President Obama: 'I have never used Twitter'

More than 2.6 million people follow President Obama on Twitter -- or so they thought. The president told a youth audience in Shanghai on Sunday that he has never used Twitter.

The @BarackObama Twitter account was a wildly successful campaign tool in Obama's run-up to the presidency last year, which staffers used to promote their candidate. Since being elected, the account is believed to have been taken over by the Democratic National Committee.

“I have never used Twitter, but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting Internet access," Obama said during the town hall. "My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone."

The latter statement elicited laughs from the crowd. Perhaps because Twitter is not solely a phone application. Or maybe some recall this photo (right) from the campaign showing Obama's professed tech-savviness.

But we should point out that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama's opponent in the election, has somehow managed to write cohesive sentences on his  Twitter page here using his war-mangled fingers -- well, either that or a staffer relays his tweets for him.

Ahh! We don't know anymore!

Now knowing that the tweets don't actually come from Obama himself, followers have expressed disappointment. "I have never used" was a trending topic on Twitter this morning (meaning many people tweeted messages with the phrase) as users reacted to the news.

"Humbled," which was @BarackObama's one-word reaction to news of being selected as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, carries a lot less weight with the new knowledge. Who's humbled? Some rep at the DNC?

The White House maintains its own Twitter profile. The page, @WhiteHouse, has gained significant popularity of its own, with 1.5 million followers, in a relatively short amount of time.

But Obama -- err, whoever is typing messages under his guise -- still reaches a million more people.

-- Mark Milian

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Photo credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times; Associated Press (Candidate Obama using his clumsy thumbs pretty deftly on his beloved BlackBerry).

Who is a failure? Obama, if you do a Google search

Who is failure? If you trust Google's top search result to point you to the right answer, it's President Obama.

The culprit is not a politically charged search engine but rather a Google Bomb.

Such tricks have plagued the White House for some time. Nefarious bloggers exploit the way Google's algorithm surfaces relevant information by linking a word or group of words -- in this case, "who is failure" -- to a central Web page -- Barack Obama's White House profile page.

During President Bush's term, George W. Bush's profile frequently showed up on searches including "failure," "miserable failure" and "who is failure." Obama had inherited those "failures" when he took office and his profile was placed online.

For a while, Google seemed to have fixed the problem. But, as Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan writes, the game is back on.

Until it's fixed, you can type in "who is failure" into a Google search box and, for a laugh, watch where it goes.

-- Mark Milian

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Think you can fix the Obama economy? Try the Federal Budget Challenge

It's no mystery that the U.S. economy is a mess. Why is there a budget crisis? Well, spending a lot of money is a large part of it. But fixing that is more complicated.

The Federal Budget Challenge is a Web application that aims to help Americans get an idea of the complexities facing the Obama administration.

It's a game of sorts that lets players choose which programs to cut or add in hopes of balancing the federal budget. The system breaks down the financial effects of each choice.

We caught up with the development team in Palo Alto for a demo on Wednesday. Sarah Henry, program officer for developer Next Ten, said the product is primarily an educational tool.

The nonprofit organization is collecting plenty of data from the thousands of people who have taken the test so far. Players are asked for demographic info, including age and ZIP Code, which make for some interesting statistics when combined with feedback about programs like the proposed "public option" in healthcare legislation.

"It's not scientific," Henry said. So the team isn't paying too much attention to the responses. "It's not so much about feedback as it is learning new things," she said.

Initial responses have been mostly positive, Henry said.

The few complainers were a mixed bag. Some said the choices were too simple, and they'd like more think-outside-the-box options. Others said it was too long and overly complicated. Can't please 'em all, Henry said.

Next Ten is licensing its platform to cities, including Los Angeles, which plans to release its own version. The Times built a similar app earlier this year called State Budget Deficit.

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Henry, Next Ten program officer. Credit: Mark Milian / Los Angeles Times

Sarah Palin creates new Twitter acct, ditches old one 4 no apparnt reason

Sarah Palin recently started a new Twitter account to promote her new book. But what about her old one?

As Alaska's governor, @AKGovSarahPalin sent updates regularly and built a large following.

The profile has more than 152,000 followers and has made its way onto more than 1,500 lists. The latter is perhaps more impressive because that feature didn't even exist until about three months after she stopped tweeting there.

The @AKGovSarahPalin page also has the "verified account" tag, which means Twitter Inc. authorized it as a legitimate user.

But Palin has inexplicably started from scratch. The new page, @SarahPalinUSA, quickly drummed up 14,700 followers despite not having a single update or following anyone -- not even her 2008 GOP presidential partner Sen. John McCain.

But still, there's 152,000 people on that other account. Just sitting there.

On Facebook, Palin kept her old fan page, which is nearing a million fans. She simply dropped any mention of being governor from the "current office" section. Rather than promoting Alaskan legislation, it now mentions TV appearances and, uh, her new Twitter page.

Did nobody tell Palin that she can click on "settings" in Twitter and change the name of an account?

She could have easily switched the name of @AKGovSarahPalin to @SarahPalinUSA or @SarahPalinRocks or @QTPiSarahPalin or whatever she wanted.

Then, swap out the profile picture and background image, and she's set. Bonus: She gets to keep all of her followers.

Websites like Facebook and Twitter are a book publisher's dream because they let authors and promoters connect directly with fans. But they're only valuable when the pages have a lot of people paying attention to them.

Related items:

Video clips of Sarah Palin with Oprah

Oprah talks about what Sarah Palin talks about

What's actually in Sarah Palin's book

Palin's roguish book tour schedule details

The secret Sarah Palin speeches we never heard

Sarah Palin breaks with GOP to endorse Conservative

-- Mark Milian

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Book jacket: HarperCollins

C-SPAN talks with Ken Auletta on new media vs. old

Word on the street has it that there's something out there now called new media that's going to somehow change society in unimaginable ways. Even politics, like Obama's $750-million campaign haul last year.

And this Internet Web thingy moves fast and doesn't need wires (How is that possible?). And somehow all this change threatens the old media that hadn't changed much since Johannes Gutenberg carved his first wooden letter of type about 600 years ago.

Well, that's all silly, of course. Traditional media has changed plenty; it doesn't use wooden type anymore, for one thing.

But Ken Auletta has gone ahead anyway and written another one of his intriguing looks at modern media. He wrote it in book form, though, one of those cursor-less collections of paper pages that you open by hand to read and then turn the pages to continue. Amazingly ancient. Called "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It."

So tonight, C-SPAN's Brian Lamb, who has talked very calmly with every author who's ever written a book since Gutenberg, interviews Auletta about what he found. It's pretty interesting, even without antacid commercials.

We're going to watch because we're addicted to Lamb.

So we obtained for Ticket readers a little sneak peek here of the interview. It will air on....

...the "Q&A" program at 5 and 8 p.m. Pacific tonight and again at 3 a.m. Pacific Monday. Set your TiVo, not the alarm.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Schwarzenegger's 'swift action' on Maria Shriver's illegal car cellphone use: Get her a driver

That's one way to stop Maria Shriver from talking on the phone while driving -- hire an escort.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vowed to take "swift action" on Wednesday after TMZ published pictures of his wife violating the California law prohibiting hand-held cellphone use while behind-the-wheel. And he did terminate the violation, in a savvy, edict-free husbandly fashion.

Today, TMZ comes up with video of Shriver riding shotgun in an SUV after leaving a bakery.

Who can argue with the solution? By putting somebody else behind the wheel, Shriver can legally gab on her phone all she wants. (Assuming the person she's talking with isn't her driver.)

It's not exactly the definitive answer for everyone with a cellphone-driving habit to hire someone to taxi them around.

We guess the rest of us will just have to buy one of those silly-looking Bluetooth headsets (which TMZ seems to imply Shriver also got) or abstain from traffic talks.

-- Mark Milian

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Video credit: TMZ

George W. Bush gets a BlackBerry. Is Twitter next?

Former President George W. Bush just got a new BlackBerry, according to a tweet by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

Stone posted a picture of him posing with Bush at a conference, which appears to be the World Knowledge Summit in Seoul, Korea, as indicated by Stone's previous tweets.

Now that Bush has his very own smart phone, Stone asks, "Will tweets be next?"

Twitter has proved to be a very effective medium for promoting books and engaging with fans.

Many politicians like Bush suspend e-mail activities while in office for fear all messages would be subject to public information laws.

If the long-rumored Bush book, a deal reportedly valued at $7 million, is indeed imminent, now seems like the right time to start building a following.

Bush shouldn't have to deal with any user-name squatters either. He appears to already own the Twitter profile for @GeorgeWBush.

Bush's longtime senior advisor and strategist, Karl Rove, who also has a book coming out in the near future, has been very active here on Twitter all year.

He's acquired some 90,000 followers from all political sides by actively sending several tweets a day with recommended articles, his observations and media appearances. And even responding to some followers.

But here's the question: How many would follow Rove's old boss?

-- Mark Milian

Bush might not be on Twitter yet, but the Ticket is. Click here for Twitter alerts of each Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. We're also on Facebook.

Photo credit: Larry W. Smith / EPA

Huffington Post merging news with community service

Liberal juggernaut the Huffington Post is launching a new feature called Impact at midnight, which places call-to-action buttons alongside blog posts.

The buttons, which are supplied in a partnership with Causecast, contain relevant links for charities and organizations.

For example, if you're reading news about homosexuals and AIDS, there might be a link to local HIV testing centers and the Trevor Project, a suicide hotline for gays.

Our colleague Dan Fost writes on the Times Technology blog:

You've got to love the left. Even when they're running capitalist enterprises, they want to find some way to help the downtrodden. ...

[Site founder Arianna] Huffington said ads will run on the site, and the Huffington Post and Causecast will split the ad revenue. Any money donated to any cause goes directly to the cause, with nothing coming out of it. 

Her site continues to expand, reinvesting its proceeds in the product. "We’ve had a very, very good advertising year," she said. "We would be in the black if we were not expanding. Whether you are profitable or not depends whether you're standing still or expanding. This is a window we need to take advantage of."

Ever had the urge to donate your time or money after reading a particularly heart-wrenching story? Let us know in the comments.

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Arianna Huffington. Credit: Associated Press

Government website adds H1N1 flu self-evaluation

Even the government, it seems, is getting in on do-it-yourself healthcare.

Perhaps inspired by the popularity of websites like WebMD, the government-run Flu.gov has added a new feature called H1N1 Flu Self-Evaluation.

People concerned about a friend, relative or their own well-being can use the resource to help determine an illness' potential seriousness.

Just in time for the H1N1 flu nasal spray vaccine.

Rather than fuel hypochondriacs' anxiety, the program asks users a series of questions. Based on how users answer the questions, the system may calmly recommend they seek professional help. (Click "continue reading" below to see an example of what a sick person might encounter at the end of the test.)

The service, not surprisingly, promotes professional healthcare. Which is good when you consider the other, more popular option is to perform a Google search for your symptoms — or, worse, for the illness you think you have, and then trick yourself into thinking you have it.

And then there's our other favorite H1N1 diagnosis resource: Do I Have Swine Flu?

-- Mark Milian

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Photo credit: European Pressphoto Agency

Psst! Obama warns all about cybersecurity

President Obama, who has his own specially encrypted BlackBerry, now proclaims that October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

That was among the headlines on some technology blogs Thursday -- a few spots above "WARNING: New Facebook Malware Attack Is Spreading."

Irony at its finest.

Obama writes in his proclamation: "In the Information Age, the very technologies that empower us to create and build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy."

At first, it sounds a bit reminiscent of the Bush administration scare tactics many became sick of. But he has a point.

Many Americans are constantly connected to computers and smart phones, feeding them countless pieces of personal information.

Ten years ago, seeing the gratuitous amounts of private stuff we plaster on our Facebook profiles and Twitter pages would probably incite a panic attack. Then, when you consider that Mint -- now a property of Intuit, which makes Quicken -- has bank and credit card information of millions of Americans... Yeesh.

These systems aren't invulnerable. And it's probably not a bad idea to take a month to think about the things you upload daily.

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times