Top Stories for the Week of January 18 - 22, 2009

So Bill Gates is on Twitter. Hey, it's 2010 after all. He's trying to keep up with Larry King on the tech front. It makes sense, says DVICE: Gates is "master and commander of anything with a blue screen of death." His first Tweet--"Hello World" --was an inside joke that "pays tribute to basic programming," explains Ubergizmo. Surprised it wasn't a C:> prompt. Post Tech says "the public response has been huge. In just one day, @BillGates amassed more than 234,000 followers." More interesting: who is Gates following? It's mostly charities and politicians, but "for some reason, the malaria-battler is keeping Ryan Seacrest and Ashley Tisdale on his short list," says Switched.

So what is Bill Gates doing now? Well, mostly just promoting his new web site, The Gates Notes. Yep, this isn't just a cool way to retweet check Ashton Kutsher after all. "Looks like his foray into Twitter and his return to Facebook on Tuesday weren't just for the heck of it," says The Microsoft Blog. Techflash says the new Gates Notes site includes a section dubbed "What I'm Thinking," with topics including the crisis in Haiti and the role of innovation in addressing global warming. "It's an interesting move that could establish more of public presence for Gates independent of Microsoft or his foundation." Wait--he's on Facebook too? That's correct, sir. Last August, Gates quit FB because, Mashable reported, there were "10,000 people wanting to be my friend" and it was time consuming to decide if he "knew this person, did I not know this person." (Hold on a sec, you have to know your friends??) This time around on FB, Gates is a "Page" rather than a person, so he won't have to deal with the countless friend requests.

Elsewhere, a Hong Kong outfit called NMA News has made this hilarious CGI video that makes sense of the whole Jay Leno/Conan O'Brien mess. Boing Boing raves: "The magic happens around a minute in, when CoCo [that's Conan] transforms into the Incredible Hulk, and Leno into Superman." BB points out that there's an English-language version, too, but it's not as funny. Elsewhere on the boob tube, a new video at The Onion reports that the coming final season of ABC's Lost "promises to make Lost fans more annoying than ever."

The White House has released its own iPhone app which helps you get nothing accomplished more conveniently! Oh yeah! Thank you! No, but seriously, reports TechPresident, it puts some of WhiteHouse.gov's video on the device so you can watch Obama's State of the Union address in your hand, and it links to WhiteHouse.gov/Live, "the White House's under-appreciated live-streaming feature that shows what's happening at the White House at any particular time." With both the State of the Union and Super Bowl XLIV coming up, here's a timely way to kill a few hours: America Bowl, which compares America's 44 Presidents against its (as of next month) 44 Super Bowls, to see "which have been better." One match-up per day. It's "A delightful waste of time," says Democracy in America. "So brilliant that I'm completely jealous not to have thought of it myself," says Uni Watch blog. Philebrity calls it laughably unsexy. Yep, sounds like it belongs on the Web.

Speaking of fantasy-league politics, how about that Massachussetts election? Republican Scott Brown won the Senate seat that Democrat Ted Kennedy had held for more than 11 centuries. "We have our first teabagger U.S. Senator," says Joe My God. Democratic candidate Martha Coakley had to pull out all the stops to lose in liberal Mass. For post-mortems, The Gaggle explains "how Coakley blew it," and Business Insider explains "how Martha Coakley blew it" and The Daily Banter recaps "how the Democrats blew it (again)." On the Daily Show Jon Stewart was in disbelief at how incompetent Coakley's campaign was and how it possibly ruined national healthcare reform. Says Washington Examiner: "You really F#@&ed this up!" he yelled into the camera as he highlighted Coakley's numerous campaign gaffes, including calling former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling a Yankee fan. Oh, by the way, the guy who won, Brown, once posed nude for Cosmo. "Cosmo named Brown "America's Sexiest Man" back in its June 1982 edition--and he posed for the magazine with nothing but a strategically placed arm," says Fitsnews.

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