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In the face of the Wall Street meltdown, business owners need all the help they can get. So the bMighty Financial Crisis Survival Kit pulls together the latest news and analysis along with strategies, tips, and tricks to help your company weather the storm and emerge poised for the future.

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IT decision makers are split on which presidential candidate is most likely to help the technology industry, and 40% agree that the next person in the White House is likely to impact the information technology industry in several ways.

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I believe that U.S. Sen. John McCain supports business and innovation. However, a McCain staffer may have over-shot a little when he tried to highlight the impact McCain has had on technology and commerce. And, the misstep has caught the attention of the media.

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Is John McCain an out-of-touch dunderhead who doesn't know the Internet from a series of tubes? Or is he an Internet-savvy septuagenarian who needs someone else to operate the keyboard for him because of his Vietnam war injuries?

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After more than a week of getting pounded by Sarah Palin supporters, Barack Obama's forces are hitting back in a new campaign ad, playing on John McCain's admission that he can't send an e-mail or even use a computer. Obama says these points -- and others -- are evidence that McCain is "out of touch."

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Google runs special versions of its home page to mark everything from the Persian new year to the birthday of Diego Velazquez (who?). So what's on the search giant's Web site today--the seventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and UA Flight 93? As of Noon Eastern, nothing.

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The story of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy has got McCain supporters riled up. They're angry at what they see as yet another conspiracy by the mainstream media to tear down a good conservative while giving liberal darlings like Barack Obama and John Edwards a free pass.

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After U.S. Sen. John McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate for the presidential campaign, I decided to look into her technology track record. I didn't come up with much.

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The publisher of the political blog Daily Kos took us to task last week for our coverage of the controversy over Sarah Palin's teenage daughter's pregnancy. His letter raises a different issue: To what extent, if any, does the publisher of a site bear responsibility for the comments posted by a member of the site? Are the owners of Web communities obliged to control content posted by their members?

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The story of Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy is an example of the uneasy partnership between journalists and bloggers. The events make it clear what journalists' roles ought to be in the post-blogger era. But it's unclear whether journalists actually did their jobs here, because this is such an ugly story that it's hard to see past the sordid surface to find out what happened.

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Twitter users are having fun with the fact that GOP VP pick Sarah Palin was nearly unknown on the national stage before last week. Twitterers are sharing "little-known facts" about Palin, most of which are ... shall we say? ... of dubious origin.

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Joe Biden has a mixed record on privacy and Internet civil liberties issues. He often votes with the FBI and media companies against consumers and citizens. He sponsored legislation designed to make it illegal to circumvent copy-protection -- even on content and devices you legally own. He also sought to weaken encryption, and introduce a bill like the controversial PATRIOT Act long before 9/11. But in other areas he's defended privacy and cyber-rights.

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When I woke up Saturday morning, I found a text message waiting on my iPhone from the Barack Obama campaign, informing me that the candidate named Joe Biden as running mate. But I already knew that, because I'd already gotten the news the night before -- from newspapers. Old-fashioned journalism -- wordslingers working contacts inside the Obama campaign -- leaked the story in advance of your new-fangled text messaging. Score one for the old school.

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After reading how a John McCain staff blogger insulted Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts with a reference to living in their mothers' basements, I'd like to make a plea to mainstream America. This is on behalf of nerds everywhere: Will you please get some new jokes about us?

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As technologists, we're prone to fall in love with the latest new technology. We think we require the most powerful PCs, the fastest networks, and the smartest smartphones to get our jobs done. But The Daily Show reminds us that we can achieve excellence even when our tools are woefully out-of-date.

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Our next president is going to have a big job securing our nation's IT against criminals and foreign enemies. Our data networks are an important part of the national infrastructure -- and therefore tempting military targets -- along with traditional infrastructure such as dams, power plants, factories, and hospitals. Security expert Bruce Schneier has some short, sensible advice for what the next president will need to do.

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Barack Obama is active on social networks. He swaps e-mail with a Hollywood starlet. He's planning to announce his VP choice over SMS. But this election isn't going to be decided on the Internet. Old media, especially television, will deliver the messages that win the election.

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Sen. Barack Obama will likely become the first presidential candidate to announce his pick for vice president via text message. The Obama campaign announced over the weekend that supporters could sign up to receive e-mail or text messages "the moment Barack makes his decision."

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With the presidential election less than three months away, the missing piece of the puzzle is who will be the vice presidential nominees. Barack Obama recently said he'll be announcing his nominee in a way that might make some say OMG!

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This summer's presidential campaign is shaping up to be remarkably frivolous, and the Internet is providing the laugh track. While America deals with two wars and the possibility of a third, soaring gas prices, and a wobbly economy, the candidates and their supporters argue about flummery: Tire gauges, Paris Hilton, junk food, and biblical prophecy.

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The gropers at the Department of Homeland Security, not content with patting you down and rummaging through your underwear, now say that they can confiscate electronics brought into the United States for any reason, anytime, and share the devices and their contents with anybody.

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Kevin Martin added another brick to his legacy today, with the FCC's ruling against Comcast in the net neutrality dispute. And I use "brick" in the basketball sense, as in a comically misguided shot on goal.

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Let's do a little thought experiment for the benefit of Hasbro, the company which owns Scrabble and is trying unsuccessfully to kill Scrabulous. Let's argue the proposition that corporations should ignore most copyright violators, attempt to negotiate a settlement with the most outrageous few, and never, ever, sic the lawyers on pirates. Don't fight piracy. Try to make it work for you instead.

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Lawmakers in the Canadian province of Alberta are cashing in on the United States' failure to enact a rational immigration policy for skilled workers -- they're recruiting H-1B visa holders whose permits are about to expire.

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The Free Software Foundation thinks you shouldn't buy the iPhone if you value freedom. They make some valid criticisms of the pocket-sized wonder. But they go too far in trying to make a consumer choice into a political decision. I value free software, but I like my iPhone 3G quite a bit, too, and I don't have to choose between them.

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More than 42 million members of Generation Y could vote in the upcoming presidential election and the best way to reach them is online. That's according to MeriTalk, a site devoted to technology and public policy.

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The location-based social networking service Loopt is trying to recover from a privacy fumble, as users accuse it of spewing text-message spam and disclosing user cell phone numbers and whereabouts without permission. The controversy is sure to be a forerunner of privacy battles to come, as GPS-enabled cell phones like the iPhone enable businesses to track -- and disclose -- where people are at any given moment.

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Leave it to members of Congress to turn posting online videos into a partisan issue. Several members of the House of Representatives are engaged in a written and verbal slugfest over how they and their colleagues should be able to post video on outside Web sites.

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The three things that Americans love the most are sex, the Internet, and flamewars. That's why Boing Boing's decision to remove posts about sexblogger Violet Blue was such a juicy opportunity for the people who hang around and post pissy comments on Internet discussion boards.

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IBM, which made more than $10 billion in profits last year, reportedly wants state aid from the Paterson administration in exchange for expanding its facilities in upstate New York and a no-layoff pledge.

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Earlier this week, I mentioned how the technology used to gauge interest in and market peanut butter and Gatorade found that Americans in both political parties agree on a few matters heavier than snack choices.

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Vint Cerf said this week that he never intended to seriously propose that the U.S. government should nationalize the Internet. But he does think the Internet is seriously broken, with an economic system that discourages competition and innovation and encourages harmful monopolistic practices. He argued that the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which governs Internet service providers, is obsolete and needs to be revised.

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The H-1B program puts American workers at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis the visa holders, but low-ball salaries aren’t the reason. Or, at least, not the biggest reason.

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No matter what their party affiliation, Americans like peanut butter, Gatorade, and Colin Powell. That's according to a company that helps big names like Wal-Mart and Gatorade with market research.

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A finance company is arguing in court that it had a right to read an ex-employee's personal e-mail. Sounds crazy, right? And yet, in this world where we carry BlackBerrys to access work e-mail from home, and handle personal business over the company Internet connection, it takes a crazy person to figure out where personal life ends and work begins.

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The U.S. government recently denied a green card application by a well-known Second Life artist, declaring her two-year marriage to an American citizen to be fraudulent. The news isn't all bad for her, though -- the denial gives her an opportunity to appeal and prove that the marriage was legitimate.

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The Internet faces many problems from companies looking to maximize profits at the expense of the public good. Greedy businesses threaten innovation by trying to put an end to net neutrality, media companies want to control every Internet-connected device in an effort to lock down distribution channels, and spammers and other fraudsters have pretty much taken over e-mail. Now, TechCrunch is reporting that Vint Cerf, the so-called "father of the Internet," says maybe we should think of the Internet as being like the highway system -- a public good that should be nationalized.

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Sen. John McCain's computer aptitude, or lack thereof, became a hot topic of discussion at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City this week. The forum tackled technology's role in politics and policy. So, when news surfaced that McCain doesn't know how to use a computer, both technophiles and politicos in attendance were intrigued. Some were also involved.

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It should have been a disappointment when Elizabeth Edwards couldn't make it to the Personal Democracy Forum Conference (PdF '08) in New York City where she had planned to speak Monday. Thanks to VoIP technology, those who had hoped to hear her were able to link up with her via Skype, and that turned out to be an unexpected advantage.

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It's obvious that the Internet is shaping opinions and becoming a vehicle for sharing information during the presidential campaign. It was only a matter of time before we began hearing more about how political operatives are using the Web to shape their strategies. Now, one technology company is touting a "secret weapon" for choosing the ideal presidential ticket.

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I don't blame The Associated Press for refusing to participate in a conversation about its attempts to overthrow government authority and rewrite copyright law to its own liking. The AP is like a husband who foolishly told his wife that the new jeans do make her butt look big. The best way to limit damage at that point is to simply shut up and hope the subject eventually goes away.

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For the last few months it has appeared that the federal courts would force the Bush White House to account for, and eventually turn over, the infamous "missing e-mails" from the period March 2003 to October 2005. Now the judicial tide has turned.

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The TSA gropes our crotches, paws through our stuff, makes us stand in long lines to get to our flights, and treats us like criminals. But the agency knows the real reason they're disliked is because they ain't stylin'. And they think realistic badges will be a solution to the problem.

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InformationWeek has reported on a number of developments showing that the role of the Internet in American politics is expanding rapidly. Now there's proof.

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Blogs, e-mail, and Web sites have reached a milestone of sorts in campaign politics. If Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is any indication, they have taken on a new level of significance. Obama's team created a Web site just to deal with rumors generated online. Interestingly, the site tackles the problem in a decidedly Web 2.0 way.

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As part of preparing to work on our new Political Tech blog, I've been putting together a reading list of the best political blogs, newspapers, and magazines across the political spectrum. And now I'm coming to you, to share the list for your benefit and to find out if you have any recommendations.

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Conservative group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible today by "hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars."

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Sen. Barack Obama's campaign staff scrubbed his campaign site clean of some community posts after bloggers criticized the candidate for hosting anti-Semitic statements.

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As the last two Democratic nominating contests approach, Sen. Hillary Clinton's online presence hasn't diminished.

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I think of YouTube as being primarily a place to watch cute cat videos. But Sen. Joe Lieberman condemns the video site for something sinister: Terrorist organizations are using YouTube to post videos inciting Arabs to kill Americans. Lieberman is demanding that YouTube put a stop to the practice.

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