learnandteachonline.com

While the cool kids talk of nothing but socializing, Microsoft and Google, with their health records initiatives, will be going to the bank.

When I heard each and every Democratic candidate say in a recent debate there will be required electronic recordkeeping in healthcare, I thought "somebody's going to clean up."

Don't you think sometimes the Silicon Valley gang is so obsessed with shiny and hip consumer fluff that it misses real business opportunities -- and that it's part of a myopia that makes the bubble bigger and more fragile? I'd even go so far as to say that what they often seem to be selling is youthful coolness itself, a frighteningly intangible commodity!

With Dems in real control of the U.S. government in a couple of years, it would be smart to anticipate a ton of reinstated and new regulation, and think about the online opportunities. Many Web 2.0 principles could apply. Consider mandated training, for example. Lots of government regulations require organizations having a given number of employees to offer training on safety and other topics. Much of it has gone online, but companies have to buy it. What if it were offered on a free model, like social apps, which could be supported by advertising?

OK, I just reminded myself I was going to try just that with harassment training, based on free materials from California. Such training is required in California, and is starting to spread to other states. The training also can be used voluntarily by companies who care about these matters (or wish to appear to care).

I'll use Moodle. I'll let you know how it goes.

Biden seems like such a straight shooter. Could be a good act -- that he's merely mastered the art of making the pitch sound natural -- but I don't think so.

Much as I'd like to see a woman elected president, I don't trust the realness of Hillary. She's a lot more liberal than she thinks she can appear to be, and I always get the feeling that she's calculating every word.

Biden has WYSIWYG.

Story from InfoWorld:

"In a free-for-all Internet environment, where there are no rules, political debates could easily degenerate into an unhealthy, unreliable and dangerous discourse flush with rumors and distortions to mislead and confuse the public," said Balaji Sadasivan, senior minister of state for information, communications and the arts.

Back in September I took conservative bloggers to task for focusing on the minutiae in important political debates like the handling of the Katrina disaster.

Liberal bloggers are doing the same thing with the Cheney shooting accident, delving deep into the special sticker for the license and a lot of irrelevant nonsense. In fact, the whole incident has little to do with running the country, except as an example of secrecy in the disclosure of it. Focus on that part, my liberal comrades. Otherwise you make us look petty.

He is a little Magoo-like.

NYT tells about the cookie campaign.

Session-only cookies are allowed according to OMB rules, but not persistent cookies unless there is a compelling need. "Oops!" an NSA spokesperson said.

It makes you almost afraid to blog about it, doesn't it?

The CIA was sniffing around for my college records some 8-9 years after I graduated, I learned through a grapevine. The university registrar wouldn't cooperate, which I thought was cool. I never could think why I might have been considered any sort of threat, unless it was that Chinese magazine I subscribed to for a short time in the early 70s.

I used to go out with a guy who had a sort of macho gauge for activism: the number of pages in your FBI file. His ran to over 100, since he was editor of a college paper at one of those institutions where anti-warriors burned down the ROTC building, didn't merely occupy it as they did at my tamer alma mater. I definitely consider myself, at 51, to be in that generation, but I always wished I'd been born just a few years earlier rather than bringing up the rear of that era. Guys my age were the very last of the draft.

Score. I like Chris Matthews.

Looks like all the MSNBC politics shows have them. They're highlights.

Network promos have been calling MSNBC the most [something] cable channel on the internet. I wonder what that means.

Hardblogger is the Hardball blog. I wonder how much Matthews has to do with it.