Inauguration
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Acer's Chromebook Spin 714 sports an upscale design and a built-in stylus
For spring 2022, Acer is announcing two new Chromebooks in the $750 Chromebook Spin 714 and the $400 Chromebook Tab 510.
Put Bernie Sanders almost anywhere with this Google Street View app
It seems the senator is a well-traveled man.
How Twitter will transition presidential accounts after Inauguration Day
Kamala Harris' husband, Douglas Emhoff, will become the first @SecondGentleman.
Google is again halting all political ads following Capitol Hill riots
Ads referencing impeachment and the inauguration are also temporarily prohibited.
USA Today will livestream Inauguration Day in VR
USA Today announced its VR news show back in March and tomorrow it will offer a more immersive look at the Presidential Inauguration. As President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, USA Today's "VRtually There" program will provide coverage from the Capitol, National Mall and along the inaugural parade route. The livestream will begin at 9:30AM ET when VIP guests take their seats and scheduled music performances begin. To watch, all you have to do is fire up the YouTube app on you VR headset of choice. If you don't have one, the "VRtually There" coverage will be available as 360-degree video for desktop and mobile users.
Twitter to stream PBS live coverage of Inauguration Day
Just like it did with the conventions, Presidential debates and election night, Twitter will livestream President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20th. The social network is teaming up with PBS for six hours worth of coverage hosted by NewsHour managing editor Judy Woodruff. PBS will also have reporters stationed at the US Capitol and the National Mall in addition to a panel of guests to discuss all of the proceedings.
Follow the Presidential inauguration with the official Inaugural 2013 app
Earlier today, Barack Obama was sworn in for his second term as the 44th president of the United States. Although the public inaugural is Monday, legally the President is installed by 12 noon on January 20; when that date lands on a Sunday, the swearing-in is done twice, with the second public event as a ceremonial repeat of the private but legal oath. If you want to follow along with all the inauguration news, check out the official Inaugural 2013 iPhone app. The app, produced by AT&T, will offer a live stream of all the ceremony's events. The app also gives you up to the minute news, interactive maps, and a breakdown of the various venues that are hosting inauguration celebrations and ceremonies. One bit of POTUS trivia: this inauguration will be the fourth time President Obama has been sworn in as President of the United States, matching Franklin D. Roosevelt's record. Though Roosevelt was elected four times and Obama only twice, President Obama had to be sworn in twice at the beginning of his first term of office in 2009; Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed a line in the oath. In that year, one day after the official inauguration, President Obama was sworn in again with the properly-worded oath. Inaugural 2013 is a free download from the App Store.
The Guild, episode 9 now on MSN Video and Xbox Live
It's Tuesday, and you know what that means. Not only is it time to wipe down the Ampitheater of Anguish (that thing gets messy over the weekend), but it's time once again for a new episode of The Guild. And for those of you unhappy to see this here every Tuesday (perhaps because you're stricken with some horribly rare disease that keeps your eyes from moving on to our other posts instead?), we're sorry to say that there's only a few weeks left in the season. So let's make the most of it while we can.And the guildies definitely try their best -- they decide to take the night offline and split up the sexes, to... err... mixed results. Clara gets a little nuts with girls night out, and the guys also struggle to find something to do that doesn't involve signing into the game. Good times as always.And just in case you missed it last week, The Guild shared some pretty important company on MSN Video on Inauguration Day. Say what you want about the Microsoft deal, but even when there's big news going down in real life, MS is keeping up their end of the promotion deal.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Officers' Quarters: Four lessons from the inauguration
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.I have mostly steered clear of politics in this column. Very early on, in the second or third column I wrote for WoW Insider, I made an offhand joke about the current administration that set off a firestorm of argument in the comments section. It really had nothing to do with the column at all, so I found the situation extremely unproductive. I decided I'd never do that again.But I was there in D.C. last Tuesday and I wanted to share some of my observations about how to handle a transfer of power. It's a situation that can come up from time to time in a guild when a long-time leader has to step down for personal reasons -- or in democratic guilds when a leader is voted out. Let's talk about how Bush and Obama handled everything and what we can learn from their example.
Gigapan Imager used to craft 1,474 megapixel image of Obama's inauguration
In theory, at least, we already knew that the Gigapan Imager was capable of some amazing things. This, friends, is proof. David Bergman strapped the device and his Canon G10 onto a rail at Barack Obama's inauguration and snapped 220 images. After giving his MacBook Pro 6.5 hours to compile a two gigabyte image, he hosted it up on his website for people to zoom around on. We'll caution you -- you can easy kill a few hours checking out faces and such if you end up visiting the read link, but it's totally worth it.[Via Gadling]
One iPhone in a very large crowd
In traditional photography, the time elapsed between the shutter snap and the careful, loupe & light table examination of the captured images for some unexpected surprise or Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment" might be days or weeks. With photographer David Bergman's massive panorama of Tuesday's presidential inauguration, the challenge wasn't in waiting for the darkroom process to complete (although the Gigapan software did crank away on his MacBook Pro for over six hours to generate the 1,474 megapixel, 2 gigabyte master file); it was combing through the enormous image to discover those moments Bergman didn't even know he had photographed. Several commenters on Bergman's blog have already found themselves or family members in the crowd. One moment that Bergman did discover quickly: a prominent attendee of the inauguration, 'bow-syncing' cellist Yo-Yo Ma, was caught in the panorama making an image of his own, using a familiar-looking smartphone. See the video zoom below for the context of Ma's snapshot in the larger image. As digital imaging has replaced film photography for newsgathering and journalism, there have been counterexamples of newsworthy images that would have long been deleted except for the fact that they were shot on film instead of on memory cards. In this case, the image of Yo-Yo Ma and his phone wouldn't have been preserved, except that it was captured by chance and 'mined' out of the massive, frozen decisive moment. Image & zoom video used with permission of the photographer; all rights reserved.
NASA electric lunar rover struts its stuff for the President
For the Inaugural Parade, NASA astronauts greeted our new President in the style befitting such an august organization (and one that'll take all the funding they can get) by trotting out their Small Pressurized Rover. Hopefully by 2012 this thing will be spending less time cruising around Washington DC and more time on the lunar surface, where it can support two intrepid explorers for up to two weeks at a time. It sure looks cramped, but man, what a view! Check out some video of the thing in action -- in the nation's capital and in the wild -- after the break.[Via Billionaire Boys Club]
Inauguration Day overloads cellular networks, but not tremendously so
We can't see how this is shocking to anyone who has tried to make or receive a phone call on New Year's Eve (right around midnight, in particular), but cellular networks in the Metro DC area were pretty much bombarded yesterday. The inauguration of America's 44th president brought most networks to their knees, though most carriers reported that interruptions were relatively minimal. AT&T made sure to bump its 3G capacity by 80 percent and its 2G capacity by 69 percent along the parade route, and while a spokesperson did admit that it experienced "some congestion" during the events, customers were generally able to get through. In all honesty, we expected reports to be much more negative than this given the incredible amount of people shoved into one place, so we suppose a round of golf claps is in order for the carriers responsible for anticipating the surge.[Image courtesy of Zimbio]
Missed the Inauguration? Xbox Live has you covered
For politically minded gamers connected to Xbox Live, Microsoft has made some of yesterday's inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America available to watch online. Found in the Spotlight area of the NXE, the Presidential section features videos of Barack Obama and Joe Biden's swearing in, musical performances and even select, and extremely topical, TV Shows and Movies for those who catch the political entertainment bug. Nothing like watching Mars Attacks! starring Michael J. Fox to celebrate a historical moment in American history! Wait, wha? But seriously, if you're down with history check out The Presidents, a History Channel documentary available in pieces in the Presidential section of the Marketplace.[via Joystiq]
DS releases for the week of January 19th
For those of us in the United States, this week may be notable for more than video games, despite the debut of the fascinating Big Bang Mini ... and that may not even be limited to us! Well, Big Bang Mini is, but the news goes everywhere.Of course, if you think about it, so do DS games, if you want to pay international shipping. If you want an Obama DS Lite, well, you've gotta do that yourself. Big Bang Mini Jumble Madness SimAnimals Gallery: Big Bang Mini
Verizon, Bright House Networks providing gratis coverage of HBO's inaugural coverage
Neither Verizon nor Bright House Networks can provide those oh-so-snazzy interactive mix channels like DirecTV and DISH Network can, but what they -- along with a few other providers, most likely -- can do is provide free access to HBO for a day. This Sunday (that's tomorrow for the continental US, the day after tomorrow for Point Hope, AK, Kihei, HI and surrounding areas), FiOS TV and BHN digital TV subscribers will all be given a fee-free look at HBO's exclusive live broadcast of the "We Are One: The Obama Inauguration Celebration" concert from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Better still, both carriers are providing HD feeds for those looking for the best in clarity (read: you), and those scouting the full lineup of artists and speakers can find just that in the links below. Trust us, this is like a hundred million times better than trying to get within 50 miles of The District this weekend.Read - Verizon announcementRead - Bright House Networks announcementRead - Time Warner Cable announcementUpdate: Turns out, HBO's letting anyone with a STB tune in gratis. Classy move.
DISH Network delivers inauguration mix channel of its own, plus more
Not one to be outdone by its fiercest rival, DISH Network has seen DirecTV's Inauguration Mix Channel and raised it free access to HBO's exclusive coverage of the Opening Celebration on Sunday, January 18th. Yep, starting this Sunday (that's tomorrow for those on the right coast), DISH subscribers will be able to tune into HBO's SD and HD slots in order to see a plethora of musical performances and speeches by the likes of Beyonce, Bono, Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifa and Denzel Washington. At the strike of midnight on Inauguration Day (January 20th), it'll offer up live feeds of six news networks on channel 100: FOX News Channel (Ch. 205), CNN (Ch. 200), MSNBC (Ch. 209), CNN Headline News (Ch. 202), CSPAN (Ch. 210) and CSPN2 (Ch. 212). Curiously, there's no mention if the mosaic will link to high-def feeds of said news channels, but if so, we'd say DirecTV just met its match.[Image courtesy of Swamp Politics]
Europe to see HD broadcast of Obama's inauguration
For the first time in history, a US presidential inauguration will be broadcast in Europe in high-definition. Thanks to Eurovision, European broadcasters will have access to "full HDTV coverage of the ceremony, Obama's speech and motorcade produced from a battery of cameras on location in Washington." According to Eurovision Americas president Bill Dunlop: "All over Europe, networks are planning special programming to bring this historic day to their viewers live." Now, about keeping the snow at bay...
