The last month has been interesting for the Google Earth-is-a-national-security-threat set: First, the DC Naval Observatory--home to the Vice President--emerged from several years of obscurity to appear in high-res glory the week of the inauguration, arousing suspicion that Dick Cheney was behind th...

Today, we found out that Vivek Kundra, a proven government IT innovator, would be in charge of the technology that runs the federal government. It's hard for most people to realize why such a job is so important: The title "Chief Information Officer" sounds just as bureaucratic as Assistant Deputy L...

Congress has been actively Twittering for a few months now, and while I'm unsure it has directly led to any immediate, tangible successes, it's great to see our leaders keeping us updated. Only good can come from that. (A friend pointed me to Claire McCaskill's feed yesterday; it's quite clear she w...

From Required Eating Biggie's preschooler-friendly bento box featuring kalbi and chopped kimchi. There's no cooler lunch box, I say, than a bento box. (Although my 4-year-old, who just got a new Wizard of Oz lunch box, would probably disagree.) Check out the bentos made by Biggie of Lunch in a Box. ...

From Required Eating For vegetable fans and foes alike, there was a fun column in Tuesday’s New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope, the health reporter who ends up on the most-emailed list so often it makes me jealous, even though I don’t write for the New York Times. In the column, Parker-P...

A visitor from the future has landed on my refrigerator door. Its name is SmartShopper. It's an electronic shopping list, and catalogs like Sur La Table and The Sharper Image are pushing it this holiday season. And if your idea of fun is getting into a screaming fight with your fridge, I highly reco...