It’s going to be a hot one, so I got up pretty early.

Went out front just to make sure my lawn wasn’t littered with a free newspaper, then made some coffee and turned on the tube for the first time in almost two weeks. Since my programming guide is pretty much limited to SciFi and Discovery Channel, I was disappointed to find that Comcast has now moved the latter into the premium category - I’m not as happy with them as I thought I was last week now that half the value of my meager $14 price tag has disappeared.

Off to the net, where I found these tidbits:

• Nobody explained Twitter to me, but that may be a non-issue as the service is supposedly getting “Pownced.” Meanwhile, it is now quite easy to get an invite to Pownce as long as you don’t mind coughing up your email address. Now someone please explain Pownce to me?
• People still aren’t watching what they write in their blogs. A Google rep subtlely attacked Michael Moore’s new movie “Sicko”, the blogosphere (and/or someone’s corporate superiors) didn’t like it, and further explanation was required. Meanwhile, a journalist for Business 2.0 took a sneaky shot at Apple’s iPhone with a headline poo-pooing first day sales figures - the resulting comments called out the shoddy reporting and the writer weakly changed the headline.
• It is getting harder to buy a drink without “Big Brother” watching - I’m neither surprised nor will I be surprised when the governments instituting these types of policies find out the procedures create a monster identity theft hole.

No fun. Aw, Sunday is “fight the crowds at Home Depot” day anyway.

UK officials figure if they already have cameras everywhere, why not add loudspeakers to them so they can shout at folks engaged in suspicious activities.

I wonder what Houston’s police chief thinks about that idea?

Bill Gates kicked off the RSA Security Conference with an address to unveil Microsoft’s latest tool to fight internet security problems. Dubbed InfoCards, the web browsing thingamajig sounds like a cross between an Outlook vCard and an OS X keychain.

Along with disk encryption standards, these InfoCards are supposed to replace the passwords you enter into webforms, using encryption like SSL, but hopefully a little harder to get a hold of. The cards would reside virtually on the drive, and perform the exchange of personal information for you. Sounds great, if less than novel.

It is even better if you are “Government,” and already have a backdoor to all that encrypted data, which is exactly what one government is already lobbying Microsoft for.