WASHINGTON — There is one addiction President Obama will not have to kick: his BlackBerry.

For more than two months, Mr. Obama has been waging a vigorous battle with his handlers to keep his BlackBerry, which like millions of other Americans he has relied upon for years to stay connected with friends and advisers. (And, of course, to get Chicago White Sox scores.)

He won the fight, aides disclosed Thursday, but the privilege of becoming the nation’s first e-mailing president comes with a specific set of rules.

“The president has a BlackBerry through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends,” said Robert Gibbs, his spokesman, “in a way that use will be limited and that the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate.”

First, only a select circle of people will have his address, creating a true hierarchy for who makes the cut and who does not.

Second, anyone placed on the A-list to receive his e-mail address must first receive a briefing from the White House counsel’s office.

Third, messages from the president will be designed so they cannot be forwarded.

The battle over whether the president could keep his BlackBerry has been fueled to a large degree by Mr. Obama himself, who mentioned it again and again. He would not take no for an answer. In an interview this month, he worried aloud, “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

Mr. Obama received his BlackBerry on Tuesday, but officials declined to specify what kind. In a conversation with reporters on Thursday evening, he said, “I don’t think it’s actually up and running yet.”

Obama Keeps His Blackberry in a Hard-Fought E-Victory – NYTimes.com.

Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of NYCGo, a new information and reference project launched by the New York City government to provide resources to both visitors and locals. Wednesday’s launch announced the debut of NYCGo.com, a Google Maps-fueled local search and reference site, as well as the unveiling of the renovated New York City Information Center a few blocks north of the tourist-heavy Times Square district.

NYCGo.com contains not just Google map and search data, but also travel deals from Travelocity and local content from what-to-do powerhouse Time Out New York, nightlife culture magazine Paper, the New York Observer, and eco-living guide Greenopia.

The information center, located on Seventh Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets, is equally Googly. The city’s technocratic mayor, Michael Bloomberg, even contributed a guest post to the official Google blog to announce it: “The Information Center features interactive map tables, powered by the Google Maps API for Flash, that let you navigate venues and attractions as well as create personalized itineraries, which can be printed, emailed or sent to mobile devices,” the blog post explained. “Additionally, there’s a gigantic video wall that utilizes Google Earth to display a 3D model of New York City on which you can map out personalized itineraries.”

Bloomberg has been aggressive about promoting tech initiatives during his time in office, from a wind power plan (part of the much bigger “GreeNYC” project) and a city-run venture firm. Under his watch, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened its New York satellite office, taking over several floors of the historic former Port Authority building downtown.

A side note: the video provided by Google shows the “interactive map tables” in the new information center, and they look a whole lot like Microsoft Surface units. But they aren’t, a representative from NYCGo tells us. They’re custom-made.

Google powers new NYC information hub | Webware – CNET.

Putting your thoughts in 140 characters and sharing them with the world is shaping up to be more popular than “digging” your favorite news. According to new market share numbers from Hitwise, Twitter, the popular microblogging service, is now more popular than Digg’s social news aggregation service. Hitwise compared both sites in a report released Tuesday and is basing the market share ranking by page views.

Unfortunate events such as the Hudson River plane crash and also more fortunate ones like Obama’s Inauguration, led to more mainstream exposure for Twitter and moved it above one notch above Digg in Hitwise’s hierarchy – Twitter is now ranked at 84, with Digg at 85.

When the US Airways Flight crashed into the Hudson River late last week, the first reports of the incident appeared on Twitter, including amateur photographs that later made headlines around the world and transformed Janis Krums into a celebrity of the moment. Hitwise confirmed the fact that this event was one of the main factors of Twitter surpassing Digg in visits market share.

The Numbers

Wikipedia plans to become as easy to use as blogs and social media sites in order to attract users and remain competitive. Wikia co-founder Angela Beesley reveals more.

Wikis could take a trick or two from Facebook and social media in order to draw more contributors in the new year, says co-founder of Wikia, Angela Beesley, one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming linux.conf.au. She shares her thoughts on wikia, wikis and wikipedia as well as their place in the enterprise with Computerworld.

What will your talk at linux.conf.au be about?

I will be talking about the future plans of both Wikipedia and its parent organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation.

Where are Wikia and Wikipedia heading?

Both Wikia and Wikipedia will be very focused on usability in 2009. The Wikimedia Foundation was recently awarded a grant of $890,000 by the Stanton Foundation to make Wikipedia’s editing interface easier to use.

Wikia has recently launched a rich text (or WYSIWYG) editor for MediaWiki, the software that both Wikia and Wikipedia use. This means that new users can instantly get involved with editing or creating new pages without needing to learn complex markup. At the same time, we have retained the option for editors to switch to the traditional editing interface.

Wikia has also introduced a new skin making the site easier to navigate, especially for new users, and we will be refining this over the coming year, ensuring that people know they can edit and we will be making it very easy to add new content.

How has Wikia created a viable business model around wikis?

Unlike other tools, a wiki is not owned by a single person, so the model of selling something to the customer doesn’t work here.

The sort of public community-based wikis that Wikia hosts rely very much on group ownership, and we think that providing hosting or premium services via one person who is paying could upset that by implying that the individual is responsible for the site which decreases the motivations of others to build and maintain it.

Instead, Wikia is focused on the advertising-model, where we display ads from a variety of networks and directly from companies. This frees the community from being reliant on the person who pays the bills, and allows all members to have an equal stake in the success of their wiki.

Wikipedia will soon be easier to use, says founder.