You might no often think of Al Gore and Sean Parker in the same room, but the pair took the stage together this afternoon at South by Southwest, and they made similar points — that the democratic system has been broken by a flood of special interest money, and that the Internet could be the way to fix it. “To the extent that these new mediums and new media are going to have a role in reforming politics, it’s going to happen because … those systems will make politics more efficient,” said Parker (who, in addition to his more famous roles at Napster and Facebook, is the co-founder of Causes, and who also invested in political startups Votizen and NationBuilder ). Specifically, he says the Internet could lower the barrier to entry into politics, so people could run effective campaigns without raising vast amounts of money

Today brings some rather high-profile recruiting from Google: the director of DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research arm, is leaving after three years of heading the agency to join Google at a “senior executive position.” The news comes from a DARPA spokesman, who reports that Dugan felt she couldn’t refuse an offer from such an “innovative company.” She has worked at the agency on and off since 1996, and most recently has brought its budget and resources to bear on more practical problems like securing military networks. What role she will play at Google is unknown, but it is probably at least partially security-related. Dugan was originally a researcher and program manager, and ascended to director status in 2009

Turns out, Forest Whitaker isn’t just an Academy Award winning actor and accomplished producer and director — he’s also really into technology and social media. He brings together both worlds as a co-chair of JuntoBox Films , a brand new kind of movie studio that brings together its own social media platform with a traditional film production process. Whitaker was at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas this past weekend, where JuntoBox announced it has greenlit its first film, a movie called Passenger — the first of five films the studio plans to produce in 2012

To publish a “review” of the Lytro as it is today is, in a way, very premature. But it’s also only fair. The product is shipping and, to an extent, complete.

Twitter just announced that it has acquired Posterous, the Y Combinator-backed blogging and sharing platform that competed early on with Tumblr. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Legendary scientist, inventor, futurist, and all-around tech icon Ray Kurzweil is at the ongoing South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, where today he headlined one of the event’s most highly anticipated keynote sessions . So we were very, very excited to be able to meet Kurzweil yesterday afternoon for an interview with TechCrunch TV

If your company doesn’t have a Facebook Timeline app yet, you’re late to the party. 3,000 Timeline apps have spawned since Facebook launched the platform 3 months ago, and today Foursquare, VEVO, The Onion, Fandango, BandPage, and more big companies are unveiling theirs to cash in on the free virality. Pinterest and others have already seen wild growth from the platform’s ability to automatically publish to the Facebook Ticker, news feed, and Timeline when users take action.

Word of the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G first broke around the time Team TechCrunch was roaming the cavernous halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES, but at the time T-Mobile wasn’t feeling very talkative about release dates. The mangenta-hued carrier seems to have opened up a bit during the intervening months though, as they’ve taken to Twitter earlier today to announce that their latest Samsung handset will hit their sales channels on March 28. If you’re really lucky (or willing to hop in a car and take some chances), you could snag a Blaze 4G even earlier than that, as some stores will be selling the device a week early.

I usually trash any email that comes my way pitching an iPad case and/or stand. Sorry, but there are just so many of them that they really need to stand out.

Swedish gaming company King.com just acquired Stockholm-based developer Fabrication Games in a big push to expand onto Android and iOS this year. With the deal, King.com picks up Fabrication’s talent, games and developer tools. Terms weren’t disclosed, but I would assume the acquisition is priced in the talent-range