For a fascinating exercise in the banality of the web — and a demonstration of the ingenuity of one 16-year-old — check out the Obama Sign CCTV 1 on www.ustream.tv

To sum up: To stop people stealing the Obama sign on the front yard of his family's home in Portland, Oregon, teenager Preston Fosback put up a video camera inside the house and trained it on the sign from behind a window.

The stream runs live on Ustream and is now watched 24 hours a day by avid viewers from around the world in online marathon sessions. About 40,000 viewers have placed the feed among the top 10 most-watched videos on Ustream.tv

After the Wall Street Journal published an article on the strange occurrence, I went on to the site to see what was up. There were actually about 140 viewers when as 'ustreamer-23803' I posted a couple questions:

12:54 ustreamer-23803: what do you do if the sign gets stolen? How do you get the thief

12:55 BelgianChaos: we scream helplessly in front of our screens

12:55 aumbat: love

12:55 polderjongetje: and Screenshoot the thief

12:55 NinaO: yep belg!

12:55 ustreamer-27023: very existential

12:55 oldwhitelady: reward is hanging around with us... the good guys.

Yesterday, a sign came up on the video screen when I was writing this column: "Privacy protected momentarily. Please don't Panic". Then someone put up tape on the window to protect the identities of children walking to school. That got the crowd excited. It is a bit like watching paint dry, but as one commentator said... very existential.

If you do any amount of video editing on your computer then you probably use Windows Movie Maker, a free download from www.microsoft.com. I have used it and once you get the hang of the software it is pretty good for creating a home video.

Movie Maker only runs on Windows XP and Vista and takes a bit of time before you can begin to appreciate the available features, ones that some competitors are selling for a pretty penny.

I bashed around for ages like a fool to learn the software, only to find out that (of course) Microsoft has some directions on the Internet on how to use Movie Maker immediately. For those smarter than myself (about 99 percent of the universe) go to: www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/

I am not a reader of Esquire, but the magazine has been among the first to give the public a foretaste of electronic ink by giving us a taste on its latest cover. I believe electronic ink will save the print media and the book publishing trade. Of course cheaper devices to read e-ink will have to be on the market along with a change in publishing strategy before the revolution occurs.

Esquire's latest cover has a small digital display on it, which flashes a changing message reading "The 21st Century Begins Now". I disagree with some commentators that the gimmick (which actually illustrates a story inside), does not measure up to the hype surrounding e-ink.

Only about 100,000 copies of October issue has the electronic ink display on the cover. To see how it works Esquire has a video of the cover online at www.esquire.com

Contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com to make comments or to send in ideas of technologies you want covered.