Top Stories for the week of January 12 - 16, 2009

How do you watch the historic Obama ceremony next Tuesday--during work? Bring your headphones and go online says NewTeeVee, which runs down the many live video feeds of the event, including C-SPAN's planned webcast, a multichannel grid of inauguration activities from Saturday through Tuesday. "Obama's campaign set a new standard for high-tech, high-touch politics, so it's no surprise his inauguration will be cast in the same mold," says Cosmic Log (whose own roundup of political webbery mentions the inauguration Twitter feed). Indeed, the official 2009 inauguration site offers tech goodies like updates on your phone via SMS text messages. Thoughts from a Tech Specialist points to a great collection on Inauguration speeches dating back 50 years to Dwight D. Eisenhower. "Every blog I am visiting these days seems to say "Live Blogging the Obama Inauguration," says The Blog Herald, which wonders what is the point when you can just watch the actual video?

A lot of people are stoked about a CNN/Facebook uh, "friendship," in which Facebook members will be see the inauguration on CNN while staying on Facebook friending one another, says Javno. "The idea is for you to be able to watch the Inauguration, to share your real-time thoughts, and simultaneously view what your Facebook friends are also saying," says Mashable, whose concern is: did CNN snub Twitter? (Eh, well, Obama's Twitter account was hacked recently.) Thousands are signed up, so "it seems like the Barack Obama Inauguration will be historical in more than one way," says Ronnestam.com (perspective check needed in aisle five!). Heck, this is the first time an official presidential portrait has been taken with a digital camera. "Very symbolic," says Crooks and Liars, which quips that the McCain photo would have been taken with this (are the "old" jokes starting to get old?). Says one photo critic at HuffPo: "I like the [Obama] photo, but the camera focused on the tie...and not on his face, which is kinda fuzzy." And it's also the first time in presidential history that citizens have been able to go online and create pictures of themselves that look like the cool campaign posters the winning candidate used.

As Obama steps up, another of America's Most Beloved Execs is stepping back. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has announced a six-month leave of absence to deal with health issues he says are "more complex that I originally thought." Speculation is rampant. "It's got to be serious," says Bits. "You don't take a six-month leave of absence because you've got a stomachache." Gadget Lab suggests Jobs won't be back and "this is the first step in a phased goodbye."

Elsewhere in tech shutdowns, Facebook probably is happier with its Obama/CNN arrangement than with Burger King's stunt offering a free Whopper to those who dropped 10 Facebook friends through a special application. The Future of Ads called it "a savvy move" by BK. Unimpressed, Facebook turned off the app, citing privacy violations. Inside Facebook explains: "Normally, no notification is sent when a user removes a friend on Facebook. However, the Whopper Sacrifice application sent a notification to the friend being removed letting them know they were being 'sacrificed for a Whopper' before finalizing the removal." Idiots!, says TechCruch: Facebook blew a Whopper of a PR opportunity. There surely will be others. Google is shutting things down, too, including Google video uploads, Google Notebook, Catalog Search, and the microblogging site Jaiku. Says SearchEngineLand: "it's similar to what happened with Yahoo a year or two ago, when it had some products that never took off or multiple ones that served the same audience"--no biggie--but the move does come on the heels of Google laying off off 100 recruiters and maybe 70 engineers. Hey, this just Google reaching adolescence, says Between the Lines.

And yet, a lot of people are keeping their chins up. After all, American Idol is back, with singers in bikinis. The investment fraud guy who faked his plane-crash death is being brought to justice, and the NFL player's girlfriend who cut his hair says "At least he has a great haircut for the news." And StyleList wonders if Oprah will capture some video moments at the inauguration on her new Flip cam: "It would be so cool if the campaign handed out commemorative Flips designed with the Obama logo on them and encouraged supporters upload their Inauguration experience to the Obama site." It's good to have a dream.