Race for Seat That Was Once Obama's Stirs Passion in Illinois - New York Times

“Isn’t that something that would just make your day, to read the headlines on the morning of Nov. 3: ‘We took back that U.S. Senate seat’?” Dan Cronin, chairman of the DuPage County Republicans, hollered to an expo center filled with Republicans.

“Oh my God!” Mr. Cronin went on. “I’d have to lie down! I’m telling you; it would be a remarkable experience.”

More is at stake in the race here than merely the balance of power in the Senate. Senator Roland W. Burris, a Democrat who was appointed to the post and is not seeking election, may hold this seat for the moment, but it remains, in the minds of loyalists of both parties, Mr. Obama’s.

And that is adding a layer of intensity and ferocity — and the attention of the president himself — in the final weeks of a campaign that has been punctuated by unexpected developments.

Representative Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican who has long represented a north suburban Congressional district, and Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat and Illinois treasurer, remain locked in a close fight, some polls suggest.

A large chunk of voters — 17 percent in one recent Chicago Tribune/WGN television poll — is undecided, despite seemingly endless, harsh television advertising and a constant run of news coverage. To hear some voters tell it, left to decide is a basic question that has taken a central, often ugly, role in this race: Who can one actually believe?

Mr. Kirk, 51, was once seen by some as having an upper hand. He had years of experience and a voting history that could appeal to a state that has, historically, elected moderate Republicans. But then came a string of questions about his descriptions of his own history, and he ended up acknowledging misleading statements about his record as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer.

Despite his relative inexperience, Mr. Giannoulias, 34, has pulled off a statewide election once before, and was expected to benefit from his party alliance. These days, Republicans hold no statewide offices in Illinois, and Democrats control both chambers in the state legislature.

But Mr. Giannoulias’s campaign, too, was upended by events: This year, federal regulators seized the bank his family owned, where he had once been a senior loan officer. Reports that the bank had made loans to people with connections to organized crime did not help. Mr. Giannoulias has insisted that the struggles of his family’s bank were not unlike those of many Americans whose businesses were devastated by the recession.

The questions and revelations have had an effect on the images of both candidates.

“I don’t trust either one of them,” said one voter, Nancy Melin, as she ate lunch Wednesday in downtown Chicago, “so I wouldn’t feel good about voting for either of them.”

When the Chicago Tribune poll, conducted Sept. 24-28, asked which candidate was more honest and trustworthy, the results were mixed: 35 percent said Mr. Giannoulias; 30 percent said Mr. Kirk; 16 percent said neither; and 18 percent did not know. Ms. Melin, who said she often voted for Democrats, said she was considering not voting in this race.

Mr. Obama’s relationship to Mr. Giannoulias has drawn special notice on all sides. Although the White House initially encouraged at least one other Democrat to run for the seat, Mr. Obama is making his second visit home on Mr. Giannoulias’s behalf. On Thursday, he is to appear at two fund-raising events (one is a small dinner party). Next week, Michelle Obama is scheduled to come. And others in the administration have offered encouragement, too; on Saturday, Arne Duncan, the education secretary, played in a basketball tournament here with Mr. Giannoulias and told reporters he was a “big, big fan of Alexi.”

Republicans (who note that Mitt Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator Scott P. Brown and others have come here to help Mr. Kirk) often point to Mr. Giannoulias’s ties to the president as a rallying cry for their own candidate and as a way to dismiss Mr. Giannoulias.

Mr. Cronin, for example, offered this description of Mr. Giannoulias before his Republican rally: “A basketball buddy and a pal of Barack Obama, and that’s his résumé, period.”

Republicans, too, are pleased to remind voters that the seat in question was at the center of a corruption scandal that enveloped the former governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, a Democrat. Mr. Blagojevich, who is awaiting a second trial on charges that he tried to sell an appointment to complete Mr. Obama’s Senate term, appointed Mr. Burris.

If voters here are talking about their doubts about the candidates, the candidates are talking about the economy. “Why would we want to put the same people who created this mess in charge and give them a promotion to the United States Senate?” Mr. Giannoulias said in an interview on Wednesday, referring to Congressional Republicans.

Mr. Kirk said he believed the race would turn on the economy. “I’ll give it to you short and sweet,” he told the crowd here. “I’m the candidate who would spend less, borrow less and tax less to fix our economy.”

As if this Senate seat were not wrapped in enough unusual circumstances, there is another one. Voters will be asked to vote twice in this race on Nov. 2: once for the six-year term to start in 2011, and a second time for the few remaining weeks (yes, weeks) of Mr. Obama’s term, which, a court has ruled, must be filled in a simultaneous special election.

Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from Chicago

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New Facebook tools invite users to stay longer - Los Angeles Times

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, introducing the changes at a news conference, said, "It's a core part of our belief that people own and have control of all the information they upload." (Paul Sakuma, Associated Press / October 5, 2010)

Facebook on Wednesday unveiled tools that give users freer access to the data they've sent the website and make it easier for them to interact with smaller circles of friends, features that analysts say could increase sharing and time spent on what is already the world's largest social networking service.

Facebook will also now allow its more than 500 million users to more closely monitor and control what personal data third-party applications access via a dashboard. The move is likely to appease some concerns of lawmakers and privacy watchdogs who have complained that Facebook does not adequately protect the privacy of its users.

The three new features, the result of two months of intense work at the company, started rolling out to users Wednesday. Last week, Facebook launched new photo features including high-definition images and better tagging.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes at a news conference at his company's Palo Alto headquarters, his first public appearance since last Friday's debut of "The Social Network." Zuckerberg declined to discuss the movie that explores the controversial founding of the 6-year-old company. He had previously called the movie "fiction."

"It's a core part of our belief that people own and have control of all the information they upload," Zuckerberg said.

Rather than blasting information to all of their friends, Facebook users can now put their friends in different groups and send messages and chat with people in those groups.

"What we've created here out of the box blows everything else away," Zuckerberg said. "We think that's what people are going to want to use."

Facebook already offered a feature that let users create custom friend lists, but only 5% of users took the time to do that, Zuckerberg said. Users can create groups to share baby pictures with family members, reunion information with high school pals or exercise tips with fellow joggers, for example.

"People are undoubtedly going to take to this," Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray said. "Once people get invited to a group and understand how it is used there is going to be a natural gravitation toward using it."

That gravitational pull could yank users away from other sites that offer popular groups services such as Yahoo and Google.

Facebook users will also be able to download all the information they have uploaded to the site, answering a key criticism that Facebook is a "closed" site that does not allow users to export their information.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search and user experience, addressed that concern last week at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. The "download your information" feature will give users a ".zip" file with all the photos, videos, status updates, friends lists and other information they put on the site.

Despite strides, Facebook continues to be dogged by privacy concerns. In August, Facebook rolled out a new feature called Places that lets users share their locations, prompting complaints from some privacy watchdogs. Facebook responded by requiring users to opt in to the service.

Facebook is banking on its rising popularity to generate advertising sales, which makes up the bulk of its income. Revenue is expected to hit at least $1.4 billion in 2010, up from $700 million to $800 million last year. The privately held company is valued at nearly $34 billion.

Erica Newland, in a blog post for the Center for Democracy & Technology, said the new features "demonstrate that Facebook has listened to past criticisms about its practices and is ready to play a leadership role when it comes to user privacy."

Privacy watchdog Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, disagreed, saying Facebook hadn't gone far enough in giving consumers access to the data it collects on them and what it does with that data.

"Facebook is still operating as a largely stealth data collection platform, allowing advertisers to target users through nontransparent means," Chester said. "Facebook is a huge privacy problem."

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Why Cisco Umi Doesn't Have What Chambers Wanted - PC World

With Cisco's introduction of its Umi home TelePresence system on Wednesday, a vision that Chairman and CEO John Chambers has been talking about for years finally saw the light of day. But one piece of his dream is still missing.

Cisco introduced TelePresence for enterprises in late 2006 and not long afterward began promising a version of the high-definition videoconferencing system for home use. Chambers, one of the biggest cheerleaders for that concept, has referred to it repeatedly over the past few years as part of his vision of a world connected over a high-speed "network of networks."

As Chambers predicted, Umi lets consumers with a high-definition TV and a good broadband connection see their family and friends while they talk, all in the comfort of their living rooms. But nearly every time he has referred to home TelePresence, Chambers has asked listeners to picture themselves watching a sports event on live TV while bantering back and forth long-distance with friends or relatives on the same TV. That's not possible in the Umi product Cisco announced on Wednesday.

The problem with making Chambers' vision a reality turns out to be more complicated than simply implementing a "picture-in-picture" feature in Umi, according to Philip Graham, vice president of engineering and chief technology officer for Cisco's TelePresence business.

While Umi users can talk to each other in real time, the action of a live sporting event often doesn't appear in a synchronized way in two different homes, Graham said. Part of the reason has to do with delays in the networks that deliver the broadcast across a continent from where it's taking place to where it's being viewed. But a major culprit is the DVR (digital video recorder), which can introduce a noticeable delay, he said. If a DVR is recording a program while it's being broadcast, typically the viewer is actually seeing the DVR's recording of the show, which it can't deliver in exactly real time, Graham said.

Therefore, if one viewer is recording the game on a DVR while the other isn't, or even if they both are, the action may not appear on both TVs at the same time. That makes it very awkward to talk about the game as it's taking place, Graham said.

Cisco wants to solve this problem, but to do so it will have to work with broadcasters and cable companies, which have never had to make sure shows were perfectly synchronized in viewers' homes, Graham said.

"It requires a lot more work, with people who don't have to do that today," Graham said.

One solution Cisco is looking at is a system of signaling to the broadcaster that a viewer is watching the event while participating in a Umi session with someone else who was also watching it. The idea is that the broadcaster, tipped off by that signal, could switch on a system to synchronize the program on both viewers' TVs, Graham said. He did not give an estimate for when this feature may be offered.

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