The long, long election campaign season culminated today as people made their choices on hundreds of statewide and local contests as well as the race for the next U.S. president. We've kept an eye on Google Hot Trends to decipher what may be meaningful, as well as searches that are "business as usual" on Google. This is the third and final update for today. - Ed. As of 12 am EST:
If we count the search queries relating to the commercial breaks on election night TV coverage, the entire list of the 100 fastest-rising terms on Google Hot Trends reflect a passion about today's events. As polls closed and the presidential race was called after 11 pm EST for [president obama], people searched for outcomes on state races of interest, such as [al franken senate race], [massachusetts question 2], and [proposition 8] in California. Obsessive viewers noted that cameras captured a sign in Times Square that seemed to say "[cassoulet forever]" (which is odd; it's a classic French country dish), and they were intrigued by CNN's use of [hologram technology] to show non-local notables like musician [will i am] appear on the set with Anderson Cooper.
Even when looking ahead to entertainment after a marathon post-election season, Americans can't stop pondering politics just yet. Two of the top 100 at this hour are for upcoming films [valkyrie] (the true story of an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler), and [frost nixon], a dramatic re-telling of Richard Nixon's 1977 TV interview with David Frost. Both films were promoted during commercial breaks in wall-to-wall coverage tonight.
Finally, eager voters (presumably of all persuasions) seem to be looking forward to a new era of [obama jokes].
Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Elections team
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Thus far, we've seen OLED rule the FDP International floor in Japan, but now we've got one more emerging display technology showing off its merits: e-ink. Soken Chemical & Engineering Company demonstrated a wall of 30- x 30-centimeter e-ink paper displays in order to showcase just what the technology was capable of. Quite honestly, we're still struggling to see just what that is. Practicality aside, it's still pretty fascinating to think that all of the colors you see above are being emitted from ultrathin displays, though the choice of pattern is questionable at best.
We get pretty tired of keyboards that don't completely rule. The Eclipse III from Saitek probably isn't one of them -- it's backlit, after all, and that backlighting is totally multi-color, which is pretty important. At least to us. If that wasn't enough, this USB plug and play beast boasts a "two stage height" adjustor system, keys which are "laser-etched," headphone and microphone audio ports -- oh! and "time-saving Windows and internet shortcut keys." We have yet to see any indication of price, nor do we know when it will drop. Can we make a suggestion? ASAP would be for the best.
The portable Dell M109S projector which we saw a while back has just been reviewed over at Laptop Magazine. Similar to other pocket projectors, the verdict seems to be that the quality is nothing to explode in excitement over, but is impressive for such a small machine. Laptop praised the projector's LED as one of the "brightest in its class," though they seem disappointed with its non-standard native resolution of 858 x 600. They also laud the simplistic design of the projector, but found the buttons on the box "hard to use," and complained about the lack of remote control capability. Ultimately, they conclude that the size -- not as small as pico projectors, but not large enough to compete with higher-end models -- makes the M109S an awkward middle child. If you want the full rundown, however, hit the read link.
Sure, not every station's pulled out the Star Wars / Iron Man-style holograms for the 2008 election, but they're all trying to put shiny new HD studios to full use and get as many eyeballs as possible until things are decided. NBC & ABC immediately jumped out front at 7 p.m. with data pouring in on the widescreen edges of their HD feeds, with CNN waiting until states were decided to begin updating their lists. ABC's chosen to lean on its touchscreen display and forgo side graphics altogether, while despite Fox's claim as "America's Election HQ", with totally bare shoulders and boring sets, we're pointing our flatscreens elsewhere. PBS, despite airing the clearest, most high quality video available of three old guys at a table, has no slick touchscreens or HD graphics packages to speak of. Think about that as you check out the rest of the screens after the break, and during the next donation drive. Big Bird deserves better.
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Larry Page / The Official Google Blog: A vote for broadband in the “white spaces” — All eyes are on the presidential election today, but another important vote just took place at the Federal Communications Commission. By a vote of 5-, the FCC formally agreed to open up the “white spaces” spectrum — the unused airwaves between …
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Forget The Magic Wall. CNN Now Has Holograms — CNN is cool. In addition to the huge touchscreen “Magic Wall” (which was originally military technology), CNN's Wolf Blitzer gets to play with Holograms today during their coverage of the presidential elections.
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Mac OS X 10.5 only: If you enjoy searching for music in the iTunes Music Store but would rather buy DRM-free MP3s encoded in a higher bit rate, then check out Advantageous, a script for iTunes 8. Once you've downloaded and installed the package, just click the script icon and select Get MP3 from Amazon while viewing a track listing in iTunes. Your browser will open the relevant page for the artist or album at Amazon's MP3 download store. Advantageous is a free download for that works with iTunes for Mac OS X 10.5.
Google is experimenting with allowing users with registered accounts to verify their identity through Knol, the company's Wikipedia-like database of content supplied by volunteers. It's not clear what benefit there is except for a note that you're noted as Verified within Knol (though I'm guessing you'll get brownie points during the inevitable takeover by our robot overlords). Though this could have obvious applications for other Google projects, from transactions via Checkout to publishing on Blogger. The system attempts to verify you through phone or credit records, but doesn't always work according to Google. Get verified yourself after the jump.
First, you'll have to sign up with a Google account, such as the one you use to access Gmail, Google Calendar, iGoogle, etc. Then you'll have to visit Knol and sign in with your account. To get to the Settings menu, I had to click the Write a Knol button. Then, Settings appeared in the top-right, allowing me to access the Name Verifcation option.
You can choose to go with phone verification or credit verification.
Debit cards (and American Express) aren't allowed for credit verification, and to be safe, I used my land-line phone number. For phone verification, enter your name, number and address and you'll be provided with a PIN. You'll receive a call on your phone, where you'll be asked to enter the PIN number with your phone keys.
For credit card verification, it's the same process, though you enter your credit card number instead of your phone number, and there's no further steps.
When you're successfully verified, you'll get an email to confirm that you've completed the process. And within a few minutes the Verified note will appear on your My Bio page in Knol. And now Skynet will know exactly where to harvest your meatbag when it comes to life, if it didn't already.
Google Image Search now makes the filters for faces, photos and news images available directly on the results page. Previously, one had to click through to the Advanced Image Search to refine your image searches. You'll find the drop-down menu to select between filters to the right of the existing menu to refine your search by image size. Which makes it even easier for fair use-enabled photochoppers to find places and faces for satirical digital compositing.
You can watch a feed of cable network CNN live on the station's web site in a Flash player, but it won't let you watch full-screen. For Windows users, gHacks has published the direct URL for the stream that you can access via Windows Media Player. But users on any platform can use free, open-source VLC to play the stream. Download and install VLC, then select File > Open Network. Select HTTP/FTP/MMS/RTSP from the list of protocols on the left, and paste the rtsp:// URL from gHacks in the text area at the top. Now you can watch CNN live, full-screen and commercial free as the returns come in.
Voice-to-text phone service Dial2Do sends text messages, emails, and reminders with the ease of a phone call. Similar to Jott, the popular voice-to-text service that just added significant limits to its free accounts, Dial2Do walks you through a simple voice-recognition menu to perform actions. Aside from email, SMS, and reminders, Dial2Do supports posting to tons of different services, including Twitter, Remember the Milk, and your WordPress or Blogger blog (again, much like Jott). As an added bonus, Dial2Do is currently available in 19 different countries. During its beta period, Dial2Do is free—though all signs point to pay accounts post-beta. We highlighted several free alternatives to replace Jott's functions when it began charging for its best features, but Dial2Do is another great option to add to that list. Thanks magnoliasouth!
Microsoft says that "a very good system boots in under 15 seconds," and while the early-release Windows 7 Preview doesn't deliver a sub-15 second boot time, it does start 20% faster than Windows Vista on my computer. The only way to truly compare boot-up times between operating systems is to try them out on the same exact hardware, and as of today I'm triple-booting XP, Vista, and the Windows 7 Preview on a newly-built PC. The results? Windows 7 boots much faster than Windows Vista—but surprisingly, no faster than Windows XP. Here are my exact numbers, machine specs, and caveats.
The hardware: My test system has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 3.16GHz with 4GB of RAM. The only difference between XP, Vista, and the Windows 7 Preview is that Win7 is installed on an IDE hard drive, and XP and Vista are booting from SATA drives. That puts Win7 at a slight disadvantage because IDE drives are not as performant as SATA. Also: the version of Windows 7 that I'm using is the Preview release from last month's PDC conference, an incomplete, earlier-than-beta, for-testers-only edition. One can only assume it will get better (read:faster) in the final release.
The test: Since I'm triple-booting the three operating systems, I used a simple handheld timer to get my numbers, starting at the "Choose your operating system" screen (which comes after the BIOS startup) and ending at the user login screen. These tests do not include the amount of time it takes to load the user's desktop, because that depends entirely on what's in your Windows startup. This is simple, pure, operating system boot here—no desktop or BIOS involved.
Here are my final numbers from starting the three operating systems on the same box and timing them:
Operating System
Time to reach user login prompt
Windows 7 Ultimate (Preview, PDC edition)
27 seconds
Windows Vista Ultimate
34 seconds
Windows XP Professional
27 seconds
Final result: The Windows 7 Preview boots 20.6% faster than Windows Vista, but in exactly the same amount of time as Windows XP. Because of the slower IDE drive on my test system, and the preview status of Windows 7, it's very probable that Win7 will be even faster than XP in its final releases.
Just to make sure you have one less excuse to get out and vote today, Vote411 has a quick and easy tool to help you find your polling station. Simply enter your home address and it will display the location relative to your home with Yahoo Maps, and provide a link to a voting guide for your state — I tested it on my address, where the usual location had changed since the last election, and it worked fine. An "I Voted" sticker is the fashion accessory of the season, so drop by your local voting boutique get yours today, dahling (if you didn't get a sticker, make one). Want to sound off about the election? Check out our election day open thread. Photo by Jessie Terwilliger. Thanks, Asian Angel!
We've never been fans of the impossible-to-open packaging holding us twenty tedious steps away from satisfying our gadget lust (surprised?), but apparently neither is Amazon. To address the issue, Amazon has launched a Frustration-Free Packaging storefront:
Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging, a multi-year initiative designed to alleviate "wrap rage," features recyclable boxes that are easy to open and free of excess materials such as hard plastic clamshell cases, plastic bindings, and wire ties. The product itself is exactly the same—we've just streamlined the packaging.
Amazon wouldn't allow me to embed their wrap rage video, but keep reading for a similarly themed SNL commercial featuring Kristen Wigg as an equally frustrated consumer.
Just replace jars with flash drives, memory cards, or—in Amazon's example—pirate ships, and you know where they're coming from. Right now the initiative doesn't feature that many products, but hopefully in time this initiative will make all of our lives that much easier. In the meantime, you can try breaking through clamshell packaging with your can opener or even a dedicated package-opening gadget.
Personal finance blogger Ramit Sethi's Save $1,000 in 30 Days Challenge is exactly what is sounds like: Sethi wants to help as many of us as possible to save an extra $1,000 in the month of November. The challenge mixes daily tips from the I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog—broadly outlined in the video above—along with user-submitted tips for reaching the goal. We're a few days behind schedule (the challenge started on the first), but if you could use a few extra bucks heading into the holiday season, now's a great time to do some last-minute saving.
VIPeers is a file-sharing service that also happens to be one of the easiest ways to create a torrent for peer-to-peer downloading. I chatted with zSlide founder Louis Choquel, who was kind enough to offer Lifehacker readers an invitation to the private beta. Enter the code LIFEHACKER20 when you register between now and Monday, November 10th (though if the site doesn't run into any scaling problems, that may be extended). I tested out the service, which works in any browser, and had no problems — if you do, just let the team know in the support forums. Simply upload a file up to five gigabytes in size, and VIPeers will give you a selection of sharing options, from a direct-download URL to a torrent file link which will be seeded automatically by VIPeers and work in any BitTorrent client. If you've ever wanted to create a torrent download but found it too confusing to set up a seeding server, tracker and the like, this is a great way to get started. If you give VIPeers a try, link to your file in the comments. Thanks, Janko!
As you're enjoying your free Election Day coffee and donut, check out another today-only deal: 37signals, makers of productivity webapps Backpack, Basecamp, and Campfire (which we use in-house here at Lifehacker), are offering 25% off new sign-ups and upgrades today only until midnight Eastern time. Enter the coupon code VOTE to get the deal.
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Mac OS X 10.5 only: If you enjoy searching for music in the iTunes Music Store but would rather buy DRM-free MP3s encoded in a higher bit rate, then check out Advantageous, a script for iTunes 8. Once you've downloaded and installed the package, just click the script icon and select Get MP3 from Amazon while viewing a track listing in iTunes. Your browser will open the relevant page for the artist or album at Amazon's MP3 download store. Advantageous is a free download for that works with iTunes for Mac OS X 10.5. 
Google is experimenting with allowing users with registered accounts to verify their identity through Knol, the company's Wikipedia-like database of content supplied by volunteers. It's not clear what benefit there is except for a note that you're noted as Verified within Knol (though I'm guessing you'll get brownie points during the 
Travel search aggregation site 
We've never been fans of the impossible-to-open packaging holding us twenty tedious steps away from satisfying our gadget lust (surprised?), but apparently neither is Amazon. To address the issue, Amazon has launched a Frustration-Free Packaging storefront:
VIPeers is a file-sharing service that also happens to be one of the easiest ways to create a torrent for peer-to-peer downloading. I chatted with zSlide founder Louis Choquel, who was kind enough to offer Lifehacker readers an invitation to the private beta. Enter the code LIFEHACKER20 when you register between now and Monday, November 10th (though if the site doesn't run into any scaling problems, that may be extended). I tested out the service, which works in any browser, and had no problems — if you do, just