This morning, in an unanimous vote, the U.S. Senate has agreed to delay the government mandated digital television transition. The target has been moved from the original February 17th date to June 12th.

(Updated: The bill has been voted down in the house. More info at the bottom.)

Media reports have been all over the map, with sources suggesting anywhere from 5 million to 20 million US households are unprepared for the transition.  There have also been reports of as many as 2.5 million on the FCC’s waiting list for their converter box coupon program.  13.5 million coupons have been passed out, but it’s estimated that roughly half have not been used.  The coupons carry a 90 day expiration, and as the unused coupons expire those on the waiting list will get a shot at one.

President Obama has called for an additional $850 million as part of his stimulus package to provide additional funding to the FCC coupon program.

The FCC has of course already auctioned off and collected it’s nearly $20 billion dollars to re-license the wireless spectrum that would have been freed in just 3 weeks.  (Why again, does the FCC need another $850 million of taxpayer’s dollars to cover the coupon shortfall? Anyway…)

Major players AT&T and Verizon will have to wait until June to begin using their newly acquired slice of the airwaves, though this morning’s bill includes a 116 day extension to the end of their original licenses as compensation.

(Shameless plug warning: who needs OTA anyway, when you’ve got Artvoice TV?)

Update, Wednesday Jan 28: Despite the unanimous vote and the support from President Obama, it turns out this bill was not a shoo-in after all. Because the bill had been fast-tracked in the House, it required 2/3rds votet here before reaching the President’s desk; however, this morning it was shot down by a 256 to 168 vote. So it’s not over yet folks. The House may vote next week for a second time on the issue. In the mean time, we can say the great digital delay… has been delayed.

Blogs have been buzzing over the past few weeks since Microsoft’s announcement of their deal with Jerry Seinfeld as Windows Vista’s new poster boy.  (Well, by “buzzing” I mean mostly joking, and mocking.)  A comedian whose prime was when Windows 95 was cutting edge, to team up with a man who’s about as exciting and photogenic as taking snapshots with the lens cap still on seemed like an unlikely team to bail out the sinking ship that is U.S.S. Vista… I’m no marketing expert, but it seemed like a queer choice.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Well folks, the first of many TV spots is up on YouTube.  Check it out.  It’s a commercial about nothing.

Am I alone when I say… “uhhhhhh”….?  Windows is moist and delicious?  This is the hip new advertising campaign supposed to sway Apple-curious consumers who are intrigued by the “Mac vs. PC” ads?

What kind of weed do you think they have in Redmond?  I think the marketing team got into the programmer’s stash.

Google just put up a download link.

This is the Beta version, for Windows.  Mac and Linux users still have to wait a little longer.

In my totally preliminary and totally unscientific observation, I will say it certainly has a fast “feel” to it.  Things like opening several tabs & switching between them, scrolling up and down complex pages, and moving around within Google maps all have a very smooth and responsive feel.  Other first impressions: It’s simple.  Which is kind of refreshing. I like the “most visited thumbnail view” that the browser opens to – instead of a homepage, you see thumbnails of sites you visit frequently… think of it like multiple home pages, that configure themselves based on your habits.  It also took me a moment to notice – there’s no search bar! (which took me by surprise seeing its a Google web browser and all) – until I realized the regular address bar doubles as the search bar when something besides a URL is typed in.

So far so good.  It’s worth a shot…  It was a quick download and painless installation.

SpaceRef.com reports that NASA has discovered a computer virus on one of the computers located on the International Space station.

The virus (well, technically classified as a worm) was identified as W32.Gammima.AG, and Symantec describes it as a relatively low-risk threat.  Its purpose is to steal passwords to on-line games, and presumably sends them back to its author(s).  It normally spreads via removable media, like memory cards or thumb drives.  Other than being an annoyance, unless you play the games the worm targets, there really isn’t any damage done.  NASA gets lucky this time (assuming the astronuats aren’t playing World of Warcraft up there!)

Just goes to show you still need to run anti-virus even when you’re 230 miles above the Earth.

A post on the Microsoft Developer’s Blog yesterday outlining some new privacy features in the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 that has consumers rejoicing, and webmasters everywhere reaching for their tinfoil hats.

IE8 is slated to include a private web surfing mode, known as “InPrivate.”  When InPrivate is activated, several behaviors of the browser change: cookies are held only temporarily for the browsing session, browsing history isn’t recorded, auto-fill form information and passwords on not recorded, and so on.  The idea is that once you close your browser, not a trace of your browsing session is saved anywhere – a great idea if for example you wanted to check your bank statement at a public terminal.  (Interestingly enough, this is feature the Safari browser has had for years now.)

Microsoft does take it a step further with “InPrivate Blocking” – and this is where the controversy begins.  InPrivate Blocking is intended to prevent the planting of cookies on your machine that tracks your behavior across several domains.  It also has the ability to give fine-grained control to block tracking pixels, and analytics scripts.  All great ideas on the surface, to protect end user’s privacy… because let’s face it, those techniques are almost exclusively used by on-line advertisers in order to track and target advertising to web users.  By breaking some of these systems advertisers rely on, advertisements may not be delivered correctly or at all in certain circumstances.  (Also not an entirely new idea, as AdBlock & AdBlock Plus has been offering similar functionality to FireFox users for years.)

This gets interesting though when we consider Internet Explorer’s overwhelming market share, and Microsoft’s desire to better position themselves in the on-line advertising marketplace.  As I think back to all the anti-trust lawsuits and predatory business practices over the years, I can’t help but wonder – are they really out to provide security & privacy for their user base, or is there something more sinister cooking up?  Distributing these new features on such a wide scale might throw a wrench into analytics tracking all over the web, and may seriously damage how advertising is delivered by many of the big players on the Web… just in time for Microsoft to push their new advertising services… (you don’t think IE8 will block Microsoft’s own advertising, do you?)