As much as I love the Surface, I sincerely hope the government doesn’t buy one, and instead spends their money on doing something useful, like ensuring every peak hour train has eight f—king carriages. Honestly, how can they justify even contemplating the Surface when our public transport system is worse than some third-world countries.

Anyway, according to the article, the Government is looking for “innovative ways to store, share and analyse government information”. Like claiming copyright on train timetable info and blocking third-party apps? No?

Sorry, I’m just a bit over Cityrail at the moment. But you should read the ITNews article anyway.

[ITNews]

At the moment though, they’re still not in the running – they need to register as a political party first, and to do that they need 150 members who are over 18, enrolled to vote and live in South Australia to sign up. Fortunately, the guy behind the party, David Doe, is going to be down at Rundle Mall between 5:30 and 6:30 pm today gathering signatures. If you’re in SA, and want to actively try and combat Australia’s backwards classification strategy, you should probably get down there.

You should also check Kotaku later this morning for an exclusive interview with David Doe.

UPDATE: Interview’s now live here.

[Kotaku]

The app store will be managed by the General Services Administration, and in addition to business apps, will provide tools for storage, web hosting and social networking. Kundra hopes it will save both time, energy and money, while bringing the Government’s IT infrastructure out of the dark ages. Somewhere a Vogon is shedding a tear.

Google Exec Sergey Brin was so excited that he drove over in his Tesla and promised to save a chunk of Google’s cloud servers just for the government! Facebook, Vimeo, Microsoft, Adobe, and Salesforce.com are all providing services as well. Everyone wins! [Apps.Gov via White House via NY Times]

Proloquo2Go is a text-to-speech iPhone app that’s meant to aid those with autism, cerebral palsy, ALS, Down Syndrome—pretty much anyone who has a disability that makes speaking a difficult venture. It costs $US150.

But Medicare/Medicaid restrictions won’t pay for this software or the accompanying iPhone because the iPhone is not a uni-functional device. (A person with autism might play games on it, after all! Or call a doctor!)

One family’s alternative, as documented by the NYTimes, is a government-funded $US8000 desktop computer that can have no other function than text-to-speech. No emailing doctors. No browsing the web for medical research. So, this pricey clunker sits at home while the family pays out of pocket for the iPhone app that can operate in their real, mobile life.

Medicare acknowledges the situation. They have heard of the iPhone, as they explain in their official statement on the matter: “We would not cover the iPhones and netbooks with speech-generating software capabilities because they are useful in the absence of an illness or injury.”

But with the US focusing on healthcare policies, there’s never been a better time to reassess such archaic thinking. All things equal, a company like Apple or RIM will always make superior hardware to that of some boutique electronics company, and they’ll do so for pennies on the dollar. Even more importantly, these better distributed hardware platforms will be rewarded with greater enthusiasm and expertise from software designers—the real innovators in today’s design-heavy electronics industry.

I’m no health care expert, but it’s obvious that reform in this sector would be a win-win. Taxpayers would save money. Government programs would aid more individuals. And those being helped would simply be helped better, with more options and ultimately in a way more specific to their particular problem.

But the government can’t subsidise a semi-open platform that would drive both technological innovation and market competition. That’s crazy talk! [Proloquo2Go and NYTimes]

Credit to Nicholas Thompson over at Epicenter, who spent some quality time with the bill:

[I]n its original form, did have some seriously bad ideas in it. For example, in an emergency, the president could “order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.”

And then, Senate procedure happened. The softened, pared-down language of the current bill would only entitle the President to, “In the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network” help to “direct the national response” to the crisis “in coordination with relevant industry sectors”. As Thompson notes, nothing scary is granted here, and the President definitely hasn’t been authorised to take over private networks for kicks, or whatever the suspicion was.

In reality, the bill might actually aid transparency, oddly enough: Thompson highlights a theory that, by ensuring the government’s digital emergency management powers are kept out of the less accountable hands of the NSA, and in the public view. So there’s that! [Wired Epicenter]

Remember Rufus Terrill and his BumBot? Well, the crazy bastard is running for mayor of Atlanta now on an anti-bum platform. And yes, he still has that robot. [The Awl]

Laptop Mag points to this interview that shows that indeed, different divisions are merging and acknowledging each other’s presence. VAIO is now under the PlayStation, Walkman and Reader group. VAIO notebooks are going to use PSN for movies and TV shows. Which is a step in the right direction, but turning a ship this size is like a group of ants trying to move a dumpster. [Laptop Mag]

The Death and Taxes poster shows every single expense according to the president’s 2010 budget request. The circles you see here are proportional in size to their actual weight in the total budget. Each of the figures include the percentage change compared to 2009.

Defense spending is more or less the same, only increasing by 2%. And still, everything else looks minuscule.

According to PC World, FCC Chairman Michael Copps hinted that if they do discover unfavorable effects as a result of exclusive handset deals, they won’t be opposed to regulation. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar also rambled on, saying something about how if Microsoft and IBM had exclusive deals Google would have never existed. Um, what?

But there’s a twist! AT&T’s Paul Roth fired back at this line of thinking, mentioning that exclusive deals prevent the mobile handset world from completely devolving into a lowest common denominator mentality when it comes to new tech. Both sides have valid points, I suppose. So let the battle begin. [PC World]

We ask that you examine this issue carefully and act expeditiously should you find that exclusivity agreements unfairly restrict consumer choice or adversely impact competition in the commercial wireless marketplace [...] Whether exclusivity agreements are becoming increasingly prevalent between dominant wireless carriers and handset manufacturers.

According to Ian Paul at PC World, the underwriters—Senator Kerry, Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)—are mainly addressing the most successful smartphone out there in that note.

But why do this now? Only because the iPhone has been a raging success? Wasn’t this as bad two years ago as it is today? And why is this an FCC concern? Why should the government make any company to do business or sell their products in a certain way? Maybe the reason is that Kerry has Verizon and he’s pissed off he can’t have the iPhone or the Pre (for now)?

I don’t know about you, but as much as I would like to choose whatever carrier I want—you actually can, since you can buy the iPhone unlocked—this “concern” seems a a bit retarded to me. [PC World via Christian Science Monitor]