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Broadcasters throughout the country will turn off their old analog TV transmitters on February 17, and begin transmitting their TV signals only in digital format. But despite all the benefits, consumers still have questions about how this transition will affect them. CNET News' Maggie Reardon explains the ins and outs when the flip gets switched two months from now.

Today's stories:

Huffington Post closes $25 million round

What you need to know about the digital TV switch

Morocco issues biometric ID cards

Europe to get cybercrime alert system

Liberal news outlet The Huffington Post has announced its latest venture funding round. The upswing: It is $25 million, not $15 million as previously rumored.

The funding comes from the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Oak Venture Partners. No valuation was provided, but AllThingsD's Kara Swisher suggests it's slightly under $100 million. The company has 46 employees.

Fred Harman of Oak Venture partners will join Huffington Post's board. Previous investors include Softbank Capital and Greycroft Partners.

This is the company's Series C funding round. Traffic to its Web site skyrocketed amid the hotly contested presidential election this … Read more

Political site The Huffington Post has reportedly received a $15 million third round of funding, according to the Times UK.

That funding round brings The Huffington Post up to $40 million in raised capital, giving it an estimated valuation of $100 million, says a report in PaidContent.org

The Huffington Post anticipates using the proceeds to help fund its expansion, which will include offering local news and investigative journalism, according to the Times UK site.

Oak Investment Partners participated in this latest round. In previous rounds, SoftBank Capital and Greycroft Partners have provided investments.

Internet hosting site McColo disappeared on Tuesday. Along with it went thousands of pieces of spam, thanks, in part, to investigative work by Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs.

For about four months, security experts have been collecting data about McColo Corp., a San Jose, Calif.-based Web hosting service that may have been used by by the cyber underground, according to the The Washington Post. Krebs said that the McColo hosting company had been responsible for up to 75 percent of all spam spent.

Security vendor MXLogic said it was seeing about a 50 percent decline in spam volume as … Read more

Social networking finally reaches its most underserved niche: the hobos. Look for Tom to officially join the Hobo Nation any day now. In other news of the day, Caroline McCarthy joins us for a rollicking discussion of The Washington Post's war on spam, and Molly most likely gets herself fired from CBS and kicked off TWiT in one fell swoop. So, learn to love Caroline. She might be sticking around.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 makes date with U.S.: Black Friday for $799.99 http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/12/sony-ericsson-xperia-x1-makes-date-with-us-black-friday-for-79/… Read more

Taking a cue from real-world Post-It notes, Stick provides an equivalent product for your computer desktop. A few differences from other sticky note programs make this a valuable asset for any PC.

The most noticeable is that notes, when closed, turn into tabs you can then append to the sides of your screen. This makes keeping your desktop tidy a snap. In addition to basic text notes, you also can create Explorer notes, which are actual Windows Explorer windows. You can navigate the file system from within these or even use them for Web browsing.

Each note features a variety … Read more

In the past two weeks, there’s been at least a dozen stories in the mainstream and not-so-mainstream media about the importance of innovation in a recession. For businesses, refocusing on R&D and innovation really is a good strategy in down times. There’s plenty of historic evidence to back the claim up (the invention of farming technologies and civil engineering breakthroughs in the Great Depression, alternative energy investments in the early 1970s, and a sharpening of Internet business models after the dot com bust in the late 90s). What’s also true is that writing about innovating … Read more

DANA POINT, Calif.--When political pundit Arianna Huffington, along with a team of digital-media veterans, launched political news aggregator The Huffington Post in 2005, critics were skeptical of the left-leaning site. But it's turned out to be one of political journalism's great recent success stories, even amid controversy over the charismatic and opinionated Huffington and the site's business model, which utilizes thousands of unpaid bloggers in addition to full-time reporters.

Just over a year ago, The Huffington Post hired Betsy Morgan, head of CBSNews.com, to serve as its CEO, taking over from co-founder and former AOL … Read more

Maintaining healthy Twitter relationships takes a bit of work. In polite Twitter society, it is important that you spend the time performing upkeep on your social register of those you are following, since there are many people who may take offense if they follow you, and you do not follow them back. And we would certainly not want that.

Of course, one doesn't necessarily want to follow all one's followers. One is not keen to appear needy.

Unfortunately, keeping up with who's following you so you can decide whether to follow them back isn't easy on … Read more