, however the service would not be free to users.

Bill Schrier, the city's chief technology officer, called it a "longshot" but said it's worth trying.

"It seems logical to respond to that anyway because Seattle is an innovative place, we've got a lot of asets we could bring to a partnership with Google," he said.

Cities have until March 26 to submit a "request for information" to Google, which will respond later this year.

Schrier said pursuing the Google experiment won't delay Seattle's effort to build a city-wide fiber network that provides everyone with fast service because the city's in the process of developing a plan for that project.

"It won't delay us because we're building a business plan anyway," he said.

A statement issued by McGinn's office this afternoon reads like a preview of Seattle's application. After a few paragraphs saying Seattle's interested in the Google project, the statement lists city assets including its municipal fiber network and its "high tech industry and population":

Google and book publisher and authors have improved their class-action settlement but not enough to avoid antitrust troubles, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a filing and news release this afternoon.

The key quote in the filing:

"Although the United States believes the parties have approached this effort in good faith and the amended settlement agreement is more circumscribed in its sweep than the original proposed settlement, the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation."

The Justice Department liked changes that removed Google's "most favored nation" status but said the settlement as revised would still give the search company an unfair advantage.

It said in the release that "the amended settlement agreement still confers significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on Google as a single entity, thereby enabling the company to be the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats."

Today's filing sets the stage for a Feb. 18 hearing before a federal judge considering whether to approve the agreement, which was originally reached in 2005 after a fight over Google's efforts to digitize the world's books.

Other critics of the agreement have lined up in recent months, giving the judge plenty to consider.

The state's new free TV and PC disposal program netted a huge pile of old devices in its first year: 38.5 milion pounds, according to a release today from the Department of Ecology.

That included 22.3 million pounds of old TVs, 12.3 million pounds of monitors and 3.9 million pounds of computers that were taken for free at recycling centers during 2009.

The state expected the program to draw 26 million pounds in the first year, but it passed that milestone in August, Ecology Director Ted Sturdevant said in the release. Electronics manufacturers pay for the program under a state law passed in 2006.

I imagine the pace will slow because people are buying fewer new TVs now that most people have flat-panel models, and because a lot of people (including yours truly) hoarded old monitors and PCs to avoid paying the old disposal fees.

King, Pierce and Snohomish counties accounted for 64 percent of the total.

Here's a state Web page where you can find nearby drop-off sites. For disposing of TVs, monitors and PCs, select the "electronics" material category.

Research giant Gartner is sharing its predictions that "herald long-term changes in approach" for information technology in 2010 and beyond.

Some excerpts from the release:

-- By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. According to Gartner's PC installed-base forecast, the total number of PCs in use will reach 1.78 billion units in 2013. By 2013, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter.

-- By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Virtualization, cloud services and employees running their own PCs on corporate networks will contribute to this trend:

A new report says Seattle is one of the country's three most conducive areas to video game development, along with San Francisco and San Jose, Calif.

The report by the Washington Interactive Network comes as the Legislature hashes out its budget, but network director Kristina Hudson said the industry isn't pushing any particular bills this session.

Instead. it's hoping the state will maintain tax incentives for high tech research and development and watching the state's new taxes on digital distribution.

Hudson said the study's goal was to find the top game development regions and figure out if any was dominant. It analyzed Seattle, Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and San Jose.

It drew on earlier reports quantifying the region's game industry, which employs more than 15,000 at more than 150 companies in the western Washington. Excluding Microsoft, those firms grew employment 14 percent from 2006 to 2008, to 5,070 jobs in the Puget Sound region.

The conclusion was that three cities -- Seattle, San Francisco and San Jose -- are in the "top tier" worldwide, based on the number of firms, educational institutions, cost of living, cost of business and available engineering, multimedia and animation talent.

From the conclusion:

Much of the infrastructure is in place to keep Seattle competitive. Seattle ranks among the top tier regions in the nation in overall competitiveness in the Interactive Media sector, along with the Bay Area and Los Angeles and international leaders such as Vancouver, Tokyo and Seoul. Two factors that continue to push the Seattle region ahead of its competitors are the region's historic strength in wireless talent and technologies, and the significant lower cost of doing business.

Hudson's group plans to post the report online this week.

This is a little spooky: The National Security Agency worked with Microsoft to "enhance" the security of Windows 7.

From Computerworld's report:

"Working in partnership with Microsoft and elements of the Department of Defense, NSA leveraged our unique expertise and operational knowledge of system threats and vulnerabilities to enhance Microsoft's operating system security guide without constraining the user to perform their everyday tasks, whether those tasks are being performed in the public or private sector," Richard Schaeffer, the NSA's information assurance director, told the Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security yesterday as part of a prepared statement.

The NSA has worked with Microsoft before to develop secure configurations of Windows and Internet Explorer for federal and military users, but this time it started the process during the Windows 7 beta so it was ready when the software launched.

It's still a little unnerving. Electronic privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg told the publication, "When NSA offers to help the private sector on computer security, the obvious concern is that it will also build in backdoors that enables tracking users and intercepting user communications."

Now the agency is trying to work with Apple, Red Hat, Sun and others on "secure baselines" for their products, Schaeffer said in his prepared testimony.

Maybe they should have a logo program so buyers know which systems have the NSA seal of approval.

King County is pretty familiar with real estate developers.

Now it's going after software developers, encouraging them to connect with Metro and build transit applications and services.

It's happening at a "Metro IT Developers Workshop" the county transportation department is hosting Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m. at King Street Center. More than 50 developers are expected to participate in the event, which is full and has a waiting list, Metro spokeswoman Rochelle Ogershok said.

Well-to-do parents who get lost or bored taking their children to the zoo have a new lifesaver: The Woodland Park Zoo just released an iPhone App.

The 99 cent program uses the phones' GPS system to pinpoint location and nearby exibits, play areas, restrooms and concession stands. It also provides a schedule of activities, animal fact sheets and a "friend finder" that locates other iPhone users at the zoo.

Additionally, the app ties into Facebook and Twitter, so users can keep their online pals updated while roaming the zoo.

The zoo contracted with Austin, Texas-based Avai Mobile Solutions to develop the software. Proceeds from its sale "go toward the zoo's animal care, education, conservation and operations costs," the release said.

A photo by the zoo's Ryan Hawk:

The city of Seattle's chief technology officer, Bill Schrier, was elected president of the Metropolitan Information Exchange, an organization of tech managers for cities with populations over 100,000.

Schrier, an enthusiastic user of social media tools such as blogs and Twitter, has been Seattle's CTO since 2003.

But it remains to be seen what's going to happen to Schrier (left) next year, after his current boss is replaced by either Joe Mallahan or Mike McGinn.

Maybe he should mount a T-Mobile device on his bike ...

There's not much left of Zango anymore, but it was continuing to sue security software vendor Kaspersky for interfering with the way Zango's downloaded software operated on people's computers.

Kaspersky treated Zango's software as malware and "protected" users from it, prompting a lengthy lawsuit from Zango that appears to have ended with a ruling this morning by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The court sided with Kaspersky, rejecting Zango's appeal of an earlier U.S. District Court decision.

A key issue was the leeway Kaspersky could use to categorize Zango's software as malware and block it from users' computers.

The court decided that Kaspersky could claim protection under the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which provides immunity for computer services that help restrict access to objectionable materials.

But one judge said the case raises questions about vague language in the act that could enable computer security and filtering companies to abuse their immunity, blocking competititors without informing users, for instance.

Zango had argued that Kaspersky Internet Security (KIS) disabled the Zango toolbar that displays ads related to a user's Web searches. Whenever Zango's software tried to access the Internet, KIS would display a warning and ask users if they wanted to block the program.

The case circled around the character of Zango's software and business practices, an issue that dogged Zango and led to FTC charges alleging that it was pushing adware on consumers. Zango paid $3.1 million to settle the charges in 2006, contributing to financial problems that resulted in the company's bankrutpcy and sale earlier this year. (See "Zango goes Bango" for more).

From the court's decision today:

The degree of threat posed to users by Zango's software is in dispute. Kaspersky contends that Zango's software is adware, and possibly spyware. Spyware, which is often installed on a computer without the user's knowledge or consent, covertly monitors the user's activities and exposes the user to the risk that his or her passwords and confidential information may be stolen. Zango maintains that it installs its software only upon receiving user consent, and that it provides easy means of uninstalling Zango software from a user's computer.

Later, the court noted that immunity protection extends to companies that " 'enable or make available to ... others' the technical means to restrict access to material that either the user or the provider deems objectionable."

Kaspersky, at least, found Zango's material objectionable and it prevailed.

Yet a concurring opinion by Circuit Judge Raymond Fisher suggests Zango v. Kaspersky won't be the final word on the question of immunity and how far security and filtering companies can go.

Fisher said the Communications Decency Act does immunize Kaspersky but suggested Congress or another lawsuit may be needed to clarify the Act:

Nonetheless, extending immunity beyond the facts of this case could pose serious problems if providers of blocking software were to be given free license to nilaterally block the dissemination of material by content providers under the literal terms (of the Act). The risk inheres in the disjunctive language of the statute -- which permits blocking of "material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,whether or not such material is constitutionally protected" -- and the unbounded catchall phrase, "otherwise objectionable."

Fisher continued:

Congress plainly intended to give computer users the tools to filter the Internet's deluge of material users would find objectionable, in part by immunizing the providers of blocking software from liability .... But under the generous coverage of (the Act's) immunity language, a blocking software provider might abuse that immunity to block content for anticompetitive purposes or merely at its malicious whim, under the cover of considering such material "otherwise objectionable."

He cites an example that could affect far more people than Zango:

Consider, for example, a Web browser configured by its provider to filter third-party search engine results so they would never yield Websites critical of the browser company or favorable to its competitors. Such covert, anti-competitive blocking arguably fits into the statuatory category of immune actions -- those taken by an access software provider to provide the technical means to block content the provider deems objectionable.

It could do wonders for Zango's legacy if this case ends up helping to close this disturbing loophole.

Despite that open question, the act has done a "marvelous job" of endorsing the notion that the marketplace could provide useful software and Web tools to help people manage what happens on their computers with a minimum of government interference or liability, said Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group that filed an amicus brief in the case.

Seattle startup Survey Analytics landed its first government contract, and it's a big one.

The company's helping the White House with its open-government push, powering a new "open government brainstorming" site launched today by the Obama Administration's Office of Science & Technology Policy and the National Academy of Public Administration.

Survey Analytics' IdeaScale crowdsourcing platform is providing a way for citizens to suggest and discuss ideas for increasing the openness and transparency of the federal government. The Web tool also lets participants vote on other people's ideas, search the ideas and spread the word via email. It's behind this "participate" button at WhiteHouse.gov.

Here's the site's intro:

On January 21st, the President issued the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, calling for an unprecedented level of openness in government. In the memorandum, the President outlined three principles for promoting a transparent and open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Now, the President is calling on you to help shape how that commitment is fulfilled. This online brainstorming session, open from May 21st to 28th, 2009, will enable the White House to hear your most important ideas relating to open government.

Survey Analytics Chief Executive Vivek Bhaskaran said it was a learning experience for the company. For instance, it learned that because of First Amendment free speech protections, the government can't delete public comments submitted to the site.

Survey Analytics also had to buy additional servers to handle the anticipated load, but he said it's worthwhile for the visibility and potential future government business.

It's been awhile since Microsoft introduced a game-changing social Web application, but Vine -- a service that's debuting today with a beta test in Seattle -- could be a contender.

Vine is a hyperlocal, personalized message and alert system. It's intended to be a dashboard that people can use to keep tabs of their family, friends, activities and major events in their community.

The dashboard -- which appears as a widget on a PC screen -- displays a map of the user's community and the status of their contacts. It also has buttons to send alerts or reports, which can be sent and received on the PC or as text messages on a cellphone.

Vine could be used by families, schools or soccer teams to notify people of schedules and changes. Individuals could use it as a central hub to keep track of local news and data feeds and updates from services such as Facebook.

But Microsoft's main emphasis now is providing Vine to emergency management officials, who are intrigued by a new tool that could be used to broadcast and receive information during a disaster or other major event.

Actually it was politicians and Paul Allen's development team that did the ceremonial shovel thing this morning at Amazon's immense new headquarters.

Construction started a year ago on the 10-building, 1.7-million-square-foot campus just south of Lake Union. Amazon employees will move into the first buildings next May and the whole thing will be done by 2012.

"This is what a community is about, this is what this community is all about,'' Gov. Chris Gregoire said before she, Mayor Greg Nickels and City Councilwoman Jan Drago wielded the golden shovels in a sandbox erected just for the show.

The campus takes up about a third of the 5 million square feet of space Paul Allen has amassed in the formerly blue collar area between downtown and the lake. Allen and Jeff Bezos didn't make the event; maybe they were toasting each other on a boat somewhere.

Look how fast those politicians dig! Here they are in the parking lot on the upper left:

Another angle of the world's largest bookstore's new home, looking toward the lake:

Talk about back to the future.

During an Innovation Summit session this morning on cutting edge materials, a Canadian researcher described new nanotechnology for modifying cellulose.

Designs have been done for a factory that could extract nanocrystalline cellulose particles that are 20 nanometers long and 20 nanometers wide. The factory could produce a ton of this material a day, said Jim Dangerfield, executive vice president of FPInnovations, a research organizationn exploring new directions for Canada's forestry industry.

The characteristics of this material depend on which plant it comes from, whether cotton or spruce, for instance. Combined with other materials it could potentially have aerospace applications, he said.

"My dream is that one day we'll be making airplanes out of this material again," he said during the panel discussion at the Bellevue summit, organized by the Washington Technology Center.

Boeing's advanced materials boss didn't rule it out. In response to a question, Gerould Young, director of materials & structures technology at Boeing Research & Technology, noted that airplane construction began with wood and fabrics, moved to aluminum and is now jumping to polymers and fibers.

The carbon fiber in the 787 can be considered version one of this new approach.

"As we look to the future you're going to get more optimized configuration out of that material system," Young said. "We're looking at all sorts of things."

Fibers used in planes could be natural fibers or carbon nanotubes, he said.

"I think you're going to see really a revolution in that material as you go forward," Young said. "It will be significant over time, what we take out in terms of weight, and ultimately (contribute to) the performance of our aircraft."

Speaking at today's Washington Innovation Summit in Bellevue, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell said the Bonneville Power Administration will announce in a few weeks that money's available for smart grid demonstration projects in the Northwest.

Landing a regional demonstration "gives us a leg up competing for federal matching funds,'' she said.

"I believe energy is the mother of all markets - it is a $6 trillion opportunity,'' she said, adding for comparison that the Internet was a $1 trillion opportunity.

I thought the new administration was going to tone down the jackboot attitude of federal agencies that blossomed during the perpetual war on terror.

But apparently word hasn't yet reached public servants at the FBI office in Dallas.

According to a shocking Wired story, the feds responded to a debt collection spat between AT&T, Verizon and VoIP customers by seizing hundreds of servers from multiple co-location facilities, as well as the iPods belonging to a debtor's kids and even the savings of a former comptroller's grandmother.

More than 300 companies were using servers at a facility owned by alleged debtor Mike Faulkner, the story reported:

Faulkner says the two telecoms have used the FBI to seize equipment to obtain evidence through a criminal investigation instead of pursuing the companies through civil litigation and the discovery process. And instead of targeting the investigation specifically at the VoIP companies, he says the FBI swept in everyone who had servers in the same place where the VoIP servers were located. As a result, all of Crydon Technology's equipment was seized, as was the equipment of numerous businesses that had the bad luck to own servers running out of Crydon's facility.

"They're destroying more and more customers and it just doesn't seem to make sense," Faulkner says. "They've done a horrible amount of damage and have been so barbaric in the way they've shut things down. If they just picked some random guy off the street to do this investigation, he could have done a better job than the FBI did."

When one of the affected companies, a credit card processor, "tried to explain to an FBI agent that some of the servers that were seized belonged to him and not to Faulkner, the FBI agent implied he was lying,'' the story reported:

"We were treated like we were criminals," he said. "They assumed there was no legitimate business in there."

Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels seized the opportunity to suggest, on Twitter, that this is another reason to consider using cloud servers such as those rented by Amazon Web Services. Does Amazon have protection from this kind of thing? What if the RIAA takes exception to the DRM free music Amazon's distributing from its servers and calls the feds?

Seattle CTO Bill Schrier was one of four municipal tech managers who submitted remarks to this morning's FCC hearing that's intended to start the conversation about a national broadband policy.

The hearing is intended to start the conversation about a national broadband policy. Schrier talked up Seattle's fiber-optic broadband plans and suggested the FCC put a priority on similar super-high-bandwidth services.

That gets to one of the key tasks the FCC is facing, which is to clarify the definition of broadband. It's currently 768 kilobits per second, this Washington Post story notes, which isn't enough to deliver online video without pauses and buffering.

Here are Schrier's prepared comments and background on his blog.

The headline on state Attorney General Rob McKenna's latest news release says it all:

"Dude, don't wait on that Dell refund!"

McKenna is reminding people who bought a Dell in the past four years that they may be eligible for a cash refund if they had problems with financing, technical support, warranty repairs or cashing in rebates.

Dell is paying $1.5 billion under a January settlement with Washington and 33 other states, but so far only 42 Washingtonians have filed valid claims.

The state's received claims totaling $10,680 and paid out an average of $250 per consumer, with accepted claims ranging from $30 to $848, the release said.

But hurry. Completed forms are due by April 13. Details are at the AG's Web site, including this FAQ. Forms may also be requested by calling 1-800-551-4636 between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

The $40 coupons for digital TV converter boxes are available again, officials managing the program announced today.

After coupon funding ran out in January, Congress added $650 million to the federal stimulus plan for more in February.

Now the waiting list has been cleared and coupon applications are being accepted. Households that did not use their coupons before they expired can also reapply, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

Coupons can be used only for converter boxes that allow older analog "rabbit ear" TVs to receive digital signals over the air. TV stations will must convert their broadcasts to digital by June 12, freeing up bandwidth the government has auctioned to telecom companies. All the major Seattle area stations are now broadcasting both digital and analog signals.

For more information about applying, here's the official DTV site and here's a visual primer on connecting the converter boxes that ran with a February column on the broadcast situation.

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope is getting a huge boost from NASA, which just announced that it's going to provide its planetary images and data to the service.

The deal involves more than 100 terabytes of data NASA will host at its Ames Research Center (near Google headquarters) that Microsoft will add to the telescope's explorable online map of the skies later this year.

Microsoft Research unveiled WorldWide Telescope last spring as a technology showcase and educational resource.

Also being added to the telescope is data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2005. It's been gathering high-resolution images and other data from Mars since 2006.

The most surprising thing about Gary Locke's financial disclosure today wasn't that he made more than $1 million last year, mostly from lawyering and serving on Safeco's board.

It was that he also made $19,250 consulting for Waggener Edstrom, the Bellevue-based PR firm known mostly for its longtime association with Microsoft.

Locke, the Commerce Secretary nominee and former Washington governor, is tight with Bill and Melinda Gates, so it makes you wonder.

But it turns out to have nothing to do with Microsoft.

WaggEd's Tim Smith said Locke was "until recently" on an advisory council the firm created in 2007 to help launch its public affairs practice. Smith
characterized the payments as an "honorarium" for his service on the council.

The council was formed to "provide strategic counsel to Waggener Edstrom's Public Affairs practice and its clients on a range of issues impacting business, government policy and public debate,'' the firm's 2007 announcement said.

Other founding members included Daniel W. Caprio, Jr., a fellow at The Progress & Freedom Foundation; Larry Irving, former assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration; and Lance Tarrance, founding partner of RT Strategies public opinion firm and former President of Gallup China.

The city of Seattle's ambitious effort to develop a citywide fiber optic broadband service is moving ahead, but slowly.

That was the gist of an update presented today at the City Council's energy and technology committee.

After years of committees and task forces, the city hired a consultant last fall to analyze its options. They range from building and operating a municipal system, like Tacoma's, to subsidizing a privately built network with city assets such as right of way and existing fiber lines.

The city now favors a particular approach: It would build the heart of the system, extending fiber to neighborhoods, at which point a private company would connect homes and businesses and sell the broadband services.

A city-owned system may cost $300 million to $400 million and "that doesn't seem to be the wise route now, or ever in the future,'' committee chairman Bruce Harrell said.

Councilman Richard McIver floated a bold idea during the meeting. He suggested the city get a jump on building its own network by acquiring assets from Broadstripe, one of the two companies now providing cable and broaband services in Seattle. St. Louis-based Broadstripe is restructuring, after filing for bankruptcy in January.

Combining Broadstripe's network with existing fiber could be a bargain way for the city to build a network all the way to homes.

But that might take quick action, and the city has been steadfast in its pursuit of another public-private partnership.

The consultant, Maryland-based Columbia Telecommunications, is now doing a follow-up study further analyzing the "fiber to the neighborhood" option. Qwest and Comcast have used a similar approach.

That study should be done in June, which may give the city enough time to make up its mind on the project in time for its November budgeting.

Theoretically the project could begin as early as 2010, but remember that a broadband task force started this process in 2004 and first suggested heading this direction in 2005.

In the meantime, Seattle is looking into whether it can qualify for a share of federal stimulus money for broadband projects in rural and underserved communities.

Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys and one of the founding tycoons of India's technology outsourcing industry, will speak in Seattle at a World Affairs Council event in Seattle on April 2.

Nilekani periodically comes to the area -- he's a regular at Bill Gates' CEO Summit -- but this visit comes shortly after the release of his new book, "Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation." The book calls for India to emphasize innovation and reforms to continue its economic growth.

Nilekani's April 2 lecture, sponsored by the Museum of History & Industry and the University of Washington Center for Information and Society, will "address India's place in the burgeoning technology and business markets of the 21st Century we well as how technological innovation factors into India's entrepreneurial growth. India's growth in the IT sector will also be examined in the content of its international relationships," according to today's announcement.

The event costs $15 and begins at 7 p.m. at the Museum of History and Industry.

A free online "self sufficiency" calculator that helps people figure out their living expenses and financial situation won the NPower Seattle Innovation Award at the organization's luncheon today.

The awards recognize technology developed by non-profits in the Puget Sound region. Judges were from event sponsors Microsoft, Accenture and Avanade.

The calculator - at www.thecalculator.org - was developed by the Workforce Development Council. It helps people develop goals, evaluate job offers and see if they're eligible for public assistance programs.

Here are a few ideas to save the state a bunch of money. They could also also bypass roadblocks that bureaucrats are seeking to make public records less available to the public.

If you missed the story we ran Sunday, there are a couple of bills in the Legislature that would make it more expensive and difficult for the public to see records that public servants are creating and maintaining on the public's behalf.

Bill Gates' mosquito-release stunt at TED yesterday was amazing.

After decades of mellow, academic keynotes, could he get radical in his quest to raise awareness of social and health issues?

What will he do next?

A few ideas:

- Throw pies at Big Pharma executives who aren't doing enough for global health.

- Have Nordstrom outfit a few people lined up at the unemployment office, then add them to the mix of suits at the Microsoft CEO Summit in May.

- Hire The Stranger's Dan "the Doorknob" Savage as an outreach consultant/congressional liaison.

The University of Washington didn't have to look far for two tech veterans to lead its TechTransfer unit that licenses its research.

Today the school announced that it hired former RealNetworks associate general counsel and chief privacy officer, Todd Alberstone, as director of IP management.

It also hired Microsot product management director, Ed Cummings, as a licensing officer to work with computer science and engineering researchers.

The IP portfolio managed by UW TechTransfer has more than 2,200 issued or pending patents and last year generated more than $47 million in revenue, the release said. The technology also contributed the creation of 240 companies.

"Their recruitment represents a critical step toward an increasingly translational research culture, and UW’s ability to make a significant contribution to the local economy and job creation, especially at this critical time, through the formation of start-up companies," Linden Rhoads, vice provost of UW TechTransfer since August, said in the release.

Here are a few photos from my adventures with a $49 digital TV converter box, which I wrote about in today's column on the Feb. 17 switch to digital broadcast TV.

The photos show the different antennas, some of the screens displays and the free channel guide that comes with digital over-the-air tv.

It wasn't a very technical test. I basically hooked the box up to an analog TV in the basement of my house, which is on a hill blocking the broadcast towers, in a low spot with terrible over-the-air reception.

Then I tried the setup on a newer digital TV on the main floor of my house, and again on an analog TV here at the newspaper office -- midway between the towers on Queen Anne and Capitol Hill.

Here's the back of the box, an Apex DT502. The white cable leads out to an antenna, the black cable connects to the coax jack on the TV. (One minor gripe with the Apex box is that the supplied cables are chintzy and hard to unscrew because the fittings don't rotate very well, but most people won't connect and disconnect them repeatedly.)

The converter box automatically scans for available channels and displays the quality of reception:

Of the various configurations, the best was using a multidirectional antenna elevated above the TV at work. That received all the local channels without requiring adjustments, once I found the right spot:

With the antenna lower, it found nearly all the channels except KSTW, and KCTS was fritzy. Here's the multidirectional antenna sitting on the box, with KCTS breaking up:

It's funny, the rabbit ears did well with KCTS here, but maybe I had happened on just the right direction:

In the basement, I could pick up about half the channels and it didn't make much difference whether I used the $9 antenna or the $30 multidirectional model. In the living room, the $30 multidirectional model was slightly better. I could get most of the channels, but I had to adjust the antenna to get different sets of channels.

Here's a sample of the on-screen display that you'll get with over-the-air digital:

In the sort of worst-case reception area where I live, the best cheapskate TV option would probably be a mix of Comcast's $15 a month basic service plus as many digital over-the-air channels as possible.

I haven't tried putting a digital antenna on the roof or using one of the more expensive amplified interior antennas, but that may be next.

A store clerk who sells a lot of digital boxes and antennas told me the amplified models are particularly good on the Eastside, because they amplify signals reflecting off hills. The amplified model on the shelf was $50 vs. the $30 model I tried. My thinking at the time was that if you start spending more than $100 for a digital converter box and antenna, you might start thinking about getting a new digital TV instead, although it may still need an additional antenna.

The bottom line is that there are lots of variables in whether you'll get all the free digital channels. In particular, your location and the type of antenna will affect the quality of the broadcasts.

You'll have to decide how much you want to spend on an antenna and converter box. Make sure that you can return the antenna or digital box in case you need to try a different model or it ends up not working.

There is some upfront cost and hassle here -- more than the $40 government coupon offsets, if you can still get one.

But if you only want the basic channels and you can make your TV work with over-the-air digital broadcasts, it's still going to be far less expensive than the monthly fees for cable or satellite service.

Some Q&As about the digital TV switch:

Why is this happening? In 2005 a law was passed directing full-power TV stations to switch from analog to digital broadcasting technology. The deadline has been adjusted and is now Feb. 17. Digital broadcasting uses less spectrum than analog, so the move will free up spectrum to be used by emergency services and companies developing new wireless products and services.

Who will be affected? People who depend on free, over-the-air TV broadcasts and have an older, analog TV. For those TVs to continue working, they'll need a digital converter box. The boxes aren't needed if you have a newer TV with a digital tuner or subscribe to cable or satellite TV service.

What's up with the $40 coupons? The funding for the coupons ran out in early January but Congress is likely to fund additional coupons. Lawmakers are also talking about ending the 90-day expiration date on coupons that were issued earlier, in case you haven't used yours yet.

What about the Comcast converters you wrote about last month? That's a separate issue affecting Comcast customers with "expanded basic" service. They'll need a Comcast box on all of their TVs later this year, when Comcast does its own digital conversion.

What channels will I get with one of these digital boxes? All the major channels. Most are broadcasting digitally already, but your reception will vary depending on your location and antenna. Antennaweb.org, a Web site run by the National Association of Broadcasters and Consumer Electronics Association, provides digital channel lineups by neighborhood (but the results can be a little confusing).

Where else can I get information about the switch? The official Web site, www.dtv2009.gov, has lots of information. You can apply for a $40 coupon there, or by calling 1-888-DTV-2009. The city of Seattle also has online information about the switch here.

Adding to the economic malaise being outlined during this morning's Enterprise Seattle Economic Forecast Conference at the Seattle Sheraton, Qwest just announced a major layoff in Seattle.

Lost in the bailout melee was a bill that U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Tacoma, introduced Monday to address intrusive and inappropriate laptop snooping by the Border Patrol.

Smith's statement in the news release:

"The chief responsibility of the United States Government is to protect its citizens, and while doing so it is critical that we do not overshadow the obligation to protect the privacy and rights of Americans. This legislation will provide clear and commonsense legal avenues for the Department of Homeland Security to pursue those who commit crime and wish to do our country harm without infringing on the rights of American citizens. Importantly, it will provide travelers a level of privacy for their computers, digital cameras, cellular telephones and other electronic devices consistent with the Constitution and our nation's values of liberty."

In advance of Wednesday's FCC hearing on localism and media ownership rules, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee joined Seattle music industry and advocacy group representatives on a teleconference calling for net neutrality principles.

The call was also a prelude to a sold-out fundraising Rock the Net concert tonight at the Crocodile.

Here's Inslee's statement:

We can't allow phone and cable companies to hijack the Internet, which has been such a success due to its open architecture. Telecom companies shouldn't be picking winners and losers among online content. That has been, and always should be, up to Internet users.

Here's a link to Reclaim the Media (the flag of which is now planted in this tiny corner of the media world ...), which will post the call at its Web site.

A great resource on the topic is The Democracy Papers, a Times editorial page project that includes a series of articles and essays.

Here's the FCC hearing notice, with a list of speakers.

Growth and new programs are happening at the University of Washington's Computer Science & Engineering Department, Chairman Hank Levy said this morning at the annual "industrial affiliates" meeting with tech companies, investors and school supporters.

Starting in 2008, the department will try a new five-year program that will give graduates both bachelor's and master's degrees.

Levy said the goal is to have 30 students a year in the "industrially focused" program that's geared toward preparing students for jobs at companies such as Microsoft and Google. "These students will be really productive and sought-after and interesting," he said.

Similar programs combining undergrad and graduate engineering are in place at schools such as MIT and even my alma mater, Whitman College in Walla Walla.

There for the update, and research presentations by students, were representatives of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Cray, Sony, Madrona Venture Group, Amazon.com, DreamBox Learning and other companies.

Levy isn't just pitching to the private sector. The school's also seeking legislative support for the five-year Master's program.

Another initiative Levy outlined is already under way: a new "Experimental Computer Engineering Lab" created as a partnership of the computer science and electrical engineering departments.

Six new faculty positions, three from each side, are allocated to the effort, including two now being filled.

Computer science is also taking more Ph.D. students and overall, Levy's planning for "25 percent growth across the board" in the department.

Altogether it's getting 10 new professors, including two through the Experimental Computer Engineering Lab.

Ed Lazowska, former department head, now Bill and Melinda Gates CSE chair, paticipated after returning from a summer back surgery with a body reinforced by titanium bits.

Lazowska pointed out that CSE graduates should have no problem finding jobs, based on strong IT workforce projections by the state and federal governments.

"There's plenty of opportunity in this field,'' he said.

We'll see what the current situation is like tomorrow, when the affiliates meeting morphs into a daylong recruiting event at the school's Paul G. Allen Center.

The tech association named three board members today: casual gaming exec Paul Thelen, founder of Seattle's Big Fish Games; Physio-Control President Brian Webster; and Susannah Malarkey, executive director of the Technology Alliance.

I hope we're not seeing a trend.

First Myanmar cut Internet connectivity so the world wouldn't see as much of its brutal crackdown on protesters.

Now there are indications that China may be redirecting Internet traffic over Google, Microsoft Live Search and Yahoo and routing it to Baidu, apparently in retribution for the U.S. honoring the Dalai Lama.

Just what the world needs, another petulant superpower throwing a tantrum.

Why would China redirect search traffic? It doesn't seem like an economic strike as much as a ham-handed attempt at censorship.

Time to turn up the volume on Voice of America, and keep up the pressure on companies like Verizon and AT&T that interrupt the flow of information for political reasons.

It's also a terrible day for the FCC to propose rules that would further concentrate the media in the U.S.

I've been getting questions about the Conway study today, mostly about compensation. Here's the key passage, referring to 2004 pay:

Not counting stock option income, annual labor earnings at Microsoft averaged $145,000 per employee, more than three times the state mean of $46,200. Including stock option income, average Microsoft employee compensation came to $188,900.

A few other stats, also from 2004:

-- Microsoft was the state's second largest private employer in Washington, behind only Boeing.

-- While Microsoft employed only half as many people as Boeing, its total compensation was nearly equal -- $5.3 billion, including stock options, vs. Boeing's $5.9 billion.

-- Microsoft bought $1.2 billion worth of goods and services from Washington producers to support operations.

-- In-state purchases were $43,600 per employee, "well above average for businesses in Washington."

-- Combining compensation and spending on local goods and services, "Microsoft pumped $6.5 billion into the Washington economy."

-- Every job at Microsoft supported 4.1 jobs elsewhere in the economy, "mostly in trade, services and government."

-- Microsoft accounted for 5.2 percent of the state's personal income, or $11.2 billion.

-- The company raised the state's per capita income by $520. (Conway didn't make a joke about Highway 520 ...)

From 1990 to 2004, "Microsoft was the single largest contributor to economic growth in Washington ... accounting for more than one-fifth of the total gain in state employment."

The effect is bigger within King County, where the company generated 9 percent of the county's total income and rasied the per capita income by $1,551 in 2004.

It gets even crazier if you look at the effect within the city of Redmond, where Microsoft increased per capita income by $12,939 or 21.4 percent in 2004.

Conway estimated that nearly a third of the people in Redmond were directly or indirectly dependent upon Microsoft, and the company generated an estimated $19.2 million of the city's $48.8 million in tax revenue.

But don't forget that Redmond doesn't get as much tax benefit as you'd expect, because of generous tax breaks the state gives Microsoft and other high-tech companies.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory today announced the purchase of a $24 million Hewlett-Packard supercomputer for its Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, just a week after buying a Cray XMT system.

While most people are still in the process of moving to dual-core computers or waiting for quad-core prices to drop, the the lab took the plunge on an HP system with 18,480 cores.

After it's installed next year, the system will be used for research in areas such as "aerosol formation, bioremediation, catalysis, climate change, hydrogen storage and subsurface science" to support the U.S. Department of Energy.

The HP system, which is replacing a 2003 system from HP, will be the lab's biggest and fastest computer. It will also be available as a resource for outside scientists.

Specs from the release:

The supercomputer architecture runs on HP ProLiant servers and includes an InfiniBand 4x DDR interconnect, 4,620 AMD Opteron processors, 37 terabytes of memory and aggregate disk bandwidth of about 950 gigabytes per second enabled by nearly 21,000 disk drives in HP enterprise virtual arrays. Consisting of 18,480 2.2 gigahertz AMD Opteron processor cores, the new HP supercomputer will have an expected total peak performance of about 163 teraflops.

It's due to arrive in January and be ready to roll in September. Scientists wanting to tap its power will need to submit proposals and go through a competitive peer-review process.

I wasn't there so I can't say for sure, but it sure sounds like Microsoft's testimony spanked Google's in today's Senate subcommittee hearing on the DoubleClick acquisition.

Microsoft's top lawyer, Brad Smith, said Google is spooky and will end up with a huge share of the online ad business if it acquires DoubleClick as planned. The deal will give Google an 80 percent share of non-search ads served to third-party Web sites, in addition to the 70 percent share of search ads that Google already has, he said.

Smith's counterpart at Google, Dave Drummond, used Web 2.0 jargon like "the long tail of the Internet" in his testimony and peaked with a lame analogy:

The simplest way to look at this is by way of analogy. DoubleClick is to Google what FedEx or UPS is to Amazon.com. Our current business involves primarily the selling of text-based ads -- books in our analogy. By contrast, DoubleClick's business at its core is to deliver and report on display ads.

Except that most everyone sees both Google and DoubleClick as doing the same basic thing -- providing Internet advertising services. The distinction between display and search ads is too narrow -- it's not books versus trucks -- and Google's going to narrow it further if the acquisition goes through.

This is a little nitpicky, but there's another problem with the analogy: Amazon.com isn't just a bookseller anymore. Among other things, it's also in the business of order fulfillment, just like FedEx and UPS. Check out this page, where Amazon says "You sell it, we'll ship it."

Instead of asking senators to sort that out, Smith played up basic concerns that speak to the concerns of these particular senators: The scary stuff and potential monopolies.

From his prepared testimony against Google's acquistion, given today to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights:

This country doesn't permit the phone company to listen to what you say and use that information to target ads. The computer industry doesn't permit a software company to record everything we type and use that information to target ads. Yet with this merger, Google seeks to record nearly everything you see and do on the Internet and use that information to target ads. Indeed, one question is whether this merger will create a whole new meaning to the term being Googled.

These privacy issues in fact have antitrust consequences. Given the nature and economics of online advertising, this concentration of user information means that no other company will be able serve ads as profitably. In short, it will substantially reduce the ability of other companies to compete.

It is spooky. But doesn't Microsoft also compile user information for the purpose of targeting ads? Didn't Microsoft also try to acquire DoubleClick?

You can tell Smith's probably the world's most experienced antitrust testifier. But Drummond may have a chance to catch up.

(P.S. Maybe I liked Smith's testimony better because he made a great case for print media. Isn't it worth 50 cents to get your news in a format where nobody's tracking and recording every story you read?)

Finally, the Microsoft antitrust case gets interesting again.

Not because the company lost its appeal and has to pay a big fine. That's really a snooze. Microsoft paid the fine a long time ago, and it's been making changes since 2004 to comply with the ruling that it was appealing.

Maybe I'm just enjoying the lull between this ruling and the next round of antitrust complaints here in the U.S., but I'm excited to see this enter the next phase, where we see how Microsoft performs, now that regulators have supposedly balanced the market and removed the unfair advantages that the Redmond company gained from its monopoly.

Microsoft has clarity and its competitors supposedly have a level playing field, thanks to the European Commission, so let the game begin.

Some are thrilled that Microsoft is finally getting its due, but I think that also happened in 2004 when the European Commission began telling Microsoft what it could and couldn't bundle with Windows.

That's what Microsoft has fought the hardest during all of its antitrust cases -- the right to decide what it can include in its software. When it lost that right, it protested and negotiated the details until the bitter end. The end result was the stillborn "N" version of Windows with media player stripped out, per the commission's ruling. Microsoft's point was made when almost nobody bought the software.

Similarly, Microsoft moaned and groaned and took forever to release and document the server protocols the commission (and the U.S. Department of Justice) forced the company to share. The protocols make Windows servers work better with Windows desktops, and presumably helped Microsoft build its phenomenal server business.

By haggling and stretching out the documentation process for years, Microsoft held its competitive edge while it appealed the ruling. I wonder how much that tactic hurt its appeal. Even if the competitive advantage of the protocols was overstated, the delayed compliance created the impression Microsoft was continuing to benefit where it shouldn't.

If Microsoft was faster to document the protocols, other companies would have had a few years now to be using them. A few years of this "balanced" market competition would be a chance to see whether the protocols gave Microsoft an unfair advantage.

Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice are already making noises about how today's ruling will limit innovation. If that happens, maybe they should work together on an appeal.

But why not let it sit for a few years. Give Microsoft a chance to show whether it can keep gaining server market share on its own, without any unfair advantage, real or not.

I'd think the clarity and certainty of a final ruling would be more valuable to Microsoft than the distant possibility of winning an appeal sometime in the next decade. Unless it really has been making a killing with those protocols.

Perhaps it wanted to spare Seattle employees from the hyper-aggressive parking patrols that have turned up in South Lake Union since Paul Allen began developing condos and office buildings in the area.

Like this guy, who parked in the restricted loading space next to a handicapped parking spot on private property. Do as I say, not as I do? Grrrr.

Here are few more details about Seattle's broadband project that I wrote about in today's column.

First, citywide Wifi isn't high on the list of priorities. At least that's my impression, after talking to Bill Schrier, the city's chief technology officer. He mentioned the challenges EarthLink has had with municipal Wi-Fi in places such as San Francisco.

But he did say that Wi-Fi nodes could be added to the fiber that's extended into neighborhoods. I think that's an interesting option -- maybe the city could provide free basic service on the same network. That would help lower-income residents overcome what's really the biggest cost of computing nowadays, Internet service, and provide roaming access for everyone.

Schrier is also keeping his eye on Layfayette, La., and Clarksville, Tenn., as models of muncipal fiber providers.

He didn't say which Seattle neighborhoods could get the fiber pilot project, but assured me that Paul Allen's poeple haven't been twisting his arm to put South Lake Union at the head of the line.

Here are some links if you'd like more background:

Seattle Broadband Initiative home page

A column I wrote a year ago questioning the broadband project.

A column on Qwest's CEO discussing the company's plans for broadband in Seattle.

The key report by the city's broadband task force from May 2005

Contact info to provide input to the mayor.

The City Council's Energy and Technology Committee.

Still think net neutrality concerns are overblown? Keep in mind AT&T's "content monitors."

Pearl Jam protested when an overzealous AT&T content monitor cut political comments from a Web cast of the band's Lollapalooza performance on Sunday.

The Seattle band had inserted the lyrics "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home" into a song, but they were missing from the Web cast.

When asked, AT&T told Lollapalooza that the monitor made a mistake and the lyrics would be restored, according to a writeup today on Pearl Jam's Web site. An excerpt:

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

The post was picked up by tech blogger Om Malik and others. I wonder if it will be a turning point in the debate over net neutrality.

As Pearl Jam pointed out, the incident undermines the public statements by the likes of AT&T's chief executive "that fears his company and other big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown."

Still think net neutrality concerns are overblown? Keep in mind AT&T's "content monitors."

Pearl Jam protested when an overzealous AT&T content monitor cut political comments from a Web cast of the band's Lollapalooza performance on Sunday.

The Seattle band had inserted the lyrics "George Bush, leave this world alone" and "George Bush find yourself another home" into a song, but they were missing from the Web cast.

When asked, AT&T told Lollapalooza that the monitor made a mistake and the lyrics would be restored, according to a writeup today on Pearl Jam's Web site. An excerpt:

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.

AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.

The post was picked up by tech blogger Om Malik and others. I wonder if it will be a turning point in the debate over net neutrality.

As Pearl Jam pointed out, the incident undermines the public statements by the likes of AT&T's chief executive "that fears his company and other big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown."

The Internet can sometimes feel intimidating and even dangerous, but I'm glad to report that the guy who got the thing started is very nice and approachable.

Vint Cerf is also funny -- early on he had a T-shirt made that said "IP on everything."

Cerf, a key architect of the network and its military predecessor, now works at Google as a telecom policy expert and traveling sage who regularly visits the company's offices around the world. (Technically, he's vice president and "chief Internet evangelist.")

Today he was speaking at Google's Kirkland office before heading north to Vancouver for the GeoWeb conference on the intersection of the Web and geographic information systems.

I was one of the local reporters Google invited to meet with Cerf before his talk. (Interestingly, Google also invited Microsoft blogger Dare Obasanjo to interview him.)

In hiring Cerf, 64, Google is following the same path Microsoft did when it began hiring old lions such as Gordon Bell and Jim Gray, whose early research built its industry.

They're more than figureheads, though, and Cerf's experience with regulating emerging networks is particularly useful now that Google's trying to enter the telecommunications business and bidding on new spectrum the government is auctioning off this year.

I asked whether Google will be known primarily as a telecom company in five or 10 years. Cerf said it's still unclear what Google would do with wireless spectrum if it wins the auction.

"How would we use that and what business model would we apply? That's still very much a fluid discussion. I think we'd like to have multiple business models to choose among in any case."

What's going to be Google's biggest challenge if it moves into the telecommunications space?

"If we were to, for example, win the 22 MHz capacity or something like that on a national scale, then the biggest challenge there would be to figure out the most effective way to make use of that capacity. Are there third party arrangements we should consider, is there a wholesale model, do we actually run the service, do we cooperate with someone else [making] joint investments in infrastructure? All of those are questions that have got be answered. But I really don't see that as our biggest challenge. Our biggest challenge is to continue to evolve the search engine capability and our ability to serve up advertising information which is useful."

How will Google manage all these different fronts that it's opening up? Telecommunications is a complicated business.

"You may be presuming something about what we will do should we in fact win this particular spectrum auction. I would be careful not to jump to any conclusions about what we will do if we have the rights to radiate in that frequency band. There are all kinds of ways of exercising that right. One of them is to build your own facilities. But there might be other answers that don't require us to do that."

Like lease capacity?

"Be a wholesaler of that capacity, there are a variety of business models. I'm not aware that any conclusions that have been reached at this point about what the optimal choice might be. For all I know it might differ from one area to another -- there's a different model for urban vs. rural areas. I just don't know."

I'd thought about taking Cerf to see the new Bruce Willis movie, "Live Free or Die Hard." It's about a big attack on the Internet, with hackers taking down crucial parts of the network. But he'd already seen it.

"I have. It's the usual dramatic overstatement of vulnerability, although I will say that I am quite concerned about the potential hazards and vulnerability of the Internet as it exists today. There really are some serious problems there -- denial of service attacks using zombies that have been created by invasion of the operating system, often by means of a vector going through the browsers, which are too willing to download and execute random pieces of Java code and have too much access to the right resources of the computer so that these Java code things can actually exploit, install trojan horses and things. It's all pretty terrible."

So will the nation's crucial systems be brought down someday by a disgruntled former Department of Defense employee?

"I really don't think that that's likely to be the effect. You look at the worst case recent problem -- that earthquake that severed some of the cables in Asia. Even there, though it was awful, there was very rapid recovery.... So the Internet's actually been remarkably resilient in spite of all the things that are happening to it. I've been surprised at that."

What does Cerf think about broadband service in the U.S., the country where this amazing network was developed?

"It's embarrassing in some respects that we haven't found a more effective way of bringing broadband services. I'm even concerned about the broadband that is available.... It's not as fast as some of the other services in other countries -- you can get a gigabit per second in Japan, full duplex for 8700 yen a month. It almost made me want to move to Kyoto."

I also found out that Cerf and I have a very indirect personal connection. I mentioned that my grandfather helped build an early defense network, the Distant Early Warning radar system in Alaska and Canada that was created in the 1950s to watch for a Soviet attack. Cerf lit up and said that he was inspired to enter the field as a teenager in 1958, when he saw an enormous "SAGE" computer in California used to manage the network.

Microsoft programmer Adam Barr blogged about question and answer session the state Department of Transportation held on the Redmond campus yesterday:

At the brown bag today people were getting a bit irate when it was pointed out that even if things go smoothly and voters approve a large "Roads & Transit" tax package this fall, it will probably take 10 years before a new bridge opens (the DOT has a project website if you want more info on it). A couple of people made the comment that this was going to start hurting Microsoft, because people will quit to avoid having such a nightmare commute (although Google has basically the same commute).

The New York Times ran a nice story about backstage jockeying to get Google's antitrust complaint about Vista onto the front burner.

Those negotiations seem to be the story, not some newfound sympathy that the Bush administration has for Microsoft -- they've been kissy for six years now.

It's also old news that Microsoft has learned to lobby and make nice with the government. What will be interesting is seeing how gracefully it can make the leap to the next administration.

Meanwhile, Google seems to be asserting its newfound political influence.

But the spat over Google's toolbar seems inconsequential compared with the way the administration has sided with Microsoft in the European Union's antitrust case and swung for Microsoft in China, Korea and India.

Does that mean the Department of Justice is going soft on the toolbar issue? It's hard to tell with the amount of information that's been provided; so far all we have is the Microsoft-Netscape specter being raised before the specifics are disclosed. (That also seems really outdated; isn't Google doing an end-run around the PC?)

One thing that is known is that the feds and states are going through the routine process of writing a status report for the judge overseeing the case. It's a six-way process that has Microsoft, the feds and five states all trying to spin the report their way.

These reports have been prepared for years, but this may be the first time one of the sides has tried to change their composition through newspaper stories. (Microsoft will often offer background briefings to help reporters "understand" what the reports say, but after the reports have been written.)

Did the DOJ act differently this time by suggesting the toolbar complaint isn't worth pursuing? It's not the first complaint that has been rejected.

How much of an issue is the Google toolbar on Vista? I thought most consumer PCs sold in the U.S. were now preloaded with either the Google toolbar or with Google search as the default setting in Internet Explorer.

Could the heightened attention on the toolbar be payback for Microsoft complaining to antitrust regulators about Google's DoubleClick acquisition?

I hope we're not seeing a trend. Next will we see Microsoft and other software companies complaining about Google's apparently exclusive deal to provide third-party applications on Apple's iPhone?

Inside baseball aside, this is a great opportunity to ask Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to consider making Microsoft's antitrust compliance process less secretive. I know it's late in the game but why not set a precedent?

The public should have an opportunity to review the complaints and remedies of conduct that are allegedly hurting consumers. That would also make it harder for attorneys general to negotiate with innuendo and let their constituents have a say on what's important. It would also help people decide whether public servants are doing their best to protect them or corporate interests.

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- After opening their conference with a moment of silence to recognize American troops, the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher turned to politics and grilled presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain about his support for the war in Iraq.

Sorting out the Iraq mess and finding consensus on how to proceed seem more difficult than any of the technological challenges that will be covered during the rest of the conference.

Almost as sticky was the question of what the government should do to help the United States improve broadband service and catch up to the level of service in other developed countries.

On broadband, McCain argued for less regulation and government oversight. He didn't seem to agree with the suggestion, by Mossberg and Swisher, that telecom industry consolidation might be a factor.

Is there a role for government when there's too much concentration of power? Mossberg asked.

McCain's answer:

"I think the trend is in that direction but you known and most everyone in the room knows that when government gets involved there's intended consequences and unintended consequences."

They didn't let him off that easy. Swisher asked if broadband should be considered along the lines of the federal highway system.

Pressed further, McCain said:

"I understand that when you control the pipe you should be able to get profit on your investment, etc. At the same time I do worry about the concentration of it."

Regarding the war, all three agreed that mistakes were made, but the journalists questioned McCain on his opposition to withdrawal.

Noting that it turned out Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction or a role in the 9/11 attack, Mossberg asked, "Why on earth do you support staying in there instead of saying this was a tremendous mistake ... let's end it?"

McCain argued that pulling out would further destabilize the region and draw neighboring countries into a bigger conflict, saying, "We will lose more if we leave the country."

"Other nations will be drawn into the conflict," McCain said. "We still are dependent on our energy supplies from that part of the world.''

Both perspectives drew applause now and then from an audience that included the heads of numerous major tech and media companies.

Afterward I asked a few about their impression and several said they were impressed with McCain, whether or not they agreed with him politically. One noted that Al Gore was just as sharp when he spoke during a previous D conference.

A few of McCain's zinger lines made YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen chuckle (I was sitting behind them). That's got to be worth something.

Here's a clip of McCain's presentation provided by D.

The terrific Fortune magazine story about Microsoft threatening free software groups with patent lawsuits has one thing wrong.

Patent Armageddon isn't coming, as the magazine suggests.

It has already begun, and I'm starting to wonder if we should chuck our computers and go back to pen and paper until things calm down.

At least, that was my reaction to hearing that the Justice Department wants to imprison people for life for using copied software and jail people who attempt to infringe on copyrights.

Intellectual-property protections are important and they've helped Microsoft build a great business. But they are not a life-and-death issue. There are strong laws already in place that deal with theft and they've been successfully used to restrict software piracy in the U.S.

The rules around copyright infringement are more complicated, but that muddiness is why those rules shouldn't be used to further restrict liberty.

There's an ongoing debate about fair use of copyrighted material, for instance. Can you make backup copies of copyrighted material? In some cases, yes. The recording industry has accepted that copying CDs is common practice and levies a charge on blank audio discs to cover the cost of this copying. Will you be jailed for exercising a privilege that you're paying for?

The bigger question, though, is this: Will you be able to tell what's right or wrong if the law is approved, or will you be bullied and scared into curtailing your own freedom? Throw away the VCR, dear, I don't want to break the law.

Before going further, lawmakers need independent analysis of the true cost to society of copyright infringement in the U.S. Breathless "anti-piracy" lobbying materials won't suffice.

That information will help the country decide whether it really wants to launch a War on Copying. We need to know if there really are weapons of mass replication being deployed. Then we can decide if we should let the drug dealers go so there's room in federal prison for all the guys with photocopied New Yorker cartoons in their cubicle.

I can hear it now:

"Sorry, ma'm, we don't have the resources to find the scumbag who stole your $20,000 car, but when we recovered its stripped hulk we found a homemade CD music compilation in the glove box. You'll have to come with us."

What about digital rights management and watermarking technology? Is that technology failing so badly that draconian new laws are required?

Will anti-copying technology advance, if it's illegal to research and test the strength and capabilities of digital locks?

As for Microsoft threatening the free software crowd via Fortune, that reminds me of suspicions that Kim Basinger's divorce lawyers "leaked" that awful voice mail that Alec Baldwin left for their daughter.

Parties in high-stakes negotiations do this sort of thing all the time. They drop salacious tidbits to raise and shape the profile of a case, engage the public and put pressure on their opponents.

The tactic seems desperate, but I wouldn't bet against Microsoft's army of lawyers. They practically wrote the book on software patents and must have a good idea where the company may be wronged and where they could win a patent war.

So much for the kinder, gentler Microsoft. We hardly knew ye.

The best response so far to Monday's column on KEXP and the Internet radio royalty situation came from Seattle radio producer Tim Shook.

He pointed to an article he wrote last year about the history of another cool local, independent station with a strong Web presence -- Nathan Hale High's KNHC-FM (89.5).

For more on the station, known as C-89, here are a few earlier pieces we ran.

That's the general theme of a high-level conference on alternative energy that Cascadia Center and Microsoft are hosting next Monday at the company's conference center in Redmond.

It's one of two events focusing on electric cars in May, so don't be surprised if you see more than the usual assortment of hybrids humming around the area.

Cascadia's shindig is open to the public but costs $75. Session topics include the future of plug-in hybrids, government incentives and flex-fuel infrastructure needs.

Among the speakers at "Jump Start to a Secure, Clean Energy Future," are Bill Reinert, Toyota's U.S. engineer in charge of advanced vehicle planning; Nick Zielinski, GM's chief engineer for the Chevy Volt, and Michael Rawding, Microsoft's vice president in charge of special projects and corporate affairs.

Also speaking are elected officials, federal officials involved in energy policy and research, academics and investors in green transportation ventures. The keynote speaker is Tyler Duvall, assistant secretary for transportation policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Here's the full agenda.

If you don't get your fill (ha!) at the conference, there's another green transportation conference the following week in Wenatchee.

The Power UP! electrifying transportation summit takes place May 14 and 15 at the Wenatchee Convention Center.

Its keynote speaker is the "father of the plug-in hybrid," Andy Frank, director of the National Center for Hybrid Excellence at University of California-Davis.

Power UP! costs $175, or $75 for students, but it will have a zanier assortment of vehicles. Among the rigs on display are a plug-in Prius, an original EV-1 and an electric tractor.

Here is some supporting material for today's expanded column on KEXP and radio royalties.

KEXP stats: The station reaches 175,000 people: 115,000 terrestrial listeners plus 60,000 online listeners. About 30 percent of the financial contributions to the station come from outside of Washington. Locally it has about 1,000 volunteers who donate time to the station.

KEXP is run from a Paul Allen-owned building on Dexter Avenue, near the Pink Elephant car wash. It has a fiber-optic connection to the University of Washngton and its transmitter at 18th and Madison on Capitol Hill. Allen is no longer covering the station's deficits, but he's providing the building for $1 per year for five more years or so.

The station's 4,700-watt broadcast has a roughly 18-mile radius.

Working with the UW, KEXP has added HD radio capability. That gives the station the capability to add a second or third broadcast channel. Director Tom Mara said they're still discussing how to use the additional channels.

At the Dexter building, the station has four studios and they all have turntables as well as digital disc players. The station has 10,000 CDs in its collection.

KEXP added a "click to buy" button on its Web site in response to listener requests. The button directs users to an assortment of local music sellers, who give the station a percentage of the sales. The station's proceeds are neglible - the sales added $6,000 to the station's $3.4 million operating budget last year.

I also need to correct something on the technical side -- it was the UW Computing and Communication Department, not the UW Computer Science and Engineering Department, that developed KEXP's Web streaming service and other technologies.

Regarding the royalty situation, here are some sites with more info:

The Copyright Royalty Board is the body that approved the higher royalties, at the request of Sound Exchange, a group representing copyright holders. Sound Exchange was created by the Recording Industry Association of America.

On April 16, the CRB refused to hear an appeal of the higher royalty fees. The next step for broadcasters opposing the new fees is to seek relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals or from Congress.

Discussions are taking place between interested parties that could produce a settlement. Sound Exchange, for instance, extended an olive branch to Webcasters on April 19.

On April 26, U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee and Don Manzullo announced a royalty limits bill.

Here's a great primer on radio royalties provided by David Oxenford, a lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine's Washington, D.C., office. Oxenford also writes a great blog on the topic. I interviewed him last week to learn more about the situation. Davis Wright is also The Seattle Times Co.'s law firm, but that's not why I called him. I stumbled across his Broadcast Law Blog and wanted to know more about the appeal process.

Another great blog is Kurt Hanson's Radio and Internet Newsletter.

More disclosure: I had no idea The Times would editorialize on the radio royalty situation in today's paper. I've been working on the KEXP story for about a month now; it would have run sooner but vacations and the full pipeline delayed things.

It was worth waiting, I think, because last week we were able to put together a nifty music slideshow featuring Lymbyc Systym, an Arizona band that sounds a little bit like Seattle's The Postal Service minus the vocals.

During my reporting, the most amazing thing to discover was how much sound Lymbyc Systym produces -- it's just two skinny young guys with a drum kit, a laptop, a glockenspiel, a clavinet and an assortment of keyboards. Alan Berner's picture really captures their sonic effect.

KEXP DJ Cheryl Waters invited the band to play after she heard them en route to the bathroom at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, one of the national events that KEXP participates in to raise its profile and broaden its reach.

Who is Ed?

Is he the reason Bill Gates opted not to run for president?

Gates and fellow billionaire Eli Broad are pouring $60 million into the "Ed in '08" political campaign.

The Ed in '08 Web site has a guy's picture, but it belongs to Roy, a former Los Angeles school superintendent chairing the campaign.

Actually Ed is short for education, a topic that Gates and Broad want to be emphasized in the 2008 presidential election.

"Ed in 08" is the slogan for their political group, Strong American Schools.

A sample Gates quote, from his foundation's announcement today:

"Each year more than 1 million students drop out of high school. That's one child every 29 seconds. We all must demand that candidates and our leaders share their opinions and policies on how our country will offer all young people Strong American Schools."

The city urgently needs a Dutch boy with a very large thumb.

I just walked past a few million dollars' worth of equipment trucks, tractors, fire engines, pickups and police cars and dozens of municipal employees watching water gush from a big leak near KING 5's office on Dexter, waiting for someone somewhere to somehow make it stop.

No wonder my shower today reminded me of being in a cheap Italian pensione. Some are fretting about one of Paul Allen's nearby condo projects getting wet, but I doubt it will crimp his style.

The state Department of Ecology just launched a couple of nifty Web sites.

One is the Coastal Atlas, a zoomable map of shorelines in Western Washington, perfect for plotting that next oyster hunting expedition.

The other is a site that reports several times per day the stream flow levels in key watersheds. In announcing the "Instream Flow Data" service, the agency's release said:

Ecology is launching the new feature during Earth Week 2007 to underscore the challenges we face in effectively managing water resources for the benefit of people as well as salmon.

I wonder if you'll be able to see the flow levels change when Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! get traffic surges at their hydropowered datacenters along the Columbia River.

That's the subject of a great-sounding public forum featuring elected officials and others that the Washington Coalition for Open Government is holding Monday evening in Tacoma.

Jerry Handfield, the state archivist and WCOG president, will make a presentation he's calling "Mythbusters, Identity Theft and Online Public Records."

A panel discussion will involve State Auditor Brian Sonntag, state representative turned Microsoft employee Toby Nixon, Pierce County Deputy Prosecutor Bertha Fitzer, Davis Wright Tremaine partner Michele Earl-Hubbard and Tacoma News Tribune investigative reporter Sean Robinson.

The event is co-sponsored by the regional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and hosted by the TNT. It's from 7-9 p.m. in the auditorium at the paper's building at 1950 S. State St.

If the speeches get boring, check out the enormous Chihuly installation in the lobby.

A reader asked me today where her company could recycle old PCs.

I've mentioned Re-PC before, but just came across a great list of computer recycling options compiled by King County.

I should have asked her whether they were upgrading to Vista or switching to Macs.

This story's all over the Web today: An Alaska state technician accidently reformatted a backup drive containing information on the $38 billion oil sales account that pays state residents an annual dividend.

Backup tapes turned out to be unreadable, even after Microsoft and Dell pitched in to help recover the data.

In the end the state had to rescan the original paperwork, which fortunately was still there, stored in 300 cardboard boxes. That cost $200,000 and the snafu will reduce Alaskans' oil dividend checks by 37 cents apiece.

I wonder if Alaska hired the techician from the King County elections office.

Ed Lazowska, the University of Washington's outspoken advocate for computer science education, is taking his show national.

He was named the first chair of the Computing Community Consortium, a new group formed by the National Science Foundation and the Computing Reseach Association.

The CRA blog made the announcement:

In his new role, Dr. Lazowska will lead the CCC -- a consortium of experts drawn from and chosen by the computing research community -- as it seeks to stimulate scientific leadership and vision on issues related to computing research and future large-scale computing research projects. The CCC, established by CRA in partnership with NSF, will catalyze the computing research community to debate long-range research challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising visions into clearly defined initiatives.

Lazowska will apparently keep his day job as the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair at UW, according to an engineering school spokeswoman, but I'm still trying to reach him for confirmation.

UPDATE: He's staying at UW. The consortium gig is part time, he said via email:

"Half-time position, located here. Big hill to climb, but important to make the effort."

It was fun while it lasted, but Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams and others in the ragtag Bill Gates for President campaign have given up.

The campaign started last November, when Adams mused about the possiblity on his blog and a group separately created the Billgatesforpresident.net Web site. They announced their decision yesterday via an e-mail that was posted at NetworkWorld and flagged by Slashdot:

We've tried.... We really have! We wanted to evoke political debate and to a certain extend we succeeded to do just that. On the other hand, we failed miserably to draw enough attention our way. Bill Gates probably noticed and read the website and our arguments, but he probably didn't feel the drive needed to go for that presidential candidacy

Bill told me last summer that he wasn't interested in being a politician, but you never know. Here's a Gates for President post from November with all the links.

Practically before Bill Gates finished his Senate testimony in support of the H1 visa program this morning, Seattle-based WashTech gave its supporters a "click to send" form letter countering his statements.

Gates told a Senate committee it would be "fantastic" if the government would increase the H-1B visa limit from 65,000 a year to, say, 300,000.

According to a Bloomberg report, Gates said:

"Even though it may not be realistic, I do not believe there should be any limit. These employees are vital to U.S. competitiveness, and we should encourage them to become permanent U.S. residents so that they can drive innovation and economic growth alongside America's native-born talent.''

He said the U.S. should simultaneously invest more in research and education and double the output of math and science graduates.

WashTech's form letter didn't mince words. It also made the assumption that tech workers have friends who are highly skilled and unemployed because of the visa program:

As a high-tech worker in this country, I oppose further expansion of the H-1B visa program that is riddled with fraud, abuse and undermines the economic rights of citizens and immigrants alike. Increasing the visa program is actually detrimental for U.S. citizens from seeking out technical professions because they believe that their will be too many workers seeking to few job openings.

I know of my friends that are highly educated and skilled but have faced long periods of unemployment. The only thing tech workers are guaranteed today is economic uncertainty caused by the winds of globalization and relentless corporate downsizing.

If you'd like to draw your own conclusions, here's a link to a video of today's hearing (the committee used RealNetworks' player ...) and Bill Gates' prepared comments. Here's a story about Microsoft making the same pitch last year.

A reader saw the headline on Monday's viaduct rant and thought I was going to write about running Vista on a Mac. The email:

"I only read the first few words of your title and thought you were going to talk about how a lot of people are now buying Apples and running XP/Vista in Parallels V.M."

Sorry to disappoint. Great suggestion for a future column.

U.S. antitrust regulators still haven't decided what to do about a complaint they received about the way Windows Vista handles middleware, according to a status report filed last night with the judge overseeing the case.

It must not be a pressing threat to competition in the tech industry. The complaint was received in November, and it may take another four months to investigate.

But it's serious enough for the regulators to have obtained "significant additional information from Microsoft and the complainant."

No other details were provided and the complaintant's identity wasn't disclosed.

I wonder if it's a security vendor such as Symantec. That's not the sort of middleware that's been addressed by the case, but Symantec has complained publicly about Vista.

How Windows treats middleware was a key issue in both the U.S. and European antitrust cases against Microsoft. In Europe, regulators went so far as to require the company to ship versions of Windows without a bundled media player.

Despite the pending complaint, the report suggests Microsoft and regulators' technical committee (TC) are working cooperatively to be sure Vista doesn't create roadblocks for other software companies.

Microsoft's portion of the report said 30 software companies were offered help dealing with Vista's new middleware settings, and 26 opted to visit a special testing lab the company and regulators established in Redmond:

As discussed in Microsoft's previous Supplemental Status Reports, Windows Vista handles middleware settings on a "per user" rather than the previous "per machine" basis. This change to the operating system necessitates that middleware ISVs change various settings in order to take advantage of the newly revised Middleware functionality in Windows Vista. Accordingly, the TC and Microsoft have cooperated in various ways to encourage middleware ISVs to achieve "Vista-readiness" prior to the shipment of Windows Vista.

Microsoft worked closely with the TC to notify 30 ISVs identified by the TC in each of the four Middleware categories -- "Internet browsers, media players, e-mail clients, and instant messaging" -- of the need to prepare their middleware applications for Windows Vista and of the various opportunities made available to the ISVs by Microsoft and the TC, including a Vista-Readiness Lab in Redmond. Twenty-six of the 30 ISVs responded positively, taking advantage of or indicating interest in the offered opportunities. The four remaining ISVs that chose not to take advantage of the Vista-Readiness Lab are receiving support from Microsoft by e-mail and phone.

Another issue is the sharing communications protocols used by Windows. Microsoft was forced to license the protocols to competitors and explain how they work, but it's taken years to produce adequate documentation.

The latest status report said the quality of the documentation has improved significantly, but regulators are concerned that Microsoft found additional protocols that weren't disclosed before.

Microsoft determined that there are a number of protocols that must be documented in addition to those originally planned, either because they were added to Longhorn Server after the initial schedule was developed, or because they were inadvertently overlooked in preparation of the original technical documentation and the schedule for the rewrite project. Plaintiffs are concerned that Microsoft has not been able to meet its original schedule and are particularly troubled that at this late hour in the program Microsoft is still discovering protocols that should have been included in the original documentation.

That sounds like the key issue that U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly will consider during a status hearing next week.

One goal of the Monday column is to explore ways that the tech industry influences the region.

Sometimes I wish that influence was greater, sometimes not.

One more reason the viaduct is relevant to the area's tech industry: If politics kill the whole project, Microsoft and other companies in the Overlake tech cluster will benefit because the state will then turn its focus - and its major projects war chest -- toward Highway 520.

Without the viaduct, the state might even resurrect plans for Highway 605, a new north-south corridor on the Eastside that has been considered off and on for decades. That project never took off, largely because it would put a freeway through rural areas and possibly sensitive habitat areas.

A few years ago the state revisited the concept, which it now calls the "commerce corridor."

The additional 10,000 to 12,000 Microsoft employees planned for Redmond will figure heavily in the planning.

Biotech entrepreneurs, start your grant applications.

The state has begun doling out proceeds of its long-ago settlement with the tobacco industry, hoping to give the local biotech industry a boost.

The money is being funneled thorugh the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, which finally began taking applications for its first grants today. It's providing grants of up to $1 million for research into technology applications that improve health-care quality and cost effectiveness.

From the introduction:

The inaugural funding opportunity of the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, LSDF 07-01 Beneficial Applications of Technology in Health Care is designed to encourage sharply focused research projects. $3-$6 million will be awarded to support proposals demonstrating beneficial applications of technology for improving healthcare quality and/or cost effectiveness. Awards are expected to range between $250,000 and $1 million dollars and to extend from one to three years, though there is no fixed cap on amount or length. The Facilities & Administration (F&A) allowance for grants in this funding cycle will be a fixed 15% of direct, allowable costs.

Interesting that this comes just as Microsoft dives into the same market. The company is supporting the fund, so it probably won't apply for a grant.

U.S. Rep. Brian Baird's Web site won one of 18 gold medals in an annual contest that ranks the best sites on Capitol Hill.

The Vancouver Democrat was the only Washington representative to place in the Congressional Management Foundation contest.

I'm guessing he won largely because his site has a lot of neat multimedia features, including a video "welcome" clip; video clips of testimony and committee meetings; and MP3s of Baird discussing issues such as immigration.

Sen. Patty Murray won one of 27 silver medals. Murray's site also has audio and video features and it prominently displays a blog she wrote during a Middle East visit, but it hasn't been updated since 2005.

Washington state consumers reported more problems with online shopping last year, according to a 2006 roundup released today by Attorney General Rob McKenna.

But communications services remained the biggest source of consumer complaints, followed by offline retail, collection agencies and auto sales.

The AG's office received 819 complaints about "electronic shopping" last year, making it the fifth most common category of consumer complaint. The year before, the category was ninth with 532 complaints.

The rising complaints seem related to overall increases in online shopping. Noting a drop in complaints about online auctions, McKenna said it appears their popularity is waning and consumers are being more cautious online.

"Complaints received by our office suggest that consumers are becoming more careful about bidding for merchandise in online auctions," he said in the release, "but risk is still there. The Internet is ripe for fraud and some consumers are blindly shopping on sites they are not familiar with. Shoppers should only visit reputable sites in order to ensure trouble-free transactions and reduce the likelihood of becoming victims of identity theft."

Washingtonians submitted 319 complaints about online auctions last year, down from 774 in 2005.

It took just a few months to get a 2.5-square-mile "proof of concept" network up and providing free, ad-supported Wi-Fi service in Portland, according to an Unstrung report.

The Microsoft-sponsored service went live Dec. 5 and is spreading through the city. It's designed as a two-tier system with a premium, paid service and a basic, free service that helps bridge the digital divide.

Working in the system's favor is the falling price of hardware, the story said:

"What we see is the price of a WiFi repeater, now sub-$100, will quickly be sub-$50," MetroFi Chief Executive Chuck Haas said. "If you fast-forward two years in Portland, there will be 10 times as many WiFi repeaters in homes, businesses, and high-rises, than the number of MetroFi lightpole-mounted devices."

At that point the dream of free, ubiquitous WiFi coverage will be closer to reality. At least in the Emerald City.

That's funny, and sad, because Portland's the Rose City.

The Emerald City is Seattle, which abandoned the concept of free municipal WiFi in favor of an expensive fiber optic system that's still under review at City Hall.

Energy, life sciences, nanotech and wireless are the focus of the Washington Technology Center's upcoming conference at Bellevue's Meydenbauer Center.

Keynotes will be delivered by Gov. Gregoire and Peter Andrews, chief scientist for Queensland, Australia.

Here's the agenda.

Declan McCullagh has a great piece on the "new" data retention policies that are forcing Internet service providers and others -- coffee shops with Wi-Fi perhaps? -- to hang onto customer data in case the police want a peek.

I've said that one of the issues that needs to be sorted out in 2007 is the definition of blogger.

The situation is getting so bad that it's disrupting Congress and providing cover for weasels in the other Washington.

That was painfully obvious if you watched the hissy fit that bloggers had in recent weeks over the weakened ethics bill. They helped scuttle a provision that would have required lobbyists to disclose more about the "grassroots" tools they are using to manipulate the opinions of lawmakers and the public.

Specifically, bloggers had fits about section 220 of the bill, which said that grassroots campaigns costing more than $25,000 per quarter had to be disclosed as a lobbying expense.

Goaded by lobbyists who don't want the public to know about their spending, bloggers (and evangelicals) interpreted the bill to mean they'd have to register with the government and have their First Amendment rights threatened.

A primary source of the goading, according to The Register, was political junk-mail firm American Target Advertising, one of the companies that stuffs your physical mailbox with election spam every November:

The bill made no direct mention of bloggers, but (ATA's Mark) Fitzgibbons had the vision to recognize in the blogosphere's endemic paranoia and aversion to fact-checking a perfect means of spreading opposition to section 220. After all, even with the clumsy wording, the bill would only affect bloggers who get paid a six figure salary from an employer or client (advertising revenue wouldn't count) to stimulate grassroots lobbying as a full-time gig

But that didn't stop Fitzgibbons and ATA from spreading the Fear among the entire blogosphere, and it didn't soften the indignation that the hyperbolic rhetoric inspired among bloggers.

So instead of enlightening the public with a fresh take on an important issue, bloggers were played by the entrenched powers. The end result was to create a loophole for lobbyists.

It's a replay of bloggers' past fits over election spending disclosure rules. They've objected to rules that would require candidates to disclose their online campaign spending, just as candidates do with offline spending.

Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the judge who is separately overseeing Microsoft's antitrust compliance, saw through the technology smokescreen and ruled in 2002 that exempting online spending undermines the disclosure rules.

Both Kollar-Kotelly and the authors of the original ethics bill recognized the obvious -- that political campaigns are using all of the latest communication tools, such as blogs, and that spending has to be disclosed to the public.

What's holding things back is the term "blog." The technology has advanced faster than the language, and the term is too vague for legislation. The inadequate terminology confuses bloggers and lawmakers alike and creates opportunities for manipulation.

Instead "blog" is stuck on the list of loaded words that are subject to interpretation and vulnerable to misuse in the Capitol. Others include grassroots, green, terror and privacy.

For starters, it's time to clarify once and for all that blogs are no longer the province of independent, unpaid, amateur essayists. Most blogs are written by solo bloggers, but the most-read and most-influential blogs are professional operations. Should the same rules apply to both categories?

Blogging software and blog networks are powerful and efficient communication tools. They're now being used by the powerful to efficiently influence the masses.

Just look at what happened with the ethics bill. Lobbyists used blogging tools to manipulate public opinion and get section 220 removed. Those are the bloggers that would have had to register under the ethics bill, by the way.

Why are we still using the same term to describe them and all those teenage diarists writing about Hello Kitty?

After all the media bashing in the last decade, and the weak press performance before the invasion of Iraq, some saw blogs as a ray of hope, an independent, untainted voice that would give people a voice and stand up to power.

I still have faith that the press will perform its role in society. It's also exciting to see the definition of press expand to include journalistic blogs. But that evolution is threatened by imprecise terminology that puts too many activities in the category of blogging.

It's no wonder lobbyists and marketers are so enthusiastic about blogging. They're taking advantage of the medium's credibility to deliver their message, mooching off the aura of independence that surrounds blogs.

Incidents like the ethics bill make me wonder how long that aura will last.

The unifying effect of the term "blogging" helped build the blog community and gave it power and legitimacy.

But the blogosphere is starting to seem like the British Empire in the middle of the last century, when the empire was unraveling and colonies like India began the messy process of establishing their own identities. The empire's influence and structures remain, but most of its territory is no longer British.

Blogs have to be more upfront about paid political content if they're ever going to have the credibility of the mainstream media. You may laugh and sneer at that last point, but the MSM has developed a pretty good system for handling paid political ads so the public can tell what's an ad. That system also helps the public and watchdogs monitor election spending, to be sure the system is fair and transparent.

Truly independent bloggers trying to influence politics will be marginalized until they accept the reality of public disclosure rules. The rules improve credibility and independence, unless you've got something to hide.

There's hope. The blogging institution has the ability to self-correct. When its legitimacy was threatened by cheap and sleazy spam blogs, bloggers came up with a new term, splog, to identify and isolate the moochers before they eroded blogs' credibility.

When will bloggers do the same thing with "grassroots" blogs created and seeded by professional lobbyists? To fight section 220, lobbyists characterized these things as political blogs, but that's a wolf in sheep's clothing.

If there was a unique term that identified blogs that are basically high-tech political campaign materials, lobbyists couldn't hide under bloggers' umbrella and it would be easier for Congress to write ethics rules that take into account current technology.

What do you think these should be called? Here are a few ideas:

Spinblogs

PACblogs

Weaselogs

Bullshlogs

Abramhoffs

DeLaylogs

The Chronicle has a cautionary tale for Seattle and other cities mulling public Internet access projects.

Apparently Gates and the U2 frontman had dinner Wednesday and talked about ways to get presidential candidates talking about global health issues in the next campaign.

Perhaps he was inspired by all the talk of Bill running for president.

I heard about this third hand, through one of the bloggers that Microsoft flew to Seattle to schmooze with Bill on Thursday. They left with some gossipy blog fodder and the gift of a Zune, but apparently no breaking news.

Below are some excerpts from a recap by Steve Rubel, one of the 14 bloggers who participated. Rubel also happens to work for Edelman, one of Microsoft's PR firms, but he's still one of the voices Microsoft was trying to influence.

Anyway, it sounds like Bill deflected questions about SCO and Linux, agreed that digital rights management needs more work, recounted how he once planned to become a lawyer, and reiterated his interested in biology and energy ventures.

Other tidbits selected from Rubel's blog:

Q) What is the most important thing we can do as tech leaders re. education/healthcare?

A) Get involved in the school where your children go.... For healthcare (and developing nations), distance is an issue. Sometimes the most we can do is vote for certain political candidates. (Gates said he and Bono discussed this over dinner last night -- specifically what they can do to surface these two issues in the upcoming Presidential campaign.)

Q) What would you be looking at today if you were an independent entrepreneur?

A) Something dramatic like artificial intelligence. Biology. Energy.

Q) What's on your Zune? (Rubel's question)

A) All of the U2 stuff plus a lot more musicals than you might expect -- for example, Wicked.

Q) Are there things on the horizon that will bring more transparency to government?

A) It should be interesting to watch online video in upcoming presidential election. People will try to outdo each other to be the online hip guy.

The internet has made it difficult to run a regime that runs on secrecy. Government is already benefiting. Government isn't open to competitive forces. All things good or bad will come more slowly to government

Q) What's on your Christmas list?

A) I am always hard to buy for; www.teach12.com has great lectures on science topics. I didn't buy the last DVDs of (the TV series) 24. I try not to purchase these so I can receive them as gifts.

My suggestion to Melinda: The last season of 24 was awful. Bill might want one of these instead.

It's better than nothing, but the math and science education boost that Gov. Gregoire proposed today seems pretty puny for a state that's a world center for software development.

The spending boost is hardly enough to be trumpeted as a way "to grow our economy and secure a bright future for our students."

Gregoire's calling for $197 million in additional spending over two years. That may sound like a lot, but it's just a 1.4 percent increase in K-12 spending over the same period. It works out to another $98.50 per student per year. Total spending per student would then go from $6,900 to $6,998 per year.

The money would also come from the state's surplus, so it doesn't sound like a permanent commitment. If the surplus dwindles, will class sizes get bigger again?

Apparently the gov didn't take my suggestion to limit R&D tax breaks and give schools some of the $259 million she's giving back to Microsoft and other companies every two years.

Parents of public school children already pay far more than $98.50 a year out of their pocket to compensate for the state's weak education funding.

Gregoire's proposal is a start and it seems to say all the right things about class sizes, curriculum and teachers, but the money's not enough to start quoting Tom Friedman.

Here are some links with more info on the neuroengineering work in today's column, and a little more ranting about misdirected subsidies.

Professor Yoky Matsuoka came from Carnegie Mellon University ,where she ran the Neurobotics Laboratory.

Carnegie is a leader in robotics, and also has lots of connections with Microsoft, which is increasing its focus on robotics and the use of computers in medical research.

UW's dean of engineering, Matthew O'Donnell, has a background in bionengineering and previously directed the program at the University of Michigan.

Other local players include Northstar Neuroscience and a new startup, Neurobionics. I interviewed the founder of Neurobionics last summer for the Enterpreneurs & Innovators show I do for SCCTV; I'll post a link to a Web version when it's posted.

I was a little snarky about Paul Allen's biotech office and condo developments in South Lake Union, but he's also doing some really cool things a few miles away from at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Fremont.

Maybe it confuses things to talk about real estate subsidies and new research areas at the UW. But I think it's worthwhile go discuss whether the public subsidies for tech office parks are appropriate, given our region's ongoing failure to adequately fund education and the mixed record of biotech job creation.

Public resources may be better spent on education and research at schools like the UW, preparing people and hatching ideas that will create tomorrow's companies. There will always be people willing to build more offices and condos if there's demand.

Here's a more eloquent plea to sharpen our focus on nurturing biotech companies.

Opportunities for new energy businesses in Washington and healthcare technologies will be the main focus of SST 2006, a daylong event at the University of Washington Tacoma campus hosted by U.S. Rep. Adam Smith.

Here's the agenda and list of speakers.

Angela Gunn produced a nice report on e-voting technology used state-by-state for Computerworld. You can click through a map to see what each state uses.

It's a nice companion piece to the profile we ran on local e-voting watchdog Bev Harris yesterday.

During a congressional hearing today on the Hewlett-Packard scandal, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee called for fast action on a law making pretexting illegal.

``I hope the message is delivered to the leadership of the House of Representatives to pass this bill in the next 24 hours. We can have this on the suspension calendar tomorrow night,'' the Bainbridge Democrat said, according to a Reuters story.

Inslee's on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

In January, long before HP was caught pilfering phone records, Inslee introduced a bill that would have made pretexting clearly illegal. Now he's backing another bill, the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, H.R. 4943, that the committee approved in March.

The FCC is being sued by a public interest group seeking data on who provides broadband service where in the U.S.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Center for Public Integrity is requesting an FCC database that lists broadband providers by Zip code.

The non-profit wants to share the information with the public on its Media Tracker Web site that provides details about media ownership.

Whether or not you equate broadband providers with media distributors, the database would be a great tool for consumers and people following municipal broadband projects like Seattle's.

The FCC is being sued by a public interest group seeking data on who provides broadband service where in the U.S.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Center for Public Integrity is requesting an FCC database that lists broadband providers by Zip code.

The non-profit wants to share the information with the public on its Media Tracker Web site that provides details about media ownership.

Whether or not you equate broadband providers with media distributors, the database would be a great tool for consumers and people following municipal broadband projects like Seattle's.

Lots of feedback on today's column on the tech industry, education and tax breaks.

Mostly I've heard from people who don't think money alone is the answer to school problems. It's a great topic but I don't want to stray too far from technology and business subjects.

One thing I didn't mention today -- Microsoft's interest in education isn't new or specific to Washington state. Along with other big tech companies like Intel, Microsoft has brought similar concerns about education and workforce preparedness to Congress.

Hopefully it's putting a little more oomph into its back yard.

Lots of feedback on today's column on the tech industry, education and tax breaks.

Mostly I've heard from people who don't think money alone is the answer to school problems. It's a great topic but I don't want to stray too far from technology and business subjects.

One thing I didn't mention today -- Microsoft's interest in education isn't new or specific to Washington state. Along with other big tech companies like Intel, Microsoft has brought similar concerns about education and workforce preparedness to Congress.

Hopefully it's putting a little more oomph into its back yard.

In a new report on phone companies' broadband video efforts, Merrill Lynch said Verizon's fiber to the home technology is superior to AT&T's approach that extends fiber to neighborhood "nodes."

But Verizon's approach will cost the company $8,500 for every new video subscriber it acquires, the report said.

"We do not believe these economics will ultimately be sustainable,'' analyst Jessica Reif Cohen wrote.

She also predicted telcos will acquire 5 percent of the video service market, or 5 million subscribers, by 2010. But she questioned whether telco investors will have the patience for such a costly investment.

Consumers may benefit, however, if telcos aggressively discount their services to compete with cable providers.

Bottom line, it's a risky investment for telecommunication companies. Which is all the more reason for Seattle to be cautious before it enters a joint venture with a private company to provide fiber to the home and broadband video services in the city.

Despite the fretting by some tech executives, Washington state is a pretty good place for businesses, according to a new Forbes report.

Too good, perhaps.

Washington the 12th most business friendly state. It ranked fifth in the categories of "regulatory climate" and "growth prospects."

But it was ranked 41st in "quality of life" based on cost of living, schools, crime, poverty and health statistics.

Yikes. I hope Washington isn't taking on the character of a developing country, one of those places where the government pours investment into a few standout industries and fails to provide adequate schools, healthcare and other basic services.

Virginia was ranked the most business-friendly state. Idaho fared well, placing sixth, while Oregon was 31st.

Cnet has a good rundown here. Basically, the FCC is pushing ahead and doesn't want it to bog down in debates about interference.

If the technology ever gets momentum, it might be worth revisiting in Seattle, a city with its own electricity system. A city task force considered broadband over power lines but opted to push for fiber to the home instead.

The Register has a good rundown of municipal fiber vs. Wi-Fi in its story on Berkeley's request for a fiber providers.

I wish I'd mentioned Portland's project in Monday's column.

The city chose MetroFi to develop a network that's being designed to provide 1 Mbps downloads to 95 percent of the city within two years. It's going to the city council this week for final approval.

"The contract doesn't require the city to help finance the $10 million network, for example, or to spend any money on wireless services,'' the Oregonian reported.

MetroFi expects to make money by selling banner ads. Portland residents can buy ad-free service for $20 a month.

The system won't be fast enough to deliver high-def video, but it's four times faster than the basic DSL service that Qwest now provides in Seattle for about $30 a month.

How did Portland land the contract? The city offered to be the network's "anchor tenant" under a deal that may save the city money, if the network works as promised.

The Oregonian reported:

Portland also plans to subscribe to the network for far-flung city offices and, if technical issues can be worked out, to cut the cost of collecting credit card data from its automated parking meters. MetroFi's contract sets a $9 monthly fee to serve each meter, for example, compared to at least $15 a month that Portland now pays.

In total, Portland estimates it could spend up to $16 million over five years on wireless services from MetroFi. While it has no formal commitment to spend anything, Kleier said, the city considers the service a good deal -- provided MetroFi's service works.

Today's column on Seattle's efforts to develop a superfast broadband network was a tough one. I don't want to be a naysayer and I hope the city does get a better network soon. But I also think the community ought to have more of a conversation about how much it wants to contribute to a private system.

I'm also curious about whether Seattle should involve neighboring communities and King County in the process. A regional plan may be impossible with all the franchises and telecommunications regulations, but at least smaller communities could benefit from Seattle's research.

We published a list of companies that responded to Seattle's request for interest, but the companies aren't all interested in providing service to consumers. Some are offering to provide services or equipment. Microsoft and Google aren't on the list.

Microsoft Senior Vice President David Cole is apparently in pretty good standing at Microsoft, despite his online business division's struggles to catch up with Google and Yahoo! and his plans to take a leave of absence this month.

MARK HARRISON/THE SEATTLE TIMES

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Western Washington University Business Forum.

After Cole asked Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to speak at a forum being held by Cole's alma mater, Western Washington University, Ballmer jumped at the chance to help out an employee who worked on some of Microsoft's most important products over the past 21 years.

Ballmer recounted the meeting with Cole today, during his speech at Western's Business Forum at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center:

"I have no affiliation but I love you, baby, so I love Western Washington,'' Ballmer said he told Cole.

Later in the speech Ballmer talked up the need for the state to continue investing in higher education. He also touched on immigration reform, saying Microsoft needs to be able to recruit smart people all over the world and bring them to work in Redmond.

Even though Microsoft is hiring people in India and China, "the lion's share" of its employees will remain here, Ballmer said, pointing to a factoid the company dug up for China President Hu Jintao's visit: Microsoft currently has 2,000 Chinese-speaking employees in the Puget Sound area.

Microsoft is rolling out the red carpet literally and figuratively for China President Hu Jintao.

The actual red carpet, along with a small forest of potted plants and huge bouquets, appeared at the executive briefing center on campus where Hu will visit Tuesday. Black limos were already piling up outside today, and a phalanx of state patrol motorcyclists were roaring down Highway 520 in formation, apparently practicing for Hu's motorcade.

The figurative red carpet was a press conference where PC maker Lenovo, a darling of China's tech industry, "reaffirmed" plans to buy $1.2 billion worth of Microsoft software over the next year. Lenovo is the world's third largest PC maker behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard, since it acquired IBM's PC division last year.

Lenovo Chairman Yang Yuanqing announced the agreement at a ceremony with a group of Chinese government officials and Microsoft executives, including Chairman Bill Gates, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Tim Chen, Microsoft's China chief executive.

The deal was characterized as an intellectual property agreement because the companies will work together to promote the use of legitimate, licensed software, as opposed to the freely pirated software widely used in China and other developing countries.

Microsoft has reached similar agreements with other PC makers, including deals recently announced with China's other major producers, but today's announcement means Hu will be greeted with headlines announcing that one of his country's highest profile companies is spending a fortune on U.S. software. It also gives him a retort in case someone brings up China's trade surplus.

Lenovo began working on its agreement to preinstall Windows on most of its computers last June, Yuanqing said, when he visited Gates and Ballmer. The deal was finalized in November, then "reaffirmed" in today's ceremony. Lenovo has since seen the percentage of its customers choosing machines preloaded with legitimate versions of Windows XP increase to more than 70 percent, up from 10 percent before the agreement, he said.

It's unclear how much of the $1.2 billion is new sales for Microsoft, which apparently didn't file any reports of material financial events related to the announcement.

Nor did the companies say exactly how much of the $1.2 billion represents China sales for Lenovo, which gets most of its sales from outside its home country. It's roughly proportional to Lenovo's overall sales, of which about $4 billion are in China and $10 billion are elsewhere, said William Amelio, Lenovo president and chief executive.