John Siracusa is right about electronic voting. People have been trained for years to be skeptical about computers replacing our ancient paper ballot systems. It’s sad for me to hear otherwise intelligent people spew out all the various rote reasons why we could never vote via the Internet from our own laptops or phones. “It’ll be the end of democracy!” “Hackers will steal elections with a single click!” “Paper systems are so much harder to manipulate!” Nonsense, plain and simple. Like fears of Terminator style artificially intelligent machines…

Imagine the possibilities, not just for news consumers but producers. Enhanced spell check for journalists! A suspicious sentence is underlined, offering more factual alternatives. Or maybe Clippy chimes in: “It looks like you’re lying to your readers!” The software could even be extended to email clients to debunk those chain letters from your crazy uncle in Florida. via Bull beware: Truth goggles sniff out suspicious sentences in news » Nieman Journalism Lab. I don’t want to rain on this guy’s parade or anything, but the issue here isn’…

> But that seems unrealistic. I don’t think we can have our cake and eat it too. I don’t think the carriers will work together, and I don’t think we can let 25 different carriers have 25 different spectrums — that’s ultimately bad for business *and* the end user. I know this is a more complicated idea that requires bigger brains than mine to be tackled, but I also know (or at least strongly feel) that it’s something that needs to happen if we’re going to…

> How does AT&T defend the move? The company explains it will only impact two percent of consumers who use “a disproportionate amount of bandwidth,” and poses the caps as an alternative to throttling transfer speeds or disconnecting excessive users from the service completely. Customers will be able to check their usage with an online tool, and get notifications when they reach 65 percent, 90 percent and 100 percent of their monthly rates. via [engadget.com](http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/13/atandt-will-cap-dsl-u-verse-internet-and-impose-overage-fees/)This impacts two percent of customers…

> Harry Baals is the runaway favorite in online voting to name the new building in Fort Wayne, about 120 miles northeast of [Indianapolis](http://topics.sfgate.com/topics/Indianapolis). But [Deputy Mayor](http://topics.sfgate.com/topics/Deputy_mayor) Beth Malloy said that probably won’t be enough to put the name of the city’s longest-tenured mayor on the center. > > The issue is pronunciation. The former mayor pronounced his last name “balls.” His descendants have since changed it to “bales.” > > Supporters said it’s unfair that the former mayor…