Well, if you think Google is evil, you have reason to be pleased with your home state today. Rhode Island US Attorney Peter Neronha has announced a mammoth settlement with the search engine. The company will forfeit $500 million after profiting from ads that prompted US consumers to illegally import prescription drugs. From the ProJo:

As first reported in the Phoenix, Netroots Nation - an annual conference of influential liberal bloggers - will be coming to Providence next summer.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse made it official with an announcement at this year's Netroots Nation in Minneapolis over the weekend.

This is good for Providence: a small economic infusion, some election-year atttention, bold-faced names, and a little bump for a city attempting to build a reputation as a high-tech hub.

As Providence Mayor Angel Taveras announces the city's designation as one of IBM's "Smarter Cities" and plans to develop a computerized land management system to help spur growth in the Jewelry District (or Knowledge District), it may be worth another look at a piece that appeared in last week's Phoenix on Brown University's Chris Bull.

I've got a piece in today's Phoenix on the daunting challenge of cybersecurity. Experts say our power grid, financial systems, and telecommunications are vulnerable to hackers. And erecting a comprehensive defense is a near impossibility: intruders need find only one weak point to break in and do damage.

The local angle is Congressman Jim Langevin's heavy involvement in the issue.

While keeping an open mind, I'm not yet sold on this form of new media.

But Clive Thompson had a great NYTM article on the subject a while back.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane.

Sara Streeter sends word:

WHO:
Christopher Penn, founder of PodCamp Boston
Nathan Hutnak, Executive Director of Free Geek Providence
Brian Alves, Vice President of AIGA
Michelle Riggen-Ransom, Communications Director of BatchBlue

WHAT:
technology conference for people new to technology

WHEN:
9am-2pm February 8, 2009 (Sunday)

Social-networking and other forms of new media played an important role in the Obama campaign. The NYT today looks at what might be ahead for the "Obama movement," or what it calls a YouTube presidency:

His aides — including his campaign manager — have created a group, Organizing for America, to redirect the campaign machinery in the service of broad changes in health care and environmental and fiscal policy.

The brightest minds in media have yet to figure out a way to sustain journalism deep into the Internet age.

With an op-ed in today's ProJo, Joel Brinkley offers this concept:

When the [newspaper Web] sites were considered technological curiosities, there was no thought of charging people to use them.

I was going to include Nate Silver's name in the headline for this post, but he's better known by his Web site, FiveThirtyEight.com, which -- with good reason -- has become a sensation this campaign season.

Here (h/t Romenesko) is part of the backstory:

Political commentary on the Internet is nothing new these days.

Charges of bias in the media -- whether from liberals or conservatives -- are a hardy perennial, and there are those of us who will tell you that fairness and intellectual honesty are more vital than some mythical state of total objectivity.

Anyway, the NYT reports today on SpinSpotter, a company offering a "very beta" form of software for filtering spin in the media.

Will electronic devices for reading newspapers save the newspaper industry?

Regardless of the answer, the movement is gathering steam (pixels, whatev). From today's NYT:

Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.

The ubiquitous Mr. Crowley has launched a Facebook group to Boycott the New Yorker:

If anyone thought racism is dead, just look at the cover of this issue of the New Yorker. Try to call it satire all they want, but who are they kidding!

The idea that we can have the African-American as president of our country should be a time of celebration.

From the NYT:

The once-mysterious blogger known as “Fake Steve Jobs” is turning off his iPhone for good.

Daniel Lyons, the former Forbes magazine journalist who wrote the blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs for the last two years, is moving on with his professional life and creative pursuits. In a final entry Wednesday entitled, “I’m sailing away,” the author, who is moving to Newsweek as a technology columnist this fall, said he was shutting down the popular parody of the life of the Apple chief executive and starting a new blog under his own name.

Pretty funny, and a bit sad, via Belo's Sports Blog:

Christian Web site changes Tyson Gay's name to Tyson Homosexual

Michael David Smith of FanHouse reports: The Web site One News Now, which describes itself as providing "your latest news from a Christian perspective," has been running stories that refer to the Olympic springer Tyson Gay as "Tyson Homosexual."

Netflix is one of those genius ideas made possible by the Internet. Now, Time Inc. is set to bring a similar approach to the magazine world with Maghound ((h/t Romo):

After almost four years of continuous development and testing, Maghound.com, Time Inc.’s Netflix-like service for magazines, is finally set to launch this September, Dave Ventresca, president of Maghound Enterprises, Inc.